The One You Feed - Benjamin Shalva

Episode Date: November 30, 2016

Please Support The Show With a Donation   This week we talk to Benjamin Shalva Benjamin Shalva is the nationally renowned author of Ambition Addiction: How to Go Slow, Give Thanks, and Discover Joy Within and Spiritual Cross-Training: Searching through Silence, Stretch, and Song and has been published in the Washington Post, Elephant Journal, and Spirituality & Health magazine. A rabbi, writer, meditation teacher, and yoga instructor, he leads spiritual seminars and workshops around the world.  In This Interview, Benjamin Shalva and I Discuss... The One You Feed parable His new book, Ambition Addiction: How to go slow, give thanks and discover the Joy Within That ambition can be healthy and it can also cross the line to being destructive The casualties ambition can leave behind The mirage of "any day now" The signs and symptoms of ambition addiction That addictive behavior is something we do often and it's counterproductive The helpfulness of the question: Is my goal an all or nothing goal? That the road to hell is not paved with good intentions, it's paved with unexamined intentions Recovering from ambition addiction The technique of breath, word and deed The key step of slowing down   Please Support The Show with a DonationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

All-or-nothing goals tend to be goals that require us to sacrifice everything else. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor?

What's in the museum of failure? And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Benjamin Shalva, who is back on the podcast for a second interview. Ben is the nationally renowned author of Ambition Addiction, How to Go Slow, Give Thanks, and Discover Joy Within.

His previous book was Spiritual Cross-Training, Searching Through Silence, Stretch, and Song. Ben has been published in the Washington Post, Elephant Journal, and Spirituality and Health magazine. He's a rabbi, writer, meditation teacher, and yoga instructor. Shalva leads spiritual seminars and workshops throughout the world. And here's the interview with Benjamin Shalva. If you value the content we put out each week, then we need your help. As the show has grown, so have our expenses and time commitment. Go to OneYouFeed.net slash support and make a monthly donation.

Our goal is to get to 5% of our listeners supporting the show. Please be part of the 5% that make a contribution and allow us to keep putting out these interviews and ideas. We really need your help to make the show sustainable and long-lasting. Again, that's oneufeed.net slash support. We really need your help to make the show sustainable and long-lasting. Again, that's OneYouFeed.net slash support. Thank you in advance for your help. Hi, Benjamin. Welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks, Eric. It's so great to be back. There's not very many guests who have made a second appearance, so you've joined some elite company at this point. You've got another book out very quickly, which is why we're having you back, and I'm excited to get into the book. It talks about ambition addiction, which is a question I ask myself often about whether I fall into that category, and your book helped me sort some things out. So we'll get to that here in a second, but let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. Actually, I'm going to change it this week. I'm going to do it with turkeys because it's Thanksgiving. Nice. Do it. Go with it. All right. There's a's a how does it i can't remember there's a grandfather

who's talking with his grandson he says in life there are two turkeys inside of us that are always at battle one of them is a uh good turkey which represents things like love and bravery and peace and the other is a bad turkey, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. He looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that silly parable means to you in your life and in your work. I like it with the turkeys, first of all. Well, I'm probably going to release this in like March. People are going to be like,

what on earth? Right, right, right. We're over the turkeys now, right? But I feel like I've got turkey inside me, so it fits. But let me say that I'm struggling every day. I'm trying to be a good person. I'm trying to be a good husband and father, and I'm trying to be a good person. I'm trying to be a good husband and father, and I'm trying to be an effective writer and teacher, but it's a struggle. And the struggle is somewhat having to do with just sort of being skilled in those different endeavors and trying to figure out what to do in a given moment, you know, how to proceed. to do in a given moment, you know, how to proceed. But actually, the meat of the struggle is so much about my desire to be the best, or the greatest, or the most powerful, or the sexiest, or the most admired and that ego drive for me it's an every day every

hour sometimes every minute practice of recognizing that ego and acknowledging it with a nod but then stepping back and choosing a lighter path, a path of heart, a path of humility, and going with the good turkey is that struggle every day. I agree with that for sure. The book is called Ambition Addiction, How to Go Slow, Give Thanks, and Discover Joy Within. and discover joy within. And I resonated with a lot of it, and we'll get to that a little bit, but I was really interested in the topic because as a former addict of drugs and alcohol, I've certainly wondered at points if I haven't taken, whether it's ambition or work or, you know, what I do to be, is it just become another addiction for me? And, and your book helped me think through that. And so I'm looking forward to talking about that. But let's, let's start with what do you mean by ambition addiction? So I started figuring out this idea of ambition addiction, because

