The One You Feed - Deborah Schoeberlein David

Episode Date: November 24, 2015

Please help us out by taking our short 3 question survey and receive a free guide: The 5 Biggest Behavior Change Mistakes  This week we talk to Deborah Schoeberlein David about integrating mindfulness into daily lifeDeborah Schoeberlein David is a teacher, education consultant and curriculum developer. Deborah's most recent book is Living Mindfully: At Home, At Work and in the World . An earlier book, Mindful Teaching and Teaching Mindfulness: A Guide for Anyone Who Teaches Anything, is now in its fourth reprint and has been translated into Spanish and Korean. Deborah's other publications include multiple articles in professional journals and trade magazines; and online postings, including more than 60 blogs for the Huffington Post.Our Sponsor this Week is Spirituality and Health Magazine. Click here for your free trial issue and special offer. In This Interview Deborah and I Discuss...The One You Feed parableHer new bookHow the mind naturally wandersHow mindfulness is not a panaceaBringing mindfulness into all aspects of our livesExploring different styles of meditationThe practice of adding in instead of adding onIntegrating mindfulness into activites that we are already doingFocus, Observe, RefocusLearning to break our habitual reaction patternsIncreasing the space between stimulus and response    Please help us out by taking our short 3 question survey and receive a free guide: The 5 Biggest Behavior Change MistakesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Personally, I think it's much better to have mindful sex than mindless sex. 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, 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. Go to reallyknowreally.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 Debra Schoberlin-David. Debra has more than 25 years of experience

teaching youth and adults, developing interactive curriculum, training teachers, providing parent education and seminars, and implementing sensitive programming, both in K-12 and professional settings. She is the author of Mindful Teaching and Teaching Mindfulness, and a new book, Living Mindfully at Home, at Work, and in the World. and a new book, Living Mindfully at Home, at Work, and in the World. I also wanted to mention that we often get asked about various aspects of behavior change, and so we thought we would get some specifics about where your interests lie. We'd like to know what you want to know more about, what your key questions are, and where your interests lie so that we can best meet your needs, address your questions, and deliver the content you want while moving forward. We've created a quick three-question survey, and it would mean a lot to us if you would take a minute to complete it. In return, we'll send you the top five behavior change mistakes

that people make when working to stop a bad habit or to start a good one. If New Year's resolutions are your thing, or if you just want to start the year off strong, knowing in advance what could trip you up will go a long way to set yourself up for success. To take the survey, go to oneufeed.net slash survey. And here's the interview with Debra S. David. Hi, Debra. Welcome to the show. Hi, Eric. It's nice to be here. I am happy to have you on the show and talk about your latest book, which is called Living Mindfully at Home, at Work, and in the World. But before we get into that, let's start like we always do with the parable.

There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. And he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you how that parable applies to you in your life and in the work that you do, as well as maybe some of the things that you do yourself to

feed your own good wolf. Well, Eric, I have to admit that my initial response to that parable is just to want to say, awoo! It's a good one. I like it. Because I think one of the great things about parables is that they work on so many levels. So they work intellectually. They work emotionally. They work with our memories and the histories that we have and the associations that we have. And if they're really good, then they touch something deep inside us that's almost nonverbal. Right.

Right. verbal. Right, right. And, and so this, this notion of these wolves, my response is, is at that sort of nonverbal howl level. But probably that won't take us very far in a podcast. So I'll work with some words. You could certainly tell us about, you know, things that you do in your own life to feed the good wolf versus, you know, thinking about the meaning, if you like? I think I want to recast the wolves a little bit and say that maybe another way to look at this is to say that there are a whole lot of wolves inside of us, rather than sorting them into the good ones and the bad ones. Those wolves are all different kinds of emotions. And those emotions and their outcomes are really the critical piece in my experience and in the writing that I do. And so rather than looking at which of them we feed in terms of the good or the bad, I like to look at what's the outcome?

