The One You Feed - How to Make Great Relationships with Dr. Rick Hanson

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

In this Episode, You Will Learn... The fundamental quality of recognizing the good in and having compassion for ourselves and how it's foundational in how we show up in relationships Recognizing tension in relationships and developing practices to help you determine what to do or say and when Asking yourself to choose harmony or truth in conflicts and how if you routinely choose one, you can end up with neither. Why it's important to admit fault and how it's a strength, not a weakness Using wise speech is about how we say something and it can have more impact than what we say The useful strategy of making small agreements that can improve larger issues in a relationship To learn more about Dr. Rick Hanson and his work, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Where we repeatedly dwell, for better or worse, becomes what dwells within us, because neurons that fire together wire together, especially negatively, because the brain's negatively biased, as you know. It's like Velcro for bad experiences, but Teflon for good ones. 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 Dr. Rick Hansen, a guest who's been on numerous times. He's a senior fellow at UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center and an expert on positive neuroplasticity. Rick's work has been featured on CBS, NPR, BBC, and all the other major platforms, and he is a New York Times bestselling author. His six books have been published in 30 languages. Today, Eric and Rick discuss his new book, Making Great Relationships, Simple Practices for Solving Conflicts, Building Connection, and Fostering Love. Hi, Rick. Welcome to the show.

Eric, again, I'm really glad to be here. We were yakking it up before we started officially, and it was great. I want to keep going. Yeah, we should have captured some of that. However, yeah, I don't know how many times you've been on now. We've had you on with Forrest, and it's always a pleasure. And we're going to have a chance today to discuss your new book called Making Great Relationships, Simple Practices for Solving Conflicts, Building Connection, and Fostering Love. There you are. But before we do that, let's start like we always do with a parable. In the parable,

there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there's 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 they think about it for a second, look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you, what does that parable mean to you in your life and in the work that you do? Oh, it's central for me as well. And we have the two wolves, and much of life is about feeding the qualities inside the wolf of love, of mindfulness, of resilience, of determination, commitment to social justice, all of those things.

determination, commitment to social justice, all of those things. The wolf of positive emotions, emotionally positive experiences are one of the best medicines of all for both mind and body, authentic ones. So we want to cultivate one and we want to increasingly disengage from the other. If we hate it, we feed it, but we can withdraw food from it and fuel for it. And for me, there's a resonance of this that relates to my own background in the Buddhist contemplative tradition that has to do with where you dwell becomes increasingly what dwells within you. And also, this resonates for me very much in terms of my background in neuropsychology and what's called positive neuroplasticity, in that it's really important to rest in what calls your heart, to rest your mind on what calls your heart for a breath or longer to help the mental neural pattern of the time that underlies that experience, to help that leave residues that last behind in physical changes in your brain in terms of altered neural

structure and function. Because without that actual physical change in your nervous system, you may have momentarily fed the wolf, right? But there's no lasting learning. There's no development, no cultivation. The wolf has not gotten any bigger. Bigger, the good wolves get bigger when we take in the good and we turn positive states into positive traits by resting in them for a breath or longer. And I've written a ton about that in Hardwiring Happiness and other books, as you know. You are right up my alley. You know, I am right up your alley with the one you feed. Yep. So say that about the dwelling piece again. What was that quote that you just said? Basically, if you just think about it, think of it as dwelling.

There's a technical word in the language of early Buddhism, a Brahma Vihara. A Vihara is a dwelling place, a Brahma being a really positive dwelling place. So Vihara, where do we dwell? And I find for me that this is a very emotionally rich and embodied sense, like dwell. It's like a dwelling place. Where do you abide? What's home for you? We long to come home. It's sometimes said that all sickness at bottom is homesickness. You understand that in different layers of meaning. So, where do we want to dwell? And where we repeatedly dwell, for better or worse, becomes what dwells within us. Because neurons that fire together, wire together, especially negatively, because the brain's negatively biased, as you know. It's like Velcro for bad experiences, but Teflon for good ones. So it's really important to rest in beneficial experiences,

particularly the ones that you hope to grow and stabilize inside yourself so that you rest in them, either because they're already happening, usually. Like right now, it feels really good with you, Eric. It's good. I'm resting in this. It's camaraderie. It's companionableness. You know, we're spiritual friends as well as worldly friends. It's good. So there. On the other hand, you can create a beneficial experience deliberately by mobilizing compassion for somebody or mobilizing gratitude for something or anything else. Okay. Once you're having that experience, don't waste it on your brain. Slow it down so that as you dwell in it, stay with it, not out of attachment to it or clinging

to it, more like a gentle openness to it and an establishing of yourself in it, a protecting of it often for a breath or longer, right? Doesn't take a lot of time to change the brain for the better. We just need to give it some time initially, especially with positive experiences, and then do this repetitively. So as you dwell increasingly in what calls your heart, that becomes increasingly what dwells within you in a sense of growing stable traits that operate in the background, or you can call upon them quickly as needed.

Traits, again, like the trait of mindfulness, the trait of compassion, the trait of resilience, the trait of being determined, the trait of emotional intelligence, right? Becoming more skillful in relationships, the trait of patience, the trait of fundamentally positive mood, inner peace. The more we dwell on experiences of these things, the more we dwell on experiences of them as strengths, we grow those durable strengths within ourselves. Yeah. That idea of just these brief moments underlies a lot of what I've really focused on in the spiritual habits program where, you know, the core mantra there is little by little, little becomes a lot, right? Which is beautiful. These little moments, right? I think it's a Tanzanian proverb. I didn't make it up but kind of what you're saying most of us don't have big chunks of time to devote

to spiritual practice our lives are busy but we can little by little make a lot of progress and that's what you've talked so eloquently about for so many years oh i love that proverb i'm going to remember it little by little a little becomes a lot. The thing I see a lot as a psychologist, therapist, and long-time husband, long-time father, long-time business person as well, is that we tend to just race on. We don't value enough and we don't have the humility to stay with e-beneficial experiences. We race onto the next one before internalizing the current one, which leaves us endlessly hungry for more. And so it's really important to value key beneficial experiences. And because you value them, internalize them, rest in them. And we also have a culture

that kind of pooh-poohs this whole idea, you know, culture that basically says, you know, what doesn't kill you will make you stronger. You know, you learn through pain. Actually, most pain has no gain. Think of it. And most pain actually tears us down. Stress, anxiety, depressed mood, anger, chronic anger is terrible for cardiovascular health. Shame, feeling inadequate, feeling less than others, feeling endlessly driven to impress others and, you know, win their approval again and again. You know, whatever their approval was yesterday,

you need to rewind it today to fill that hungry hole in your heart. That's deeply problematic. And I find so many people, when they first start to slow down to take in the good, they start to realize that it's hard initially. It's just not their habit. It is hard. But it's wonderful. You know, it's good news. Like, why not stay with the experience? But like, we want to race on to the next thing.

