The One You Feed - Greg Marcus on the Spiritual Practice of Good Actions

Episode Date: December 3, 2019

Greg Marcus is a practitioner, facilitator, and innovator of American Mussar which is a 21st-century spiritual practice for an authentic and meaningful life. He has a B.A. in Biology from Cornell University and earned his Ph.D. in Biology from MIT. He worked for 10 years as a marketer in the Silicon Valley genomics industry, after which he became a stay at home dad, writer, life balance coach, and biotech consultant. His latest book is called The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions: Finding Balance Through the Soul Traits of Mussar. Need help with completing your goals in 2019? The One You Feed Transformation Program can help you accomplish your goals this year.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!In This Interview, Greg Marcus and I Discuss Spiritual Practice of Good Actions and …His book, The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions: Finding Balance Through the Soul Traits of MussarThe Jewish Spiritual Practice of MussarTaking mindful action in everyday lifeThe Soul Trait of EnthusiasmToo much of a Soul Trait vs not enough of a Soul TraitThe middle way as it relates to Soul TraitsFocusing on a Soul Trait for 2 weeksHow to move head knowledge into heart knowledgeThe Morning MantraPicking 1 specific action to takeJournalingThe Great Wall of Mussar – and how to overcome itHandling significant emotional disruptionHow our free will isn’t always accessible to usHow to slow the train of emotional disruptionShadow Soul TraitsInverting the Shadow Trait: What is the light that’s casting the shadow?Greg Marcus Links:americanmussar.comTwitterFacebookFabFitFun:  A women’s lifestyle subscription box filled with full-size premium items that you will love. Give yourself (or someone special in your life!) this gift – use the promo code FEED for $10 off your first box at fabfitfun.comCalm App: The #1 rated app for meditation. They have meditations, sleep stories, soothing music, and calm masterclasses with may One You Feed Guests. www.calm.com/wolf 25% off a Calm Premium Subscription.Talkspace: the online therapy company that lets you connect with a licensed therapist from anywhere at any time. Therapy on demand. Non-judgemental, practical help when you need it at a fraction of the cost of traditional therapy. Visit www.talkspace.com and enter Promo Code: WOLF to get $100 off your first month.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Musar is a Jewish spiritual practice that goes back about a thousand years, and it helps us identify those things inside which cause us to get stuck, and then it gives us a process to bring those things into balance and healing by taking mindful action in everyday life. 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 Know Really podcast.

Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our guest this week is Greg Marcus, who is a practitioner, facilitator, and innovator of American Musar, a 21st century spiritual practice for an authentic and meaningful life. He has a BA in biology from Cornell University and earned his PhD in biology from MIT. He worked for 10 years as a marketer in the Silicon Valley genomics industry, after which he became a stay-at-home dad, writer, life balance coach, and biotech consultant. His latest book is called The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions, Finding Balance Through the Soul Traits of Musar. And this is our second time talking with Greg because I thought the first conversation was

so good that I wanted to do it again. So please enjoy our conversation with Greg Marcus. Hi, Greg. Welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to be here, Eric. It is nice to have you on a second time. We interviewed you before. I don't remember when we did it, but I think it was a great interview. And we talked about your book that I really got a lot out of and still really enjoy, which is called The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions, Finding Balance Through the Soul Traits of Musar. And we will talk more about that in a minute, but let's start like we always do with the parable.

There's a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter, and 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 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 granddaughter stops and thinks about it for a second. She looks up at her grandfather.

She says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Thanks for asking. I absolutely love the parable, and it has a lot of meaning for me. One of the fundamental assumptions that drives my Musar practice, my Musar spiritual practice, is the idea that we have this conflict inside between what's called the good inclination and the evil inclination. And the evil inclination isn't like evil in terms

of terrorism or murder. It's our base instincts. It's our anger. It's our selfishness. It's kind of sexuality when it's out of control. It's all of these sorts of drives. And then on the other side, the good inclination is our compassion. It's our ability to think about the needs of other people. And we are constantly driven by this conflict between the two. So that's exactly what I think the parable of the two wolves is talking about. And it's our choices that drive our behavior, and it's our choices that drive which one of these is in control. One of my favorite teachings from the Old Testament, from what Jews call the Torah, is something where Moses said, I place before you a blessing and a curse. Choose the blessing that you may live.

