The One You Feed - How Mindfulness Can Free the Inner Critic with Ginny Gay
Episode Date: September 15, 2023In this episode, Eric and Ginny explore ways to work with and free the inner critic through mindfulness. Ginny shares her story of struggle and growth on her path to becoming a mindfulness teacher and... explains the many benefits of practicing mindfulness as a way to quiet the inner critic, which leads to living with more joy and less suffering. In this episode, you’ll be able to: Accept the crucial need to turn toward difficult feelings rather than turn away from them Understand that where the wound is, the healing can begin Differentiate the inner critic from our inner conscience Recognize the various ways the inner critic can show up Identify different ways to practice mindfulness in your life Understand the important connection between mindfulness and meditation Define spirituality in your own way that is meaningful to you To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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In case you're just recently joining us, or however long you've been a listener of the show,
you may not realize that we have years and years of incredible episodes in our archive.
We've had so many wonderful guests that we've decided to handpick one of our favorites that
may be new to you, but if not, it's definitely worth another listen.
We hope you'll enjoy this episode with Ginny Gay.
The inner critic tells so many lies, one of which is that you're the only one.
You're the only one that struggles with this or that. But the truth of the inner critic is
everyone has some component of it. And now how much it trips you up,
it can vary from person to person, but it is ubiquitous.
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 No 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. Our guest on this episode is Ginny Gay, a certified mindfulness
teacher who has worked with Eric to create content here at The One You Feed for the past eight years.
Prior to that, she spent 13 years in the corporate world where
she thought climbing the corporate ladder equated to success in life. Instead, that approach
ultimately led her to a place of severe burnout, addiction, anxiety, and depression. Now, she knows
that for her, success in all aspects of life comes from living from a place of authenticity
and integration where meaningful
work and relationships are the fruit and contribution to the world. Ginny loves creating
courses, programs, workshops, and written content to help people live life more skillfully and to
help them navigate the difficulties that come from the inherent challenges of being human
so that they can experience more peace, purpose, and joy in their daily lives.
Hi, Ginny. Welcome to the show. Hi, Eric. This is so fun.
Yes. So listeners, you will have heard Ginny on a couple of podcast interviews. And if you've
received anything from the One You Feed that's been written in the last seven years, six years,
Ginny's little typing fingers have been all over it. And you're
running your mindfulness course for the second time soon and taking more of an active role in
putting things out into the world with the one you feed. So I just want to give listeners a
chance to know you better. And of course, you are my partner in business and in life. And so
yes, welcome.
Thank you.
It's wonderful to be here.
You know how we start with a parable.
So I'm still going to read it.
Or I don't read it.
I actually recite it since I know it.
In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild.
And they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and
fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at their grandparent
and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent 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.
Oh, I love that parable. Other than in your life and in the work that you do.
Oh, I love that parable.
Other than you, it's what caused me to fall in love with the show for the first time.
But it is so important, I think, to who I am and how I view the world and how I view my life. Because what that parable tells me is that we have choice and we have impact in the way we show up and the way we experience life.
And the more aware we are of what's happening inside of us and around us in the moment,
the more choice we have. And then the more choice we have, often the more skillful we can be.
So life can feel better and be better than it does in this
moment, right? If we have the ability and the skillfulness to choose and to know how to make
it so. I always get this like hit of like euphoric liberation when I remember that in real time,
which is like, oh, I'm not stuck here. You know. Oh, okay. It doesn't feel great now. I can
actually make this feel better or be better. It's life-changing, right? And I think the other thing
that I've come to really understand at a deeper level about the parable is that it's not about
casting out the bad wolf. It's about integrating the two, integrating ourselves in a way that all can be
held in some loving awareness. You know, we may not like, we may not want to cultivate certain
unskillful states, but we can be with it all, right? And we don't have to put anything out of
our hearts. And in that way, we can really transform. So
it's become my worldview and my life experience.
Well, you've certainly heard it enough times.
And I'm always amazed at all the different interpretations that this parable has,
like that every guest has a slightly different or more nuanced kind of perspective. And I'm
surprised by that because it seems so
clear to me and so simple, yet it's really rich. I think that's the other reason I love it.
Yeah. I think you honed in on the main part of it for me is choice.
Yeah.
You know, because I think that parable just points to we have a choice.
Yeah.
But we often forget we have a choice.
Yeah.
And remembering it is so important. And in order to remember it, we have to use mindfulness. We need to be aware. We need to be paying attention. Or we just didn't know we had a choice. And remembering it is so important. And in order to remember it, we have to use
mindfulness. We need to be aware. We need to be paying attention.
Or we just didn't know we had a choice, right? Like not only maybe we forgot,
but maybe we never knew. And then when we realized like, oh, wait a minute,
this could be different. It really could be different. It's not like wishful thinking.
It's just revolutionary.
It's not like wishful thinking.
It's just revolutionary.
So let's let listeners get to know a little of your backstory that brought you to the point that you really started to engage with this work in a meaningful way.
Yeah.
Where do you want to start?
Well, let's start with a very brief sort of biographical sketch where you grew up, where you come from, some of those basics. And then I want to get through to the ideas sooner than... Well, as you know, I do love to talk.
