Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 570: You Are Not a Sh*tty Person | Carla Naumburg

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

There’s so much compelling research behind the notion of self compassion. Even though many of us think we need an internal cattle prod in order to retain our edge, research shows that people who have a supportive inner attitude — who have their own back — are more resilient and effective. Not to mention happier. And nicer.And yet, it is easy for skeptics to be turned off by some of the language and practices of self compassion. So today we brought in a guest who puts it in plain English, and is very funny. Carla Naumburg PhD is a clinical social worker, author, and mother. She has a lot to say about self compassion, and she does so in a way that skeptics will find appealing. One other note about Carla. A lot of her books are directed at parents, especially parents who are self critical. But this episode is aimed at everybody. We do talk a little bit about parenting at the end, but it’s not the main focus. Just so you have it, her books have titles such as: How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t with Your Kids and You Are Not a Sh*tty Parent. It’s common for parents to think they suck. It’s also common for humans to think we suck. That we are somehow terrible people. Sit back, relax, and let Carla disabuse you of that notion.In this episode we talk about:What Carla calls “shitty human syndrome”Asking ourselves, what do I need right now?How, for skeptics, the data on the effectiveness of compassion practices is a powerful incentive.The third arrow of denial and distractionThe very human problem of not knowing how to deal with our feelings.  Using “noticing, connection, curiosity, and kindness” as ways to get super clear about the practice of self-compassion Curiosity as the antidote to judgmentHow loving-kindness ties into the ability to treat ourselves with self-compassion.Kinder self-talkPracticing self-care by setting boundaries Single tasking as a strategy for decreasing stressAnd, using acronyms like SNAFU and KISS as a simple way to quickly access complicated thoughtsContent Warning: This episode contains explicit language. There is a clean version over on the TPH app and website. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/carla-naumburg-570See 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, Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. There is so much compelling research behind the notion of self-compassion. Even though many of us think we need an internal cattle prod in order to retain our edge, research shows that people who have a supportive inner attitude, who have their own back, so to speak, are more resilient and more effective, not to mention happier and nicer. And yet it is easy for skeptics. I don't want to name any names, but his initials are Dan Harris, to be turned off by some of

the language and practices of self-compassion that can come off as, I don't know, a little bit schmupy to some. So today we've brought in a great guest who can put self-compassion in plain English and also be very funny. Carla Namburg, PhD, is a clinical social worker, author and mother. I first met her back in 2017 when I was giving a talk at my old high school, Newton South High School, go Lions. Carla lives nearby and during the question and answer session, she got up and asked me

a rather peak-hount question about the fact that I was meditating at that time in my life for two hours a day. And now we're like, I'm the same age. But the biggest obstacle for me is I have two young kids. And they have this radar. And I crawl out of bed so quietly in the morning,

and I just like shuffle one foot over to my cushion and they sense it. And they're there. And I think a lot about your wife, and I've like shuffle one foot over to my cushion and they sense it. And they're there. And I think a lot about your wife, and I've never met her, but I've heard you talk about how long you meditate each day, and I'm like, wow, she puts up with that. You know, my husband, I love him.

But if he was like as much as I want him to be enlightened, I want him to unload the dishwasher. And if he was like, I'm gonna meditate for an hour, I'd be like, no, you're really not. So if he got too enlightened, he might not be able to unload the dishwasher. That's right. Disploshers, loading, unloading. So I would love to hear if you want to speak a little bit about how your practice has changed since you became a father or any advice you have for parents, because that's the biggest thing for me.

That's great. So what's your name? Carla. So one thing immediately that I think would be like a easy fix is like, have you thought about giving your kids up for adoption? Yes. So that gives you a sense of what we're dealing with here. Carla is very funny. I've called her a mom with moxie.

And like I said, she has a lot to say about self-compassion. And she does it in a way that I suspect skeptics will find very appealing. She does use a little bit of profanity, which I happen to like. I think it's a feature, not a bug. That said, we are posting a cleaned up version of this episode over on our website.

If you've got kids around or sensitive ears, there's a link to that in our show notes. One other note about Carla, a lot of her books are directed at parents, especially parents who are self-critical. But this episode is aimed at everybody. We do talk a little bit about parenting at the end, but it's not the main focus here. Just so you have it, her books have titles such as, how to stop losing your shit with your kids, and you're not a shitty parent. It is very common for parents to think that we suck.

It is also very common for humans to think that on some fundamental level we suck that somehow we are terrible people. So sit back, relax and let Carla disabuse you of that notion. Before we jump into today's show, many of us wanna 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 McGonicle, 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%.com. All one word spelled out.

Okay, on with the show. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm aall, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a 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 whatever you get your podcast. Carla Nomburg, welcome to the show. Thank you. I am so happy to be here. Happy to have you here. What is the shitty human syndrome?

It is a syndrome that I made up for the purposes of my book, which is one of the cool things about writing a book. You get to just make stuff up and put it in there, right? Also when you have a PhD people tend to believe you. So I defined it as the thought, belief, or perception that we are shitty humans when in fact we are not. And this is the point in the conversation

when people look at me and say, but what if we really are? Like, what if we really are shitty humans? And then they start to think of all the examples of the worst people in the history of humanity who have done horrible things. And what I would say is, I don't actually believe there are shitty humans. I mean, there are humans that I don't really want to talk about right now and really

aren't relevant to this conversation, I'd say, if you want to go to the extreme, but in general, you know, once we label someone as shitty, there's not a whole lot we can do for them. It's like, you're stuck in your shitty box. Good luck with that. And what I would rather do is talk about people who don't have the information, support, and resources they need to do better. Because that's the start of an interesting conversation about how can we help people? What do they need? Right? I think that's much cooler way to start thinking about things.

I had a guest on recently, Father Gargory Boyle, who works with gang members in Los Angeles. I think he's a real heroic figure by the Boyle, even though I'm a dedicated agnostic, if not atheist. And he said, I don't believe in evil. I do believe in horrible behavior. Yeah. What he said, I'm totally unbored with that. Absolutely. How common is SHS, shitty human syndrome? How common is it for human beings in your

experience to have this creeping suspicion that maybe were garbage? Okay. So before I answer that question, let's talk about who you and I are, right? We are upper middle class white people living in America. I actually live now in the town that you grew up in, totally obviously, coincidentally. And so when I talk about people for better or for worse, I'm sort of referring to white folks in America who have too much time and money on their hands, perhaps, right? And so amongst us, I would say it's super duper common.

I don't know that many people who don't struggle with this, but I don't want to speak for people from different culture societies, eras. When I tried to talk to my husband's grandmother about this who's 99 years old, she was like, I literally don't know what you're talking about. So, but for the kind of crowds that I think you and I run in, yeah, it's crazy common. I don't know anybody who doesn't have some touch of this. There was a famous scene where Sharon Salisberg

back in the 70s, I think, maybe it was the 80s. I don't know, there was a big meeting with his holiness, the Dalai Lama, and Sharon Salisberg back in the 70s, I think, maybe it was the 80s. I don't know. There was a big meeting with his holiness, the Dalai Lama, and Sharon Salisberg, the great meditation teacher, asked him, what do you have to say about self-hatred? And he literally couldn't compute it. And I think that's sort of supports what you just said. I've heard Sharon tell this story. I'm so grateful, Dan, that you have so many conversations with her and bring so much of her teaching to the world because she's my favorite meditation teacher. And so I love to access her through your podcast and everything you do. I've heard her tell that story and it totally blew me away. And I felt really sad after it,

not for his holiness, the Dalai Lama, but for the rest of us who are living in this world, mired in self-hatred when clearly it absolutely doesn't have to be that way. Self-hatred is interesting because you can have self-hatred without thinking you're a shitty human or a bad person. You can think, well, I'm a mess, or I can't get my act together, but not necessarily have a creeping suspicion that you're bad. Does that make sense? The distinction I'm thinking of, like, I personally, sometimes less frequently now than previously, have this suspicion that I'm just irreparably selfish.