What do they present us with as a result? And so is the outcome constructive or is the outcome destructive? Does it lead to suffering? Because sometimes a particular emotion can be used in a way that is different from how it appears at a more superficial reading. So sometimes what looks like kindness is actually really nasty. And sometimes what looks like anger is the fiery energy that's needed in a situation to cause something good to come about. And so that's a very complicated response for a little guy. And I'm glad that the grandpa didn't go about trying to explain it at that level. But I wanted to point it out and say that that parable brings to mind, as all good parables do, so many complexities. And Living Mindfully, as a book, is trying to address a lot of these different complexities and say that things are not so simple and they're not just the way they appear to be. that we try to feed the good wolf using the parables terminology, the way that we try to do that is sometimes to work with things that are not on the surface so obviously good or pleasant.

Right. And in the book, you wrote something, I'm just going to read it because one of the things with the parable I often wrestle with is that idea of good and bad. Those aren't my favorite terms, but you talk about how you say positive feelings and emotions make life easier, happier, and more satisfying because they increase compassion, kindness, and prosperity. Cultivating them leads to a better life. In contrast, destructive emotions increase suffering by strengthening anger, greed, fear, jealousy. It's not that these kind of emotions are bad. Rather, they lead to behaviors that cause problems and pain for everyone involved. And I really love how that sort of sums up why we're looking for, you know, why is it we want to feed the good

versus the bad wolf. It's really kind of like you said, it's the it's the outcomes. It's kind of what happens when we engage in these particular type of emotions, not that they're better or worse. It's that they lead to outcomes, some of which we and the people around us value and others, ourselves and the people around us tend to not, not prefer. Yeah. And I think also that there's increasingly this association, which I think is on some level, maybe unfortunate between mindfulness or other contemplative practices and happiness and relaxation in a very Western sense of the word. And there are things in life that are not happy. When you lose someone you love, it's not happy. And yet these tools of mental training are things that allow us to work with

those kinds of raw, painful experiences in ways that are constructive. Yeah. To quote you again, there's a part in the book where I wrote down a line where it says, perhaps happiness is overvalued or overemphasized in today's culture, whereas a state of peacefulness or normalcy might actually be a more realistic goal. It depends what we mean by happiness. Right. And so many people would say, Matthew Ricard talks about happiness and really challenges us not to go for the, gee, everything's ecstatic version because he says that's not sustainable and it's not what it means. But in our Western culture, happiness looks a lot like, you know, the kid in the candy store.

Right. And I really like that, a state of peacefulness or normalcy. I like that idea of sometimes that is more than enough. A lot of times if we can just deal with what life brings us in a state of, you know, the word that I often like is to, you know, if we can handle the things that happen to us in a graceful or dignified manner, sometimes that's all you can muster, and that's more than enough. And then you sort of hope that those wolves are sitting there nicely wagging their tails waiting to be fed. Right. So before we go further into the latest book, I want to touch briefly on something that was from one of your previous books called Mindful Teaching and Teaching Mindfulness. And I really love this part where you're talking about dealing

with teenagers and this whole idea of where we're talking to kids about, well, you can make this choice or you can make that choice. And you came to a realization and I'm just going to read it to you because I really liked it. And I think it applies absolutely to teenagers, but I find that it applies to all of us to some, you know, to a great degree, which is why awareness and mindfulness is so important. You say the underlying issue that informed their response was basic. My students didn't have the skills to pay attention and develop an awareness of what was happening in the moment with their bodies, emotions, and thoughts. In other words, by the time they understood what they were doing experiencing and or enduring it was too late as a result they had far fewer options than they would have had um you're talking about

their their ability to to abstain or to make intelligent choices about sexual activity here which is then but you say they couldn't say no in part because they had trouble accurately interpreting what was happening sure much less predicting what was coming next. Telling them about prevention wasn't going to help if they weren't present while taking risks. Yeah. And that just really struck me as, you know, true for them and true for all of us when we're trying to build a better life. If we're not aware of what we're doing and our choices. Well, there was this thing that happened as a as a precursor to, to that realization for me, which was that I was, I was doing HIV prevention work in schools and I, I love teaching adolescents.