I know. So this week, it's start back in like, I was born February 4th, 1979. No, I was born and
raised in Atlanta, Georgia by two really loving, devoted parents who really just gave me a sense of what
support and love meant. And I'm so grateful for that. I mean, I think every family has
issues and problems and wounds and areas of rub and of real problem. But like when I distill it
all down, what I know is my parents are and were loving, supportive
parents and people. And so I'm really grateful for that start. You know, it gave me the ability to
feel my feet sturdy on the ground from the get go. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's an interesting
nuance in what you just said there, though, which is you can acknowledge that your parents were very
loving and you got a lot of benefit from them.
And you can also acknowledge ways in which their parenting style, the wounds that they carry,
the issues that they had still impact on our lives. And I think we often get stuck in a,
either I had a terrible childhood or I had a great childhood. My parents were good. They weren't good. And I think there are some cases where it's clearly almost all good. You had just outstanding parents, but it's not, you know, not that common.
And we certainly know the horror stories. But for a lot of us, there's a lot of nuance. And so,
you know, trying to find both the good and the bad in it, I think, can be really positive instead
of just only focusing on one of them. Yeah, because I mean, as we grow up,
we start to realize how human our parents are. And, you know, they have their own wounds,
they have their own conditioning and patterning and life experience. And just like me,
those things could come in the way of love, or those things could trip them up in ways that
made it so that the heart of them,
which to this day, I still feel like I connected with and know, which is loving, just couldn't
show up in the fullness that it wanted to. And so if anything other than blame, I have compassion
and I have gratitude for how they continued to try and show up.
Yeah. Okay. So we've got childhood.
So that's, well, right. Adolescence. Yeah,
exactly. All right. So adolescence was hard. Let's see. That's about, yeah, it was hard. It's hard
for everybody, right? I mean, I think that the wounds of my life, the pain of my life, again,
on the spectrum of pain could be minimized, right? Depending how far out you zoom. I will say that sensing my own pain and discomfort in my own
internal world and not wanting to be with it or not wanting to experience it has driven me a lot
in my life. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. Adolescence, some of that pain comes. Yeah. Let's keep moving
forward. Okay. I'm starting to think of all the things I could share.
Yeah. So then I went to college in Mississippi. And being the oldest child, I had the very like,
I want to do a good job. I want to like please people and I want to like be successful and,
you know, make my parents proud. And so just show me the rulebook, show me what I should do.
I'll do it. And then you'll be happy and I'll
be successful, right? So that was kind of my approach. And as it turns out, life doesn't
really work that way, fortunately or unfortunately. And I graduated college, I got married right out
of college and got my first job right out of college. We're talking two days after I graduated
and it was in the corporate world in the pharmaceutical industry.
And there was so much about the corporate world in the pharmaceutical industry that
I loved and I'm so grateful for.
That marriage was very short-lived.
A lot of it was sort of connected to how dogmatically we had been members of our Christian
church.
This branch of a Presbyterian church was a very,
as it turns out, fundamentalist kind of branch of the Presbyterian church. And I feel like that was
problematic because not being allowed to show up fully as ourselves caused there to be secrets.
And those secrets in the marriage caused the marriage to sort of crumble.
And I filed for divorce. And the church did not support that and did not reach out in sympathy, empathy, or compassion
and did not want to know why and just sort of wanted to judge and dictate.
And it was at that point that I kind of said, wait a second, you know, like, if there's
a God, this is between me and God, not me and a bunch of, at the second, you know, like, if there's a God, this is between me and God, not me and a
bunch of, at the time, you know, white, middle-aged men telling me, and the elders of the church
telling me what could and couldn't be according to God. And so, yeah, I kind of rebelled against
all that and said, like, forget it. I can't live like this. I don't want to live like this the rest
of my life. Got a divorce and continued on in the corporate world, trying to sort of sort out what's what,
if it's not what I thought it was. The church had been an important part of your life. I mean,
up till then, you were very involved. And now all of a sudden, it's just gone.
Yeah. I mean, there were a couple of years in high school when I was like,
super rebellious and wasn't super church going. But then the last part of high school,
I really identified as like, oh, that's the right way to do things.
And I'll do it that way.
And I kind of just jumped in wholeheartedly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so you were in the corporate world a number of years and were fairly successful at it.
Yeah.
And there were some good things about it, but it ultimately did not end well.
Yeah, it soured.
Yeah, I kind of climbed the corporate ladder pretty early on.
soured. Yeah, I kind of climbed the corporate ladder pretty early on. And I really loved so much of the jobs that I held both in sales and in sales training and then in sales management.
Largely, it was the people that I loved, you know, but I also loved the ability of making a real
difference in pharmaceuticals. You know, there's going to be all kinds of feelings about that as
I speak it, you know, it's a polarizing industry, right? The part of it that I really connected to was the part that does a lot of good
and brings medications or ways to alleviate people's suffering into the hands of the people
that can get it to the patients that need it. And so I felt very mission-driven in that way
at every level of the industry in which I worked. And then the people that were around me became like my family. It became really
my identity until really I hit kind of that glass ceiling everybody talks about. My experience was
that, you know, I got to a certain level of climbing ladder and then there were no more
rungs on that ladder for me to climb, though I saw them, they weren't available to me. You know,
other men that were less successful or less experienced were getting promoted and put in for opportunities before
and instead of me. And then it became an environment of having some bosses that were
really toxic and they did not believe in me. And every bit of me that was out in the world and
outspoken and assertive, the way it felt to me was
that those edges were too sharp and that needed to be dulled down. And that's when everything
soured and started to turn is because, you know, I kept trying harder and harder and harder to
please and do right and be successful and do good. And I just kept getting dulled more and more,
put down, criticized. And I hit a point to where I felt like okay so my lack
of enthusiasm about this industry this job and my lack of engagement with it my inability to sort of
focus on it and stay with it I was diagnosed in high school with ADD so I was like maybe this is
my ADD so I went to a doctor this doctor agreed They prescribed me this stimulant similar to Adderall called
Vyvanse. And it worked. I mean, you know, it worked to help all of those things. In the short
term, it was really helpful. In the long term, that was not a great medicine for me because
it became something that I leaned way too heavily on, began to abuse, and then began to medicate the abuse of that with things like
alcohol to come down off of the high that that stimulant gave me during the day. And then later
it became I needed Ambien to be able to go to sleep because I was taking so much stimulant.
