The One You Feed - Dr. Rick & Forrest Hanson on Learning to Be Well

Episode Date: October 5, 2021

Dr. Rick Hanson and Forrest Hanson are hosts of the popular podcast, Being Well. Rick is a psychologist who writes and teaches about the essential inner skills of personal well-being, psychological growth, and contemplative practice, and together they address many of these issues on their podcast.In this episode, Eric and Ginny discuss how to be well and experience psychological growth with Rick and Forrest.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!Enrollment for the Spiritual Habits Group Program is now open through October 12. Click here to learn more and signup!In This Interview, Eric, Ginny, Rick, and Forrest Discuss Learning How to Be Well and …Their podcast, Being WellThe “dreaded experience” and how we organize our lives to avoid our fear, shame, vulnerabilityHow growth comes from facing and leaning into our dreaded experiencesLimiting beliefs and how our self-conception is 6 months out of dateUnderstanding that our brains are forecasting machinesRick’s experience in a body massage skills workshopPausing to take in the positive experiences that come on the other side of facing the dreaded experiencesThe assumptions that Forrest must be perfectly adjusted being the son of a psychologistNature versus nurture and how we all have wounds to deal with, no matter our upbringingThe upper reaches of potential Becoming comfortable with the experience of admitting fault is how we free ourselvesAsking where the forces of control are in our livesDistinguishing between our internal and external forcesHow our circumstances can be unfair, and yet our healing is our responsibilityWe have a moral responsibility to decide which “wolf” we will feed The hope in knowing that all storms will pass Dr. Rick Hanson and Forrest Hanson Links:Rick’s WebsiteRick’s FacebookForrest’s WebsiteForrest’s InstagramForrest’s FacebookBeing Well on InstagramBest Fiends: Engage your brain and play a game of puzzles with Best Fiends. Download for free on the Apple App Store or Google Play.   Peloton: Now you can get a Peloton bike for $400 off! And of course, the bike is an incredible workout, but did you know that on the Peloton app, you can also take yoga, strength training, stretching classes, and so much more? Learn all about it at www.onepeloton.com.  If you enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Rick Hanson and Forrest Hanson, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Dr. Rick Hanson (2018)Dr. Rick Hanson (2015)Being Human with Krista TippettSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family. That's what the spiritual teacher Ram Dass said, and it strikes a chord with so many of us. Combine that with the inherently stressful holiday season, and it's no wonder that the last few months of the year are some of the most difficult for so many people. That's why we're opening the doors to the Spiritual Habits Group program once again, and I'm inviting you to join me. Whether you're looking to develop a consistent daily meditation practice

or implement mindfulness practices into your life or connect more deeply to what really matters, the Spiritual Habits Group Program will give you the tools you need to turn this wisdom into daily, sustainable, transformational practice. And you'll do so in a community where you belong

and feel connected. Finish 2021 strong with the satisfaction of knowing you showed up as your best self with less stress, able to actually enjoy this time of year. Just go to oneyoufeed.net slash spiritual habits to join the program. Enrollment is open now through October 12th. That's oneufeed.net slash spiritualhabits. It's like the brain is this expectation machine. It's an expectation engine. It's continually forecasting. What's it going to be like if I have Chinese food or Italian food tonight, or if I say this or say that in that interaction? And very often what it's doing is it's forecasting pain. 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. 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. This episode is unique in a few ways. It's actually a reoccurring guest, which is psychologist

Rick Hansen, but also it's a multi-person podcast. We have Eric, we have our own Jenny Gay joining in as the co-host, and then Rick and his son Forrest, who host the popular Being Well podcast, are both on this episode as well. Rick is a psychologist and writes and teaches about the essential inner skills of personal well-being, psychological growth, and contemplative practice. And together, their podcast addresses many of those same issues. Hi, Rick. Hi, Forrest. Welcome to the show. Hey, Eric. Thanks for having us. Oh, hey, I'm really happy to be here. And welcome, Ginny, to the show. Hi. Well, thank you. Listeners have heard you on some spots before, but this is the first full episode we've had you involved.

And so we're really excited. This is a four-person conversation, which we have never done here on the show. And we thought Rick and Forrest would be a great couple of people to kick this off with. So why don't we start like we always do with the parable, but why don't we let you take it? All right. All right. Let me see what I can do here. I've heard it a bunch. Let me see how I can speak it. All right, Forrest, it's you and me. All right. So the parable goes like this. There was a grandparent that was talking to their grandchild and they said, in life, there are two wolves at battle inside of us. 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 grandchild stopped and thought for a second and said, well, which one wins? And the grandparent said, the one you feed. So I'd love to know what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, well, for starters, thank you, Jenny, for asking it. I think it's a great question. And I love that the podcast is in some ways centered around that question. For me, the first place that I go when I think about it is to a lot of my dad's work makes sense, right? Which is about cultivating positive strengths inside of yourself. When I kind of take a little bit of a right turn from that is around the relationship that the two wolves have to us. So for me, I think that for a lot of people, there are two wolves in the heart. One of them's a good wolf, one of them's a bad wolf, if you want to use that language.