And for me, that means that at every moment we have this choice about whether we're going to feed the good wolf or whether we're going to feed the bad wolf. And this came up for me in a very interesting way recently, which I'd love to share with you and your listeners. Yeah, please. I was on a break from some work I was doing, and I was walking around the block, and it was an absolutely beautiful day. It was sunny, it was warm, and I started thinking about this blessing and curse idea. And I said, well, what's the curse right now? Here I am, I'm out taking a walk, it's very nice and sunny. And then I realized that up until that point on the walk, I had just been ruminating about something. I was still thinking about the work that I'd been doing, and I hadn't been paying any attention to the beautiful day. So the curse was getting kind of hung up in my work thoughts. And when I was able to realize that and reorient myself, I could choose to experience the

blessing, which was the beautiful day. That's a great example. And I can relate so much with that. And one of the things you say in the book is about the evil inclination. And again, I think that term always sort of my initial reaction to it is like, all right, hold on, settle down. Too strong, but I get the point. You talk about how the evil inclination not only causes us to do things we don't want to do, but is also the cause of not doing things that we want to do or that are important to us. And I think that's such an important point. And your walk sort of illustrates that a little bit. Like, there's nothing wrong with taking a walk and thinking about your work, right? I mean, sometimes that's a really good thing to do.

And I love that idea of thinking of our thought pattern as the blessing or the curse. Yeah, yeah. The whole point of me taking that walk was I said, you know what? I need to take a break from work. Right, right. Absolutely. There is nothing wrong with thinking about work. If that's what we're going to do, then we should mindfully be thinking about work at that point. Hmm, you know, what is it?

How do I want to balance these different things? What's my strategy for A, B, or C? Yep. So let's talk about Musar for a minute, because, you know, I love the title of your book. It's one of my favorite titles of any book, The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions. of any book, the spiritual practice of good actions. So, you know, Musar is a program to really develop our, maybe you won't agree with this, but to develop our spiritual life. It's also very focused on actions in the world, but tell me, you know, a little bit more about, in a short sentence or two, what Musar is to you. Musar is a Jewish spiritual practice that goes back about a thousand years, and it helps us identify those things inside which cause us to get stuck,

and then it gives us a process to bring those things into balance and healing by taking mindful action in everyday life. That's a great summary. And so the essence of it, at least the way that you present it, is there are these 18 soul traits, these different traits that we have, and you then, maybe it's, is it 18? It's 13. 13. Yeah. There's actually more than, you know, there's lots of them. In my book, I cover 13. Right. 13. right. And so you do each of them for two weeks. So essentially for two weeks, you focus on a soul trait. And then after two weeks, you go on to the next one and that gives you a half a year program. First, give me a trait that we could talk about. Just pick one that you're interested in choosing right now. Yeah. So one that I think relates to what we were talking about before is a trade called enthusiasm. It's about getting energy up to really do something

mindfully and with a lot of consciousness. And having too much enthusiasm can be just as bad as having not enough. So if we have too little enthusiasm, we might be procrastinating, we're not going to start projects, or we might not finish projects. We'll kind of get started and get going, but then we won't kind of put in the grind it takes sometimes to sort of finish all the little bits and really do things in a high quality way. So that's the danger of too little enthusiasm. But then if we have too much enthusiasm, we can be rash and frenetic and just really not thinking things through and doing a lot of look-before-you-leap behaviors and getting so spontaneous and impulsive that we can't really bring any quality to what we're doing either.

Yeah, and I love that idea that you present in the book that is so true, which is that any of these traits, you don't want too much or too little. It really is the middle way, right? And I love that teaching in general that too much enthusiasm, as you said, is a problem. Too little is a problem. Where is the midpoint? I think that's a very wise way to look at these traits. Yeah, and I think that's very counterintuitive for a lot of people because we tend to think of a trait like truth as, well, you want to be as truthful as possible, or arrogance is bad, therefore you want to be as humble as possible. And this teaching gives a very different perspective on that, and I think that gives people choices that they might not get if they were following a different teaching. Yep. Yep. It's one of the things I really like. So we take enthusiasm and we work on it for two weeks. And this is really where I want to dig in a little bit deeper and talk about what does it mean to work on a soul trait for two weeks? How do you do it? Because one of the things that I see is one of the

biggest challenges for people, for me, for listeners, for lots of people, right, is we have a spiritual idea or a principle or a thing that we want to do. And our biggest challenge is remembering to actually do it, remembering to actually bring it into our day. So let's talk about how Musar addresses that, kind of what we do in a two-week period to work with a soul tree. Yeah. So by way of introducing this, I want to share a teaching from one of the great Musar masters of the 20th century. His name was Rabbi Eli Elopian, and he used to say that Musar teaches the heart what the head already understands.