And so my weekdays were medicated, my ups and my downs, my consciousness and my sleep. And weekends,
I was just completely
dead to the world to try to recoup so that I could start all over again on Monday.
Meanwhile, I was in a relationship that I really had identified myself with. I'd become very
enmeshed with this person, but it wasn't a great match. And that crumbled.
I'm like, no.
I'm like, no, which is truly a very different story, which we can get to.
But yeah, so that crumbled.
Everything around me was sort of crumbling.
And I was living so far outside of myself that I caused a lot of pain, not only for myself, but others.
And I carry a lot of shame and weight around those days when I just, I was not showing up in the world in the way that my best self would
want me to. I was struggling to figure out how to survive, forget thriving, just survive in this
world. I just couldn't see any other world. I couldn't see any other way to exist. I didn't
know what other industries were out there or jobs. I didn't think I could find any other way to be.
I certainly thought, well, I better figure out how to moderate my Vyvanse usage because I don't know how to live without this
medicine. I feel dead inside. I look at the next 30 years of my life and I feel exhausted,
not excited. I felt completely detached and empty and I didn't see another way forward.
And all of that ended in sort of a crash and burn and landed me
back home in my parents' house at probably around 30 years old, my early 30s. And I had to kind of
figure out what next. So, okay, you are now addicted to Vyvanse, have an alcohol problem
because you're using alcohol to cope with it. You have lost your job, which was kind of your
identity and career. You lost
this relationship that was sort of another part of your identity and you're back living with your
parents. So things are going well. I'm really living the dream. No, I'm sort of back home.
Thank God I had a home to go back to where I could sort of pick up the pieces and sort things out,
which I began to do. I mean, I will say that
it's always been my experience and therefore it has always been my belief in the thing I've held
on to that we grow through difficulty. And so I did think, woo boy, like I'm probably going to be
doing some really big growths in and through this. And I was, I really held on with faith,
this hope that like on the other side of this
is a fuller, more beautiful, like soul of me, you know, I don't know how to get to that yet,
but I know it's there. And I think that hope and that knowledge and that faith and that experience,
having seen that for yourself is really critical to grow and as opposed to like calcify through
difficult times. And so I've always been
spiritually sort of attuned and connected to things that speak to a deeper realm of life.
I mean, back in my days of Christianity, but then even now, I mean, I was searching
through all kinds of things in the spiritual realm of things to help find a thread to grasp onto.
And so I began to explore mindfulness and meditation. And that's how I began to put the pieces of my life in place to begin building a foundation that was stronger than the one I'd had before.
Now, I know it's been a long journey to get there, but what are some of the key ideas or key learnings, you know, as you started to kind of put things together?
You just identified one, which is at least being willing to identify this as a possibility for growth. It doesn't mean to minimize the pain that we're in, but to at least have part of one eye on, oh, yeah, this could be a growth opportunity.
So that's one.
What are some other things?
Well, I have a seminal moment that I remember. Of course, you know this. I've told you this
many times. But it's this moment sitting watching an interview of Pema Chodron.
It's the beloved Buddhist teacher. And she was talking about difficult feelings and how we have
a tendency to not want to feel them, right? And she posed this question, which was
when we sense difficult feelings, they're just asking, can I be with this? And I just remember
it was like an acorn dropped on my head, you know, and I was like, what? I mean, it had never
occurred to me. Can I be with this? The message I had always gotten somehow was do not be with that.
In fact, if you do, you will probably never recover. That abyss of
sadness or fear or whatever that unpleasant feeling was, was something that you just don't
recover from. So you just don't go there. But when she was like, can I be with this? It sparked my
curiosity. And I was like, well, I don't know. Can I? And I thought, why don't I just try and
not like try to open to it fully, but like try to like slide my toe over into that area and just like see what it kind of feels like.
And we'll just take it from there.
And that was a turning point because instead of running away from those uncomfortable, unpleasant, difficult, scary feelings, I started to turn towards them.
And that shift is radical and critical, right?
Because I stopped running from things.
Yep.
I often think that is the seminal critical shift in every alcoholic addict's life.
That sobriety is not possible until there is some grasp of, okay, whatever comes, I
can be with it.
I may not like it.
I may hate it.
It may be awful, but I can be with it. I may not like it. I may hate it. It may be awful,
but I can be with it. I don't have to escape it. Because as long as we think we have to escape,
we've got a very convenient escape that we've often gone to, you know, one that does for a
period of time and in some ways actually work for a very short time. So it makes it very difficult
to achieve lasting sobriety until we get that, okay, I can be with this.
Yeah.
And it wasn't like immediately I knew I could be with it all fully.
But what I started to see was I can be with a bit of it and it's not nearly as obliterating as I thought it was going to be.
In fact, I might even say in that moment for me, I was like, this isn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be.