And for many people, the wolf kind of has its leg stuck in a trap. And the bad wolf is actually a very friendly wolf, seemingly, to them. Because for many, many people, it's a lot easier to kind of feed the aspects of their self that are actually not serving them in long-term ways. And a lot of the time when we're making positive change in our life, when we're cultivating those positive tendencies that we have, that can be a long and painful road. So the good wolf kind of snaps at you as you come ever closer to it, attempting to free it from the trap. Whereas the bad wolf can be very seductive, very friendly, very engaging. And a lot of the hard work that we do in this life is about trying to free that good wolf, if you will, from the prison that it finds itself in. And so that's kind of where I take maybe the slightly modified version of the

teaching story. I didn't mean to alter the parable there. But I just think that for many, it's so much easier to lean into their negative tendencies in different kinds of ways. And we see this all over the place with addictions of various kinds, with leanings in the mind. And it's so much harder to lean into the person that they actually are deep inside. Maybe the person that they were before the world kind of got in the way a little bit. So that's what I think of when I think of the question. You know, that makes me actually think of something that you have written about, Forrest, the dreaded experience. Oh, yeah. This is a vamp on my dad's material to give

attribution here. But yeah, I love it. Okay. Well, I first saw it as an Instagram post that you did and I saved it and I have gone back to it over and over again because I just so connected with it deeply. This idea that we have a core fear or maybe core fears, right? It typically can be an emotional experience that we organize our lives around avoiding. And when I read that, I thought, oh my gosh, do I ever. I can rattle off a few just right off the top of my head, but then the closer I looked, you know, the more I sort of held that thought and looked around, the deeper it went for me. And I wondered if you would mind maybe sharing a little bit more, elaborating on that a little for listeners to know about what this idea is and how it might show up in our lives. Yeah, I'm super happy to. Also, at the end of whatever I

say here, Dad, of course, you're more than welcome to give your take. But the basic idea is exactly how you outlined it. I think you outlined it really well, Jenny, where for most of us, there is some fear, some emotional experience. Maybe it's oriented around vulnerability for a lot of people. For a lot of people, it's oriented around shame. For me, my personal one just to share is feeling like a bad person, quote unquote. There's this kind of apocryphal story inside of our family of me being a very young kid and kind of going into my parents' bedroom and saying, you know, I feel like a bad soldier or I feel like the bad knight. And that was just such a centrally painful experience to me. And I see many ways in which I've kind of oriented my life around avoiding feeling like that bad person,

and a lot of ways that I've accommodated my behavior in order to do that. In some ways that are totally normal, totally like pro-social, typical stuff, and in some ways that I don't think served me long-term. And one of the more challenging things I've had to do in my life is lean into those moments where I have a cringe factor, as my dad likes to say, where my cringometer is turned up to 10. And those are some good indicators for a lot of people that you're trafficking in the territory of your dreaded experience, this pain that you feel inside oriented around a certain kind of emotional sensation that you're having. That makes so much sense. I think for me, it shows up as, you know, this basic fear of being like, not enough, not good enough, not whatever enough, you know, or in some way unworthy. And when I say

it out loud, you know, my head says, that's ridiculous. You know, of course you are. But there's something deeper in me that clearly has some real aversion to having that be validated in some way, you know, by an experience. And Rick, maybe if you want to chime in here too with Forrest, like how do you encourage people to lean into that and actually begin to step outside these invisible walls that we've built for ourself so that we don't stay so small? It's a fundamental question because I think that the experiences that we habitually avoid form the cages, form the bars of our invisible cage. They bound our life. And a lot of what growth is about and healing is becoming more and more willing to risk those experiences. Very often, they actually don't happen. They used to happen

maybe. The odds of them were maybe high when we were little because of the circumstances we were in or in our last job or last marriage. But today, the actual odds are pretty low. But even if they did happen, we'd also be a lot more able to handle them. So recognizing that the odds of the dreaded experience are a lot lower today than they used to be. And second, it wouldn't feel so bad. And even third, recognizing that you could still cope with it. It wouldn't destroy you. It'd be a drag.

It'd be a bummer. You'd be upset for a few hours or minutes or days, but then it would really pass. Knowing those things helps us take those chances. So I wondered, Ginny, if I could ask you a question. Sure. So when you talk about, let's say for you, and I can relate to it very much, the dreaded experience of not being enough, for me, I would add a kind of social element to it of being seen by others as not enough.

Fault found, right? Public humiliation or falling short, criticism. I grew up in a fault-finding home. So what would happen in your life? Can you imagine it? If you were just willing to risk that experience, if you were willing to risk flopping, if you were willing to risk the booze, what kind of life might you have then? Right. You know, it's something that I'm trying to do actively more and more in my life. In fact, showing up today with you all is one way that I'm really trying to lean into the anxiety around, what if I screw it up? What if I'm awful? What if they think we're, you know, just total losers? Well, obviously, Eric's not. He's like

400 episodes into establishing that. But being my first one, you know, it's like one of Ginny is just bleh, the worst. So realizing that, you know, I really do want to take the step to show up even here today with you guys. But I find myself having a lot of social anxiety because of part of really having authentic connection is that vulnerability and to be able to have connection to be seen. So even showing up to lunch with a friend can cause me some anxiety. But every single time, every single time in recent memory that I have shown up, it has been life giving, and it has filled me with energy and love and connection and confidence. life-giving, and it has filled me with energy and love and connection and confidence. So it is,

it's like, once I see past that fear through the experience of doing it, it helps me next time to take that step and to push beyond it. But it still feels hard, you know, maybe in smaller ways or larger ways, depending, but it's still, that element of hard is still there for me a little bit. Makes me think of something I heard you guys say recently. You were talking about limiting beliefs. Yeah. And I think it was you, Rick, that said something along the lines of, our self-conception is always six months out of date. So great.