I noticed in my own life, I was having these dreams of all encompassing glory, kind of all-encompassing glory, kind of all-or-nothing fantasy of a perfect future to come. For me, it took the shape of, you know, I want to be a critically acclaimed, world-renowned, best-selling writer, right? And so I had this dream in my head. And I began to see that a lot of times this dream was getting in the way of my physical health, my relationships, my spiritual well-being. And I began to see that, you know, while ambition can be a really wonderful, essential part of being a healthy human being and doing good things in the world, that ambition can sometimes cross over the line and become destructive. And that's what I talk about when I say ambition addiction. It's that unrelenting

drive to dominate, to win, to be the absolute best no matter the cost. And it's when that drive also leaves a lot of casualties in its wake in terms of personally, and in terms of relationships, and in terms of spiritual life. One of the things you talk about in the book is this idea of, we live in this fantasy of any day now. What is that? Yeah, so any day now is the name that I've given to that dream that we have in our heads of the perfect Hollywood ending. Now, your Any Day Now is going to be different than my Any Day Now, and it's going to be different than someone else's Any Day Now. them all is the fact that when we have an any day now, we have this dream of a perfect ending where there's a little tableau, you know, and everyone's just in their place and we've won

the final grand prize, you know, and we've dominated and all the struggle has proven to lead us to this amazing end point. And the thing about an any day now is that it's a mirage. So one of the difficult issues with ambition addiction is that a lot of us actually think that that mirage is real. You know, we imagine that like, oh, you know, if I actually do get that bestselling book and that, you know, Pulitzer Prize, that I'll be happy because that's the picture I have in my head. But in fact, it's not real because people with bestselling books and Pulitzer Prizes are not necessarily any happier

than you or me. And we know that, of course, because they share that fact with us and they say, I'm still me. I'm still a regular person struggling. But our any day now, it leads us to believe that we will reach an end of suffering if we only, you know, write that book or get that promotion or get our kids to Harvard or whatever it is that we're dreaming of. I agree with that. I also think, though, that any day now is more pervasive than just an ambition issue. I think it I think it crops up in a lot of the self-improvement things that we try and do, even if it's not to be the best meditator in the world. But if I meditate, if I just get to the point where I meditate every single day and exercise every single day, and read enough books, my any day now will be a day where it's easy and life is easy. And it's not a challenge anymore. So I think

it's interesting as we talk about this, because I see that also, beyond just the type of ambition you're describing in the book. Oh, yeah, that's absolutely true. I think that we as human beings, we do tend to fantasy, we do tend to imagine, you know, a future that is an improvement on the present. Sometimes that actually could be a healthy thing if it drives us to and motivates us to do good work in the world. I think that where I sort of specify ambition addiction is if that any day now of ours, in whatever realm it is, if it starts to consume us so much that we don't have any bandwidth for things like our physical health, for getting sleep, for eating well, for exercise, or if we're ignoring our kids or our spouse or our friends,

you know, that's when I think it becomes something that where we need to recognize that we are suffering from an actual addiction and take the steps we need to recover. Let's talk about what an ambition addiction is, because you say in the book, and I believe it to be true, that some degree of ambition is a good thing. I mean, I look at, I feel like built into the very fabric of existence is the desire for growth and creation and stretching. I feel like that's just, you know, to me, there's a lot, that's a very spiritual thing. So, you know, we're recognizing, hey, there's some degree of that that's good. How do you start to diagnose? Has this gone too far with me?

Am I am I an addict? I mean, because it seems like, you know, addiction is just, you know, a good thing that is usually just taken way too far. Right, right. And it can be hard to differentiate. Right, right. And it can be hard to differentiate. I mean, I think when one starts to ask themselves, you know, name a couple that I think are very prevalent. One is a real contempt for the present and a reverence for the future. That's a big one. When you find yourself walking around seeing the present moment as just kind of a, you know, a DMV waiting room to get through so that you can get to get back on the highway, you know, and you're kind of ignoring all the gifts in this present moment. That's a that's a key sign. And along

with that, another really important sign to look for is manic pace. You know, when ambition is driving us to always be fast and furious, always in a rush, impatient with other people, very, very busy all the time, you know, running into people in the grocery store and just being like, oh, sorry, I'm so sorry. I can't talk right now. I'm just in a rush, you know, and all in finding ourselves doing that over and over again. That's another real sign. And just to talk about one more that I think is very important. A lot of ambition addicts suffer from a severity and depression. So a lot of us are on this, essentially this dopamine roller coaster, you know. neurons in our brain are transmitting a neurotransmitter called dopamine. And that gives us a real buzz. It gives us a high. But dopamine is connected with often with with hope for the future. So every time that we don't get that any day now, that dopamine level