And so that showed me I could be with a little more of it and a little more of it and a little
more of it. As I look back on it now, what I realize is it was the building of that skill
and sort of ability to tolerate discomfort that everything else unfolded. I mean, it is so true
that where the wound is, that too is where the healing is. Though we may not have
all the knowledge in the world, it has been my experience that I do have wisdom inside of me.
And that wisdom can help guide me, right? I can grow that wisdom. I'm not like, you know,
a finished product here and just tap into it and you'll know everything you need to know.
But there is some wisdom there. There is some discernment. And you can begin to tap into that when you begin to open to the wounds in a skillful way that has some support. So fast forward a bit. One of the ways I found support was in the podcast. I was first a listener. And we can save our story of how we connected for perhaps another episode because that's a whole story in and of itself.
for perhaps another episode, because that's a whole story in and of itself. But yeah, the parable,
when I first heard that, I realized, okay, so let's name some things here. Let's name that we have choice. Let's name that we all have all the tendencies inside of us, right? And that we have
the ability to nurture the life we want to live and have and the way we want to experience things.
And so starting a meditation practice where I sort of begin regularly sitting with myself,
connecting to myself, because up until then, I had lived so far outside of myself with
my North Star being somewhere out there.
I don't even know if I could have identified it.
But I began cultivating a connection to it within myself.
And so that was, you know, give or take 10 years ago.
Yeah. And the short version of our meeting story is we met online, but not in the way people
normally meet online, not through a dating service, but through the podcast.
Yeah. Yeah. I had started a blog and I did a blog post on the parable and I tagged you in it and you
shared it and I was thrilled. And yeah, began diving deeper into some of the episodes of The One You Feed.
Like one of the first I remember is the first episode with Emily White on loneliness.
Well, first of all, I realized I had no idea what it was I was necessarily feeling other than inside of me.
It just felt bad.
But when I listened to that episode, I was like, oh, wait, part of this is loneliness.
Because I had sort of walled myself off from the world and so much of everything.
It's so powerful to be able to name a problem, name a human experience. It's like instead of
it then having a lot of power because you've named it, like you've given it power,
it's actually the opposite of, at least in my experience, what happens is you have then the power to recognize
it when it shows up, figure out how to work skillfully with it. You're not so enmeshed and
entangled and identified with it. It's like you and then that thing over there, you know,
it's really powerful. Yeah. You talk a lot about the power of naming things. And I think
some people struggle with naming because naming can become labeling and can become identity.
But when we don't take it that far, it's an enormously helpful tool.
Yeah, it really is. I'm Jason Alexander.
And I'm Peter Tilden.
And together on the Really No Really podcast,
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Hi, everybody. It's Ginny. You've probably heard me with Eric on some episodes of The One You Feed.
I have a question for you. Are you your own worst critic? I mean, when you pay attention to how you
talk to yourself, is it just kind of mean? And do you often feel beat down and just heavy inside?
If so, I truly understand the struggle. I used to believe that relating to myself this way was what
kept me performing at any acceptable level. And without it, I thought I'd drift off into the
deep end and become a failure in pretty much every aspect of my life. But it turns out that's
actually one of the inner critic's worst lies, that it helps you. I mean, maybe short term,
you get a push and do well, but long term, it's corrosive and it actually keeps you from living
to your potential. I've created a free three-part video series that teaches you how to get to the other side
of the inner critic like I have, and you can grab it today.
Just head to oneufeed.net slash inner critic.
I'm sharing this with you as not only an inner critic survivor, but also a certified
mindfulness teacher.
And you can learn to relate to yourself differently, living with an inner lightness and not a sense
of being at battle with yourself.
And life is so much better when you're a friend to yourself. I promise. So go to
oneufeed.net slash inner critic for my free mini course. See you in the videos.
So let's move into one of the areas that you really specialize in working on and helping
people with, which is the inner critic. You refer to yourself as an inner critic survivor.
Yeah, I mean, not to...
You're joking, kind of.
Yeah, not to make the word survivor or anything trite, but I do feel that way in terms of
the inner critic can be so corrosive that it feels like a slow death inside.
And to come back from that does feel like you've
fought a good fight and survived, at least in my experience.
You've said that you think the inner critic is perhaps the number one cause of self-created
suffering.
Yeah. Well, I mean, that would be a hypothesis. I don't have evidence behind that. But I
do know it speaks to a couple things. The first is how common it is. The inner critic tells so many lies, one of which is that like, you're the only one, you're the only one that struggles with this or that. But the truth of the inner critic is everyone has some component of it. And now how much it trips you up, it can vary from person to person, but it is ubiquitous.
And in terms of suffering,
your inner critic might want you to think that it's showing up for your own good,
but as an adult, it actually does the opposite.
It keeps you small.
It keeps you in pain.
It's very painful.
And it tells you lies about who you are and who you aren't.
And so you don't really ever step out into who you could be.
And so how do we work with the inner critic versus the inner,
I don't know what the word I would call it is, inner guide, conscience,
the part of ourselves that does genuinely reflect on when we've made a mistake,
when we need to do something better, when we need
to apologize? How do we differentiate the inner critic, which is a destructive force from, I'll
just use the word conscience, which is a good force? Yeah. Well, I mean, I could talk a long
time about this, but I'll say a couple of things. The first is, you have to sort of discover for yourself that indeed you actually are enough. You are whole.
You may not be a complete work of a human yet, but you are whole. You are not missing key pieces.