So many of these ideas, it's exactly what you were talking about. Yeah, I know in my head, gosh, I really shouldn't be doing this. You know, here I am again, you know, making the same mistake. But I don't really remember it until after the fact. So how is it that we can get that knowledge into our heart? And the way that we do that is by taking action. We treat Musar like a practice, like a yoga practice, for example, something that you would do, you know, you want to get on the mat every day and you want to do this day after day. So

then on a day when maybe we're not feeling so great or feeling a little sluggish about doing it, it's become a habit. So we will do these things on a regular basis. So that being said, what is it that we do then when we're doing this regular Musar practice? And there's three parts. The first part is a morning mantra. It's a recitation phrase that you can write on a sticky note or an index card, and you can put it on your bathroom mirror or next to your bed table. So for enthusiasm, one of the phrases that I like, it's called run to do good. If there's something that needs to be done, you want to really get after it and run to do it. So I'll begin my morning by saying that out loud for two minutes, or maybe I'll put it to the music of some pop song that

I like, and I'll sing it in the car. But by opening your day this way, we frame the day, and it helps me be aware of, you know, I've been procrastinating on this particular issue, or I have to write this uncomfortable email to a coworker, and I find myself gravitating towards my Facebook page. Well, I need to run to do good. Even though it doesn't maybe feel comfortable, it really is for the best that I say what I need to say in this email. So that's kind of the mantra part, and that's part of the action part.

So let me pause here. Are you tracking with me so far? I am tracking with you totally so far. It's a great idea. Okay, fantastic. So then we want to pick one very specific action to take. And I was just emailing someone about this today where they were having a big issue with patience. That's another soul trait. So they're having a lot of impatience and a lot of different situations. And so what we wanna do is we wanna pick

one particular situation and we wanna make a small change. So this person was having a lot of impatience when they were in traffic and they were having a lot of impatience like dealing with family members at the dinner table. And so I was like, OK, well, pick one of those two situations. And if you're picking the family members, pick which family member you want to be more patient with.

I'm going to be more patient with my daughter when she brings up X situation, so that it becomes something small and manageable. And we think about that, and we focus on just that one thing, and we're much, much more likely to be able to make a difference. And maybe ideally, I'd wait five seconds before I answer my daughter, but maybe at first, I'm only able to wait one or two seconds, where before I wasn't waiting any seconds. So that one tiny little change, that's the whole game, because even a one-second delay will help you answer in a better way than you would have if you hadn't had a delay at all. The third part, and this is the one which people struggle with the most, is journaling. So then at night, you would write in your journal,

okay, well, how did enthusiasm show up for me today? How did patience show up for me today? In what ways was I tested? And then how did I handle it? And it could be just a couple words, was I tested? And then how did I handle it? And it could be just a couple words. It could be a paragraph. Journaling is, you know, some people do it, some people don't. But like all of these things, the more you do, the more benefit you get. But even if you only do a couple of the things, you're still going to get some benefit from it. Yeah, I think that's really good. And you stay with the same thing for a couple weeks, which I think is really important. We ran a spiritual habits workshop in the spring that will probably run again soon. It was really about taking spiritual principles and tying the principles of behavior change to them so that we can actually really embody spirituality, these things that we believe. And one of the ideas

with it is less spiritual ideas, right? And take one and go really deep with it, which is what you're doing with the soul trait. You're taking one idea, enthusiasm, and you're going really deep with it for two weeks. And I really love that idea. Yeah, yeah. And I love the way that you're doing that in your workshops as well. That's a great way to go. An advantage of rotating every two weeks is then it doesn't become stale. So it's like I've done some which are so uncomfortable for me that every day I'm counting down until I can get to the next one. And as the saying goes, there's no growth in the comfort zone. So we want to push ourselves out of the comfort zone. But there are some soul traits where for me, it's not that big of a challenge.