then declines and we end up going into actual physical withdrawal. And so a lot of times ambition addicts are going to be very forlorn, depressed, you know, cranky, moody, and have a hard time enjoying and appreciating even very simple pleasures because, you know, they're always gritting their teeth, they're always have a furrowed brow, and they're never really able to lighten up. Yeah. I identify with some of those things. A lot of those things you just said, describe Chris and I can assure you he does not have an ambition addiction. No, that no one, no, he, this episode does not apply to him. We can feel, we can feel pretty, we can feel pretty confident in this one. But for me, I recognize some of those things. What I thought was interesting is you listed out some of those symptoms and I have

some degree of those at different points. What I thought you said, and I really like this, you said all addictive behaviors from alcoholism to workaholism to ambition addiction have two common traits. Addictive behaviors are persistent and counterproductive. And, and that was a different frame that I started, you know, when I started to look at it through that frame, I started to feel like maybe I was okay. Yeah. Well, that's exactly what I start the book with is actually a diagnostic process based on that idea that, that, um, addictive behavior is something we do often and it's counterproductive. And what I do is I have the readers go through a diagnostic process, you know, they're kind of filling in worksheets, if you will, to really see when I

work, when I work out, when I parent or, you know, whatever it is that I'm ambitious about, are my actions both persistent and counterproductive? And a lot of times what we're going to find is that, sure, my actions are persistent, but they're not necessarily counterproductive. They're not necessarily destructive or hurting other people or hurting myself. And in that case, you know, that's terrific. That means that we're ambitious individuals with a healthy ambition within healthy boundaries. And that's something to celebrate. individuals with a healthy ambition within healthy boundaries. And that's something to celebrate. But then again, what I hope the book can help clarify for folks is, well, there are times,

however, when my behaviors do become both persistent and counterproductive. And now, and those, and on those occasions, that's where I really need to be careful. And one of the ways that I help readers think about this too, is when you're thinking about your goals, one way to sort of get a sense of would my goal here be counterproductive or not is to think of it, think of it this way is my goal and all or nothing goal. If for instance, my goal is to become president of the United States, let's just say, would I be satisfied if I also became a senator or a congressman or a, you know, someone involved in civic affairs in a meaningful way? And if I in my heart say, no, I have to be number one or nothing at all, that's a real clear sign that that goal and that arena in my life is going to be counterproductive

because all or nothing goals tend to be goals that require us to sacrifice everything else. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir.

Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, Really No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead.

It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're not feeling too inspired for a clever bit right now about the donation campaign after we just finished off a large pizza. I'm feeling super fired up. Super fired up, yeah. I'm not really willing to ask for money right now, but I'm certainly willing to take a long nap. That's right.

My job is to ask for the money. So, I will. Please, if you are enjoying the show, if you're getting value out of the show, please go and make a donation at one you feed dot net slash support. One of the things to think about is that not only are you supporting the show for yourself, but you're also providing the show to other people. We're trying for five percent of our audience. We are less than half a one percent right now. So when you contribute right now, you are helping bring the show to lots and lots of other people, people who listen to it today and can't afford it. And I get emails from those people who say, I wish I could help and they can't. And also to all the people who have never yet heard the show. So you can be part of the show. You can help support it and do something good in the world at the same time by going to one you feed.net slash support. We really need your help. Thank you. And here's the rest of the interview with Benjamin Shalva. You have a line that I really like where you say

the road to hell is not paved with good intentions. The road to hell is paved with unexamined intentions. And I just thought that's sort of summarizes a lot of what we're talking about here very well in, you know, am I looking at what is, you know, what's behind what I'm doing? And I always believe for myself that most things that I do in life, it's difficult for me to have an entirely pure motive. I would be lying if I said that I did the show only to, you know, put messages of hope into the world, right? Right, right. Of course. And to help other people, that's a big part of it. But there are also other parts of it, you know, ego works its way in or wanting to be successful or, or all that stuff. And so I've gotten okay, as as I've grown into