You are not lacking in a way that would give you the right to show up in the world with dignity,
right? Like you are whole. You are worthy, as Brene Brown says,
of love and belonging, and you are enough. And that's one of the things I love about mindfulness
is that it orients towards you having a direct experience of something. And so, you know,
the first thing is to know that because until you know that you have that basic, in Buddhism,
it would be called basic goodness, it might be easy to believe the lies of the inner critic.
The second part of the answer, I would say, is, and this is a key distinction, is the
inner critic attacks who you are as a person, your identity, and your worthiness to take
up space and belong.
It is who you are.
That's who the inner critic is talking about.
who you are. That's who the inner critic is talking about. Your inner discernment, your inner wisdom would actually point to behaviors or actions and how they could be more skillful. But it doesn't
question your basic goodness as a human being, right? And so it can be useful to reflect on how
we can be more skillful or how we can act and show up in a way in this world that more closely aligns with our values, how we can be more kind, any number of things.
That's really important territory to traverse.
Right, right.
But instead of I did something bad, for lack of a better word, the inner critic would say I am bad.
That is not helpful, untrue,
and really keeps us wounded. Yeah, as you were saying that, it hit me that another key distinction
is, or another way of thinking about that is that the inner critic does not have a growth mindset.
True. Right? Like, if I'm examining my past behavior for ways that I could do it differently,
inherently, there's a growth mindset, there's a belief in ways that I could do it differently, inherently,
there's a growth mindset.
There's a belief in there that I can change.
But to your point, the inner critic doesn't believe that we're going to do better, right?
It actually thinks that that thing that you did is a reflection of who you are.
It's the best you can do.
That's what you are.
Yeah.
Whereas that internal conscience or that holding ourselves accountable or all that is inherently growth
oriented. Yeah, that's such a good point. And you know, it makes me think about how the inner critic
is not always holding you back in the world. Sometimes it's propelling you forward with such
a frantic fear and fury that you're trying to overcompensate for some inner deficiency.
that you're trying to overcompensate for some inner deficiency. And both are like you say,
I love this term, it's running on dirty fuel, that over time that causes an engine to collapse.
But both tell you that you're not good enough, you know, and you either have to overcompensate or you're not good enough. So why even try? Right? Yeah. The other thing about the inner
critic is it would have you believe that
it's actually acting on your behalf. Like if you didn't have the inner critic, you would not get
out of bed that day. Or if you didn't have the inner critic, you would not work as hard at your
job or you wouldn't ever hit the gym like you need to when in actuality, there are much better
ways to motivate ourselves than shaming ourselves into doing something. And my background in education tells
me, and I think personal experience might inform everybody, that you actually don't perform better
in an environment where you don't feel safe, right? If safety is in jeopardy in any level,
you shut down. And so we cannot possibly realize our fullest potential if we're always stuck in a
shamey kind of place.
So that's another lie of the inner critic.
So where does it come from? I mean, I know this is just a speculation, but why do we have this?
Well, there's a lot of theories. The most common quoted that I've heard is that it does go back
to Freud and the superego, right? This part of us when we're young that keeps us in line with our family of
origin or any caregivers that we have that helps us to act and behave and relate in such a way
that we don't jeopardize the connections that give us care and love and food and shelter and
all of these important things. And so that is the case up until about age eight. And at age
eight, that part is pretty fully developed. And we begin to be able to operate in a more nuanced
way with more wisdom and discernment. So we continue to grow and we really outgrow the
usefulness of this superego or this inner critic, so to speak. But this eight-year-old superego continues
to live on inside of our minds. It doesn't really evolve, but it continues to tell us and dictate
what is good or bad about us, what's right and wrong about our inner world and outer world.
And we end up being bossed around by a really bossy eight-year-old self, right? That doesn't
have the adult wisdom to live and discern an adult life, right?
It's a conditioning.
It's a habit of mind that we really have to sort of wake up out of and begin to work skillfully
with.
So we'll move on from the inner critic in a minute, but you have actually produced some
videos about working with the inner critic where you've got a variety of strategies.
Can you share one of them?
Yeah. Oh, man. How to pick one?
I know.
So the first thing I would say is maybe going back to the power of naming something,
it can be really helpful to sort of name your inner critic so that you begin to recognize it.
Now, I'll say one more thing because I would be remiss if I didn't
describe this. I wish I had heard this long before I actually did, which is the inner critic can show
up as a voice, an actual like we hear the words in our head. It can also show up as more of an
atmosphere. And that's how it shows up for me. So I needed to begin to recognize and name like
this inner weather system, this inner atmosphere that felt really
icky. It just felt dark and heavy, like I was wrong and something was wrong and just bad,
you know? And so when I began to recognize that feeling as the inner critic showing up,
then I began to learn how to work skillfully with that, but know that
it can show up in a variety of ways, right? But however it shows up for you, you can name it.
And I mean, I encourage you to be playful with this, like, because humor is just a wonderful
way to poke a pinhole and deflate things pretty quickly. And I wish I could have like a visual
aid right now to show you because the visual of this is funnier even than you can imagine. But for some reason, when I just like close my eyes and think of my inner critic,
the image that I get is like the Wicked Witch from Snow White from Disney's Snow White cartoon
back in the day, the old, old one. And then I went and Googled it just to get like,
am I remembering her correctly? And like, she is even more wretched, lecherous,
and just hilarious looking like as an archetyping
caricature of like the Wicked Witch than I even remembered.
But now that's who I think of when that part of me kind of comes up.
And it helps me take it a little less seriously.