And I actually think that's a very generous estimate. And a lot of times I think our self-conception is years out of date. I felt the same way, yeah. I would answer personality tests up until a few years ago. Anything around impulsivity, I would always mark myself as impulsive. Yeah. I was a heroin addict at one point, so yes, I was pretty impulsive. But more in my adult life, that is not a trait that really shows up in me at all.

And yet I identified that way year after year after year, you know. So I think this idea of, you know, the dreaded experience ties into our self-conception of ourselves. And I think, you know, Ginny, like you, thinking about going out to eat with a friend, we drag these old beliefs like that's hard, that's scary along with us. That doesn't match our recent experiences, as you were kind of saying, Rick. Yeah, a lot of what we do, it's like the brain is this expectation machine. It's an expectation engine. It's continually forecasting. What's it going to be like if I have Chinese food or Italian food tonight, or if I say this or say that in that interaction? And very often what it's doing is it's forecasting pain, right? And then we withdraw because, oh, we don't want to experience that pain. So, you know, the engine is trying to help us.

But on the other hand, it makes us like puppets or robots. We're continually getting pulled by the strings of our avoidances of one kind or another. And so on the other hand, the way to free ourselves and also to be more powerful and engaged in life is to be willing to tolerate the forecasted pain and then still go down that road. Now, don't be dumb. Don't put your hand on the hot burner. Don't run through the red light. Don't shoot up the heroin and all the rest of that. Don't do those things, okay? But there's this key phrase in psychology called distress tolerance. It's a fancy phrase, but if we could tolerate the anticipated distress we would experience from, say, being open with a friend at lunch or admitting fault or asking for forgiveness or

asking for friendliness, asking for love, whatever it might be, if we could tolerate the discomfort that we might experience if we were to do that, then we could step forward much more boldly. Having a discovery that I could be with difficult emotions or feelings was a moment in my life I'll never forget. I was sitting on the couch watching Oprah's Super Soul Sunday. She was interviewing Pema Chodron. And Pema posed the question of when difficult emotions come up, asking yourself the question, can I be with this? And it's the first time I'd ever heard that question.

And I realized there was a whole bucket of scary feelings inside of me that I was trying to avoid. And I knew it. But the thought of could I just, could I be with them had never even occurred to me. I just assumed I couldn't. And so I stopped and I was like, well, huh, I don't know. Can I? Maybe I could try just a little bit.

That shifted really the trajectory of my adult life. I mean, it's so powerful to know that you can be with what comes up. Might need some support more times than others, but you can and you can survive it and that life can be bigger on the other side of that. I mean, that's life-changing. I've gotten a lot of that from the two of you guys in your conversations together on your podcast. Yeah. That's so lovely. I'll tell a story here that Forrest doesn't know, and it's a bit of a risk for me to even tell the story, and you'll understand why when I tell the story. Okay.

But for me, it really illustrated this. So the short version is that I grew up in a loving, decent home. And the, I'd say, culture in my home was very Midwestern and conservative in a lot of ways in terms of lifestyle. So there was no talk whatsoever about the body, sensuality, anything like that. It was just wasn't talked about. And then fast forward 20 some odd years later, I'm about 27, 28. I'm in this kind of human potential environment. Still a young man, still frankly, very kind of embarrassed about my body. I felt skinny. It was scrawny. I was very young going through school. So taking showers with a bunch of kids, a bunch of other boys in junior high or high school was often a kind of an uncomfortable

experience. And there I was in this touchy-feely workshop where we're going to learn massage skills. And the start of the workshop with about a dozen people, half of whom were very attractive young women my age. The other half were dudes like me of various kinds we were supposed to stand up in front of the group and introduce our body to the group just introduce your body now right there you're standing up you're exposed you're completely seen right there you are and you're going to say well these are my shoulders this is my hair and try not to comment about judging it or not, but you are introducing your body. This is my belly.

This is my sagging flesh, whatever you make. I love your face, Jenny. Okay. So I'm like, oh, this is insane. So already on the cringometer, the cringometer, it's an eight at least, just standing there with my clothes on, just introducing my body. So I'm about number five or so in the sequence here. First person stands up, introduces their body, no big deal. Second person stands up, takes off their coat, takes off, you know, and does their shoes, introduces their body, right?

Number four, let's say. Third person introduces their body. They get down to kind of their underwear and a t-shirt. Next person is a woman next to me. She's down to bra and underwear. And then it's my turn. What am I going to do? And at that point, it was like a 10.