In particular, I wanted to teach all the kids that none of the other teachers wanted to teach because they are so much more interesting and so much more fun and challenging. And they're really alive because they're on the edge. Um, And so I wanted the kids that everybody else was like, ah, forget it. And then I would go in and I would work with these kids and speak with them and be present with them and listen and observe. And what I heard over and over and over again when they were talking about having unprotected sex was, well, you know, it just happened. And I thought, gee, the grammar on that is really telling because it happened. It's like, well, you know, where were you? You know, it happened. So what was the it and where were you? And what was really clear was they

weren't there. Or if they were there, they weren't aware of themselves there. And what was happening with their bodies, which is the most intimate thing in the world that can happen, was happening sort of to them. And I'm not talking about cases of sexual assault. I'm talking about consensual sex as they understood it. But it happened. And I thought, geez, how do we go about trying to create a change in behavior if it is happening? Because it isn't sentient. And we can't educate it into happening differently. But if these teenagers aren't present, they have no chance.

and then yes absolutely for many of us as adults in many other kinds of ways our lives just happen right and it it's like it may not be as intense it may not be as quick as adolescent sex but things things happen to us over long periods of time, jobs, relationships, patterns of interactions. And, and they happen in ways that in the end, we're not really there. And so our ability to, to work with it diminishes. You know, one of the big points of this show in general for me and, and goals is that more than anything was to keep myself off of autopilot, you know, to keep myself from just, um, not being aware of what was happening to me day to day and realizing that those day to day situations, the week to week situations add up to months, years, and to a lifetime and, and not realizing all the choices that I'm making or not making in any given

moment. And so I think that's such a powerful idea that I talk, that's why a lot of times, and I think sometimes we, this whole idea of mindfulness, it's becoming such a cliche these days in so many ways. The reason is because at its heart lies such a big truth, which is that if we're not aware, we can't make better choices. And for me, that's what mindfulness has given me, is the ability to be more aware in the moments of my life about what's actually happening and be able to choose instead of looking back on everything retrospectively,

going, well, I wish I had or I could have done, and actually being able to bring that into the current moment. There's this tremendous desire to escape. least that's what i perceive that people people want something different and they they think that the way to have something different is to get away from where they are and to go someplace else and if actually there there is no place else this is all you got and this is we are. And this is what we're going to work with or not. And so what is so important to me and to many others right now in the mindfulness field is keeping it real and reminding ourselves and others that it's fabulous that finally the research shows that this stuff actually works in a way that science understands and that makes it's fabulous that finally the research shows that this stuff actually works in a way

that science understands and it makes it palatable in western culture and it makes it available to us but um this is not a consumer product you can't you can't go out and get mindful uh and and just because you're going to have different attributes that cue mindfulness or symbolize it somehow, it's really what you do with your mind day in and day out that matters. And it's not all that sexy. And for those who have practiced it, it is day in and day out. And a lot of times it's drudgery. those who have practiced it, it is day in and day out. And a lot of times it's drudgery. And keeping that awareness, that's the practice of mindfulness. It's not those ecstatic,

insightful moments where everything is clear. That too. But those are intermittent. What it really is, is day in, day out, are you a decent human being in the way you interact? Do you overall contribute to something that is better than just how it has been? Are you able to give of yourself? Are you able to help others touch something inside themselves that enables them to then give to others? Can it radiate? And so that's why this idea of living mindfully, yes, it begins with each of us individually. It has to, by definition. But it's not just for me. I want to live mindfully so that I, in dedication to doing something beyond just myself, because I'm pretty boring and I'm very small. But there's a whole world out there. And that's where we want to bring it. That's the orientation. And here's the rest of the interview with Deborah David.