And it also helps me name it so that I can begin to work skillfully.
But yeah, I put together this video series.
And you can get that free training at one you feed dot net slash inner critic.
And I plan on, you know, diving even deeper into this work in the future because it has been the primary pain point of my internal world in the last, I don't know, in my adult life, let's just say. And I have come to realize for myself that you can live without it,
that you don't have to have its oppressive tyranny tearing you down all the time. And it is wonderful.
So I want to help other people find their way to that way of being so that they have a fighting
chance in this life of feeling into their truest, fullest selves, free from that burden. So a big part of the inner critic work
has emerged from the deep work you've done with mindfulness. Yeah. So let's talk about mindfulness.
It's very much a buzzword. Yeah, of course. And it's a buzzword that I sort of react to a little
bit, but I don't think you do. I think its original and beautiful potential is still very alive in you. Tell me what you love about it. Yeah. Oh my gosh. How do I count the ways?
So I love so much about it. What mindfulness is, as I know it now, is not as much an intellectual
exercise of life. Like it's not about like cognitively, intellectually knowing about
something or letting your mind pay attention to things during your everyday life. I mean, that's a piece of it to be able to be present with our minds.
But even more so, it's about an embodied presence, an embodied awareness in and of the present
moment, in and of our experience in the present moment, both inside of ourselves and also what's going on around us
without judgment, right? Without the inner critic or really any kind of judgment that allows us to
open fully to what is, know it directly and clearly, experience it directly and clearly,
and just to know the fullness of life in that way. Now, that's a little bit of a departure from the word mindfulness sounds very intellectual.
And it's actually the opposite of that in the terms of like, it's one thing to know
or to think we have stories about the world and stories about people and stories about
the way things are.
And so often the stories that our minds sort of make up based on our conditioning
of various sorts, it's not the truth of that thing. It's not the essence of that thing
gets lost because it's obscured by our stories and our conditioning. And so we can either miss out
or we cause a lot of suffering, both for ourselves and others. And again, back to kind of the beginning of the conversation when I said that like my own aversion to feeling unpleasant and uncomfortable
sensations and feelings and emotions has driven me a lot of my life. Well, now it's finally driven me
to alleviate suffering in a way that is not an addiction, not a masking, not a running, but in a healing way, in a way that
makes you whole, right? And so I think I'm all about trying to suffer less myself, like cause
less harm to myself, and also less harm to other people. I don't want other people to suffer either.
And mindfulness has proven for me to be the most skillful way to do those things. Realizing all of the ways that
we create suffering for ourselves, I'm just like, show me those ways so I can stop that. I don't
want any more. I mean, life is hard. Life is painful. In and of itself, it just is. And it
always will have moments of that. And I don't want to make it harder and more painful than it is,
right? So if there are things I'm doing that are causing
more pain and suffering and are keeping me from living fully and experiencing even the beauty and
joy of life and the fullness of who I can be, let me figure those things out so I can be more
skillful. It's ultimately me just being sort of pragmatic, practical, and like really hating to
suffer. Mindfulness also, it's a really instructive way to show up in life.
Like in other words, in my past with previous religions and churches and things and not to
paint them in any kind of negative picture, because I think everybody has to find where
they fit and where they flourish. And it just wasn't there for me, because I did not know how
to do a lot of the things that
the church told me were good things to do or like how to stop doing the bad things that
were causing me.
I just, I knew what maybe to do, but I didn't know how.
Mindfulness has taught me the how.
The how to be really skillful in life so that we suffer less.
That's another thing I love about it.
And finally, it's not about just have faith
and believe and don't ask questions. It's all about ask the questions, bring curiosity, and
see for yourself and your direct experience. Like don't believe what anybody tells you,
right? Like discover for yourself. It really points you towards your own experience. I'm Jason Alexander.
And I'm Peter Tilden.
And together on the Really No Really podcast,
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podcasts. There is a critique these days of mindfulness, they call it make mindfulness
right where mindfulness has been pulled out of its original Buddhist container, you know,
depending on how you want to frame it, it's been watered down. It's become a tool of the corporate patriarchy. Lots of different things.
And one of the criticisms is it has been divorced from what you were just talking about that
seems to be most apparent in a lot of churches. And in the church, one of the things that's most
apparent, and again, I'm painting with a broad brush, churches are different, but there's a
big focus. We hear a lot about morality, but morality is pretty deeply baked into Buddhist thought too. So for you, how important is when learning mindfulness and using mindfulness to have other aspects of the tradition it came from baked into that approach? Or do you feel like it stands alone on its own pretty well and is a pretty powerful tool that way. Yeah, it's such a good question. Actually, in the training program where I got my certification to
be a mindfulness teacher, we were divided into pods of other students in groups, small groups.
And someone in that small group asked the question I think you're kind of asking,
which is like, if we strip mindfulness of its Buddhist roots, is that kind of
cultural appropriation? What are we doing here? And I'm not going to pretend to say,
I know the answer to this, but a couple of reflections I'll offer.
I was trained in a secular mindfulness practice, that you can practice these tools,
which are very skillful, and not have to officially affiliate yourself with a Buddhist religion, right? That there are universal truths
that we can all recognize, like in life, there's suffering, it's hard. Things are impermanent,
they're always changing, right? There are certain truths that we can all learn and then begin to
practice out of in a skillful way that can make life easier and more full and better for us all.
that can make life easier and more full and better for us all.
There are other traditions besides Buddhism that practice meditation and mindfulness under a different name.