Talk about the anticipation. Oh, my gosh. West, where is your cringometer right now? Are you doing okay? I'm toughing it out. I think I know where this story is going. So I'm waiting for the punchline over here. I'm feeling it right now. I'm feeling it right now. Okay, like what am I going to do? What am I going to do? Am I going to basically embrace the Gom Jabbar using the reference from Doom? Am I going to go for it or am I going to, what's out? Either way. And I go, okay. So I just start taking, you know, I stand up,

there's my body and I peel off my pants. I take off my shirt and then I drop my underwear. This is it. This is my body. Oh my gosh. And in that moment, in that moment, I swear to you, I felt like 500 volts shot through my body for about eight seconds. Grounded out. It was like lightning struck. But then, forever after, whatever. It's a body. We all have a body. That's right.

Virginia Satir, the great family therapist, would do workshops where she'd have people bump their belly buttons into each other as kind of an icebreaker in the very beginning. Like, we all have belly buttons. We're all human. We all have a body. But that would be an example of a dreaded experience, at least a 10. But you step into it. You do these wise experiments. It was a safe setting for me to go for it. And it was like,

whatever. Very often, it's not so horrible. I am proud for you. I am proud for you that you did that. And I think that is brave. And you're right, though. We can kind of go there. And then all of a sudden, we realized we didn't have to be so afraid. How liberating. We've been going to new dookies ever since, right? Forrest, keep your clothes on. I don't get any ideas about like, just settle down over there. I know. I'm well regulated. I got it together. Oh, man. That's funny. Thank you for sharing that. Oh, yeah. But to go back to what you said, Jenny, earlier, you know, when we risk the dreaded experience, when we push back the bars of our

invisible cage by just a notch, and we do it in such a way that we set ourselves up to succeed. I knew that I had 28 years of issues around body shame at that point. And I just thought, you know, I'm tired of it. That's another thing that can kind of happen. We just feel tired of doing laps inside the track, inside our invisible cage. And then we hopefully choose well, do an experiment, see how it goes. Was it that bad? Was it horrible? And then when, as usual, it goes pretty well, take it in. Help that learning land so you really get it and it really sinks into you. And to me, that fundamental process risks the dreaded experience in a very careful way designed to succeed at it. And then when you do succeed at it, learn the good lesson, which step by step by step keeps pushing the bars

further and further back and expands the space of the life that you can have. 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?

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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. 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. podcasts. That is something that I have learned from your teachings specifically, which is as we look to make the move from a state to become a trait, to really be with and savor and take in

and notice and appreciate what it's like when we get to the other side, so to speak. And you know, Tara Brock, I think the after the rain idea, I don't know the origin of that, but you all must have a connection over that somehow, is pausing to take in once we have ridden the emotional wave, whatever that is, and we've come to a place of being able to have some peace, to take in that peace, to take in that peace. Because from a neurological perspective, right, we're doing something there. We're actually growing the ability to make those connections and extend that place. Is that right? Totally.

It's like you're kind of growing into, you're inhabiting who you want to be. It's still you, but it's a you that's less burdened, that feels happier, calmer, more open-hearted, braver, more spacious for other people. You're growing into who you want to be and you're helping that become established in you. Oh yeah, that's it. Right. And I think we can do this in big things like, you know, a big moment like that, but there's thousands of small moments too, you know, where just like today I meditated or today I exercised and I did what I said I was going to do. And there's just, it's subtle,

but there's an internal feeling of congruence. And we sort of do what we say to ourselves we're going to do. And we meet our commitments to ourselves. There's just a very subtle internal congruence. But if we can learn to notice that and savor it a little bit, it makes it easier and easier to continue those behaviors. You know, can I go back to something Forrest said back when we were talking about this dreaded experience to begin with? Help me with your words. You said something about how it was to be like, you were afraid of being a bad person or a bad soldier. Yep. Yeah. So one of mine, I think many people have multiple, I certainly have multiple. It gets to various kinds of social exposure, and particularly feeling like I've

done wrong, like I am wrong, like I did the wrong thing. I can recall in vivid detail so many different moments in my life, often in kind of work or school environments, where I messed up something, I submitted a homework assignment the wrong way, I was called into my boss's office because I messed up something I was supposed into my boss's office because I messed up something I was supposed to do. And those moments are just like cast in such stark relief for me with so much painful emotion attached to them. And so that's another kind of indicator that might be helpful for people. Like what really stands out in your memory negatively? And that's generally a pretty good indication of like where some of those dreaded experiences are

found for you. So yeah, that's mine. Like feeling like a like where some of those dreaded experiences are found for you. So yeah, that's mine. Like feeling like a bad person is generally how I phrase that. Feeling like a bad person. Yeah. I mean, I can relate to that. But when you said that, the other thing that I was struck by is, Eric has talked about this on the show before, but that my mom has been suffering from Alzheimer's for a number