Yeah. I mean, I've been hearing that. Feed the wolf. Yeah. I've been hearing that teaching from you for, I mean, how many years now? Six, eight, right? And it's still, it's not natural to me to dwell and stay and savor. Yeah, and let it sink in.

And sometimes what we rest in, what we dwell in, you know, what we stay with, is not technically something you could actually savor. Like, for example, the feeling of healthy remorse or disenchantment. Like, hey, it's fun to get buzzed, but, you know, the feeling of healthy remorse or disenchantment. Like, hey, it's fun to get buzzed, but, you know, it's fun for 20 minutes. And then after that, it's all just contraction and wanting more.

And then the next day, feeling, you know, foggy and your partner looks at you and goes, oh, your breath smells. And there you are. Well, realizing that may not be an experience you savor per se, and yet it's important to let it land, not out of beating yourself up, but by letting the resolution and the disenchantment sink into you so the next time you walk a higher road, one that's kinder to your future self, right, is going to be paying the price for that pleasurable 20 minutes and also to the other people around you. Sometimes ideas are really also useful to internalize. So I'm just kind of building on what you said there about savoring, not against it, just adding what else people can be aware of, you know? Like the idea that you're not responsible for your partner's alcoholism, right?

Or the idea that your contribution to a rocky relationship with an adult child, perhaps, was real and worth remorse, regret, and correction. And that contribution that has your name tag on it, you know, was one of many significant factors in whatever has turned out. That idea, that understanding is also something to really let it land so you can form conviction around it. Anyway, we feed many wolves in many ways. And little by little, a little becomes a lot, just like you said. Yeah. I love that idea, though, about staying with things a little bit more purposefully and

consciously, both what we would consider positive things and things that we might consider negative in the sense that they don't feel good necessarily. But to me, that is sort of the point of a lot of the negative emotions, right? Used correctly is that there's something to be learned there if we can, you know, not all the time, not in every case, but in a lot of them there is. But our desire to not feel them means that we also won't learn from them. Exactly. To give you a little example, so last night I have a regular Wednesday meditation program online. People can check it out.

It's free, no big deal. And it's very open and inviting Wednesday night. So last night, the first one of the year, I gave a talk on what matters and what doesn't, because that's really central. And in effect, we want to help ourselves disengage from what truly doesn't matter, those wolves, metaphorically speaking. We want to disengage from what truly doesn't matter, and we want to rest increasingly in and feed and cultivate and practice what truly does matter to us. Okay, so I gave that talk, and then my wife and I have a little kind of time together. She goes to bed a little earlier than I do, so we hang out and we also do a little brief meditation on the way to bed. It's like I'm putting her to bed. It's kind of sweet. And we

were talking, and I'll spare you the exact detail, but she made a little passing comment about a situation that I could just kind of deal with and put up with, in effect, that wasn't that great for me. And right there, I was at a crossroad. What matters most? Which wolf am I going to feed? Am I going to get a little irritated and a little snarky and push back on this thing that she thought I could just put up with that would be uncomfortable for me? Or do I just sort of let it go by and know that actually I'm not going to do that thing, but I don't need to make a deal out of it right now. What matters more now? which wolf do i want to feed i want to feed a pleasant way of ending our day together i don't feel the need to get into an argument just before bed you know i'm trying to

manage my tendency to drop in exasperated input no input is one thing but adding exasperation maybe the input matters but does the exasperation truly need to matter to you? Do you want to really feed the wolf of exasperation? So that was a little moment. And basically, I could just feel myself initially wanting to chase the irritable, kind of exasperated reply and to feed that wolf and to make that wolf matter in the moment. that wolf and to make that wolf matter in the moment. And I just slowed it down to kind of disengage from that reactive cascade and rest more in a, hey, I'm okay still. I don't need to chase this one. I don't need to go to war over this one. We're all right. And, you know, slide into making that matter instead. That's the wolf I fed. And I'm really happy now, 12 hours later,

being able to talk about it. Yeah. I actually want to come back to that story in a minute because I think it's central to a lot of things in the book. But I think we first have to start with the elephant in the room, which is you writing a book about relationships is ironic given you've been married five times. What? You're joking. I've been married 40 years to the same person. No, I'm confusing you with the professional wrestler, Ric Flair. I'm sorry. Oh, okay. Don't worry about it. There's also a Ric Hansen who's the police chief of Calgary, Canada. And then there's another Ric Hansen who, you know, disabled athlete, went across the

country. It's a joke. That was a joke. Good job. It was a stupid joke, Ric Flair. I couldn't resist. Eric, right here, right here, what are we going to chase? And which is one of the central themes in the book, Making Great Relationships, right here. Am I going to get snarky about that? Am I going to take it personally? Or am I going to know that you're a good guy, right?

And if I actually had been married five times, it would be ironic to write a book about making great relationships. Right there, right there. We have that choice. Hundreds of times each day in all kinds of relationships of all sorts. And which one do you tilt?

Which choice do you make? And that's what that book is so much about. What do you do with your thoughts and basically your thoughts, words, and deeds, what you say and what you do. With your mind in your mouth, essentially. I don't mean that sexually. Again and again and again. And the consequences of that, those little things, as you just said, build something that's a lot over time. Yep. Yep. Now, that was a pre-planned dumb joke. I know you've been married a long time. I'm just thinking of you and Ric Flair in the same breath. It just

was too good to resist for me. Let's go back to that story about your wife there though, because there's something interesting in that. And as I was reading your book, I sort of kept seeing both these things reflected and what they are is I feel like it's a real tension that I have certainly faced in relationship. I think everybody does to some degree, right? And it's this tension of, on one hand, we want to pause, slow down, rein in our tongue, think about what's important, choose what do I want to feed right now And we're presented with something in a relationship. That tendency, though taken too far, becomes a tendency where we don't talk about the things that we're unhappy about. We don't talk about what we need. We don't talk about what we want. So my rationale is a little bit like the one you just did, which is like,

I want to feed this peaceful moment. Yeah. So I'm not going to bring up this thing. Yeah. And then I say to myself, this isn't the right time, which may be very wise. In a lot of cases, it is. I'll bring it up later, which then I never do. Yeah.