These principles are found in the works of a lot of teachers, researchers, and so it
is most often associated with Buddhism.
Buddhism doesn't have the exclusive rights to it. At this
point in my life, I do find myself most closely relating to the Buddhist tradition in terms of
Buddhist psychology and the way the Buddha taught for us to live so that we might suffer less and
live more. But I don't think that's a requirement to be able to benefit from or practice these things, right?
It's not necessarily a religious experience.
It is a spiritual practice of being able to unburden ourselves from suffering and live more fully.
I'm not sure if that speaks to your question, and I'm not even sure if I fully, like, have explored that terrain enough to come to a real definitive conclusion.
But it's certainly a question to keep in the conversation.
I just find it an interesting one.
Some people will be like, well, mindfulness is talk to soldiers to make them kill better.
What do you do with that?
I don't pretend to know that.
And it's really just more philosophical discussion than it is anything.
It's not real practical. So mindfulness is though, as well as being associated with the Buddhist
tradition. Well, can I pause you actually really quick? Because I will say that one orienting
question around mindfulness is like becoming aware of in any given moment, like where does
this lead and do I want to go there? Realizing that our actions have impact and that with every moment we are practicing
ways to relate to ourselves in the world your favorite world word neuroplasticity right but
our ability for our brain is not my favorite i'm kidding but the ability for our brains to
form connections that then with repetition strengthen and it's those connections in our
brain that
really take the way we see and experience the world and show up in the world. So in a lot of
ways, we are practicing these things in any given moment. So when we become aware of the impact that
what we're doing is having, we can then begin to ask that question earlier and earlier on in the
process, which is where is this leading and do I want to go there?
Yeah.
And if I don't, let's reorient to where I do want to go.
So, like, to your point about soldiers killing, I mean, I don't know the answer to that, right?
Yeah.
That's, again, kind of a philosophical situation and certainly not pro-killing over here.
I couldn't even kill the praying mantis in our apartment the other night.
I had to, like, escort him out in a mason jar delicately.
And I'm still afraid that he may have fallen too far and hurt himself. But anyway, I don't know.
But I do know that we can bring awareness to things and shining the light of awareness on
something illuminates aspects of it that we kind of can't unsee once we've seen them.
And once something is brought into the light of awareness, it just doesn't have the same power over us as it did before.
So if anything, you know, err on the side of more rather than less awareness, right? And that's what
mindfulness will help you do. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's kind of where I come down on the whole
topic too, is that being more aware, being more reflective is a positive thing. It doesn't matter
where you get it,
how you get it. We need more of it in the world. And, you know, like, let's just get it out there.
Nothing in the world is ever perfect. Nothing is ever pure. It's just, that's not the way things
are. But, you know, particularly in a culture that is driving us further and further away from
any time in our own experience, any quiet time, any antidote to that seems positive
to me. Yeah. Yeah. It's really true. I think so too. So mindfulness is often associated with
Buddhism. It's also associated with meditation. Tell me the ways that they are linked and that
they are not the same. Well, I mean, there's certainly a ton of overlap. I look at meditation
as a daily practice that helps me come back to the very simplest aspects of my direct experience,
both inside myself and what's going on around me, that I can practice being in my body in a very
somatic embodied way. I can ground myself there. I can practice noticing what's coming up
and how I'm relating to it. And finding a way to have that daily stillness practice
is really the laboratory and the training ground and the practice field for a lot of the skills
that we hope will grow out and become our default in the rest of our life. And so, you know, it's not just
about the insights you have, like on the mat as you're meditating and the ahas that will inevitably
happen, but you're just sort of practicing the way to relate to things and connect with yourself and
be grounded and present in who and where you are, that then allows us to do more and more of that
in a maybe unconscious way, in a mindfulness way,
you know, during the rest of our lives. Now, we can also have very meditative experiences that
are off the mat and in our lives. In Buddhism, it's talked about like you have a work practice
or like karma yoga, it's called, or you can take some sort of activity you do every day and do it
mindfully, meaning like you're not thinking about the future, you're not ruminating on the past, you're not analyzing the present.
And when you catch yourself doing that, you bring yourself back to your direct experience
of that activity, you know, what it feels like, what you're hearing, you know, the sensations
that come with it, and being very present in that moment, the very smallest details of it,
so that we aren't absent minded, but we are very present for that moment in the very smallest details of it, so that we aren't absent-minded,
but we are very present for that moment in our life. And again, as we practice these things,
they do begin to grow in the rest of our lives. So meditation can be an active practice in the
midst of your day. It can be a set-aside practice that you do, you know, in the quiet of a place in
your home. And it's also a way of living. So what would you say your definition of spirituality is?
I love this question. So for me, spirituality is anything that simultaneously both draws me
deeper into myself, the depths of myself, and connects me with that which is larger than myself.
So those moments feel spiritual to me.
And that can be anything from hearing poetry read.
That feels really deeply spiritual.
You're recognizing some aspect of yourself and also the universality of it.
And it can be religious, but it's so not limited to that.
Spirituality is and can be in any moment of connection with others and with ourselves
and with the world.
I mean, I feel that the arts are very spiritual because they tend to speak to the bigger pains
and beauties of what it means to be human in a way that is broadening and not reductive.
But yeah, that's spirituality for me. That's what I'm
landing on right now anyway, is my definition. Yeah, I happen to like your definition a great
deal. Oh, thanks. You're running a program called The Well-Trained Mind. Spiritual Habits is taking
the fall off. Folks, sorry if you were planning on signing up. I hate to break it to you. You're
going to have to wait till next year. I hate to break it to you over the airwaves. But the good news is. But the good news is it'll run again in the spring.