of years now. And the last few have been the most difficult and we've been very involved in her care. now. And the last few have been the most difficult and we've been very involved in her care. And so as she has been sort of disappearing little by little, slowly by slowly, that has brought up a bunch of stuff with me with her. And I realized the tendency that I have to go to blaming her for either doing or not doing something as I was a child, which has caused me to now have to suffer with this thing, this, you know, as an adult. So when you said that, man, you know, I mean, it's amazing. So you can grow up with Rick Hansen as your dad and still have core issue. Like it's not necessarily anyone's quote fault, right? Like I even heard, was it Kristen Neff, who's like the mother of self

compassion in my mind. And she said that she heard her son remark, and like, the only thing she's really ever wanted to instill in her child is this sense of self compassion toward, you know, to really cultivate that. So like, that is like, I mean, if you are set up to like be armed with self compassion for life, it's to be Kristen Neff's child. But even then, at some point, she heard some self-loathing and self, like, really just some words coming out of her child's mouth. And she thought, like, wait a minute, maybe this is not all about the faults of our parents and the faults of our, maybe it's just how we're wired, right? Like, maybe it's just how our brains are, you know, again, back to some of your work, Rick, you know, like Velcro for the negative and Teflon for the good, you know, we can hold it looser when it's not so much our fault or our

parents fault. Yeah, well, I love that we're talking about this, because I think that it's such a cool thing. Just to put it kind of simply, I think it's so cool. And I think it's so important that we talk with people about this on a regular basis, where particularly come up to me and they're like, wow, you know, you're Rick's kid, you must just be like perfectly well adjusted and psychologically healthy and all these things. And I'm like, are you kidding me? I mean, come on, I'm a human, right? I would totally imagine that, of course. Yeah, yeah. And that's a very, very natural thing for people to think, right? That if you're the kid of a psychologist, you're going to end up just being like perfectly well adjustedadjusted. And for starters, I would say that I know lots of kids

of psychologists and none of them are perfectly well-adjusted. So if you're still holding onto that belief, that's just demonstrably not true, as I could say from my personal experience. But I think that it takes it to an even more important point, which is the one that you've raised, which is this idea of whose fault it is. And what does it mean to become a healthy, happy, functional person as an adult? And my personal view on this, for starters, it takes me a little bit into like nature nurture. We're as near as we can tell about half of the stuff that makes us who we are is nurture, is based largely in like what our parents do to us, what happens when we're young, interactions with other kids, all of that good stuff. And about half of it, roughly 30 to 70%,

depending on who you ask, comes down to nature, where our genetic constitution are leaning toward being a little bit sadder, a little bit happier, whatever it is. And your parents do a lot. And I'm a big believer in developmental psychology and like the huge impact that the first three years has on a person's life. But what's really, really funny is the more that I've learned about psychology, the more that I've started to gain an appreciation

for the impact of nature. And like how much of this is just about like the path in life we all tread, where everyone comes into the world with a wounding of some kind, something they hold in their heart. Nobody comes in fully formed. Nobody comes in perfect.

And in the first 10 years, most people get out of it alive, but nobody gets out of it unwounded. That's my firm personal belief. Nobody gets out of it unwounded. And then the job of the next 30, 40, 50 years of your life is figuring all that stuff out, creating a coherent narrative around it, doing the work internally, figuring out how to reconcile those experiences. And I think that that's a common human experience. And for me,

it just really pulls me into like a deep appreciation for other people and all the work that they're doing that we don't see. And also a way to be kinder to ourselves. Like nobody's perfect. I'm not perfect. Rick's not perfect. None of us here are perfect. Nobody came in perfectly clean. And yet we're all just kind of doing the best that we can. And it certainly helps me hold a lot of my early experiences a little bit more lightly, including, you know, the normal stuff of a parent bumping into a kid and misunderstandings and all that good stuff, and just having an appreciation for how this stuff is hard. And even if you get born into a very privileged situation, as obviously I was, extremely psychoeducated parents, white male growing up into a middle-class to upper-middle- class environment and a very safe area, all of this stuff, like deck very stacked in my favor. Still, I've got my own pathology,

you know? And so if that's true for me, that's probably true for most everyone. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I think we love narratives that we can make sense out of. So if we can be like, well, I'm this way because my parents did A, B, and C, well, then we understand it. And we think maybe there's something we can do. The idea that some amount of it is nature, is genetic, is sort of at first glance a profoundly sort of not enjoyable realization. For sure. Like, oh my God, what can I do about that? Yeah.

What we can reflect on, though, is how much of it is still available for us to change and improve. And you know what I think is an interesting question. And I know you guys have explored this on your show is sort of what are the upper reaches of potential? And also what are the upper reaches of potential for a person? I get into this in the addiction space a lot because some people will achieve permanent full sobriety. A lot of other people may not achieve that, but that doesn't mean that they're not having significant victories

in what they're doing. And so I think this question of, you know, sort of what are the upper reaches and how do we sort of not limit ourselves by saying, well, I can only get so far, but also not have expectations on ourselves that constantly make us feel like we're falling short. I feel like this is such a nuanced point that we could probably spend 10 episodes on, but I'd love to hear you guys reflect a little. Well, this is squarely in Rick's wheelhouse, so I'll toss it over to him initially and then maybe chime in. Wow. Well, I love this topic. It relates to the book I just wrote, Neurodharma, which is really about the upper reaches and