But I think there are a lot of people out there who hate themselves, but maybe for different reasons. I'm sure you're right when I'm trying to think about my own experience, for years I thought I was just terrible at everything I was doing. I thought I sucked as a parent, sucked as a professional, sucked as a partner was like a mess and generally a wreck.

But oddly enough, I didn't hate myself. It just wasn't the language or the thinking that came to me even though I thought I was screwing up all the most important work of my life. But I'm sure there are people who perhaps hate themselves for other reasons. I think it's amazing the narratives our minds can bend themselves into, right? Yes. It comes in all different forms. So when you say shitty humans in your home, you don't necessarily just mean, well, I'm a bad person. I'm only out for myself like I sometimes fear I might be. It could be I'm a shitty person because I can't get my act

together. I'm not doing a good job at anything I'm trying to do. I don't live up to society standards for, I don't know, beauty, financial gain, professional achievement, productivity, et cetera, et cetera. All the things, I'm not thin enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not accomplished enough.

I'm not a good enough partner, daughter, mother, brother, and uncle. I'm not contributing enough to society. I'm not as strong enough patient enough parent. I'm not living up to my parents' expectations or society's expectations or whatever it may be. I mean, again, I think everybody has their own narrative about what constitutes our own unique brand of shittiness. about what constitutes our own unique brand of shittiness. So I heard this acronym recently, a weird, white, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic. It's a whole group of countries that fit into the weird category.

Why do you think self-hatred is such an epidemic in places like this? Okay, so I'm gonna offer my ideas, but I'm not an expert in this. So if your listeners have other suggestions, I would love to hear them. I think part of it perhaps is that we spend too much time thinking, right? Many of us have jobs that don't keep us busy enough because we have this privilege. And I'm already hearing the voices of people listening saying, no, I work my ass off constantly,

all day long, dealing with people I don't have time to think and I still feel terrible. So that's another thing. But I think for some of us, we have too much time to think. And as I think you and I both know all too well, Dan, too much time spent in your own brain often takes us to dangerous places, unhelpful places.

I also think that the amount of time we spend on social media is a huge problem in this realm because we are constantly reminded of all the ways in which other people are doing things better, more effectively, more efficiently, more beautifully than we are. I really think social media is a huge problem with this and an example in my own life

is I remember when I was a relatively new parent really struggling, I learned something about how Guenath Palatro was having fresh fish delivered to her house every single day and she also had relatively young children at the time and I was like, oh my gosh, that's what a good parent does, right? That is what a good parent does. They have fresh fish delivered to their house every single day. And so instead of just comparing myself to the other parents who lived in my community, who have generally similar resources and challenges and structures to contend with that I do,

I was literally comparing myself to every human on the planet who I could access via, you know, pop culture sites and social media, and I chose to compare myself to a person who has unlimited resources as far as I can tell. So I think that also contributes to part of the problem is that we just, the comparison, no matter what realm you're comparing to, whether it's along your professional success, your marathon, time, whatever, instead of just focusing on the people near you, who you know, you are literally focusing on every single person in the planet. I agree. I think that's absolutely accurate.

I would add, I think that a culture of individualism, which is rampant in weird countries, white educated industrialized rich democratic countries, and individualism is good in many ways. It can bring innovation, it can bring freedoms in these weird countries. They're democratic. That's the D in weird, and so human rights are valued, and there's social mobility. But individualism also contains within it the seeds of what psychologists, and I'm saying this to somebody who knows more about psychology than I do, but psychologists call the happiness fallacy,

which is that happiness is an individual sport of competition and comparison. When in fact, happiness is given the way we, as humans, are wired via evolution, best and most successfully pursued as a team sport and the most important variable therein is relationships. So I throw that out for your consideration. I absolutely agree with everything you said. And I love that you brought up happiness because one of my favorite little soap boxes to get on is to talk about the happiness problem in our country,

which I think has changed a little bit in the wake of the pandemic. But before COVID, happiness was the goal, right? And there were popular college courses about happiness and so many books about how to be happy and podcast and everything about like you should be happy. And if you are not happy, it's because you aren't doing things right to which I would always think. And I know the Buddhist psychology, I think, really supports this life is really fucking hard and horrible things happen. And how am I

supposed to be happy? What yoga class could I possibly take that could make up for the death of a love one or my child having a horrible diagnosis or my house burning down? And I think that really hit home for a lot of us during the pandemic. Like nobody was really out there during the pandemic saying, you should be happy while you are locked in your home, terrified for your family and your children and everything. And I hope that narrative starting to change, but I do think a lot of the reason why we're all suffering from the shitty human syndrome also is the general message of Western society is that you should be happy, you should be able to control how you feel,

and by the right things and take the right courses and read the right books and listen to the right podcasts, and if you're not happy, it's because you're doing something wrong. And that's just not how emotions work, right? But then we end up feeling like shit, because we're not happy, it's because you're doing something wrong. And that's just not how emotions work, right? But then we end up feeling like shit, because we're not happy enough. Yes. Just a quick shout out to the many people of color who listen to the show, who happened to live in weird countries, at least in my world, and I'm sure this is true for you to

Carla, the people of color. I know who tend to be pretty high income, although even those who I know who are not, suffer from the same sort of self-criticism, I think it's probably even more noxious because in ways that you and I can't even begin to understand their identities are forged in a world where the dominant culture sometimes explicitly or implicitly tells them they're not in step. So anyway, just to make that quick shout out,

let me move on to the antidote or what we can do about this. And your argument here that you make an aerobust and profanity filled way is for self-compassion. So for people who haven't heard of it before, what is self-compassion? So here's how I think about it. But you just put out an awesome TED Talk about it, which I really love.

Thank you. And so we can dig into this a little bit together. I think self-compassion is about noticing when we're suffering or struggling. And that noticing piece, as I know, I don't have to tell you, Dan, is huge because I think so many of us busy people when we're having a hard time emotionally, physically, psychologically, in our family lives and our professional lives, whatever, we tend to kind of brush right past it and reach for our phones for the distraction. My go-to thing is to like, angrily empty the dishwasher, my husband knows there's a whole

lot going on when I'm just slamming dishes around. And not actually take the time to really notice and acknowledge that we're struggling or suffering in some way. So that's the first part about self-compassion. And then I think the second part is once we've noticed, to actually take that suffering seriously and treat ourselves with kindness and acceptance and letting it be okay that we're having a hard time and responding the way we would treat a really good friend or a loved one. So if a good friend of mine calls me up to tell me she had a horrible day at work or a horrible day

with her parents or whatever it is, I don't generally say, yeah, that's because you're a shitty human and you kind of suck. I would never say that to a friend. And yet, so many of us say that to ourselves. So self-compassion is kind of adopting that voice that comes from the people who treat us the best way possible in turning that voice inwards to ourselves.

So it's, I'm here two steps there. One is having the self-awareness to know, yeah, this moment sucks, I'm struggling. And then the second is to instead of habitually, reflexively, automatically reverting to the culturally enforced norm ofced norm of beating the crap out of ourselves. We can actually do this counterintuitive, but very helpful thing of talking to ourselves the way we would talk to one of our kids or to a good friend. Absolutely. My daughter, for example,

is downstairs right now with a cast on her arm. And what did I do for her? Well, we set her up with a little nest. We put some pillows underneath the cast now with a cast on her arm. And what did I do for her? Well, we set her up with a little nest. We put some pillows underneath the cast. We tried to make her comfortable. I offered her some food. I know she thinks is yummy because she's really struggling right now. She's having a very hard day. And if it were me and I had a cast on my arm, my gut reaction would probably be, I'm such

an idiot. I can't believe I fell. What the hell was I thinking? I spent all my time talking about mindfulness and whatever. And here I was clearly distracted. I would really, if I wasn't careful, I would be berating myself. And instead, the goal is to treat myself

the way I'm treating my daughter. Like really ask, what do I need in this moment and take my responses seriously? Your fellow Bostonian, Chris Gurmur, one of the pioneers of self-compassion research along with Kristen Neff, who I believe was really the first mover. Anyway, Chris, Kristen's partner has been on the show before. He once said that the

pre-eminent self-compassionant question to ask oneself is, what do I need right now? What do I need right now? Chris is brilliant. Kristen Neff is brilliant. Thank you for those shout outs. They work absolutely inspired and guided my work all along the way. You go quite a ways in your book to make the case that self-compassion is not just like a nice idea or hippie-dippy fantasy or self-indulgence or letting yourself off the hook or something that will make you weaken and effective. Can you hold forth on all of that? I would love to hold forth on all of that?