In the book, you talk a little bit about that, believing that enhancing your own experience is the ultimate measure of mindfulness is a fundamental and grave misunderstanding. So I like how you spin it that, yes, we are is something we have to do, but its value is not just to us. Whereas if you frame mindfulness or meditation up as this idea of I go get away from it all. 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. Going to the spa, right, then it does become very much an about-me thing, whereas if you frame it as it helps me to conduct myself in the world better and to be a better father, friend, whatever you are, whatever those roles you play in life, I think that's really important. And then the other thing that I really like about what I've read of your work is you... Oh, I'm so glad you like my work so much. Yes. Well, you say that the other

thing you say is that it's not, you know, I think this is probably a direct quote. If not, it's close, which is, it's not a panacea, right? This is not a, you know, mindfulness does not, does not directly lead to, you know, this, everything being perfect. It's simply a way of being able to be more present and more useful in our lives. And you, you say at one point, you can't change the external realities if you can't change, which we all find there's things we can't change. The only available option is to work with your inner experience. And that's really what we're talking about. Yeah. I'm thinking back now on a conversation I had, it was probably a dozen years ago when I was involved with the very early beginnings of the mindfulness

and education field. And I was sitting having a conference with a little meeting with a bunch of other people. And at some point, somebody spoke up and said, you know, I meditate every day and I've meditated every day for 30 years and it's changed my life. And I looked at the person and thought, you got to be joking. Because to be able to make that statement in that way and to wear it as a badge to me was so harsh because everything that I was learning from my teachers and coming to understand was that the more present we are, the less likely we would be to make a statement like that. And yet the person was completely fine with it. So I thought, well, okay, maybe this person is a higher form of life and there's something there. It's my cynicism that's getting me in trouble.

But then I'm a rational being. And my education in the West taught me to be critical. And I'm thinking, something's not right here. That we can't use mindfulness as a form of justification for who we are and how we are. And we can't use it as a form of oppression to make people better. Like, let's fix the kids, let's make them more mindful. Or, you know, honey, if only you were more mindful. It's like, ouch, gosh, you know, don't use it as a weapon. What if we stop talking about it so much? And what if we focus on what does it look like when we actually bring mindfulness into what we do? How does it change the tone, the quality, the pitch of our howl going back to that wolf as opposed to, you know, the kind of outward symbols of what we think is socially desirable? Well, I've talked about this on the show a bunch of times,

but I think one of the things that stood in the way of my meditation practice for years was people who would say things like, oh, when I meditate, I just feel so great. It just makes everything so, and I'd be like, that is not what happens to me. It's like the circus comes to town when I sit down to meditate. And, and that really, for a long time, I just thought I must not do that. I must not be made to do this because it isn't doing that for me. And, you know, finally, when I, when I got the idea, when I, when I really, and it's not that it wasn't, not that this idea wasn't in a lot of the books I was

reading or people I was talking to, I just wasn't hearing it. But when I got the idea, like, it's not about the experience, the experience isn't, this is not like smoking pot, right? Which, you know, was what I wanted meditation to be. I wanted it to be like taking a drug, like, Oh, I feel great, you know, and, uh, it's not. And so, um, and so I just, but once I sort of accepted that, like, that's not what's going to happen here. Um, and got down to, like you said, the business of actually doing it consistently and working at it, then yes, I do see benefits from it. But the benefits are not maybe as spectacular that they're actually, they get it. They're actually doing the practice and they didn't think they were. So when I've been teaching mindfulness techniques,

and I want to be really, really clear, I am not a mindfulness teacher. I'm a teacher and some of the things I teach about include mindfulness techniques, but I'm not a mindfulness teacher. I'm a teacher and some of the things I teach about include mindfulness techniques, but I'm not a mindfulness teacher. In any case, you teach these techniques and people come back and they say, you know, I didn't do it at all. I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything. But every day I thought about how I wasn't doing it and then I thought what I wasn't doing. And then I just didn't do it. And I look at them and say, you did it.