But the even better news is, yeah, that the WellTray Mind, I'm going to offer that again
this fall. And I'm so excited about it. It was one of the most wonderful experiences to run that
program this last time. And so to do it again feels really exciting to me. We essentially walk through the foundations of mindfulness and
of mindful meditation. So if you've ever been interested in what that really means,
how you actually do it, if you have wanted to start a meditation practice, but just sort of
have never gotten the traction, or maybe you're looking for a way to reinvigorate your own
practice, breathe some life back into it. All of those reasons would be great reasons to join me
and everybody else in this program. Because another thing I love about mindfulness and
these teachings is that though foundational, they are not elementary in the sense of like,
oh, beginners learn that and then everybody else goes on to learn something else, right?
Like if you're advanced, you learn something else. These concepts are rich and deep. And depending
on where you are in your life, when you meet them and encounter them for yourselves, they will mean
something different for you. They will open up something new for you. So even if you've been
practicing for a while, it's a wonderful time to revisit the foundations of mindfulness at this place in your life.
And so we do that in a group format.
And it'll be live sessions, six of them, two hours each on Sundays.
So six Sundays.
And it's also really nice to connect with other people who are also seeking to learn and deepen themselves in kind of this unifying topic, this really deep and rich
topic of mindfulness and mindful meditation. So that's another exciting part is to be able to like
see those connections form in the group. We live in such a virtual world now that like you don't
need to live in the same neighborhood as your new closest friend. You know, I have a friend who's
been doing a virtual learning program. And one of her best friends now
is someone that she actually has not met in person,
but that she talks with almost every day virtually.
She lives in another country than she does,
but they would not have met if not for this program.
So all of that's really exciting.
And I invite people to see if it's for them
and check it out.
Well, you had a similar experience.
I mean, I guess you met her,
but she's primarily a virtual friend.
Oh, my dear.
Oh, Anna.
Yes.
Other side of the world.
Yes.
She's on the other side of the world, but never far from my heart.
I don't know what I would do if I had not met my dear friend, Anna.
And she'll be a friend for life now.
I just know it.
And we're connected through this deeper topic of mindfulness.
Right.
So like we met over kind of like you and i like we met over a
topic that feels really deep and important and like values driven and those are deep roots for
a relationship to take soil and take hold in they certainly can be yeah why do you call the program
the well-trained mind that term i've come across it a couple of times just this idea that the mind
is a wonderful servant but but a terrible master,
I think is the quote, I can't remember who to attribute it to. But the idea being like,
if left on its own to run wild and free, our minds are kind of a like chaotic bed of suffering
to like exist in, right? Like, we're all familiar, like you just all you have to say is monkey mind.
And most people know what that feels like. Or if we believe our thoughts, right, all the time, then how much
suffering can come from that. So when we have a mind that we aren't so enmeshed with, we can
disentangle ourselves from, and we can begin to practice ways of being and connecting with and
orienting with the world. In this way, we are training our
minds so that the world in which we live is less chaotic and suffering and all of the things that
a mind left to its own would read. So in this way, we're learning to train the mind. We can do that.
That's amazing. We can practice things like back to the parable. We can choose the wolf we want
to feed. We can choose the things we want to train.
So let's learn to do that.
Beautiful.
Listeners from around the world have insisted that you now sing opera for us.
Oh, my God.
You rascal.
I will not do it.
I will not do it.
Let's see.
If we hit how many people in the program
if we hit a hundred
enrollees in the program
maybe I'll sing some opera
well let's be clear
you can sing opera
I can
I do
it was like
the thing
it was my thing
in high school
we skipped right over
high school
there was so much
more there
yeah you dated
a guy who wore a cape
oh my gosh
look
look
it's true
nothing against capes.
No, nothing.
They're very in vogue, I think.
Are they?
Well, maybe not for men.
I don't really know.
I mean, let's put you in a cape.
Rizzo, you ever wear a cape?
We're in a studio.
Oh, my God.
That's the funniest story, I will say.
I grew up in a very conservative family, and I have this memory of this really crazy guy.
I dated a very conservative family and I had this memory of this really crazy guy. I dated very theatrical guy.
My dad's sitting in his like recliner by a window, but which is by our back door.
This guy comes to pick me up for a date and he comes like pretending to fly in towards
the back door and runs up to the window where my dad is with his cape kind of flared out
as like, hello.
My dad just turning around,
like barely reacting other than looking his eyes like, what in God's name? And I'm like,
that's my date. Your dad's pretty deadpan. And it explains why he is so happy to have me around.
You and my dad do get along quite well. Oh, I have so much more I want to say. Can I come
back and do this again? Sure. Another time. Should we tell people where they can learn about?
I guess we should.
My program?
Yes.
So if you are interested in learning more about the Well-Trained Mind program and potentially
signing up this fall, you can go to oneufeed.net slash mindfulness.
Again, oneufeed.net slash mindfulness.
We'll put the link in the show notes, right?
Yep.
For folks that are interested.
And yeah, I invite you to come and check it out.
I would, of course, love to connect with you there.
All right.
Well, Miss Ginny, thank you.
Thanks, babe.
I appreciate it.
No, I'm not going to go on.
Yeah, it was really, really fun.
Let's do it again.
Okay.
Okay.
Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you,
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And together, our mission on the Really No 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
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