I would love to hold forth on all of that. Look, I'm a pragmatist. And I am a type A person who wants to get stuff done. And Dan, when you talk about being told to put your hand over your heart and wish yourself loving kindness, thoughts, I was in a mindfulness based stress reduction course out in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, which is the home base where John Kabatzin first developed all this. And I was sitting on the floor of a huge conference room on this gross gray carpet. And the teacher started talking about putting our hands

over our heart and wishing ourselves like happy wishes. And I almost threw up in my mouth and I was like, I'm out of here. I am leaving. This is total BS. Like this is, I am looking for solutions. And this is gross, like really. And I stayed only because it's really embarrassing to get them locked out in a room full of people. But it was

really that peer pressure that kept me there. And so I am trained as an academic. I'm really into research. I'm really into evidence-based stuff. And I'm also really into actual evidence from our own experience. Because I realized that the research only goes so far, and then you need to really test it out within yourself. But for me, when I started getting serious about self-compassion, it was only after I was very clear on how this was going to make my life, my professional, personal family, all those parts of my life easier and better. And until I could make that very clear connection for myself, I wasn't interested. And for me, what I've noticed is, look, I think we're going to talk about this more later, but the driving force for me that brought me into all this was I was losing

my shit with my kids all the time. I was screaming and yelling at them, I felt like a horrible parent. And making the connection between a loving kindness practice and being calmer and less awful to my kids was really what brought it together for me. I'm not interested in something that just feels good. I'm interested in something that results in a significant change in my behavior. And that's what I saw. And the way I love to think about it

is going back to Wayne Dyer, pretty noted psychologist writer, thinker. And he asked this very ridiculous question, which is, what do you get when you squeeze an orange? What do you get as orange juice, right? You don't get apple juice, you're gonna prune juice, you don't get anything else, you get orange juice. When you squeeze something, what's inside

is what will come out. And when I was walking around full of hatred and contempt and blame in shame and all these horrible things for myself, and then I was squeezed by life, by my children, my work, whatever it was, what came out was that same anger and shame and harrableness.

It just came out all over my kids. So for me, it was getting very clear on how the self-compassion practice could change my behavior in the ways I wanted to see it change. And for somebody like you who like me has an aversion to anything that seems hippy-dippy, I would imagine the data that Kristen and Chris have gathered must have been a powerful incentive.

The data was hugely compelling and what was even more compelling was the first and only time I was able to go on a way on a silent retreat. And it was years ago, it was at the Insight Meditation Retreat Center with Sharon Salzburg helped found, if I'm not mistaken. And when I came home after three or four days, I was like the frickin' dolly mama, like my kids were all over me. They were being super annoying, and I was like, yes, children, I am patient, and I can handle anything you bring my way. And I will not, and it just, it wasn't me forcing it, it was just how I was.

And that lasted about 24 hours, and then I reverted to like the total chaos. But, damn, that was probably nine or 10 years ago now, and I will never forget it. I will, and you know, at some point, I will go back on these silent retreats. I've made the choice not to because I really want to be ironically after everything I just said, I'm being with my kids. So I haven't been on another silent retreat, but I hope to, because the data I collected from my own experience that was the most powerful for me. Yes, while I can imagine it's hard to not go on more retreats,

and it's utterly defensible for whatever my opinion is worth on this score. In the book, you talk a lot about first, second, and third arrows. Can you describe this metaphor? Sure, I'm sure it's one you're familiar with and anyone who has studied Buddhist psychology. And just for the record, I am not a practicing Buddhist,

but I do believe that Buddhist psychology is some of the most brilliant wisest stuff out there I've encountered. And I hope the respect I have for the Buddhist teachings comes through in this story. But the idea is that we all get hit by the first arrows of life, right? This is just the shit that happens to us,

the washing machine breaks, you get audited by the IRS, your house gets struck by lightning, my kid, as we speak, fell on the basketball court yesterday and has a concussion and a broken arm. This is the unavoidable stuff that happens in life. These are the first arrows, and they're gonna come at us no matter what we do. It's just the consequence of being a human on this planet. But then the Buddha teaches often

that a second arrow comes shooting right after it, and this is the arrow of shame and blame, right? This is me blaming myself for, I don't know, not forcing my daughter to do a better job tying her shoelaces even though she insists it wasn't the shoelaces, but she's wrong. This is me, you know, blaming myself for not being perfected staying on top of my bills and damn it, if I had only not missed that bill payment, we'd be fine. Or we can find a million reasons to blame ourselves to shame ourselves for the horrible stuff that happens in life. and damn it if I had only not missed that bill payment, we'd be fine, or we can find a million reasons to blame ourselves to shame ourselves

for the horrible stuff that happens in life, even when it clearly wasn't our fault or was clearly beyond our control. So what we're taught is that the first errors of life are unavoidable, but those second errors of suffering, they actually are avoidable if we know how to recognize them and choose a different response. And what I find is that so many of the self-help books out there in the world,

including many parenting books, professional books, all these things, are about avoiding the first arrows. And then when that doesn't happen because the first arrows will always keep coming, we come at ourselves with the second arrows, there's very little writing or practice out there. I think you're doing a lot to change this about how to with these second arrows. There's very little writing or practice out there. I think you're doing a lot to change this about how to manage the second arrows. And then researchers and psychologists and people are starting to talk about these third arrows

of denial and distraction, which is when, you know, after you've been shooting yourself with second arrows, like, that shit's exhausting. It's overwhelming. It just wears you down and finally you're like, screw it, I'm just gonna pick up my phone and zone out to the latest like monkeys petting cats video or whatever it is because I can't deal with any of this.

And so the problem is we end up spending way too much of our time just dealing with the stings and the pain of these second and third arrows and we never figure out how to actually take care of ourselves and the wake of the first arrows. Yeah, I love this Buddhist analogy and I've spoken about and many guests on the show have talking about the second arrow teachings. I'd never heard of the third arrow, so that's really interesting. And apropos of that, I've even just noticed for myself recently, many times when some sort of suffering is coming up and even though I'm a meditation evangelist,

I will not want to be with it. It'll be my fourth instinct to just kind of sit with it. My first is to look at TikTok, distraction, and denial are where I usually go. After, of course, the second arrow. So does that sound familiar to you, or do you think I'm just like a totally defective meditator? Damn, this is not a damn problem. This is a human problem. Why? Because as you so thoughtfully brought up early in the conversation, we weren't raised this way.

None of us were taught how to deal with our feelings, right? And it's not because we all have shitty parents. I don't know, maybe you do, maybe you don't, but that's not the point. The point is they weren't taught either because we were all raised in this individualistic society that says, if you are in pain, suck it up and get over it, right? Maybe if you're a woman, we'll tolerate it, but then we see you as weak, but if you're a man, forget it, you're done. Like, put away those feelings, get on with your life. It's not like any of us had classes in school where we were taught, here's how to like be with difficult feelings. Hell, most adults these days don't even know the difference between a feeling, a thought, and a behavior. And I only know that because I went to social work

school, right? And so this is definitely not a damn thing. This is a very human reaction. None of us want to be in pain. Coming up Carla Namburg talks about two powerful and down-to-earth self-compassion practices that is after this. Hey, I'm Ericia and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wunderys 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 newer 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 Rue off course. In our series, Rue Paul born naked. We'll show you how Rue Paul 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. you get your podcasts, you can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. So let's go back to one really useful solution, which is self-compassion. You have talked about the benefits of self-compassion and you describe these benefits as including something called the four Cs. What are these four Cs? So this was my attempt to sort of consolidate all the wide range of benefits and I think they're different for everyone. So I encourage folks to notice their experience, right? Notice what happens for you. Here's what happens for me and many of the people

I know who practice self-compassion. The first one is you feel calmer, right? You're just not as stressed out when you're not beating yourself up constantly. So when you can say to yourself, hey, I'm just going to sit here and be with this and not sort of fight it, not berate myself. Our systems, like our nervous systems, everything just calms down a little bit. From there, we can get some clarity. This is the second C on what's going on. When you are constantly moving through the world with these like glasses of negativity of like all the reasons you suck.