And they say, what do you mean? I say, you did it. So you didn't put your attention on your breath. Doesn't matter. But you were practicing the process. You were remembering. You were focusing on something. You were observing what was happening. You were refocusing on it you did it and you can begin from there

and then they they have this sense this lift of wow okay this is accessible for me too and it doesn't have to come in that cookie cutter kind of pattern. Because the point of, for example, mindful breathing is not for all of us to become just extraordinarily great breathers. You know, we're alive, we're breathing fine. It's working. We can breathe better, maybe, sure. But it's not about that. It's that breath is a convenient support, and that's why we use it for lots of reasons. But it's not about the breath. It's about the practice. different approaches to meditation, which turned out to be very important to me. It seems like everything that I read for like a 10 year period was all about the follow your breath. That was like the only option. I went, well, okay, I tried it. And that doesn't turn out to be the best way for me. But I want to start with, you have other things in the book besides that, but I want to

start with the idea of you talk about basically just a very simple mindful breath. And you say, one of the things the book is that you say this is you can think of this is not not as adding on to your tasks, but rather as adding in to already established routines. Can you explain that? Sure. So many of the things that we think of as kind of, quote unquote, good for us are things that we have to carve out extra time for. So we have to make time to go hear a presentation or a teaching. We have to go to a yoga class or set aside the time to be able to do the asanas or whatever it is. We have to put aside time in an already busy schedule. And there are pros and cons to that. And the pros are obviously that it's carving out special time and it's precious.

And the cons are that it's very difficult for most of us to find the time to do it. And so rather than having to add on, which is squeezing out time to add on to your daily schedule. What I was proposing, what I propose in general, is find a way to integrate what you're striving for within what you already do. So there's a lot of space during the day that we tend to leave open or we don't notice or we fill it with things that distract us. And so you can be waiting for your coffee in the morning

if you're a coffee person. You can be standing there watching it drip, waiting for it, and there might be 30 seconds or two minutes when that's happening and you can do a practice then. Or you can do a practice then. Or you can do a practice when you're taking a shower. You can do it when you're in the elevator. You can do it on the metro. And it gets increasingly difficult to do it the more variables there are in distractions. But if you start with very simple times, quiet times, then you can develop the habit of doing

it. So a lot of times people will say, well, I can't do this at work. I say, well, do you go get a cup of water? Well, sure. Well, take 30 seconds when you're at the water cooler filling up your water bottle, do it then. Or if you go into the bathroom, nobody's standing outside with a clock watch, a stopwatch, excuse me, and timing, hopefully, timing how long you're in there. So take the 30 seconds when you're there. So find these opportunities that are invisible, that are hidden, and integrate the practice in your day so that there's a lot of repetition of what can be very brief practices because it's so helpful to learn how to punctuate the day with these pauses or these very brief mindfulness practices. Whatever you're placing your attention

on that you're consciously switching from whatever else was going on, you're placing your attention on something else, you're observing the quality of your attention, and you're refocusing as you need to. That is the core practice of mindfulness. And it can be done in a myriad ways in all sorts of places. Use some of those you just talked about, standing in line waiting for your coffee, or what is the essential practice that somebody can do in that situation? Sure. So the basic practice, as I presented in Living Mindfully, is focus, observe, refocus. And the idea there is that you have the presence of mind or the larger macro level mindfulness to switch your attention off of the task that you're doing or the thoughts that you're having

onto something else. And that something else could be taking a breath, or it could be gently touching your thumb to one of your fingertips, or it could be touching the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth, or it could be the sound that you're listening to of wind, or it could be the flavor of the coffee in your mouth. But the idea is to purposefully switch that laser-like attention off of whatever else it was on, onto something of your own choosing. And then to keep it there as long as you can within your time frame. And to notice if you're able to be unwavering with it. And for most of us, we can get that laser onto that item and then we lose it immediately. It's like finding binoculars and seeing a bird. And then the next thing we know,