I thought we could talk about that essential tension of thinking through when do I say something about what's going on? When do I not? How do I determine what the right time is? I just love, I've been doing counseling for roughly the same amount of time. That's a lot of experience, including a lot of couples and families and other kinds of relationships, including business relationships, partners or the manager, person they manage, or the work team, a lot of experience there. And there are thousands of books on relationships. I wanted to write a book that no one has written really, which is 50 simple practices for solving conflicts, building cooperation, and fostering love. Practices, specific to-dos, 50 to-dos that answer the question, what do I do when, right? So in this particular case, I think you're right. People can err on either side. They can err on the side of coming in too hot or too cool. They can err on the side of saying too much or saying too little. Which way do we go?

And there's kind of a saying, I put it in my book, Resilient, my saying, which is very often we're choosing harmony or truth in our relationships. Yeah. And there's a place for choosing harmony. There's a sequel to my story about my wife last night. Actually, I'll tell it to you. But at first I chose harmony over truth.

Yeah. Right. But there's a problem that if we routinely choose harmony over truth, over time we often end up with neither. Exactly. That was an insight I had, which was like, I was thinking I was keeping the peace. What I realized I was doing was driving all the conflict inside. Yeah. It wasn't peace.

There was external peace, but there was not peace. That's right. It's just that I, for that time, was taking all of it, you know, which turns out to be a losing game for me and the relationship. Yeah. Yeah. So exactly right. So again, long-term therapist, it's like learning a skill. You know, if you want to learn to ski, which I'm

bad at, you know, but when I was trying to learn it, there's the foundational things you learn along the way. Right. So in the book, it starts with befriending yourself. Yeah. Because if we don't have that fundamental quality of being on our own side, not against others, but for ourselves, and kind to ourselves, and recognizing good in ourselves, and having compassion for ourselves, and supporting ourselves, like a good coach or a good guide. Not a critic, but a good coach or guide, and a cheerleader as well. That's foundational. And then certainly there are general capabilities around warming the heart toward others you know the cultivation of compassion the skills of empathy of seeing the good in others seeing good intentions in others even though they are expressing them

in ways that are problematic you know it's on that foundation definitely that then you get to okay all right something happened We're going to interact about it. How do we do that? And there's a lot in the book about the actual how of moving through a conflict effectively or negotiating wants. You want X, they want Y, or you felt kind of hurt, or you felt let down, you felt really wounded. What do you do? And even ultimately, how do you resize the relationship in key ways? Maybe if only in your mind, like I don't know about you, if you want to go public with this, but I could go public too. There are certain areas where I've just sort of given up the hassle about something. Like I like to sort of need an orderly partly because I'm with a million things, and that's how I manage a million things. My wife grew up in a family where it was just chaos

everywhere, and it was not a problem. It was a happy family. So we're different that way. So I've given up about vast areas of our home. My closet is organized. My office is clear and neat. That's a form of resizing. Other people you just resize and you realize, you know, I'm not going to talk to them after they've been drinking. Or, you know, yeah, we're going to have lunch maybe once or twice a year, and we're not going to talk about Donald Trump. We're just going to let that one go right by. And that'll be enough with that kind of old friend from college, for example. So yeah, and we could talk more about it. Thanks for letting me kind of give an overview of the book. And I'm happy to give marital advice if

you want it. And happy to receive it from you as well. Yes, yes. Well, I'm teasing you about being married multiple times. I have been married and divorced twice, so I may have more war stories than you. But you've met Jenny. She's interviewed you. I'm enormously happy now. The thing that was coming up for me as you were kind of talking through this and we were thinking about it is a little bit of this sense. And I think we do this in many aspects of life, right? Which is discernment around, like you said earlier, your core talk last night or earlier this week, which was, you know, what matters and what doesn't. Because that's what we're really talking about figuring out here is what really matters. What

things can I let go of that don't compromise me in any meaningful way, right? They may cause me to have to do some adjustment. They may cause me to have to relax a little bit, but they don't compromise me in a fundamental way, but there are other things that might. And I think we do this in all relationships and even in things like work, right? Like work is a compromise for most people in some way. It's like, well, there's all these really good things, but then there's these three bad things and which outweighs which. And so there's this sort of discernment process that feels challenging. And I think that's part of why, as I was reading your book, the early parts are very much, as you said, about internal steadiness, focus, work, et cetera. Because I do think that steadiness is needed to make these difficult discernments because we don't make them well when we are out of whack. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah you know it might be helpful since you've been so kind actually to talk about the book yeah i'm just going to name some of

the simple practices then the chapters in this book are really short and you know usually three to five pages each so they're each one of them is a specific thing so i'll just kind of just start naming chapter titles starting in part four, Stand Up for Yourself. So let go of needless fear. Use anger, don't let it use you. Tell the truth and play fair. Don't be bullied. For example, these are really foundational, you know, or pass that in terms of the section on speak wisely. that's the longest part of the book. Yep. Six parts total.

Speak from the heart. Ask questions. Express appreciation. Try a softer tone. Admit fault and move on. Yep. That's been one of the best for me. Stay right when you're wronged.

That goes to practicing unilateral virtue, not out of being a doormat, but in part because it puts you in the strongest possible position. Say what you want. Come to agreement. Forgive them. Forgive yourself, too. Anyway, you can just see the kaboom of those things, and they really are a kaboom. The longer I've done therapy with people, I think I've become kinder. I've also become blunter. Yeah. Yeah. And that bluntness, that kind bluntness definitely runs throughout the entire book. Like this is what we'll do. This is what's in your power. There's so much that's not in our power, right? Other people are going to do what they do. Many people disappoint. That's reality. Okay, what's in your power with what you think and what you say and what you do? And that's what the book is really about. In that way, you can make a great relationship,

even if the other person's problematic for you, even if you want to disengage from them. For you, it's a great relationship because you've practiced with it in various ways. We could all use the occasional nudge, a little wake up from the autopilot we fall into in our day-to-day routine. That's why we send brief text reminders to listeners of the show for free. The texts help you stay on track with what you're learning from the podcast episodes we release on Tuesdays and Fridays. release on Tuesdays and Fridays. They periodically prompt you to pause for a second and become more present and mindful and encourage you to engage with the week's podcast topics in a bite-sized, short, and simple manner. We've heard from listeners that these texts help them take a moment to reconnect with what's important amidst the busyness of daily life. Someone said, it feels like a little bit of wisdom is being whispered into my psyche, which I thought was cool.

So if you'd like to hear from us a few times a week via text, go to oneufeed.net slash text and sign up for free. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend.

Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really.

Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You pulled out some chapter titles, and maybe we could go deeper into a few of them, because I've picked a few out myself

that I wanted to kind of touch on. And one of them is this admit fault and move on. You say, remember, it's in your own best interest to admit fault and move on. Admitting fault might seem weak or that you're giving others a free pass for their faults, but actually it takes a strong person to admit fault and it puts you in a stronger position with others. You know, you also then go on to talk about try not to make the fault bigger than it actually is. Be specific about what it is. Talk a little bit more about this ability to admit fault and do it in a wise way. Well, you know, there's a saying in medicine.

I'm thinking about your two marriages so far. Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment. You've had a lot of experience. I've had a lot of experience too that has come from my own bad judgment. So in the moment we do stuff, you know, a tone slips in or we drop the ball. You know, we're supposed to remember to get the milk on the way home or something, right? Or we've just kind of more globally been tuning out our partner because we're preoccupied with work or we're thinking about TV

we want to watch later tonight, whatever it might be. You know, a lot of faults are morally innocent. It just slipped our mind, right, about something. And, oh, okay. And it's about acknowledging that and being committed to correction in the future rather than arguing about the past. And so it's about acknowledging that and being committed to correction in the future rather than arguing about the past. And so it's in that context, just two examples. One is how we say it has much more impact than what we say generally. Much research on that. Tone and communications about the nature of the relationship.

Who's on top? Who's on the bottom? Who's the dominant person in the relationship in the moment? So, you know, maybe we said something that we stand behind. Maybe we just said to our partner, you keep leaving your shoes in the middle of the doorway. All right. That's a fact statement, but the tone around it could be really problematic, way beyond just a reasonable exasperation after the fifth time your roommate does that or your teenage child does that. Okay. And then the other person winces or they get on your case about it, like, oh, you're so mean, or you said that you're so mad all the

time. And okay, so you might say, okay, you're right. You're right. I don't want to use that tone. I never want to use harsh tone. One of the earlier chapters is called Watch Your Words. I use the guidelines in early Buddhism about what constitutes wise speech or right speech. One of the kind of five key characteristics is not harsh tone. So what is harsh depends on culture and setting and so forth. But you could go, you know, okay, yeah, I was cranky. My tone wasn't good. You admit that fault. It clears the decks. Now the person has to deal with the actual content that they keep leaving their shoes in the doorway.

And they can no longer evade dealing with that content, that actual truth, that fact, because they're, you know, critiquing your tone, for example. Yep. All right. Another one is where, you know, you did something that really warrants some remorse. You know, it's not just about putting correction in, but it's about, wow, I'm really sorry. And I just find if there's going to be a healing in relationships, it's important to feel that the other person gets it. important to feel that the other person gets it. This book in a lot of ways is about being that person that other people really want to be with over time. Because that person you are is someone who's prepared and is big enough and strong enough to experience and express genuine guilt and

remorse that's in proportion to what happened. You know, like, for example, let's suppose, you know, you're routinely late, you know, for something and your partner's calling you on it. Like, hey, you're always 10 minutes late. Or you'd say you'd be home at a certain time or, you know, you'll be ready for a certain time and you always keep me waiting. And maybe you realize, you know, the truth is, I just have not made timeliness as important to me as things at my job where I'm always on time. What's with that? Why am I making my partner or my kid or my dear friend or my aging parent less important to me than some jaboney down the hall at work? Some what? That of course I would show Jaboni. Jaboni. I don't know

what that means. I just made that. That's a California slang term from somewhere in my youth. Junior high, I have no idea. Sorry. I mean, I don't, it's just a made up. Anyway, point is, what? And then you start to really feel it really feel it like wow and you start to feel how much you care about your partner you'd start to become aware of your impact on your partner it wasn't your intent to be cruel and yet the impact caused harm caused suffering and you start to feel a little like a wince and you go no sorry sorry sorry, honey, or sorry, friend, or sorry, mom. I got it. I got it. And it's that healthy remorse that will motivate you to not do that again and to be that person who won't do that again. And when other people see that about you, just to finish here,

here's the moving on part where when you've acknowledged it, you can move on. Now, they may not be ready quite yet to move on because they don't trust you. And what's useful about admitting fault and moving on is to say, I get it, but I'm not going to try to prove this to you. I'm just going to demonstrate it. Yeah. It landed. I got it. I'm not admitting fault just to brush you off and make you go away. I really get it. And it's the admission of fault, including sometimes with proportionate remorse, that enables me to say, hey, I've done my part here. You know, I've acknowledged it, confessed, I've pled guilty,

however you want to say it. I'm not trying to minimize how it landed on you. I'm not trying to get into some big, long, defensive explanation. You know, internally, I'm reserving my right to judge for myself how big a fault it is. And if the other person thinks, oh, on the zero to 10 scale of faults, it was at least an eight. And you're thinking, hey, I just added a little exasperation in my tone about your shoes in the middle of the doorway for the fifth time today. But okay, you know, for you, it's maybe a one or a two. But whatever it is, you acknowledge it and then you move on from it. And it's great.

You know, you're just moving on. They can think what they think. You're walking the high road. You know, you're practicing unilateral virtue on your own. And that gives you a real feeling of worth in yourself. Plus, over time, it removes reasons for others to find fault with you. They have less and less to find fault with, even if they go looking, as some people will, unfortunately. And you're just impeccable.

You can enjoy what's called the bliss of blamelessness. Yes. Deep in your bones. In 12-Step Recovery, we talked all the time about keeping our side of the street clean, right? Beautiful. And what comes from that is a degree of peace. Yeah, that's right. And the foundation of that is like a phrase that you'll relate to, of course, fearless in searching inventory. Yeah.

inventory of yourself, which means because you're willing to do that fearless and searching inventory, you can stand strong in what you're not going to take on. You're not going to say that you're responsible for that or be guilt-tripped into feeling inferior to others because they're lambasting you about something that you're like, no, honestly, I don't think it was that bad. And I have authority to say, I don't think it was that bad inside my own heart because I'm fully prepared to say what is bad based on a sincere and searching inventory. Yeah. I want to make sure we hit unilateral virtue because I love that idea, but I want to stay here for a second and talk a little bit about a couple of words that you used in there that are part of a cultural conversation to some degree these days, which is around impact versus intent. Yeah, exactly. There are differing schools

of thought. And I tend to think people land on one extreme or the other on this, right, versus a middle ground, which is there's one idea which says, if what you did impacted me negatively, it doesn't matter what your intent was. You are wrong. There's another school that tends to say, but I didn't mean it that way. So it didn't hurt you. Right. Or it shouldn't hurt you. It shouldn't hurt you because I didn't mean it that way. That wasn't my intent. And I think in relationship, this becomes very difficult at times because we go, well, my intent was, and you took it X way. And, you know, so there is this searching and fearless moral inventory where we go, well, you know, to me, that's a two, but to my partner, it was an eight. Now, how much of that do I need to take on or not take on? Because we know that people respond to things from a variety of factors,

right? The tone about the shoes in the doorway might be a two on its own. Yeah. But if you've talked with that tone for five years, it might be an eight now, right? Or if your partner had a dad who was slightly angry, when you use a very mildly angry tone, they might react in an eight. So impact and intent can very often be mismatched. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I just love to hear you sort of elaborate on that or kind of, you know, talk through that. Yeah. Or just add another thing. Let's suppose that you are a white person and the person you're saying that to is a person of color, let's say.