saying, you know what, I'm not going to probably be pure as the driven snow on some of these things. But what I find to be really useful is to be able, like you say, to examine my intentions and look at which ones are driving and which ones are dominant. Exactly. It's not about purging ourselves of ego, which would be impossible. It's not about having 100% pure motives, as he said. You know, looking honestly at our lives is looking at ourselves warts and all, but then being able to make good choices with that knowledge. So, you know, example of that would be that, you know, I have a lot of ambition as a writer and teacher. And when I write and teach during the day, you know, when my kids are at school,

but the other day, I got an invitation from my son's teacher to join them on a field trip to Mount Vernon because we live here in the D.C. area. And so my first initial thought was, I can't do it. I'm, you know, I've got to work. I've got important writing. I've got important teaching. I've got preparations and things to do. So what I did then at that moment was I really stepped back and I, you know, and this is the idea of examining my intention. And I asked myself, am I going to say no to chaperoning my son's field trip because there's essential work that needs to happen?

And even though that work is connected with ego, that might be okay. Or am I doing it because I'm afraid? I'm afraid that if I do something like, you know, be the dad on the field trip that I'm going to lose my edge, lose the ground I've gained as a professional and, you know, end up, you know, suffering in obscurity. And so, you know, at that point, I decided, look, I'm going to go on the field trip. And you're going to check your phone the entire time and not pay any attention. Right, right. You know, I actually, I actually had to work on it as I was on the field trip, you know, put the phone away, be present. But that's the work we have to do and again it's not about having pure motives it's about examining our motives and being really real with ourselves and saying if this is just about ego if this is just about um you know my fears and insecurities is that really the person i want to be is that where I want to act from my whole life? Or, or can I bring in some, I guess I would say, more compassionate, hopeful motives also? Yeah, I think noticing the fear is that's a really good one, because I'll notice that

in regards to the show, I'll see lots of other podcasts coming out, or, you know, the numbers will stay kind of just, you know, we're not really growing. And I'll start to get this little bit of fear. And that's the time for me that it's important to go back to what is the real intention for why I'm doing this. And it works so well for me to stop and go, oh, wait a minute, that's not what this is about. Which, you know, I'm reaping the benefits of and I've achieved and all that. And that helps me step out of the fear. So the fear for me is an indicator that I'm letting create the show in the first place. And so one of the things that I encourage ambition addicts to do is not to quit their ambitious endeavors or to not have goals or dreams, but in fact, to use this addiction as a motivator to actually become more committed to their goals and objectives, but in a healthier way, you know, because I do think that when that fear creeps in, it can actually definitely, you know, be an opportunity for us to commit to what's meaningful.

I agree. So let's talk about the other side of it, which is getting better or recovering from ambition addiction or, you know, treating it. What are some of the things that you recommend, which, by the way, the things that you're going to talk about, I think are useful, even if you say, well, maybe I'm not an addict. They still are pretty useful in the context of all of us in the modern human age where everybody sort of looks like one sometimes. Right. And certainly our culture is encouraging this, you know, this unfettered ambition. In the midst of that, the road to recovery that I've laid out consists of five steps that have worked for me and that I've seen work for others who I've met along different spiritual paths and in different communities and people I've worked with as a writer and teacher. And the first step, which is the hardest and the most essential, is slowing down. So again, we ambition addicts see the present moment as prelude and the future as salvation. So naturally, we are going to rush because the faster we get to that future, the better, right? Because that

Hollywood ending is waiting for us. Slowing down then is a huge change for us. And it involves what I recommend in the book is actually a mindfulness practice that involves uniting our breath with our actions and actually with a mantra that we can maintain mentally as well. And that allows us to actually downshift and rediscover the present moment. Because I think what's happening to a lot of us is that we've actually lost touch with the very ground beneath our feet, with the very moment that we find ourselves in. And it actually is amazing. A few deep mindful breaths, you know, a little bit of the slowing down work that I recommend. And the mind and body and even the soul really shift. And there's a huge change. And that can pave the way to the other steps

that come after it. The start is definitely going slow. Yep. And the slow down, you use three words, breath, word, and deed. Can you walk us just real quickly through how to apply those? Absolutely. And breath, word, and deed. Can you walk us just real quickly through how to apply those? Absolutely. And breath, word and deed is a technique that can be practiced anywhere, anytime. So anytime you find yourself going fast and losing your breath and not having any time, this is a great practice. Here's what you do. Essentially, the first thing you do is to just notice your breath breathing in and out. The next thing you do is you start to connect your breathing with your actions and with a narration in your head. So let's say that you're driving your car.