It's really hard to get a clear sense of what's happening around you. And the perfect example I have for that is one time when my daughter was like three or four, we took her to the town fair. We spent all morning typing her up on sugar and paying seven dollars so she could pop a balloon and get a 30 cent toy. And you know, we let her go on the slides and all the things. And then sometime around noon, she had a total and complete meltdown. And she was like boneless on the sidewalk. And of course, I was like, I am such a shitty mom.

I've raised this complete little psychopath. We gave her whatever she wanted all morning. And now she's being a total ass. And I was so busy, like, berating myself and becoming getting clear on all the ways in which I was a terrible mother. And she was a terrible child. Then I totally missed that we hadn't actually given her lunch, right? She was just hungry. She wasn't a horrible person. And once I was able to calm down and say,

you know what, it's been a really busy morning. We've had a lot going on. That's okay. Like, she's having a meltdown. Kids do this. Then I was able to look at this situation from the whole perspective and be like, oh, she's just hungry. She just needs a sandwich like that's all. So that's the kind of clarity I'm talking about. We can also think much more creatively. That's the third C creativity. When we're not busy braiding ourselves, we only have so much brain space.

And when you're using all of it, thinking about what a schmuck you are, it's really hard to come up with creative solutions or opportunities or possibilities for what's going on. And then the last one I think is that once you feel calmer, once you feel clearer, once you are more creative, and once you know that you're not gonna have to put up with some jerk constantly telling you how much you suck, no matter what happens, you actually feel much more confident

in whatever's going on. And that's not to say you know for sure that you're never going to screw up again. What it's to say is that you know you're going to make mistakes and it's actually going to be okay, right? Because we all make mistakes. So those are the four C's that I generally think of as like the benefits of self compassion. So calm, clear, creative, confident, maybe a fifth C would be something around connection because the less time you spend in your own head and cycles of self-flagulation like a way to actually do self-compassion. But for sure, it's a benefit. You feel more connected to yourself as a person. You feel more connected

to the people around you and to your environment, because if you're not so wrapped up, like you said, in this like horrible, it's like you're stuck in the world's worst movie and you're on brain. And once you can get out of it, you can actually be present to the world around you. Yeah. As the writer David Foster Wallace dearly departed once said, we all live in a skull-sized kingdom. And so this is one way to make a jailbreak. But you said something before about like, how do we actually do this and then connection

as part of the actual self-compassion practice? I think it would probably be done enough teasing here. What is the practice? How do we do it? Right. So for this book, I had to get super clear on how we do it. Because for me, putting my hand over my heart means nothing. Like, that doesn't change anything. So I had to really through the research, like through Christian, Nefs book and Christopher Grumer's work and other people's work. I wanted to get very clear on what exactly are we doing to practice

self-compassion? Because self-compassion, while there is some evidence that some people are sort of innately more self-compassionate than others, the truth is that this is a practice that we can get better at. And when I say practice, a lot of people think like putting on your yoga pants, but then just sitting on the couch and watching TV, or maybe not a lot of people, maybe it's just me,

but that's often what I think about is sort of thinking about doing a thing. And when I say practice, I want people to think about the first time you try to play an instrument or learn a new language, you probably sucked at it. Like you were really terrible and it felt awkward, you didn't know what you were doing, and you probably wanted to give up,

and you were in exactly the right place, doing exactly the right thing. So that's how I want folks to think about self-compassion. The first time you try it, it may feel super weird and awful awful and you may feel like you have no idea what you're doing. And that's okay. You're not doing anything wrong. Just keep doing it. So the four practices I kind of narrowed down for self-compassion. The first one is noticing, which is a basic mindfulness practice, right? It's like the fundamental mindfulness

practice. But if you don't notice when you're treating yourself so poorly, you can't consciously choose to do something different. And what I certainly experienced in Dan, I don't know if you had a similar experience, was when I started noticing the way I was talking to myself in particular, it was pretty horrifying. There's nobody else in my life I would ever talk to that way. Right? So the noticing can be a particularly painful step, but it's a really important one. And then from there, there are a few different things we can do. One is connection. And what does that look like? Well, connecting to the people who love you and who are going to treat you with kindness and acceptance and grace and forgiveness.

And that's not always easy because compassion happens when we are suffering or struggling, right? And reaching out to these people when you're in a particularly bad place can feel very vulnerable and scary. So for some people, that's not where you want to start. And for some people, that's the easiest place to start. And either is fine. Also connecting to the present moment can be a really powerful practice because if you're

totally wrapped up in these crazy thoughts and feelings, stepping away from those thoughts and just for me, it's counting my breaths or putting my hands flat on the kitchen counter and kind of noticing the coolness of how that feels. It sounds kind of cheesy, but that really concrete movement away from my own thoughts can kind of pull me out of the spiral. So connection is the first piece. I think the second piece is really curiosity, which is the antidote to judgment. So when something horrible happens, we tend to go with I suck, I screwed it up. How about switching that narrative to, okay,

what's going on, what's happening, what do I need? Right? So going back to that moment of my daughter, flat out on the ground in the middle of the sidewalk, all our neighbors watching, instead of being like my kid is horrible, I could switch it to what's happening for her right now. And curiosity is inherently compassionate practice because when you think about it, when you are curious about something,

what you're saying is, this matters. I want more information and I'm not scared of what the answers may be. So when we can get curious about our own experience, what we're saying to ourselves is, I'm actually not terrified of what I'm going to find. It doesn't matter how awful it seems, I'm still going to show up with understanding and love and forgiveness and acceptance for myself. And once you get to that place, I mean, Dan, I think we both at least have a taste of this, that's a game changer, right?

That changes everything. So we have connection, curiosity, and then the last piece is just kindness, right? It's just not being a dick to yourself. And for me, that really shows up in kind self-talk. And the best way I can describe this is it's like learning a new language. And when I sat there in that room on that gray rug, and they were talking about sending myself happy wishes, I was like, this learning a new language. And when I sat there in that room on that gray rug and they were talking about sending myself happy wishes, I was like, this is not my language. I do not speak this, this is gross, I don't wanna speak this.

But the thing is nothing else was working and so I sort of, I was like a hostile witness to self-compassion, like a hostile practitioner, fine, I'll do it. And I had to learn to speak this new language, the way anyone learns to speak a new language. What do we do? We hang out with native speakers. So I was lucky enough to have some friends who are really compassionate with me. And I spent more time with them and

listened, tried to actually listen to what they were saying in the past. I had just blown them off. And I basically did my kindness language exercises, which is a loving practice meditation, right? When I'm doing loving practice and sending happy wishes to my neighbors who are blowing out their leaves during the middle of a podcast, it's not because I think those happy wishes are actually going to influence them. It's because I am literally practicing thinking kinder thoughts and the more you practice it, the more native it becomes. So I went from literally struggling

to find the words of self-compassion. I couldn't make them happen in my mouth. I couldn't do it. To now, I just look at the girls and say, wow, it's a hard day. We're having a rough time. We're all looking at my boss and I'll just say, yeah, this is a really tricky situation for all of us.