kind of dusting off the vision of what is actually possible for us as regular human beings that was prevalent in the culture in the 50s and 60s, especially the 60s and 70s. And then it's been kind of pushed aside as we've been grinding it out as a culture and certainly in America over the last 30, 40 years. So I really was interested in, okay, what is actually possible in the upper reaches, just like you said there, Eric. So I want to kind of get at this way that speaks to what you and Forrest have been talking about, which is, first of all, I want to fully acknowledge right here, publicly for the recording, having messed up a lot

as a father. And there are things that I look back on and I feel the wince of healthy remorse. Other things I look back on, I have what I call skillful correction, which is different from remorse, but it's a recognition that, oh, I wish I had done it better, or now at least I know how to do it a better way. So I look back on all that. And I think one of the dreaded experiences for people is being really confessed in their faults to engage what Eric knows well, a fearless and searching inventory of how you've harmed others, how you've harmed yourself, not just harmed others, but harmed yourself, and lost your nerve, swerved away, dropped the ball, let yourself be hijacked by that wolf of

hate inside, the aggressiveness, the anger. It's really important to be big enough and brave enough and humble enough to really acknowledge that. But for many people, understandably, it's really important to be big enough and brave enough and humble enough to really acknowledge that. But for many people, understandably, it's a terribly dreadful experience because when they experienced it in the past as little kids, they felt very much like a bad soldier, a bad person, a bad human. And maybe it even came with a lot of punishment and a lot of shame, even traumatic abuse. So part of freeing ourselves, which I think is necessary actually to move up the mountain of the upper reaches of human potential, is to become more and more comfortable with the experience of admitting fault, of taking appropriate blame, not erring on the side that many people, especially women in the culture who

are socialized to do this, not taking over responsibility for the upsets and experiences of others, not beating yourself up more than you really, really should, but a willingness to just go, wow, I so messed up. I'm so sorry about that. I really want to acknowledge it fully. There's no defensiveness here at all. How can I make amends? What can we do? That's a necessary step in actually freeing yourself of what deep in your heart you know you did wrong. And if you don't free yourself of that, it's like ballast. It's like lead weights holding down the balloon of the rising into those upper reaches. So I just want to really put that one on the table. It's a very important part of personal growth and development even at the higher reaches of awakening. I'm a huge fan of the middle way.

It's the teaching I come back to over and over. I feel like a cliche of myself with it, but really finding that appropriate level, the right level for us of recognizing our faults, recognizing our shortcomings, owning those, but not swinging too far over to the other side where we think we're awful people. In AA, we used to say humility is the right understanding of your good and your bad traits. And I really liked that because humility was a word that was used a lot in 12-step programs. And used correctly, it's not this like groveling humiliation. To me, it's an accurate assessment, finding the middle ground of those things. I just finished reading Joseph Goldstein's book, Mindfulness. And I'm not sure

I'm going to get the words right, but the idea was, and I thought it was so wise, that he made a distinction between like guilt and shame, I think. It was in the light of forgiveness. And he was talking about how that if we sort of unpack and live in this realm of shame where we are just constantly, you know, feeling awful about ourselves and flogging ourselves and how did we do this? And if we just unpack and live there, it's as egoic, you know, as being obsessed with yourself in a grandiose way and thinking you're amazing. And that there can be this almost middle way, but wise, equanimous, if that's the right version of that word. I might need to read the book again.

But anyway, but if we can just sort of hold that with a little more wisdom, that we can forgive ourselves and move on, right? And not be so parked back in the past in that way. And that could be a healthier relationship with some of our mistakes. relationship with some of our mistakes. You know, thinking back on what you said earlier, Ginny, about fear of being judged by others, which is something I've really had a lot myself, in a way what we're talking about here, I'm just realizing it, it's like where is moral authority in your life located? There's a term in psychology, locus of control. There are people who have sort of inner, internal locus of control, or other people who look at life as external locus of control. There are people who have sort of inner internal locus of control, or other people who look at life as external locus of control. Where are the forces? Do you

see yourself as buffeted by all these external forces? Or do you feel like, hey, the location of how I'm moving in my life is this engine and rudder in my own personal motorboat, you know, as I go down the bumpy river of life, right? And in much the same way, I think we can have either an externalized locus of moral authority, or we have an internalized locus of moral authority in which I get to decide in the inner temple of my being, what is a fault? 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. What is an error? You know, what deserves a wince of appropriate shame? And what is simply a matter of skillful correction? Or frankly, it's just a matter of personal preference. And they kind of like the dishes organized this way.

I organize them that way. And it's not a blameworthy event that I just organize the dishes in a different kind of preferential way. that I just organize the dishes in a different kind of preferential way. That is located in me. And the location of forgiveness is most fundamentally located inside yourself as well. Isn't that cool? If I could insert like that emoji with like the top of its head being blown off right now, like, oh, I feel like I just had one of those experiences.