And I actually have to work a little bit harder to grow. And so either way, by moving on to a different one. And then at the end of the 13, you go back to the first one. So it's not like when you're done, you cycle back through again. And you come back to it from a whole new perspective. Right. 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, 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. I want to ask you about something as you go through this process. You call it the great wall of Musar. Yeah. So many, many people that I've worked with or that I've practiced with, when you get started, it feels like this is like the answer to everything. Like you start and you make all this progress and your life starts getting better. And it's actually when that starts to happen, one of the ways that the evil inclination works is it tells you you're doing a really good job. So then you hit, eventually you

hit some kind of setback. And then it's like, oh my God, I'm still so broken. This Musar stuff is nonsense. It doesn't work at all. Why am I even bothering with this? And that's what I call the Great Wall of Musar. It's like that first real point of resistance. Or your evil inclination will try to trick you into thinking that you can just keep going and keep making progress without actually doing the practice anymore. Well, I have all this internalized, so I can just kind of save my two minutes in the morning and not do all of this.

And that's another way the Great Wall of Musar works out. And it's something which we have an opportunity to overcome. And then when we work through it, we continue to grow and make progress. Yeah, I love that idea. I see that with coaching clients and it's the reason I structure my coaching engagements to be a little bit longer than I used to, because what I would find is we'd get off to a really good start, right? We were very effective. Like, you know, we're out of the gates and running and everything is good. And then, like you said, there's a point where, whether it's a plateau or you hit a wall, it gets hard, you know, and we have an inclination to stop or we start to make a mistake. And that's why sort of knowing how to handle those

things is really important. So what do you advise for people when they hit the great wall? How do they refine the enthusiasm or the will to kind of keep putting the work in? I think one way to do it is to kind of know it's going to be there, is to really understand that nothing stays good forever and that this is a lifetime learning practice and understanding that there are going to be some ups and downs. I know, for example, that I've gone through multi-month periods where I don't journal. And because I know that, I can accept it and say, okay, well, yeah, it would be better that I journal, but this is just part of my current resistance. This is the way the wall has shown up for me today.

And I know that eventually I'm going to overcome it. So that's one way. And I know that eventually I'm going to overcome it. So that's one way. Another is knowing that the wall is coming is to just really reinforce your practice. Because the wall is just another kind of challenge. It's like that child of yours, which is always triggering you at the dinner table. You know it's going to happen at some point. You don't know when it is.

But if you practice enough, then when the curtain goes up and you're put on trial, you'll be ready to answer it. So when that voice says, hey, do you really need to keep going? Or, oh, you're so broken. This all must not be working. You can say, yeah, of course I'm still broken. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to be as broken tomorrow as I am today. We just keep going. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the last two words there, the really big ones, right? Keep going and, and recognizing, like you said, that we're never perfect with anything.

And the tendency, a lot of us have, if we're doing really good, like just say we were doing the Moosar journaling and we're doing really well, right? And then we miss a day and then we miss another day, right? All of a sudden now we're like, oh, see, like you said, see, I can't do it. I'm not good. You know, we reinforce the behavior instead of going like, of course I missed a couple of days. Inevitably that happens. So now let me just start again with as little emotional baggage attached to it as I can. That's right. I love that. I'm trying to detach from the emotional baggage.

And I was flipping through my journal earlier. And for a number of days, I have two or three words written down. And sometimes it's like, I'm too tired tonight. I don't feel like it. Okay, well, that's fine. That's where I was at that point. But at least I kept the habit of opening the book and kept going. You need to work on your soul trade of enthusiasm when it comes to your journaling. I do. I definitely do. I, yes, yes. You know, it reminds me once, um, I was having lunch with, with someone who was

helping me out with my website marketing and, uh, we were sitting at a coffee shop and someone came tearing around the corner, you know, like tires are screeching and they're going way too fast. And, uh, she said to me, well, there's a person who needs Musar. And I answered her and I say, without Musar, I would be that person. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great way to look at it. Let's transition just a little bit here because I want to ask you a question about a line that you wrote in the book, and I'm really interested in it. And you say, the more significant the emotional disruption, the less access we have to our free will, and thus there is more drastic the impact on our behavior. So I'd love to talk about handling significant emotional disruption. This has been sort of a key topic for me lately, this idea of emotional regulation, right?

Like how do we have emotion, How do we allow it to be there and then still act according to our values? So I'd love to get your perspective on that. Yeah. So, you know, the reason why I was writing that and to put it in a little bit of context for people who maybe aren't familiar with the whole Musar backstory, I didn't want people to have to, you know, read a whole bunch of books or to read chapters and chapters. So I created a couple of rule of thumb assumptions. And one of them we talked about before, the good inclination and the evil inclination. Another one is that we all have free will, but it's not always accessible.