And the words just flow because I've been practicing all these years. So first step is noticing then connection curiosity, kindness. How do you think about this practice as something we're doing in a free-range way, as life hits us, or is there an on the cushion practice that we can do that makes us strong and ready for when life hits us us or is it both? For me, it's all of the above. It is constant. I so appreciate when you call yourself a mindfulness evangelist because I'm so uncomfortable with

this idea of evangelizing about anything. And yet, if you were to ask me for the one thing that has changed my life the most as a human being in all sort of departments of my life. It is self-compassion. And so how does my practice look? Well, it's constant throughout the day, right? Pulling up these words, these phrases, treating myself with kindness, putting myself to bed early.

I see as an active self-compassion, right? It's also an on-the-cushion thing, which for me often looks like actually a walking meditation. And I learned this one from Sharon Spalsberg is she does a really abbreviated version of her loving kindness meditation. So when I'm out walking around my local lake, what I'll be thinking in my head is happy, healthy, safe, live with ease. Cause those are the words that I use for loving kindness

and I'll kinda coordinate it to my step. And I'll just repeat those words and somehow they make a difference. And I know for sure I spend that half an hour in a much more pleasant headspace than I would if I was just thinking about all the things I should have been doing instead or all the things I forgot to do. So my loving-med kind of meditation happens both as like a sort of more formal practice and then throughout my entire day. Just a quick point of clarification slash explanation on the walking practice.

You just described if anybody's new to love and kindness meditation, generally it's taught as a seated practice, eyes closed. You bring to mind, usually start with an easy person because that's a way a good way to get started so it can be an animal or a kid or whatever and you send four phrases. Maybe happy, maybe safe, maybe healthy, maybe live with ease, although you can make up your own language if you want. And then often you move from the easy person to yourself. And again, you create the image and then hurl the phrases and then off to a benefactor or a mentor,

then a neutral person, a difficult person, and then all beings everywhere. And what Carla was describing if I understood it, correctly was sort of taking that and doing it on the go, which of course is totally kosher all the way back to the Buddha. He talked about walking meditation as being really one of the good forms of practice. And you are just abbreviating the phrases to happy, safe, healthy, and living with these as you walk. Did I get all of that right? You nailed it.

And sometimes I'm thinking about myself. Sometimes I'm thinking about someone in my family or my friendship circles or my job. Sometimes I'm thinking about the goose that I actually kind of want to kick, but I'm scared of geese. And also it's not nice to kick geese. And so I'm trying to offer them loving kindness meditation

because I want to be a better person. But yes, that's exactly what it is. And I find that this loving kindness ties in perfectly to my ability to treat myself with self-compassion. So my experience is that the formal practice, whether on the cushion, which is meditation industry term of art, or walking around a lake, or anywhere, that formal practice really does prepare you to apply it in your day-to-day life. Would that be a safe description of your experience? Oh, 100% because, look, you can't practice anything in a crisis, and you can't learn anything new

in a crisis. And when I get to the point that my symptoms of shitty human syndrome flare up, it's some kind of crisis. It might be a mini crisis, right? But something has gone wrong, and I'm having a terrible moment. And if I am not practicing the self-compassion when things are calm, in that critical moment, I'm just gonna revert back to the old shitty self-talk, right? So I need to practice and literally build these neuronal networks so that they are available to me

in these horrible moments. And the best analogy I've heard is that I heard an interview with like a world famous interpreter, like a translator. And this woman spoke multiple languages. And she interpreted for people the highest echelons of society. And they were interviewing her about how she became so fluent in so many languages. And she said her father taught her all these languages. And the way he would test her is he would wake her up in the middle of the night in like a terrifying moment. This is kind of horrible actually. And he would speak to her in this other language.

And if she could respond in the critical moment when she was just waking up in this foreign language, he knew she was fluent. And so that's what I want for myself with loving kindness and self-compassion. In these horrible moments, I want to be able to instantly reach for that language and that compassionate behavior. And so that's what I'm training for. It's really interesting. In terms of kinder self-talk, I've been really influenced by a guy who I'm sure you've heard of Ethan Cross,

who wrote a book called Chatter. He's at the University of Michigan. He was on the show and he's done a lot of research into this kind of counter programming that we can do just by talking to ourselves differently the way we would talk to a friend or a child if we're assuming we're not entirely shady parent. And I think we've established that such a thing probably doesn't really exist. The data that he's gathered are really interesting to show that there's all sorts of positive change that can come about just by learning this new language

of not, as you said, being a dick to yourself. Yeah, and look, the way we talk to ourselves is just basically about our thoughts, right? And one of the most amazing things that anybody ever said to me. It was again during this mindfulness-based stress reduction course I took years ago as they said, your thoughts are just thoughts. They're not reality. You don't have to believe everything they say. And Dan, that was absolutely mind-blowing

for me as someone who has trained as a therapist who has spent hours and hours on both sides of the couch, both being paid and paying a shitload of money to somebody else to spend so much time talking about my thoughts. I thought they were everything. I thought they were so important. And when somebody pointed out to me, like, they're just thoughts. I was like, what? I mean, which makes so much sense when you think about it. Like, I can sit here and think I'm a freaking unicorn all day long. It doesn't make me a unicorn, right? And once my eyes were open to the reality that I can notice what I'm thinking and then decide if it's accurate, useful, helpful, and if it's not let it go or replace it with

another thought or start singing a song or a clock like a chicken or whatever I want to do, literally everything in my life changed. And that's not to say these shitty thoughts don't come back. Of course they do. That's what I spend all day doing is like noticing and trying to not get sucked into my ridiculous thoughts. And so I think there are folks out there who think that like eventually the stupid, unhelpful, unskillful ridiculous thoughts are just going to go away. And sadly, they don't. They never will. But at least now we have an alternative to just believing in them. So I love this idea and I want to go read this book immediately. Thank you, Ethan. Agreed. Thank you, Ethan.

And I think you're a unicorn. It's just because of this weird horn sticking out of my forehead. We're not going to talk about it. So back to the four steps you laid up earlier. If we want to practice self-compassion, noticing connection, curiosity and kindness. Let's just stay with kindness for a second because that's where the self-talk comes in. You've said before that you, like me, had a negative reaction to putting your hand on your heart.

And yet, I believe it's Christen Neff and Chris Germer, who have done quite a bit of work to show that this kind of self-touch actually can be very helpful. Okay, you're rolling your eyes. to work to show that this kind of self-touch actually can be very helpful. Okay, you're rolling your eyes. Isn't that terrible? Okay, sorry, continue Dan, I would love to hear the question. So I think you've kind of answered what I was going to ask, which is, so are you on board with this?

I'm on board if it works for you. Of course, look, we all have to do the crazy stuff, and I don't mean to call Christine and Chris who are crazy because they're brilliant and they've made the world such a better place and their research is legit. I want evidence-based practice in the world, right? I'm not a fan of some random person being like,

I had a thought and like, now you should all do it just because I had a thought. I think the evidence is super important. But at the end of the day, we have to do what works for us. And I know many, many people who give themselves hugs and put their hands on their heart. And that's amazing. Like, please do that. But if you are like me and that doesn't work for you, I think that's okay, too. We all have to figure out what our own self-compassion looks like, right? So for me, it's like watching NCIS while I work on a cross stitch. I know I sound like a 60-year-old woman, but let's just roll with it.