So as you inhale, you would say to yourself, I am making a right turn. As you exhale, you'd say to yourself, this is all just thinking in your head, I am making a right turn. On your next inhale, you'd say, I'm straightening out the car. On your exhale, you'd say, I'm stopping at a stop sign, and on and on. So you can do this with any activity. You know, if you're, you can do this while you're lifting weights or you can do this in, you know, while having coffee with a friend, whatever it is. Um, and what this does is because you're narrating what you're doing in your head, you've got this like kind of golf style announcer saying, you know, and now he's making the right turn. And now he's, you know, and as that, as that narrator is, is narrating

what's happening in your head. And as you're connecting it with your breath and each time you breathe, you're, you're, you're reciting what you're doing. What ends up happening is you can't help but slow down because you're not giving your brain room to be able to think, got to get home so I can write that next thing, so I can win that award, so that I can get that promotion, so that I, you know, the brain has already been narrating other things and they all have to do with ambition. And once we do this breath, word, and deed, the brain suddenly gets consumed with, I am making the right turn, I am tying my shoes, or whatever it is, and it slows us down. And what's so key about that too is that once you've practiced breath, word, and deed, and you start slowing yourself down, it actually gives your body

time to absorb a lot of the adrenaline and cortisol and other stress hormones that have probably been flowing through your body up until this point. Because a lot of us, when we're moving this fast, we're in constant fight or flight. Constantly, you know, essentially in a high stress situation physically. And when we slow down, our nervous system gets the cue and says, okay, hey, you know, endocrine system, time to reabsorb these stress hormones. And we can downshift from DEFCON 5 here. You know, we're okay. And what's amazing about that then is that once our body starts to downshift, it gives us a lot of space to relax, to appreciate, to notice details that we'd otherwise miss, and to not feel so frantic and

panicked, which is going to allow us to then keep moving forward in a healthier pace. I agree. The breath, word, and deed is a great method. And just anything that we can find that for me, that when I come back to truly to the present moment, which is just noticing what's happening around me in as great a detail as I can, that is the best way I found to kind of come out of a very anxious or driven state is to just kind of become present for a little bit of time. There seems to be some peace there. It's challenging to stay there, but there's certainly some peace there. Yeah. And I recommend to readers that when they're practicing this, it's going to be challenging and that they don't need to do it, you know,

all day, every day. And if they want to start with maybe doing, you know, five minutes of breath word and deed practice when they notice themselves rushing, and then they can kind of let it go for a while and come back to it. And it's like anything else, it's something that we're that that should become ideally a daily practice, but but something that doesn't drive us nuts, you know, and is something that ultimately will become a tool that we can turn to when we feel that heightened state of anxiety. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers

to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one

bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really.

No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You've got several other approaches. Let's maybe hit one or two of them before we wrap up. Right. So slowing down is a key step. Another key step is giving thanks, which, hey, if we're coming on to Turkey Day, I had to mention that one. Yep. So giving thanks

is essential because one of the things that happens to us, ambition addicts, is that we are constantly feeling disappointed because again, you know, our any day now is so grandiose. So we're never going to get there. Or even if we get there, we realize that it's not even the end point. We want even more. So because of that, we're so disappointed. The practice of giving thanks, of creating a gratitude practice, and I walk through in the book how readers can actually create their own gratitude practice that respects their own background in terms of religion, spirituality, secularity, style, you know, I help folks put it together authentically for themselves.

But what this does, when we give thanks, we again are appreciating the present moment. And we're also declaring that this day now, not any day now, but this day now has a lot of blessing and a lot of enjoyment and is a wonderful place to be. lot of enjoyment and is a wonderful place to be. And that's something that when ambition is really going crazy, we convince ourselves otherwise. But in fact, when we slow down and take a look around, we have lots to be thankful for. Indeed, we do. Let me ask you a question about gratitude, because one of the things that I have experienced is there are times that the gratitude feels like going through the motions. You know, I'm doing it every day and I list out things that I'm grateful for. And sometimes I really feel that. And other times I feel like I'm making a

list or how do you work to keep that fresh for yourself? Well, the first thing I think is that there is going to be at the beginning, a feeling of going through the motions. And I don't think that should deter us so much. Part of this practice is starting to rewire our brains, you know, and, and, and so there is going to be some time as we're transitioning out of this any day now mindset to a, this day now appreciation, they're going to be times when we're like, ah, you know, I'm saying I'm thankful for my family, for my friends, for the roof over my head, you know, but, but, but God, I just really wish I could, I could have a million dollars too, you know? And, um, and that's, you know, going to happen. And I actually think going through the