the bird's gone and it's not really clear whether the binoculars shifted or the bird flew away or what happened, but it's not there. And you got to find it again. And that entrains that basic process. And then as you get better and better at it, you can place your attention on things that are much more subtle, like emotions. You can place your attention on patients, on the experience of patients. And can you stay with that? Or do you lose it? And if so, can you refocus? Or you place your attention on pain, physical pain when you're in it, because paying attention to that pain allows you actually to work with it. Or you can place your attention onto some kind of devotional practice if that's what you're into. Same thing. But instead of saying,

gee, I got to put aside 20 minutes today to listen to my guided meditation, which if it works for you, I'm not knocking it, please absolutely do it. But for those of you who say, I don't have 20 minutes or I can't sit still for that or, you know, no way. That's not the barrier. Because you can use these techniques in the middle of what you're normally doing. And all it takes is a couple of seconds. And then naturally, organically, it expands, both in terms of frequency and often for people in terms of duration. I'd like to switch from here towards you starting to talk about some of the ways that we can do this. And you talk a lot about the series of steps that happen in our brain or in our mind, call it what you will, that lead us to a series of consequences that we might not like. Starting kind of with, you know, an event occurs and then

the next thing a lot of us know is here's the consequence. Like I yelled at somebody, can you walk us through that sequence of things that happens and how we can work to intervene in that? Sure. That's like asking the whole world. And you've got 35 seconds. I've got 35 seconds. Do it right. Okay. So basically, what you're describing is what we call stress. And there's a trigger. There's something that happens that we recognize as being threatening to us in some way. And the response to that immediately is protective, is how do I get away from it or how do I fight it off? And we are going so fast and it's such a survival instinct that the part of our brain that is involved with rational thought is a couple seconds behind. And what often happens

is that we lash out or we take a first step that commits us to a path that ultimately doesn't work out very well for us. And we do it before we can kind of put the brakes on because that part of the brain's a little slower. And so this will save our lives in very particular kinds of circumstances. And we certainly do not want to forget about it. If you hear the whooshing sound of a car coming when you're not paying attention, you want to jump backwards out of the way for sure. That's going to save your life. Your loved one says something in a tone of voice that you immediately associate with other times you've heard it and what happened afterward. And you bristle and say something.

All of a sudden, what might have been nothing turns into something, and it doesn't work out well. And then we get ourselves into all kinds of trouble and all kinds of suffering. And we feel terrible, and we do things we regret. And so the idea with mindfulness practice is to give us the opportunity to develop the mental skills that let us notice our circumstances. It's a situational awareness, internally and externally, so that we have a better and more accurate perception of what's actually happening. And then we have greater discernment about how we're going to interpret the data that we get and what we're going to do with it. And by slowing down the process ever so slightly through observing what we're experiencing as we're experiencing it, we get

the opportunity to actually be there while it is happening. So it's happening, but I'm here with it. In fact, I am at the middle of what is happening in my experience. And now I have a chance to determine. 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. To greater or lesser capacity of what I'm going to do. And I think for me, you know, I've said this, I've said this on the show several times, is that there's that old Victor Frankl quote of, you know, between stimulus and response, there lies a space. And in that space is all our human freedoms. And I feel like my practice of meditation and mindfulness, 90% of the benefit probably could be described as that

space seems a little bit bigger. And you're doing it right. I have a little bit more ability to intervene at that point. And one of the things that you just said there, you said both our internal and our external reality. And one of the things in the book that you're talking about, and it reminded me a lot of in recovery programs, there's a phrase called halt. Don't let yourself get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. Like if you do that, you're at great risk for relapse. And I love in the book, you're talking about one of the things in addition to being aware of the external circumstances, like what's happening and all that is recognizing like where you are in that moment. Am I, you know, if I'm going into this situation and I'm really hungry, I'm more at risk for acting a certain way or so knowing, you know, keeping that internal reality, knowing where we are along with the external circumstances,