So I think the beauty of self-compassion is asking yourself this question, what do I need, right? And then answering it and letting whatever the answer is be okay. Although what I would say is notice what you think you need and then do that thing and then notice how you feel. Because if what you think you need is to go scream at your kid or slam a door in your coworker's face, like, let's step back because I think that doesn't really

fall within the realm of self-compassion. But within the realm of things that are compassionate and caring and taking care of yourself, just do what works for you. And for me, putting my hand on my heart doesn't really work. I think that's completely legit. I've been surprised to find that for me,

putting my hand not necessarily in my heart, but like on my chest, I've noticed the more I practice, mindfulness that pretty much all of my emotions manifest in my chest, kind of like the light in ET's chest. I recently watched that movie when my son, the light goes on and his chest when he's freaking out. Anyway, anxiety, fear, anger, excitement, it all kind of shows up in different formations

within my chest. And if I find that if I just put my hand there and I don't have to do what has often been recommended by self-compassion proponents, like call myself sweetie or anything like that. It should be like, dude, it's good if I'm freaking out about productivity. Like, okay, well, you'll get to it tomorrow

or maybe you need to move the deadline and just talk to myself sanely with my hand there. I don't want anybody seeing me do this, but it does work for me. So actually as you were saying that Dan, I realized my version of that is so your listeners can't see but right now my shoulders are like up by my ears and apparently I walk around a fair amount like this and just noticing and dropping my shoulders. That is a physical response that I find is very compassionate. So yeah, that's amazing. And what I would say to listeners and everyone is just try it, right? Try all of it. See what works. Do a little experimenting. Coming up Carla Namburg on single-tasking as a strategy for reducing stress,

using acronyms such as snafu and kiss as simple ways to boil down complicated thoughts. And we talk about our first encounter back in 2017 and how it was humbling for both of us. Keep it here. Sticking with kindness though, because, and again, this is what you listed as one of the steps of self-compassion. You have talked about a couple of other practices that might work for people in this realm, and they include single-tasking and setting boundaries. Can you describe both of those for us? Yeah, so look, I think of some of this people would call self-care, which I think is a

kind of loaded term these days. It really rubs some people the wrong way, but the distinction I make is self-kindness, self-care, all this stuff. It's not self-improvement. I just want to really quickly make that distinction, because I think those are two things that frequently get confused in our culture. That when we think about self-care, we think that means we need to go train for a marathon or start a new diet. And that may have a place in your life, I don't know, but that's not what I'm talking about here. And so two of the really powerful ways we can care

for ourselves is one by setting boundaries and just getting better at saying, no, I'm not available to do that. And it's hard for many of us, when people something of us we want to be helpful and so working on setting those boundaries And accepting other people's boundaries is a really powerful act of self-compassion and one of my favorite strategies for setting boundaries is to say it like It's a rule and often it is so years ago I asked to fell a mother if she would be on some committee with me at school or something and she said no I have a rule. I just don't go to meetings at night. And I was like, what? That's a thing we can do. We can say no to go into meeting like, huh? Oh my God, this is amazing. This is a whole new world for me. Because really what I want to do at night is watch reruns of the office with my

family and meetings get in the way of that. So if you just make up your rule or give yourself a period of time, I'm sorry for the next six months, I'm unavailable to take on additional activities, you can feel free to reach out to me. Or just let it be okay. And even when it feels bad to say no to things, that's a great opportunity to practice self-compassion and remind yourself of what we call common humanity, which is reminding yourself that you are not alone

in whatever is going on, that it is hard to say no and set limits for many people. And this isn't a you problem. This is a human problem because we all want to be helpful and agreeable to the people we care about. So setting boundaries is really important. You also mentioned single tasking, which is just the fancy word for doing one thing at a time.

And you and I Dan were raised in a culture that totally just loves multitasking. I mean, how many job descriptions have we read or written that say ability to multitask required? Right? We were taught that this ability to do multiple things at a time is a skill that we should really cultivate. And that is bullshit, right? Because our brains can't actually do this. And so what happens is our brains and our bodies

end up in like trying to do too many things. And then our brain is jumping back and forth between different tasks. And then there's a lag in there and researchers have actually researched this. And it's very clear that this doesn't work. And we are far more likely to make mistakes or say or do things we don't mean

or break things or just lose our minds. And our stress increases dramatically. And so single tasking or choosing to focus on just one thing at a time is an incredibly powerful strategy that's not only super skillful, meaning it'll make it more likely we'll actually be able to achieve the thing we're trying to achieve, but it also decreases our stress dramatically. And so whenever we can make the choice to do just one thing at a time and get our bodies and brains on the same page focused on the same thing, that's really an active compassion,

right? It's saying, I've got a lot on my plate. And instead of stressing myself out and running around like a chicken with my head cut off, I am going to choose to focus on just this one thing and get it done. And like, I've got 27 balls in the air, and I'm gonna put down 26 of them for this moment. It's actually a super awesome productivity skill, but it's also an active self-compassion.

Yes, not unrelated to setting boundaries in some key ways. Nice connection. I like this. Thank you. I'll take the W. Staying on a practical tip here, you list a bunch of acronyms that we can use as ways to put into

practice self-compassion in our daily lives. I'll list all of them, but can you just pick one, maybe, or two, or whatever you feel comfortable tackling and unpack them? So I'll just so people can hear them list all of these acronyms. They include snafu, chaos, stop, halt, calm, kiss, and snacks. Can you pick one or two and walk us through them? Yeah, so I love acronyms. I think they're an easy way to trigger complicated thoughts and really boil them down so we can use them in the moment. Let's just start with Snaffo, right? This is one that I think many of us know. We use in our daily lives. Hopefully, your listeners know that it stands for situation. Normal, all fucked up. It comes from, I believe the word on the street is it comes from the military. But I think many of us get really focused on the AFU part, right?

The all F-duck part that everything's a mess and we're overwhelmed and blah, blah, blah. And I actually want people to focus on the situation normal part, right? That's the powerful part of that acronym to me that things being chaotic and a mess is actually normal. It's not problem, it's not a moral failing, it's not a personal failing, it's not because we're a dumpster fire of a person, it's because that's what happens

when you're out living a life in the world. So, I hope people will use Snaffoo in a really compassionate way to remind yourself that when things are a total mess, that's just what happens to all of us. That is totally normal. Because I do think, as you and I discussed before, that social media and reality TV,

which is actually reality, can really bring on this idea for many of us, that normal means people totally having their shit together 100% of the time. And that's just not normal, right? So here's the other acronym I would choose, which is kiss. And kiss normally stands for keep it simple, stupid. But since we're like writing a book about compassion, we're talking about compassion, I changed it to keep it simple sugar or sweetie, whatever you want, right? See what I did there? But the idea here is I

think often for many of us, I don't know about you, Dan, but this is what I do. When I'm about to take on a new practice or a new hobby, I make it like a whole big thing. Like I've got to read all the books and prepare, listen to all the podcasts and practice or a new hobby, I make it like a whole big thing. Like, I've got to read all the books and prepare, listen all the podcasts and buy all the supplies and like, it becomes like this whole thing and that can be overwhelming. And so I encourage readers and listeners to remember that you don't have to immediately sign up

for a silent loving kindness meditation retreat to start practicing self-compassion. It doesn't have to be this huge big complicated investment Although, I mean if that works for you, I guess that's okay, but you can just start small bits at a time and keeping it really simple by noticing How you treat yourself in difficult times and try to show up with some kindness, right? So I like the idea that this isn't always feel easy, but it is quite simple and you don't have to upend your life to start practicing self-compassion. I have deliberately, and you knew this in advance, had us keep this conversation sort of as universal as possible, but your book was really written for parents. So let's just talk a little bit about applying all of the foregoing specifically to parents.

There's a phrase you use in the book that might be a good starting point. The phrase is the big lie. What is that? Oh yeah, the big lie is the idea that if we, the parents, do everything right, and please don't ask me what that actually means because I don't really know what it means to do everything right. But if we, the parents, do everything right, then parenting will be easy and our children will behave and the children will be okay. That if we parent in the correct way according to all the contradicting research and the various advice and everything,

our kids are gonna be all right. And again, that's total BS. That's a little scary. I mean, first part of it is a relief that there isn't a quote unquote right way, but the second part is that even if I was doing everything right, my kid is not guaranteed to be okay. It's absolutely terrifying, which is why so many parents are drinking and not sleeping

at night and spending all the time on their phone, watching TikTok videos about how other parents can tell us what to do to make things better because we really want to hold on to this idea that there are some guarantees in life and sadly there are not. So how do we deal with that reality? That there is no guarantee? I think what comes to mind for me is community and I mean real in-person connection with other parents who we can turn to when things feel really terrifying and overwhelming. We know we're not alone and how hard this is. And I think social media, which is where a lot of parents get their community rarely offers that kind of support. I think it's really in person or to the extent that we can be in person these days, which

is more and more. I also think it's about mindfulness and being in the present moment as much as we can because when we start worrying and getting anxious about the future and what if and what if, there's nothing there. That doesn't help. There's nothing we can do there. There's no answers. There's no solutions.