Yeah. And so there's another element in to is a person of color, let's say. Yeah. And so there's another element in the mix in which someone who belongs to much more the dominant side and advantaged privileged side in the culture, including historically, is then criticizing and in effect commanding another person to do something. So you're, right? Multiple layers of that. For me, having worked through this territory a lot, including in terms of kind of classic diversity trainings and considerations about it, let's see. One of the keys for me that's been helpful has been to internally cut to the chase about, okay, what's my correction from now on? That kind of is independent from the emotional charge and sometimes the accusations

that are flying or in disagreements about what something means, let alone disagreements about what happened. Yeah. Right. And also, how can I put it, disengagement from the understandable backlog that a person who's been shoved down and had the boot on their neck and their parents and their grandparents and their ancestors and all the rest of that to kind of in effect acknowledge that while zeroing in on, okay, what am I going to do next time? Yeah. Well, you've got a line that says you don't have to fight about the past to agree about what you'll do from now on. And that line just jumped off the page at me because how powerful that's right. Because how powerful is that idea? Like, okay, your fault, my fault.

We're rehashing what may have happened. My memory, your memory of what happened. It's all muddled ground. Right. Right. What we can do is say, let's talk about what we do now moving on. And let's create, you talk about agreements in the book. Let's create an agreement about what's going to happen.

You can't reset the emotional clock entirely. I'm not saying that, but you are resetting it in a sense. And you can then from that agreement, then have conversations about, you know, how are we doing with our new agreement about how this happened? That's right. A second key distinction for me is to kind of tease apart what the experience of the other person is from maybe their accusations around it, right? I don't have to necessarily buy into the accusations, you know, that I was an egregious asshole or promulgating a bunch of microaggressions from my privilege or something. I don't have to necessarily agree with those accusations while being really interested in and sincere about understanding the experience of the other person. And in a context of a kind of unconditional grounding in goodwill and kindness and compassion, not from a pity place, not from a superiority place, but just from a naturally open heart.

That distinction between what's the experience of the other person and being interested in it sincerely and trying to learn from it, distinguishing that from whether or not their accusations are founded or whether they're over the top or whether I need to feel guilty about it, you know, separating that out, I find super helpful too. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'll give you an example of that. I grew up in a home in which my parents had a monopoly on the expression of anger.

And so I entered adulthood super uptight, really pinched. And I saw myself also, I was very young going through school, this nerdy young kid. And I did not have any sense really of my personal power, didn't get it. And then it was really in my marriage, including the early years of our children, now 35 or so years ago for our oldest, my wife started pointing out to me that actually I had an intensity that I was totally unaware of. And I also grew up in a home where my parents let fly a fair amount of emotional intensity. It was not a big deal to me. And I also grew up in a home where my parents let fly a fair amount of emotional intensity. It was not a big deal to me. And I had to realize that the experience of

other people was that they were shaken. I wasn't abusive, but I was just intense. And I didn't realize the impact of that intensity. And so I learned over time to stop being so defensive about the fact that I had every right in the world to say that because it's really true, you left your shoes in the damn doorway again, right? I had to separate out the validity, whatever it was, let's say, which usually there is some validity in what we say, even if it comes out in a sort of messy, turbocharged way, and then focus on and learn from, oh, wow, that's how it landed on you. That's how it landed on you. You know, that was really helpful and more broadly helpful to realize that, man, we're so affected by each other. We're vulnerable. We're social primates who are evolved to be, in effect, the most affected by other species on the planet by design.

Of course we're affected. Of course you are affected. It's not because you're weak or a whiner or needy. Of course you are affected by what they do. And flip the other way, they are really affected by what you do. flip the other way, they are really affected by what you do. The micro-expressions across your face of contempt, derisiveness, disdain, a little exasperation, not really being present, your eyes start wandering away, you're not showing up for them. They get affected by that, let alone if you start adding significant anger into the

mix. And anyways, it's been helpful for me to have that feeling of almost the tenderness of other people while also finding ways to be strong and be clear and to say what needs to be said. There's such an art to that, that ability to say what you need to say and do it in a way that has the most likelihood of being received. It is a real skill. It is a real skill to learn, but I do think it really can be learned. And I think it's one of the most valuable things you can learn to do is, you know, how do you have difficult conversations in a effective and productive way? There was a book that's been out a long time called crucial conversations. I don't know if you're familiar with that one, but so many great pieces in there too, about, you know,

how do you approach this? You know, there's some parallels to what you're talking about in your book and in their book, because, you know, they do say you got to start internally. Yeah, that's right. You know, you got to start internally getting clear on getting to a settled place, to a strong place. You've got to get clear on what do you actually want? What matters here? What's important? So there's a lot of work, ideally, that is done. Now, it can be done very, I'm not saying you got to set aside hours to do it necessarily. But I do think it needs to be done. It can be done fairly quickly. Sometimes it needs to be done over a longer period of time where there's some real thought about like, this is an important thing to me and how I'm about to communicate this actually matters because I want

it to be both kind, but I also want it to be effective. Right. Oh, it's good. So I'll just tell you from a lot of couples counseling and different kinds of couples, including parents and teenagers and family members and also in work environments. So first, classic setup, A and B, walk into the office, right? A says, I want you to change. B says, I want you to change. Yep. And then B says, yeah, I'll change you first. Boom, deadlock.