And similar to what we were talking about with the Great Wall, I think we need to understand that when we get angry or emotional, we really can and do lose control. Now, sometimes it's losing control in small letters, like I'll start yelling or I'll say some things that I really regret. And it could be very hurtful to someone. And it might, you know, in the worst cases, you know, if you really say the wrong thing to somebody or you go after them for their real weakness and you bring up the worst thing that ever happened to them, you can damage that relationship forever. So I'm not trivializing the words we speak to people. But thankfully, most of the time when I say things that I regret, it doesn't have that kind of big impact. But if I can understand that if I let that emotional train really get going, there's a lot of danger to be had. So it's learning to

recognize when that emotional train starts going because some really unpleasant things can happen when it does. And so what are some of your ways for slowing down or stopping the emotional train? I think what you said there is one part of it is really important. You're catching it at an early enough point because at a certain point, like you said, we're kind of out of control. I think the psychologists that I've talked to would use the term flooded, right? We used to talk about this with the kids. Kid would be at a point where it's like, you're not going to reason with this child at this point, right? They're well beyond that. So we got to calm the disturbance. So what are some of your ways for either slowing down the emotional terrain

or calming the disturbance once you're in that disruption? One of the ways actually is through regular practice. Because as I go through this cycle of the different soul traits, I'm going to become more aware of the things that trigger me. And I can pick those things as something to work on. So for example, one of the soul traits is honor. It's about respecting other people. One of the dangers of that is chasing honor or feeling like you constantly have to be treated in a certain way. So if I find that I get triggered, if people say something which is maybe critical or disrespectful, especially if it's a family member, the more that I can become comfortable with that,

the more that I can sort of say, all right, when this kind of thing happens, I'm going to understand that the circuit breaker might get tripped and I might need to just step out of the room for a few minutes. ideal thing. Like when I step out of the room, my wife doesn't like that particularly, but it's much better than me staying in the situation and saying something which is going to make things worse. Right. So you're kind of talking about, in some sense there, prevention, right? By working your soul traits, by being aware of these things, you sort of almost head it off. Yes. These kind of losing control things that we're talking about, those are all in the realm of the evil inclination. And there are some things which can strengthen the good inclination, like meditation and being mindful in general. And again, that is learning to recognize when thoughts are coming into your head and not taking action based

on those thoughts. So I wish I had like a silver bullet that I could share with the whole community here and say, oh, well, if you just do this, it's never going to happen anymore. And if you know any, I would love to hear them. But in my experience, it's really small, gradual changes where we get a little bit better over here and we get a little bit better over there. And over time, those things can really add up pretty quickly. 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.

And this idea of access to our free will, one of the main assumptions that you say is underlying the book is we all have free will, but it's not always accessible. And is that largely what you mean? Our emotions make our free will less accessible? Are there other things? The thing that I most often think about this in terms of our emotions, but it's not always negative emotions either. It could just be we're so happy and excited about this. A while back, I went to the retirement ceremony for Bruce Bochy, who was the manager of the

San Francisco Giants. And one of my favorite players came out, Tim Lincecum. retirement ceremony for Bruce Bochy, who was the manager of the San Francisco Giants. And like one of my favorite players came out, Tim Lincecum. And it was a total surprise he'd been there. Nobody had seen him in a couple of years. And he walked out on the field with a bunch of other players and I started crying. And I'm like this 50 year old guy crying in the baseball stands. And I'm like, I don't want to be crying right now. But it was just I was so emotionally overcome that that's kind of how it happened. I mean, there was nothing destructive about that. And I could sort of chide myself that it's silly to be

embarrassed about that. But being who I am, I was a little bit. And so it's not always a bad thing. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. Right, right. Let's talk about some work you've done since the book came out, which is really around this idea of shadow traits. What does that mean? And what are a couple of them? And how have you kind of worked on them? Yeah, so in the book, I talked about some very beginning soul traits, things that we all have, things that we can all work on. It's a book which beginners and non-beginners can read, but I, in my own personal work, have taken classes and did some work on some of the shadow side soul traits. The shadow is what Carl Jung called kind of the darker part of our personality. So these are things like worry, impatience, anger. These are the very much in-your-face negative emotions. And one of the really interesting things that I found at first, I was very