There's just anxiety, which makes us more stressed and more likely to lose it with our kids. And when we can come back to the present moment and just be with our kids and soak up every moment we have into the parents who are like, oh dear God, she just said, soak up every moment. And that makes me want to die. I don't mean that you have to be with your kid

every minute of the day. And I don't mean that you have to enjoy every minute with your child. What I do mean is the more we attempt to be present with our kids, the less stressful and annoying parenting will be and the more we can enjoy the time we actually have with them. And yes, I have a child who's about to head off to high school.

So if I'm sounding fairly more bit about parenting, it's because time is slipping through my fingers. I mean, I have a child who's about to head off to high school. So if I'm sounding fairly more about parenting, it's because time is slipping through my fingers. I mean, I have a kid who's about to turn eight and I only have one child and just the math is staring me right in the face. I have what maybe nine more years with this guy in the house. Yeah. And even more horrifying for me, how many more years were he's going to let me have him on my lap? How many more years were he's going to let me him on my lap? How many more years were he's gonna let me snuggle with him? I'm really running out of time on a lot of this

and I find actually as horrifying as those thoughts are, if I can take them in the right direction, it leads me right to doing that to the best of my ability, horrifying and annoying and alienating a parent in cliche, which is enjoying every moment. Absolutely. I mean, what else can we do, right?

And this is why I'm like, I don't want to go to a meeting at night because how many more episodes of the office do I have with my children? Right. And so when my daughters who are 20 months apart, they're 12 and 14, when they were babies and infants, that's when I was like, I need to get the hell away from them. Like, I am exhausted and overwhelmed, and I don't enjoy this and they're like horrible and boring and aggravating and I love them so much it hurts and yet I don't really want to be around them which is really the most baffling and horribly confusing set of emotions one can

experience. And now they're delights like I actually really enjoy being with my kids which is such a gift. And so for me it all comes back to mindfulness, which is so completely woven in with compassion, I can't really separate the two. Yes, I struggled for a long time with how to understand this notion that mindfulness and compassion

are related, you know, self-awareness and warmth. You often hear meditation teachers talk about how love and awareness are one and I could not compute that. Until I was talking to my friend, Alexis Santos, who's a meditation teacher who I've done a few retreats with, and he just said, well, if you think about awareness or mindfulness as accepting what is, well, what is that if not love? That totally doesn't resonate with me I agree with him 100% but for me I think you can accept things without loving them right like I can deeply truly accept that There are really stressful things happening in my life that there are horrible things happening in the world

And once I stop fighting with them I have a lot more room for this calm and clarity and creativity and all these things we've talked about. But it doesn't mean I love them, right? It just means I'm done fighting them, whether they accept, whether they exist inside me or in the world around me. I'm done fighting them. Yeah, I think it also kind of depends how what your definition of love is. And that's another area where I've gotten caught up over the years because it's such a big word, it's not only for letters, but it's a big concept. And if you define it down to just giving a shit, anything north of neutral, then actually, it doesn't sound so hard to do. And then I actually think Alexis's theory starts to make more sense, at least for me. Okay, but yes, and I'm getting closer, but I think my definition of love does not really

drive up with his, but again, it doesn't have to, which is one of the cool things about mindfulness and compassion is just as I've used this metaphor of like learning how to speak a new language, we all get to decide what the right words are for us. And if he, because the words aren't the point, right, it's our experience that's the point. And so for Lexus, the word love is where it's at. That's amazing. And for me, acceptance feels more like the resonant word. And I guess in acceptance, there is significant compassion, but the word love doesn't work there for me. But again, this is just the icing on the cake. This isn't really, to my mind,

the words we choose aren't as important as sort of the awareness that we're bringing to it, which only we can really know. Another phrase you use is compassioning the crap out of your kids. I didn't say that, didn't I? I just, I wanted to figure out a way to write this that didn't feel judgmental, that didn't feel like I was saying to parents, you have to be present at every moment because that

feels impossible, right? When parents say that to me, I feel overwhelmed, I feel disempowered, I feel stuck, I feel like I'm not good enough. And so I was trying to inject some humor into it so it doesn't feel quite so overwhelming. But I have found time and again that in my daughter's most difficult moments, in our moments of conflict, when I can show up with connection and curiosity and kindness, it all kind of works out as best as it possibly could. And when I yell at them, they just like roll their eyes and there's no connection there.

I mean, to be awesome if it worked, right? Wouldn't it be great if our base instincts were actually effective? That would be amazing. But they're not, which is wise, but all my time thinking about this and writing these freaking books. So yeah, I don't really discipline my kids. And when people hear that, they think it's like free range chaos in my house, which it sort of

is, but that's unrelated. What I mean is I have high standards for them, and I expect them to meet those standards. And when they don't, we have conversations about what happened and how they can do things differently. But I rarely just say that's it. I'm taking away your screen for the night because that doesn't help. First of all, then I have to entertain them, which I'm the energy to do that night. But also, they don't learn anything. They don't know how to do better because nine times out of 10 when my kids grew up, it's because they literally didn't know what to do.

And so if I just say I'm taking away your screen, what they've learned is they better work damn hard to not tell me what happened because they don't want to lose their screen again. But we don't actually have a conversation about, okay, so the next time this happens, this is what you need to do differently. This is the information you need to handle the situation differently. And sometimes there are natural consequences, you know, if they break their phones, they have to pay for a new phone. That's a natural consequence,

but that's not me just disciplining them. Does that make sense? It does, I guess I'm struggling with it because sometimes I do need to, or I tell myself at least that I need to not yell, but say something with a sharp tone and maybe a slightly higher volume if he's doing something that we've asked him not

to do for 75 times or that he might get hurt doing often those are the same things. And he needs to have a little bit of the, again, this is all story I'm telling myself. You should feel free to correct me. He doesn't need to have a little fear in those moments of like, some's gonna happen. Like, I'm gonna lose my iPad time tonight or daddy or mommy is pissed and I can't I shouldn't be doing this. So anyway, those are all the stories I'm telling myself.

Maybe I'm wrong. I don't think you're wrong. I do the exact same thing now because I think that kids also like to push limits, right? They like to see how far they can go and that doesn't mean they're a jerk or an evil person. It's just, it's what human nature does. I push limits on my husband all the time just to see if I can. But yeah, I don't look,

that's fine too. And I, there are certainly parenting experts or people out in the world who would say you should never do that, but I actually tend to be highly pragmatic. And there are absolutely times when I snap at my kids, right? Because they've just pushed me to the limit and I can only take this Dalai Mama business so far, or I really need to get the point across and my normal loving kind voice doesn't work. Or I think it's useful for children to understand that their behavior has an impact on other people. And I think it's okay for kids to learn

that when they do certain things, it is likely to elicit a reaction from other people. it's okay for kids to learn that when they do certain things, it is likely to elicit a reaction from other people. I think the problem, and this was the problem I was facing really in parenting, is when those sort of interactions become the dominant dynamic in the relationship. And for me, I was spending far too much time yelling at my kids.

And I think for many parents, when this is not to disperience because parenting is, I think, the hardest thing many of us will ever do. But for many parents, shit falls apart, your kid is something bad and the first reaction is to yank the iPad. And I just don't always think that's effective, although, man, it's so tempting. I get it, man. I really do. No, I think we are saying in many ways the same thing.

I just think it's a tool in the toolbox to be used sparingly, but if used sparingly, it can be effective at times to use a sharp tone and have a minor consequence. In my opinion, and in my experience, has been effective at times, but it is not my go-to. It might usually my go-to is conversation. Absolutely. And so just so you know, Dan, like in our house, it's called the daddy voice and the mommy voice. Yeah.