That's where unilateral virtue comes in, where you practice, I think of it as the 80-20 rule. Put 20% of your attention on what you want from them. Meanwhile, put 80% of your attention on how you could be a better partner or friend or worker or boss or sibling and so forth, because that is unilateral virtue and you'll feel so much better by doing that. Yeah. Yeah. That's so good. 80, 20. Actually,

I read that in the book too. And I loved it because you hear people say it's 50, 50, or then you'll hear other people say, no, no, no, no. It's a hundred percent. You zero percent the other person. And neither of those to me is right. So I think 80, 20 feels about right. Like 80% of my effort really should be on me and what I'm doing. And neither of those to me is right. So I think 80-20 feels about right. Like 80% of my effort really should be on me and what I'm doing. But you know what? I'm a human being. I'm not like a robot and I'm not going to respond and pay attention to 20% of it. For me, it reframed everything to realize that the strongest, most badass kind of way to be is to zero out the other person's complaints to the maximum reasonable

extent you can going forward, right? Whatever happened in the past, focus on the future from now on rather than arguing about the past. That was the best thing you can do for yourself. And think about what is it like to be with someone who sincerely wants to sort out what is the maximum reasonable correction to put in going forward without necessarily beating themselves up with a lot of guilt. Just, okay, how can I prevent that next time or what can we do going forward? When you're with that kind of person, you want to give them everything in the world, you know, because they're chill and cool and reasonable to work with or live with or sleep with. Okay. So that's one. Here's

another one that I've just seen a lot. People don't make requests. They tend to make demands. You need to get your shoes out of the door rather than, hey, I request that from now on, you make an effort to keep your shoes out of the doorway. Okay. Can we have an agreement about that? And is there anything I could do maybe even that could help you keep that agreement? Like not rushing you so much in the morning. Pick up my damn shoes. Yeah. Like not buy you any more shoes, kid.

No, no. I'm just joking. But you see what I mean? But focus on requests. Requests, not demands. Now, if the other person doesn't meet your request, there could be consequences. And those consequences are not a threat. They're just reality, right? If you have a roommate who keeps leaving their shoes in the doorway or the equivalent times 10, after a while, you're going to either get, you know,

kick them out of the apartment that you have the lease on or, you know, find somewhere else to live or something like that. There could be consequences if people don't meet your request. Here's the third one. If I slip it in really fast, I've just seen it a million times. People routinely do not actually speak from their heart. They don't share their experience. They say things like, you're wrong, or you made me something. You made me mad. You hurt me. Or you're bad in some ways, you did something wrong, they find fault. Rather than what is much more effective, even though it's harder and more courageous, is to just slow it down and go with dignity and appropriately say more like what your actual experience is, how you feel. So in the structure, as you all know, of nonviolent communication, it's called nonviolent

communication. It's really helpful here. The structure basically when X happened or happens, I feel Y because I need Z. In other words, and X is described objectively. So when you roll your eyes at me when I'm talking or when you interrupt me, which is factual, I feel frozen. I feel startled. I feel kind of flooded like I was with my kind of scary stepfather coming at me. I feel like I don't matter enough for you to slow down and actually give me an extra 10 seconds to finish my sentences. You know, I feel this inside. I feel kind of scared of you. It feels scary a little. I feel mad, honestly, as well. I feel like I just want to back away. I don't want to be with you. I don't want to have anything to do with you. I'm not saying that's what I'm going

to do, but I feel that because deep down, like you, like everybody, common humanity, I need to feel like I exist in the minds of others who matter to me, that I matter to people who matter to me. I need to feel that I have standing, that I'm not voiceless and pushed around like I was when I was young as a young girl in my family. These are things I need. So from now on, I request that you let me finish my sentences before you interrupt me. You know, I'm happy to make as much time for each of us in conversation. I'm not trying to claim more time.

I'm just trying to have as much time back and forth as you. Could we do that going forward? That's a very powerful framework with a lot of dignity and gravity in it and self-respect. And it's very effective. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today.

How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening?

Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You've got another line in the book that says, if the results in our relationships are not so good, it's our process that needs improving. And I think all this that we're talking about to some

degree is process, right? It's about how do we interact with each other? How do we talk to each other? How do we express needs not being met, et cetera. And my experience has been also that when a relationship people can be oriented almost as if there's this third thing that's out there, which is our dynamic. And if you and I can unite on, we're on one side, our problematic dynamic is on the other side. Not I'm on one side, you're on it. So by talking about process, it moves it out into this thing, my fault, your fault, and becomes this other thing that is a different thing that we've co-created, of course, but that we can co-resolve. There's something about that shift

that I think is really powerful. And so I just think that line in the book about, you know, it's a process issue can be really powerful and healing. Oh, that's right. Good process creates good product. So if you have good product, you know, you have good process. If you have bad results, bad outcomes, bad product, take a look at your process with each other, how you interact. Yeah. Relationships are built from interactions and interactions are built from kind of turn-taking. All right, you said this, then they did that. Okay, now what do you do, right? And there's kind of like a range. How can you be maximally skillful back and forth, like tennis or ping pong or something, the volley back and forth,

given what they've offered to you. And if you look at people who are really effective in the world, historically, like Gandhi or today the Dalai Lama, Michelle Obama, these are people who again and again say what they need to say, but they do it clearly from a place of dignity, gravity, and self-respect without adding all the topspin that enables other people to avoid the actual crux of their message. That's really effective. I'll tell you a quick story. A long time ago, That's really effective. Yeah. I'll tell you a quick story. A long time ago, 25, 30 years ago, I got to meet the Dalai Lama.

And I was on a board at a meditation center, Sparrow Rock Meditation Center. And we had a meeting where the Dalai Lama came in to a room with maybe 150 teachers of various kinds. And I was a small frog in that big pond, obviously. And the Dalai Lama came in with his translator and a third man I didn't pay much attention to. And after a while, though, I started to notice the third man, who looked kind of athletic. He was wearing a suit. He looked like a middle linebacker in a small college football team. And he just stood there in the front of the room, radiating loving kindness, and his eyes never stopped moving. And he was the Dalai Lama's ninja. He was there to take a bullet for him if need be. And you could

feel there was no sense of menace. It wasn't like he was scowling. He was just there with this grounded presence. And you knew he was like a black belt in seven things or something like that, you know, he could do anything, but he just radiated kindness and goodwill while his eyes kept scanning the room, right? And I think about people who have that quality of strength of character who are fully prepared. They mean business and they're fully prepared to do what's needed to serve the greater good and to be protective and supportive and provide as well. That's how we can kind of live into, right? That's the wolf we feed. What does it feel like?

You just feel immediately. I'm sitting up a little straighter. I'm channeling the Dalai Lama's ninja a little bit here. But boom, you're rested in that way of being. And as we dwell there, increasingly that becomes the habit of our heart. That becomes more and more the way we dwell ourselves. Yep, yep, that's beautiful. I want to hit just a couple other lines that came out in the book before we wrap up.