allows us to handle those situations better. There's a continuum of consequence. And that ranges from the very mild to the very extreme. And one of the populations that I most enjoy working with are law enforcement and military. And they're right at the edge because the potential consequence for them is so grave. And so the responsibility to be present and to know what's happening accurately and to be discerning in how they deal with that data is so, so profoundly important. And they need tools in order to do it. And so the sense here is, can I be more mindful so that I can read what's going on in a very

fast, rapidly evolving situation and tell the difference between someone who needs my help and someone who's threatening my life. Because what I determine is going to cause me to act in ways that are very different. And the outcomes are monumental. That's at the extreme end. But we do it every day with our kids, with our loved ones, our colleagues, with the person that we engage with when we buy a pack of gum at the 7-Eleven. We make all these little tiny decisions all the time.

And being able to know what's going on so that we can de-escalate whenever it's possible and also so that we can know when it's time to have courage and stand firm. Because mindfulness is not about passivity at all. It's about being present. And sometimes what we need to do when we're present is take action. Probably my favorite line in the book is you've got a bunch of different chapters.

You've got chapters on mindfulness of feeling, mindfulness of thought. You've got one for mindfulness in relationships. And you have one for mindfulness in sex. And the line is that sex and attention both improve with practice. But bringing mindfulness to sex offers a highly attractive type of training compared to counting your breaths, which I thought was great. Yeah. Well, look, okay. So, you know, having a conversation like this, we're ranging all over the place.

And we were talking just a couple minutes ago about adding in and having these applications for informal practice. And then you mentioned that you have a regular practice where you practice for getting out there, basically. And I just want to come back to that on my way to responding to what you've just mentioned, which is to say that when people are first starting with this practice, it's a dance. It's a dance between realizing that you have the confidence and the capacity to do it and then gritting your teeth and getting down to the business of doing it. And the two have to progress together. So it's not enough just to do it on the fly. But equally, it's not enough just to do it when you're sitting in your room when it's quiet and no one else is around. So the comment about practicing with your breath and practicing during sex, you got to start with the breath or something like the breath. Because sex is way too intense and complicated at all levels to be able to start there.

But it is a place we can practice. And personally, I mean, I think it's much better to have mindful sex than mindless sex. Right, right. Well, that chapter, you know, we don't have time to go into all of it. But that's a that chapter was really good about what I what I liked about it was it, it helped describe a lot of the ways that we engage in intimacy and all the different places that our brain might actually be while that's happening. And to read it was kind of, I was a little fascinated by like, yep. Oh, been there. Oh, yep. That, I mean, all the, you know, just to spell out all the different ways

that you may say, cause it seems like, well, yeah, I'm present for that. Of course. Right. And, but when, when you go through that list of things, I went, no, I guess you're right. There's a lot of times that, uh, you know, I'm not as present as I think I might be because of this thing or that thing. And I really thought that was a good chapter. And Eric, I'm going to counter with saying what I said earlier to you, which is that is the practice. Right. So it's fine. I mean, maybe we don't want it to be like that when we're having sex, but it's fine

when the mind goes someplace else. That's just what it does. It moves. The practice is recognizing what it's doing. So you have a chance to bring it back if that's what you want to do. What I found helpful was that the way that you were to articulate the places the brain might go was a helpful way to realize it may seem like I'm being present, but really these various things are happening. It's the same way that I think sometimes the process of labeling during meditation, you know, future or past or body sensation, doing that provides me a little bit more clarity sometimes than just thinking. It helps me to be a little bit more aware of what's happening and,