That is so powerful. And that is so true. And I think, you know what, that is something actually that my mother used to struggle with is having that inside of herself as opposed to outside, because she used to tell me over and over again to sort of, or encourage me, right, to have that sense of moral authority within myself as opposed to outside. A lot of things are kind of connecting in my brain right now. And I realized that over time, I've really, I've worked to do that. And it has been worthy of that work. I mean, this has been a powerfully liberating thing. How do you encourage people to take steps in

that direction? I've never actually languaged it exactly like this, but I think we're getting at something really important. Part of it that comes up immediately for me is a certain amount of scruffy independence that basically says, I get to claim for myself the most fundamental judgment about whether I did good or bad. I'm open to inputs from others, our friends. That's why I think it's really important to practice in community. It's important to teach with other teachers. It's important to go to meetings when you're working on your sobriety of some kind or other. I mean, it's really important. But at the end of the day, where is that ultimate moral authority located, externally or internally? And to motivate themselves, I think different things come to mind. One is to realize that the distinction exists, that you actually

can decide for yourself whether you did right or wrong, right? Whoa. And second, it's to be aware of all the vast external pressures that are trying to say to you, no, we get to judge you. We get to say whether you did good or bad, right or wrong, and like to recognize those forces on you. And in some ways, just disentangle yourself increasingly from them. Sort of like turn down the noise, turn down the volume. It's they're muttering away over there in the distance. And internally, turn up the volume on your own fundamental, innermost integrity about yourself and living true to that every day. That's a start.

Well, I was just going to say, it makes me think of, Forrest, what you said earlier about as we grow into adulthood, that the work of our lives, I love the way you said it was something about, you know, writing the narrative, right, of our kind of our story of how we got to be where we are. I mean, when we realize that that pen is in our hand, and we get to write that, that's big. I think another thing you said, Forrest, was that that Eric and I had reflected on actually before this conversation is wanting to bring it up for listeners to be able to hear and benefit from is while our patterns aren't necessarily our fault, they are our responsibility. I'd love to hear you expand on that.

I mean, for me, I think that it's kind of the fundamental teaching of this territory. And that's like, that's a big statement to make, but it just brings together everything that I was talking about earlier around nature and nurture and the way that we pop out versus the person we become in this lifetime. There's a lot of unfair stuff that happens out in the world. And it sucks, and it's deeply unfair. And then it's about, okay, what are we doing about it? And some of those actions are taken very actively out in the world, pushing back against structures that are deeply problematic in society. But some of that work also occurs inside of ourselves. unfair to you. And it left you with a lot of behaviors, a lot of tendencies that are maladaptive because of their actions through no fault of your own.

Forrest is giving a hypothetical. Hypothetical. Yeah, hypothetical example. Yeah, sorry. I'm not saying like- The you here is a hypothetical person. Sorry, that was the rhetorical you. That was the usted, yes. Got it, yeah. But okay. So anyways, let's say that somebody came out with that as their theoretical parent, right? That's not fair. It's not fair. It sucks. And it's really important to have a moment where everybody goes, this is deeply unfair. And then it's about, okay, how do we want to be in this

life? And that's where it starts to move into responsibility. And I think that that action of having that horrible cringe moment of this is deeply unfair, I have been burdened with these structures by another person, by other people, by the unfair ravages of society, however you want to put it. And yet, okay. I want to do what I can in this lifetime to be the person that I want to become, to be deeply happy to the extent that it's possible, deeply fulfilled to the extent that it's possible, and to be in integrity in my behavior with other people. for some people than it is for others. And that's really unfair. And also, I don't know what else to say. And I wish I had like a better thing to say other than it's deeply unfair. And yeah, here we are.

And I think that that moment of claiming that responsibility is like such a pinnacle moment, such a inflection point in everyone's personal journey in this territory. And until you kind of do that, it's really hard to make sustained process, particularly if you're not like me, and you don't come from a really privileged background, and you come from a background where there are structures that

are aligned against you. Unfortunately, it's even more important to have that kind of moment of like, all of this is unfair. And yet, here, I'm going to do my best. I just think that it's, it's in many ways, kind of the whole game here. Absolutely. I love how you said that, and that, you know, things can improve, perhaps incrementally, and then perhaps sometimes logarithmically, I mean, but they can always get better. I think that is something that, you know, I think of Carol Dweck's work and the fixed versus growth mindset. That framework really, I think, helped me to realize, oh, you know, wait, things can actually be meaningfully different than they are today in this moment. And Rick, your work specifically has done a lot of that for me too. You've really shown me some meaningful ways to cultivate a growth mindset. In fact, I was just this morning reading

about a workshop you have coming up called Change Your Mind, which I'm super interested in. But talking about, I think you're offering some tools to help people change the thoughts that make them suffer and create problems with other people, but that we have the power to change our mind for the good and that it can really feel and be very different is sort of mind-blowing for me over and over again. I don't know why. You would think once you learn that, you could sort of generalize that and never be mind-blown again. But I kind of continually am. You really have a lot of tools in your toolbox to help people from a cognitive behavioral standpoint, I think, specifically.