motions is not the worst thing at the beginning. Because again, we're, we're, you know, we're trying to reverse this momentum here. Eventually, though, what I really encourage, and I talked through how to do this in the book is, is to create a gratitude practice that's very flexible so that we have a certain way that we begin. Maybe we say, you know, thank you, God, for my life, or thank you, universe, for being able to wake up this morning. And maybe we start the same way every day, but then we let it meander and we can actually start to notice things in the midst of our gratitude practice. Maybe we just look around and say, thank you for that beautiful painting on the wall, or thank you for the sunrise, or it starts to become a little more dynamic, organic, and flexible as opposed to just a fixed liturgy

that we're doing every single day. I think that can really help. And I do teach folks how to start to make that happen for themselves. The other word that I like for a gratitude practice, and you just used it in one of the sentences there is appreciation is to not only think of like the things you traditionally think you're grateful for, like that I have a home and I have a job and, you know, I have friends and, but what can I appreciate that's happening in the moment or happened in the moment, whether it be a delicious cup of coffee or a sunrise or, you know, like, I mean, I found myself one time giving thanks for Judd Apatow movies, you know, because I was just like, God, that guy's good. And every time I see one of his films, I just like feel better. So I was like, you know what, I got this gratitude practice. I'm going to give thanks for Judd Apatow. So there we go. And you

know, and the thing is, like, that's totally authentic and appropriate. And it actually helps in terms of my feeling in my life, what to be grateful for. And again, totally counteracts this idea that any day now is all is all there is. Because, you know, Judd Apatow's This Is 40 is right here right now. So, you know, there you go, Judd. Shout out for you. But like, I really think give thanks for whatever, you know, give thanks for your favorite hockey team. If that's something that you're thankful for, let it be a part of this practice. Yeah. Various musicians make my list all the time. Calvin Hobbes has made many, many appearances.

Nice. You know, Leonard Cohen, who's recently passed, is a common feature. Absolutely. So let's hit one more of the five steps that you think are useful. Yeah. I think the other one... You get to pick. Yeah, thank you. I think I'd love to mention the step of donate time. So we've slowed down, we're giving thanks. And we still have ambition, though, we still have this drive,

we still have these goals. And again, that's not that they're there, it's wrong to have goals or ambition. But one of the things that happens with ambition addiction is that we tend to really sequester our time to focus it only or primarily on individuals that can get us ahead. And I've certainly seen that in my own life. You know, when I'm in a writing project, I do not want my kids bothering me. I don't, you know, even want to hear about my wife and her crazy stories from work or whatever it is, you know, I'm focused on my dreams. So one of the things that I recommend, we have a practice of, and actually of charting down in a given day, who do we normally interact with? And are there people that we normally interact with from whom we're withholding our time? And that could even be a pet. I've got a puppy that's always wanting me to take her for a walk.

And when I'm in a big project, I try to just have her get as far from me as she can. And so whatever it is, when we practice donating time, we chart where we're spending our time. Are there individuals who we're ignoring or not giving much time at all to? And then we make a practice of step by step, maybe even if it's an extra five minutes the next day, donating our time to those individuals, maybe one or two of them who can't get us ahead towards our any day now, but for whom we care about or we respect or at least we feel deserves a little time and attention. It's a beautiful sentence to wrap up on, I think.

I don't think I could say it much better, although this whole conversation has been making me think of a Bertrand Russell quote, because you talk about how serious and focused the ambition addict can be. And it's a quote I love, which is, one of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. That's so good. That's, yeah, yeah, that's a good one. Thank you for sharing that with me. I hadn't heard that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on again. Thanks. You know, congratulations on another book in a, you know, pretty quick turnaround. So, um, I'm an ambitious guy. We've, we've figured that out. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. But thanks so much for

having me too. It's been really, really lovely. We'll have links to the, to the books and all that stuff in the show notes and to your website. And yep. Thanks again for coming on. I loved our first conversation. I've really enjoyed this one also. And, um, could you make a turkey sound for us on the way out? I've never asked a guest to do that before. Skip it. No, no, that's it. That's inappropriate. Yeah, no. How was that? Perfect. All right. That's being a good sport. All right, Ben. Yeah, no. Hobble, hobble, hobble, hobble, hobble, hobble. How was that? Perfect. All right.

That's being a good sport. All right, Ben. Thanks so much. Take care. Bye. You can learn more about Benjamin Shalva and this podcast at oneufeed.net slash benjamin2. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneufeed.net slash support.