The One You Feed - How to Free Yourself from the Inner Critic Through Mindfulness with Ginny Gay

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

Ginny Gay is a Certified Mindfulness Teacher and has worked with Eric to create content here at The One You Feed for the past 8 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 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. In this episode, Eric and Ginny discuss her story of struggle and growth, how to work with the inner critic and what it means to practice mindfulness. 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!   Ginny Gay and I Discuss How to Free Yourself from the Inner Critic Through Mindfulness and … The way not wanting to experience internal pain can drive us to act in potentially harmful, problematic ways Her experience in a fundamentalist Christian church Her experience hitting the glass ceiling in the corporate pharmaceutical industry The circumstances surrounding her addiction and burnout  How she was able to believe in growth through difficulty during the worst time in her life The key learnings that helped her transform her life from the ground up The radical shift she made that saved her life The power of naming things as they show up inside of us The corrosive impact of the inner critic How to differentiate the inner critic from our helpful inner conscience Where the inner critic comes from The various ways the inner critic shows up in us How to free yourself from the inner critic What mindfulness really means The benefits of practicing mindfulness The connection between mindfulness and meditation Her definition of spirituality Her mindfulness program, The Well Trained Mind Ginny Gay Links FREE 3-Part Mindfulness Training: How to Quiet the Inner Critic The Well Trained Mind Program By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! If you enjoyed this conversation with Ginny Gay, check out these other episodes: Mindfulness in Nature with Mark Coleman Transforming Your Inner Critic with Dr. Aziz GazipuraSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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. 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. And I'm used to this. We could 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. 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 time, you know, white, 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 in 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. 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. 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 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. So what do you think were some of the key things that allowed you to sort of transform from that till now? 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, 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 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 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. 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 began 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. 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, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

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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 like make the word survivor anything trite, but I do feel that way in terms of like 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, 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 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, you know, 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? 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. 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.

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 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. 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. 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 know, you actually don't perform better in an environment where you don't feel safe. 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. 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 you know, 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 super ego, 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 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 oneufeed.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 like 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. 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?? I love so much about it. What mindfulness is, as I know it now, is not as much an intellectual exercise of life. It's not about 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 how to stop doing the bad things that were causing me. I knew what maybe 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 in 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, 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.

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Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. There is a critique these days of mindfulness. They call it McMindfulness, 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 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 have to like 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. 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 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 taught to soldiers to make them kill better. What do you do with that? I don't pretend to know that.

Yeah. 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 word, neuroplasticity, right? But our ability for our brain. That is not my favorite word. I know, 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? 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? 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,

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 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 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 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, you know, hearing poetry read. That feels really deeply spiritual.

You know, 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. Yes. Spiritual Habits is taking the fall off folks sorry if you were planning on signing up i hate i hate to break it you're gonna have to wait till next year to break it to you over the airwaves but um but the good news is but the good news is it'll run again in the spring but the even better yeah is yeah that the well-trained mind i'm gonna 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 you don't need to live in the same neighborhood as your new closest friend. 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. 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 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. You know, 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 100 enrollees in the program, maybe I'll sing some opera. Well, let's be clear. You can sing opera. I can, I can. I do. It was like the thing. That 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 god look look it's nothing against capes no nothing they're very involved i think are they yeah 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 like i grew up in a very conservative family and i had i have 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 like 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. It's 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? Yeah. 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. Have a good one. Yeah, it was really, really fun. Let's do it again.

Okay. Okay appreciate it. Have a good one. Yeah, it was really, really fun. Let's do it again. Okay. Okay. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.

To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. 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

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