Well, I appreciate that. And it's interesting. behavioral standpoint, I think, specifically. Well, I appreciate that. And it's interesting, we're almost coming full circle back to the parable that opens your show, to realize that you have this power to choose the tendencies that you feed. And because you have that power, you have a moral responsibility. It's your responsibility to decide who you will feed, which you will feed, you know, inside yourselves and out there in the world as well. Because those wolves, if you think of it, are of course manifest in relationships, families, companies, countries, whole species, humanity. And what wolves, which tendencies will

we feed and which tendencies will we put on a juice diet, right? Whether it's in our country or inside our own heart, that's really, really fundamental. And to realize we have that power, that's just so phenomenal, isn't it? It's the heart of everything. And it's so hopeful to realize that we're not totally screwed. We're not totally stuck.

There's always something. It's such good news. Yeah, yeah, Boris knows it is such a trope for me. But I reject. I'm with Captain Kirk. I reject the Kobayashi-Maru scenario. I'm with Viktor Frankl. There's always something you can do, if only inside yourself.

If only all you do is deliberately ride out the storm of the worst day or hour or minute of your entire life. Okay. But you are choosing to ride out the storm to get to the other side because all storms pass eventually one way or another. All bleeding stops eventually, as they say in the OR, one way or another. But anyway, I think your whole approach is fantastic. That's why I've always had great harmony with Eric, you know, real simpatico, camaraderie, you know, good guy. And it really does boil down to which one will we feed in the very precious minutes of our life. Right. And the law of impermanence in Buddhism really allows us to have hope, right? Because we know that things will pass. We know that. We know it will change. I just finished Joseph's book this morning. That's a thick tome on mindfulness.

Thank you for acknowledging that because it is, and Eric has been my witness. It's taken me months to go through because I've really gone chapter by chapter each morning and tried to kind of reflect on it. And it's dense if you really read through it. And there's a lot of wisdom there. Man, he rivals you, I think, for the Dalai Lama. He's my teacher. I respect Joseph immensely. He's amazing. One great thing about him, he could care less about fame. I heard this advice once to aspiring authors, pursue excellence, ignore fame.

And I wish more people would heed that advice. Joseph absolutely could care less about fame. He's totally the real deal. You get that as you read the words on his page. To this whole point, he said, talking about mindfulness and the gifts of mindfulness, he said, even the first few moments of genuine mindfulness are a turning point in our lives because we realize perhaps for the first time that the mind can be trained, can be understood, can be liberated. We get glimpses of something beyond our ordinary conventional reality, touching a space that

transforms our vision of who we are and what the world is. And we understand that there is a direct and clearly articulated path to this end. And I thank you all for helping illuminate that path in your work. Thank you so much, Jenny. That's incredibly kind. Yeah, I really appreciate that. Yeah, I think your work is accessible. And Forrest, it's been great to see sort of an addition to what Rick is doing.

You know, there is really something special that happens with the two of you that is just different than just Rick. Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's definitely something that is created there that is special. So you guys definitely are illuminating points along the path. So thank you. Well, thank you so much, Eric. I really appreciate that. special. So you guys definitely are illuminating points along the path. So thank you. Well, thank you so much, Eric. I really appreciate that. Yeah. In the past few years, there have been so many moments with my mother caring for her when I have wanted to, she's been very difficult because of her disease. It really changed her

personality and caused her to be very agitated and difficult at times. And I really deeply wanted to show up with presence and love and some compassion for her. And I'm so glad that I did in retrospect. Now that was the hard work, but the right work, but your podcast, the two of you guys were a touchstone for me in the moments when I needed to reconnect with that true nature, with that, that's that tone that I wanted to set that presence, that love, that gentleness and forgiveness, I would get in my car, and I would drive around and run my errands listening to the two of you talk to one another. And it brought such delight and gladness and edification and wisdom. And it brought me back to that center of presence and love and compassion

every time. And I just I'm grateful for that, that gift that you give. And also like, I'll echo what Eric said, the two of you together have the most delightful dynamic that just sparks so much joy. You ought to see us watching football. Oh my gosh. I mean, I wish that I could have like Thanksgiving dinner with you guys. I want to be part of the Hanson family. I'm serious. You're really sweet. That is incredibly sweet, Jenny. No, I mean, like, thank you so much for the kind words. It really does truly mean a lot to us and mean a lot to me personally. And it's just been so lovely to do this with my dad and to increasingly have experiences of being able to have that relationship with people, have that relationship with people

like you and feel like you kind of make an impact in that way. people, have that relationship with people like you and feel like you kind of make an impact in that way. And my dad's been at this for a while and made an impact on a lot of people. And it's just been very cool to begin to get a little bit of that experience myself. And just thank you so much. It's such a kind thing to say.

Thank you. And this is a first for the two of you, right? This is your first, ooh, you know, joint effort. Obviously, Jamie, you totally rocked it. Eric gave you a lot of room, gave you a lot of airtime. And great. Really rocked it. Thank you for saying that.

It was really a joy. This just felt like such a joy. And, yes, Eric's the OG here at the table. So, I mean, he is, as always, is the constant support. He is gracious and he is, he's a pro. So thank you. Thank you guys. Thanks guys. If what you just heard was helpful to you,

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