And when my kids are like, you're using the mommy voice, they know. And sometimes I'll even say to them, do you hear that I am using the mommy voice right now? And as a like notice that I'm getting random top and I'm pissed and you need to stop. And that's absolutely a thing that happens for us all the time. Before I let you go,

do you wanna talk about the first time we met? Okay. Do you wanna talk about it? No, I hear myself talk all the time. I'd rather hear you talk. So you came to Newton South High School. I believe it was the start of your bus tour for, is it called meditation for fidgety skeptics? Yes, good memory. Yeah. And so you came to Newton South, which is in my town, and you were interviewing your co-author for the book, and you had talked about how you were meditating what, an hour or two a day at that point, and after following you on Instagram

and seeing the birth of your beautiful son, who I can't believe he's eight years old, in my mind, he's like three. I was like, whoa, this dude has a wife and a kid, and he and his wife are both busy professionals and his kid is like a kid, needing all the kid things. And he's meditating two hours a day and I kind of stood up in front of a whole audience and gave you shit for it, right?

I was mostly thinking about your wife. And I think I remember saying something like, I would really love my husband to achieve enlightenment, but actually I need him to unload the dishwasher. I remember you actually being very authentic and compassionate in your answer. I think I talked about not having time to meditate and I think I remember you saying that my parenting was kind of a meditation,

it was my practice. And I thought that was a very kind thing to say. But what do you remember from that moment? I have the same basic memories as you. I would say though that in hindsight, that story for me takes me right to a machete person, for me, because it was such a, that was a mistake on my part.

I know what was a mistake. To do two hours a day of meditation when I had a young child. That was just a mistake, but I think for me, one of the motivations was, I wanna know what I'm talking about. I wanna see if I can take this further, et cetera, et cetera, but it was extremely selfish.

And yeah, I regret doing that, and I don't do that anymore. If I'm in a self-flogulation mode as a husband and father, if I was gonna tell myself I was shitty at both, that would have been exhibit A. But you know, I've thought back to that moment a lot and you quoted me in the book, right? And there's the thing you don't know that happened, Dan,

which was when night I was up with my crippling anxieties, I'm want to be in the middle of the night. And I was like, oh, I'm going to listen to a meditation podcast and it will totally calm me down and put me to sleep with the dulcet tones of Dan be Harris. And so I turned on your podcast and little did I realize I turned on a conversation you had with your wife. And it was right after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and I hope she's healthy and well now, which is a total trigger for me. So my anxiety went through the roof. But then you kept talking and And all of a sudden, I was hearing my voice and I was like, what the hell is it scared the shit

out of me? I think I sat up straight in bed. My husband was like, it's 2 a.m. What are you doing? And I realized you were playing that tape. And as I listened to it, I did not feel triumphant. I did not feel like, oh, ha, ha. I pulled one over on the meditation guru. I actually felt like a shit. Because where was my comment coming from? It was coming from my deep anxiety and deep belief that I wasn't a good enough parent. And that what would have made me a better parent is if I had spent more time meditating

that if I could actually get my ass on the cushion and sit there for even 20 minutes or half an hour hour I would be calmer and less anxious and more present and all these things that we know from the data and my personal experience meditation does for me and so from this deep place of feeling like Less than right feeling like a real jerk I took it out on you in a public place and I was like, I'm gonna call out the guy who thinks he's so awesome because he's a parent who can meditate for two hours a day. So I wanna apologize for that too.

Like that actually, that is not something I think I would say now because of my self-compassion practice and what I would hope I would say is instead of making up some obnoxious story in my mind about how you're like this perfect person who can meditate for two hours a day and be an awesome husband and parent. And I'm not. I hope what I would say is like, if that's what he needs to function well, that's amazing he can do it or parenting is hard for all of us.

And we're all just trying to figure out how the hell to do this. And if what we need to do is meditate for two hours a day, just to get through the day, like that, I, yeah, I'm there. So it's interesting how we can both walk away from this and I think it speaks to the importance of self-compassion that we can both walk away from this moment and be like yeah I wouldn't do that again. It's so fun because I have a totally different read on your comments. I didn't find them obnoxious or shitty at all. I thought they were hilarious and charming and that's why I

put them in the book and played it on the podcast. I thought it was so funny. I didn't feel any, and at the time, I wasn't even defensive. I was like, you weren't defensive at all. I didn't feel defensive. It was only later that I realized that it was a huge mistake. I'm like,

I was after I had my 360 review that I realized, oh, this was a really selfish move and totally unfair. I couldn't tell myself all sorts of stories that it was mitigated by the fact that my wife actually wasn't working for much of the time when I was doing this and that I was doing a lot of my meditation

at the office or on the road. And so it wasn't frequently when I was at home, but it was sometimes when I was at home. And that was just totally not the right move. And so I didn't feel in any way that you were obnoxious or that any apology was even in the realm of something that was needed. So I have no sore feelings about that episode

with you or that moment with you. I thought it was hilarious. It's more that I have sore feelings towards myself for having done that. Now again, I'm not actually in a self-legilation mode right now. I think it was a mistake. I have remorse about it, but not like self-hatred. And do you think that your self-compassion practice is why? I mean, I know for me, my self-compassion practice is the only reason I can look back on all the mistakes I've made

in my life, some of which I feel horrible about and not sing to this like, for me, it's the difference between I am a shitty human versus I made a mistake. Yes. Sharon Salisberg talks about the difference between wise remorse. That's why I use the word remorse and guilt. Guilt is making it all about you. I'm a shitty person. That's just more you getting tied up in the briar patch of self, which gives you way less

bandwidth to be available for other people. Whereas remorse is, yeah, that was a mistake. Let me not get so tied up in telling myself some story about how I'm horrible and try to make a man's or at least learn from it. Right, I totally agree. And I would also like to comment on the humor, which is obviously, I think, from both of us,

a default way of moving through the world and a real coping mechanism. And I think it's great, right? I love making myself, I love cracking myself up, Dan. But I also think that we can get away with a lot of, we're funny. Well, that was another thing I got pinged for in my 360 review when people in my life were criticizing me because I asked them to, was that my humor is a little serrated, a constitutive sort of unnecessary roughness or be used to distance as opposed to deal with something.

And so I'm not speaking for your humor at all, but humor can be a double edged sword in my personal experience. Absolutely. And I just wanna say this, and I hope you will leave this in the final recording of this podcast and because I mean it, I was really deeply touched by your TED Talk and I thought it was really authentic.

It felt very real to me and it felt real in many levels. Like your humor felt very real. The way you talked about self-compassion felt very real. But there was also a moment I think you know what I'm talking about, a very real emotion in it. And I hope that your listeners will go listen to that because if they don't know who you are yet or how you think about this stuff, I think that's a beautiful introduction. And also I just want more people to understand about self-compassion.

And I thought you did a great job. Thank you. I appreciate that. Speaking of self-compassion, can you, before I let you go here, just remind us of the name of your book and the book you wrote before it and any other resources you've put out into the world? Absolutely. So my current book is called You Are Not a Shitty Preparent, How to Practice Self-Compassion and Give Yourself A Break, and the previous book is called How to Stop Losing Your Shit With Your Kids. And everyone can find my stuff on carlinomberg.com and you

can buy these books at your local independent bookseller or your favorite online retailer. Carla, great to have you on the show. Super fun. Thank you for doing it. Dan, this was a great conversation and thank you so much for all of your mindfulness evangelism because it is absolutely the vibe we need in the world right now. Thank you. Thanks again to Carla Nomburg, love having her on. Thank you as well to everybody who works so incredibly hard on this show. 10% happier is produced by Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Kashmir, Justin Davy Lauren Smith, and Tara Anderson. Our supervising producer is Marissa Schneidermann, and Kimmy Regler is our managing producer.

We get our scoring and mixing by Peter Bonaventure over at Ultraviolet Audio and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands Islands delivered our theme. We'll see you all on Wednesday for a brand new episode. 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 1-3-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.