One of them is you say large issues are often resolved through a series of small agreements. Say more about that. Oh, that's great. So let's say that you're in a work setting, right? And, you know, you're part of a team and the team's discombobulated and other people's not getting the job done, lands on your desk somehow, or makes it harder for you. You know, it's a big mess, right? Maybe that has to do with the culture of the company. So you just start with small agreements. Like when do you have meetings? Is an agreement to come on time, to end on time? Do the meetings conclude with a statement

of who's gonna do what by when? So you start building in a structure of accountability and personal accountability that's results-oriented. It's about producing tangible results that are identifiable. And you do it step by step by step. That would be an example there. Or in your home life, let's suppose kind of classically. After you have children, my first book was about taking good care of mothers over the long haul after kids come along, which means taking care of the partner if there's a partner involved. And more broadly, the village it should take to raise a child. The village it

does take and should be present and often is more like a ghost town in the developed countries of the world these days. In any case, very often in a couple, let's say a heterosexual couple, there's a kind of movement over time that maybe is a lack of erotic interest on the part of one person and on the part of another person, a kind of disengagement and a lack of interest and emotional connection. And so you start to realize, oh, if we start making little agreements about emotional connection, spending more time at least every day where we're just hanging out with each other for at least 10 minutes in a row, even though the kids are pulling on us and life's crazy and we both have jobs, but we're going to set aside that time. Or we're going to give each other listening. We're going to practice a deeper kind of listening where we're really attentive for five minutes in a row. It's not forever. And we're going to connect more. We're going to touch each other affectionately, not as a prelude to a request for sex.

We're going to connect physically. Like we're going to make that important to us. We're going to do things that we're both interested in. Maybe my wife and I, we're interested now in Jack Ryan. So we're like going through the Jack Ryan TV stuff, whatever, like blows my mind. My wife's interested in an action film. But, okay, we are. Shared interest. Maybe it's you play cards maybe you go for walks maybe you have a cat or dog you care about

together okay fine and then on the basis of those small agreements then suddenly the erotic dimension of your life has more of a foundation for it and you can start coming to mutual understandings there not like you're trying to mandate some sort of forced thing, but you start having understandings like, okay, at a certain frequency, we're going to connect in that way. Once a week, once a month, twice a week, you know, we're going to connect in that way. Then, you know, bit by bit, you start making those little understandings, it creates more of a sort of a field of mutuality with another person. That's really hopeful. Instead of feeling like, you know, the proverbial elephant has to be swallowed in one bite, you don't need to eat elephants, should not

eat elephants, obviously. Big pile of tofu, let's say. Just bit by bit, spoonful by spoonful, right? And as you put it, I love that proverb. Wow. Little by little, a little becomes a lot. Yep. Certainly ties back to that. You say that in your experience as a therapist, poor empathy is the core problem in most troubled relationships. Let's not talk about how the couple got there, but let's talk about the path forward. If empathy turns out to be the core problem, how do you start building that back?

That's great. And that goes to your topic earlier about impact distinct from intent. You know, for example, just about that, when you start to imagine, you know, what's it like to be you, you over there, the you that you're living with, sleeping with maybe, or the you that you're now in the middle of this kind of awkward conversation where maybe you're a person who has a lot of advantage in the culture and you're suddenly like, I didn't mean any harm. Like, what? You know, and what's it like to be that other person? What's it like to have grown up in the ways that they've grown up?

What's it like to know that their parents and grandparents, if not great-grandparents, were enslaved, were property, you know, and had their children taken away, if not great-grandparents, were enslaved, were property, you know, and had their children taken away, sold themselves, their own children sold into slavery, for example. It's really staggering to enter into the world of others and you start to understand, of course, they've had it up to here with all that. And it's not that you personally are doing a bad thing. It's just that you're interacting with someone who's had so many bad things happen to them and to their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. Of course, understandably, they feel that way. And so empathy is really important. Entering into the world, the mind of another person, technically. So now the

how-to. I'll do the quick how-to here. Empathy basically boils down to three circuits in your brain. That's a real how-to, right? So we have empathy for actions, we have empathy for emotions, and we have empathy for thoughts. To simplify a lot of stuff, three major neural substrates are involved in those things. So one thing you can start doing is tracking the body language and the micro expressions of the other person. Imagining what would you be feeling if your body was moving or sitting or being contracted in that way. If your shoulders were coming forward, hunching over yourself like theirs are, and their head is kind of ducking a little, how might you be feeling? Like you might be feeling

beleaguered and less than and not powerful and kind of like you're trying to appease. But underneath that is a growing seething rage and having to freaking appease yet again. How might you feel? Or looking at the expressions right around their eyes or on the corners of their mouth, the main areas of micro-expression. A great TV show, speaking of, is Lie to Me, especially the first season, where they really go into Paul Ekman's work about microexpressions and really tracking what's going on in another person in expressions that last half a second or a couple seconds at most, but you can really learn a lot. So right there, empathy for actions, mirror neurons, mirror-like networks get

involved in that. Empathy for feelings, like what are their feelings, especially beneath the surface? They're coming at you all hot and heavy, angry, angry. What's underneath that? Are they frustrated? Are they anxious? Do they feel hurt? Have they just had it up to here with you being the next person in a long line of folks who've been disrespectful, who haven't slowed down to really listen. What might they be feeling underneath it all? And with training and practice, you become more comfortable with that kind of empathy. And last, empathy for thoughts.

It's called theory of mind, where basically you kind of imagine what might they be thinking, given what they're saying or how they're acting or given their personality. And you can think of personality in lots of ways, like the Enneagram point or the Myers-Briggs or the this or that, their horoscope. Who knows? You know what I mean? Their upbringing. Given how they were brought up, given their situation in life right now, given the fact that they've got chronic pain, let's say, physical pain, given the fact that their previous partner cheated on them massively, given that fact, what are their hot buttons? Understandably, what are the questions running in their mind?

The thought balloon over their head, like in a cartoon, right? The thought balloon over their head. What could be cooking in that thought balloon? You're forming hypotheses. You're speculating a little bit about what could be happening. These are things we can all do. It doesn't mean you're trying to do mind reading. You're not being a therapist. And actually what promotes empathy is boundaries. Because if you feel more rooted, like a tree, deeply rooted, you can be more open to the storms blowing at you from other people or happening inside their minds, the hurricane in their head, right? You can be more open empathically to it if you feel deeply rooted. And you're also clear that's their mind. It's not necessarily my mind. And just

because they're upset doesn't necessarily mean it was my fault. Just because they want something, because you can tune into the wants of others, doesn't necessarily mean I have to give it to them. Just because they think things have a certain meaning for them doesn't necessarily mean they have to have the same meaning for me. You know, it's the establishing of that differentiation is the technical term, that boundary. Fences make for good neighbors, the old proverb, right? And I find this so exciting. I'm a longtime rock climber. It's about the courage to venture past your point of protection, to enter into the world of the other person, and to feel the nobility in that a little bit, the moxie, you know, the badassery a little bit, and being brave enough and strong enough and caring enough, really kind enough to really enter into the world of the other person.