and be a little more precise. It's the, it happened thing. And it's one of these areas that mindfulness and this notion of everything's fine. So long as I'm mindful is it just bunk because if you are present and what's happening is not okay, then if you can stay safe with it, you need to stop it and get out. And if what's happening is okay, then that's where you want to be, unless there's some reason why you can't be. So it's what we do with that level of awareness that's so critical. And there is all the reason in the world to really pay attention to whether or not we're present at the times that are the most intimate potentially and the most risky because if we're checking out and we're not present when really deep down we have the sense we should be, then that's telling us information that's very

important for us to factor in. And it may be that we choose to change nothing because of a whole host of other variables. And that's fine. But not knowing means he can't make that choice. That's why I think it's, you know, back to sort of where we started a lot of this is that mindfulness is, it's not all about that's the end goal. It's that it's, you're being mindful in a lot of cases so that you are better able to do things in your life. It's not, it's a tool in a lot of cases, not necessarily the goal in and of itself. I was thinking about the podcast and the whole idea of what we do when we listen to podcasts. And I think that how many people are listening to this and doing nothing else, just listening. And I think that's got to be a relatively small number of people. Because like two people?

You know, like hardly anyone. So, you know, instead we're hoping that the people are listening and at the same time they're driving safely or they're not getting, you know, like mowed down when they're walking down the street or doing any number of other things. And this is happening along with other things in life. And this is an opportunity simply just right here, right now, in this instant to, you know, for listeners to say, what am I doing? Where am I putting my attention? Is it the right place for me to be putting my attention? What's the quality of my attention like? Am I doing what I want to be doing right now? Is it working for me? And if so, great. And if I'm so excited about what I'm listening to that I'm not paying attention

with my driving, guess what? Turn it off. I would suggest pull over. Keep listening to the show, but pull. I was going to say turn it on later. But whatever you need to do, it's like, pay attention. Where am I? What am I doing? And is it working for me? And does it work in the larger world? That's a practice I've tried to develop in myself is to simply stop and say, you know, very literally, like you said, where am I? What am I doing? And why am I doing it? And the more often that I stop and ask myself those three questions, the far more my life sort of holds together. Cause like it's a, it's a great way to, to realize like, Oh, where am I?

Oh, I'm sitting at my desk. What am I doing? Oh, I am. I've just wasted the last 20 minutes on Facebook. Why? Cause I don't want to do this other thing. And then, Oh, okay, I can stop. And then I have the awareness or the mindfulness to change if I want. Yeah. I've listened to a fair number of other presentations and every speaker has something to offer. And so I'm about to make a comment that's going to take issue with something that I hear again and again, but it's not with the offering of the speakers because I'm so grateful for the wisdom that's shared. But there's a lot of talk about nonjudgmental sort of responses to different kinds of thoughts. And on the one hand, I get it and I like it.

And I think we have to work with observing and looking at things without judging so we can see what's there. But on the other hand, I think that we have discernment and we have the capacity to determine whether something is constructive or not constructive. And if it isn't constructive, then what can I do about it? How can I transform it? How can I change it? How can I transform it? How can I change it? How can I feed it? I don't want to starve wolves because I don't want that kind of karma for starving anything, but maybe exercising.

Which wolf can I exercise more? Can I exercise the wolves that lead to more constructive outcomes and get them really strong? And can I let the other wolves sort of get a little bit weaker because maybe I need them in my life or maybe they're there. Maybe some point they'll just sort or who interview, who talk, who present, who think about them again and again and again, who engage in inquiry like you do. For all of us, the question is, what's our orientation with this? And what's the broader fabric? And that's where the great teachers come in. Right. Well, this has been a great conversation. This is about the point in the conversation that if Chris were here helping me record,

he would have given me the wrap it up signal a couple times by now because we're going kind of long here. So but I've had a great time and I could probably do it for another hour. But thanks so much, Debra, for taking the time to come on the show. We will have links to your work in the show notes and I encourage listeners to go check it out. Eric, thank you so much. It's been a great pleasure. Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye. All right. Bye. you can learn more about deborah s david and this podcast at one you feed.net slash deborah and don't forget to go take our survey at one you feed.net slash survey thanks