judgmental about, well, why do you have to take all these other classes before you can take this? These are the things that people really struggle with. I coach people, you coach people, worries, anger. I mean, this is the hard part. These are the hard things. But if you've never, it really is jumping in the deep end of the pool, I guess. And if you really start to work on this, and I come face to face with like, I didn't think of myself as a fearful person. I didn't think of myself as a worrier. But when I started working on worry, I realized that all kinds of decisions I was making, you know, well, I'm a procrastinator. Well, why are you procrastinating about sending this email out? Well, I'm afraid that the person's going to ignore me. Or I'm afraid that they're going to think that I can deliver more than I can deliver, or all kinds of irrational fears that come out. And I need to be able to say to myself, okay, yes, I guess worry is a much bigger part of my life. I need to be able to have that

realization from a place of healthy self-esteem. And when my self-esteem isn't healthy enough, at least I have other practices or other things that I can bring to bear to kind of combat these parts of myself which I don't like or I'm not proud of. So when it comes to a shadow soul trait, we talked about the other traits. There can be too much and there can be too little. When you're talking about a shadow soul trait, is? We talked about the other traits. There can be too much and there can be too little. When you're talking about a shadow soul trait, is that also there? Or we just kind of look at those as like, you know what? There's not a good part of that. I know this is not about demonizing parts of ourselves. So I don't love the way I just phrased that, but it was the best I could do. I think you get the point. Yeah, no, I do. And I think it's a great question. My definition of soul trait is

for it to be a soul trait, having too much of it must be as bad as having too little. What sets the shadow soul traits apart is the balance is nowhere near in the middle. But if we really lived a life without worry, or if we lived a life without fear or concern, then that's a very reckless life. I mean, sometimes we should be worried. Right. If I lose my job and I have a mortgage to pay and I don't have a lot of money in the bank, that is a very good reason to be worried.

Right. And if I just think, oh, well, everything will work out and I'll just wait for something to happen, that's not a healthy place to be. You used a phrase, inverting the shadow. So tell me what inverting the shadow is in relation to this type of work. Yeah. So I read something and I can't remember where it was. The quote was something like, the deeper the shadow, the brighter the light. Reminds me of a Zen quote, the greater the doubt, the greater the awakening. Yeah. Something like that.

Yeah, it's one of these things, and I really thought about it. And I said, well, if I have this place of darkness, or if I have all of these fears, then there must be something, there must be some way that I can flip it on its head, because there must be some equal reservoir of kind of goodness or light, which is on the other side. And often I think the psychologists would tell us that if I have this kind of fear reflex, it must have been built as a defense mechanism for something that happened when I was younger. So it came from some strong self-preservation instinct. So understanding that I really do count for something, I want to have a good impact, and being able to say that there's a

light and this drive to kind of do something, which paradoxically gets twisted into me not doing something, I found to be very empowering. So it's finding a way to kind of look at what is that light which is casting the shadow? What's happening on the other side of this which is causing this to happen? Does that make any sense? It does. Yep. There's an interesting example I found of that with anger. And there's this teaching that the divine presence flees anger. So we may not believe in the divine presence, and we may not believe that even if we do believe in that, that we not believe that it leaves when we get angry. But when I thought about it and I said, well, certainly if I think of the divine presence as my best self, as the person that I would like to be,

when I get really angry, that person is not in charge. The anger is in charge. So, if I think about how can I invert this shadow of the anger back to this other person, I actually created a little song that I would sing or hum to myself, where I put the words of, the divine presence drives the anger away, and I put that to the tune of A Spoonful of Sugar, which I don't know where I came up with this. I am not a Mary Poppins fan. I never liked that song, but somehow, if I'm really angry and I remember that, and I start humming, you know, the divine presence will chase the anger

away, suddenly I'm less angry, and I'm in a different place. Yeah, putting things to song is a really good idea that I don't do often enough, but it is an enjoyable thing to do. And in your book, there are multiple points where there's some Jewish tradition around singing, like, hey, sing more. It's good for you. That's right. That's right. And not everybody has a good voice, but singing is a good thing to do. And being able to step away from kind of embarrassment about our singing or sing by yourself. I mean, I've never met anyone who had a bad voice in the shower. That is true. Shower is a good place for singing. Well, I think that is a good place for you and I to wrap up this conversation. We're going to keep talking in the

post-show conversation. We're going to talk about shame and sadness, and we're going to talk about three reasons why people do not feel gratitude. We all work on gratitude lists, and I guess we don't all, but a lot of us do. There's times there's no juice there. I want to explore that. We'll do that in the post-show conversation. Listeners, if you'd like access to that, mini episodes, ad-free episodes, and the joy of being part of our community and supporting the show, go to oneufeed.net support. Greg, thank you so much for coming on a second time. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. It's been a pleasure for me too, Eric. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Bye.

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