These are ways to help yourself enter into that world and train so that increasingly you're just much more rapidly empathic. You feed the wolf of empathy and you can become more empathic over time. And then when people feel, Jan Siegel has a great phrase, when we feel felt, feeling felt, right? When you give others the experience of feeling felt by you, they tend to cool their jets because very often that's what people really want. You know, yeah, they want you to give them what they want, but really they want you to understand what they want and recognize why they want what they want through empathy. And then also empathy

gives you a lot of useful information. You start realizing that the real issue here is not about the shoes in the doorway. It's not about that at all. It's about the fact that you're physically big and they're physically smaller. It's the fact that they've been bullied when they were young. It's the fact that all kinds of haughty white people have been telling them what to do their whole life, one way or another, without even recognizing the fact that they were doing that, and they've had it up to here. And you suddenly realize, oh, okay, that's useful information. You know, I can take it into account going forward. Yeah, yeah. Empathy can be so helpful. Let's end with one last idea here. Sure. You start with this very early in the book, and this goes back to being with ourselves and handling ourselves. And you said,

everything I've learned about practicing with the mind fits into three categories, being with what you're experiencing, reducing what's harmful and painful, and increasing what's helpful and enjoyable. And so I love these three basic things. Can you run us through those three real quick? Oh, sure. That's really foundational. And by the way, this is a very astute conversation, Eric. No surprise. And I appreciate it a lot. Yeah. A good metaphor is imagine your mind and the brain-mind go together as like a garden. Well, we can witness what's happening in the garden with mindfulness, kindness, hopefully. We're not trying to do anything to the garden.

We're just simply being with it. Second, we can pull weeds, right? We can pull weeds or prevent them from landing in the garden in the first place. Third, we can grow flowers, right? So right there, in terms of the two wolves metaphor, we can be with the two wolves without recoiling. Doesn't mean we're agreeing with them. We can see what's there. We can be with what's there. We can also withdraw food. We can stop feeding certain wolves. And third, we can start encouraging and even breeding, if I dare say that,

other wolves, the flowers and fruit that we hope to grow in the rest of our mind. So those three are really helpful to recognize. And in effect, the second and third are about working with your mind. The first is about being with your mind. Being with your mind is primary, but it's not enough. Many people in the mindfulness, new age, self-help world overvalue just witnessing. You can witness your mind forever and it isn't going to change because the structures in it are baked into your brain. They're physical, especially the negative ones, which are designed to really sink in deep roots. The brain is very fertile for weeds by design because that's what kept

our ancestors alive back in the Jurassic Park and the Stone Age, essentially. So it's important to work with your mind actively, not just be with it. Second, very often there's a natural flow. Something has bothered you. So your partner, let's say you left the shoes in the doorway. Yep. Okay. So your partner, boom, you know, reads you the riot act about the shoes yet again. And what you could do first is slow it down in your own mind. Buy yourself 10 seconds. Buy yourself five seconds.

Buy yourself five minutes to kind of go, whoa. And be aware of, man, you're getting so pissed off. So many reactions are arising. You're having a flashback to your childhood where your angry parent kept constantly criticizing you and you became rebellious about it. So now it's like, screw the world. I'm going to leave my freaking shoes wherever I want, let's say. So you become aware of these things in you. You're not acting them out. You're not trying to change them. You're being with them. That's where you start. And then at a certain point, often after a few breaths,

maybe a few minutes, you start moving into releasing. You start letting go of that angry reactivity. You start disengaging from that turbocharger from your childhood, you know, even traumatic history in childhood. You start disengaging from these thoughts you have about your partner that they're a total asshole and you've had it up to here and you're not going to tell me what to do anymore. You know, you just let it go, let it go, let it go, disengage. And then after you've kind of released that for a while, after a few breaths or maybe a few minutes, you start to let in. You start to replace what you've released with something beneficial. Like, okay, the feeling that you can stand up for yourself reasonably without being a jerk about it,

that there's a middle way between being a jerk or a doormat. Okay, I'm going to let that in. I'm going to know what that feels like just to be there. You can also let in that, yeah, in the scale of wrongdoing, this is like a one. I left my shoes in the doorway. But the fact that I keep doing it maybe makes it a two or a three. I'm going to let that land and I'm going to correct. I'm going to commit to not doing that in the future. You could let that in, right? You could let in more empathy for the other person. Like given their history and their background, the fact they're juggling a million balls,

maybe they're the primary homemaker and caregiver for the children. The last thing in the world they need is your shoes in the doorway on top of everything else they're dealing with. Okay, you let that in. And then, you know, you come to some kind of resolution. So in effect, three steps, let be, let go, let in. It's a wonderful structure. And to really make sure you let in, a lot of people focus on letting be, let go, let in. It's a wonderful structure. And to really make sure you let in, a lot of people focus on letting be and letting go, but they don't grow the flowers. And as any gardener knows, if you don't replace your weeds with flowers, the weeds come back. So it's very important in the space that's left after you release to focus on what is the wolf, your

metaphor again, that you want to feed, to grow and fill in in that space. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love those three things. And I love that garden analogy. I think it's a really powerful way to think about how to work with the mind. And I agree with you. I think mindfulness taken too far that it's only about seeing is incomplete. I think it gets such an emphasis is because what most of us do is we don't do that first step and we start either wildly pulling at weeds or throwing seeds all around trying to plant something positive there. Fix it, fix it, fix it. Yeah. Instead of actually spending enough time to go, okay, this is what is, the feelings that come with it, I may not like them, but I can be with them

from there. And this is the sort of to recap your book, right? Is from that place now of strength, of groundedness, of consideration, I can now think about what is the best strategy in my relationship. Is it to go plant some flowers? Is it to go talk about a difficult issue, you know, but I'm doing that from a place of wisdom and strength. Yeah, that's great. And I know we're finishing. I'll just maybe finish with a plug here. Please. Not so much for my book, although I invite people to check it out. Actually, it's the result of 40 years of work. And it's my first book that's entirely focused on relationships. And I just kind of packed into it everything I'd want someone to know. And I wished I had known, you know, my own good judgment. And that's embedded in the book,

has come from my own experiences of bad judgment. Anyway, it's that I think we can get caught up also in fighting with the weeds. And the truth is the mind is inherently imperfectible. It just unfolds. It keeps unfolding. And biologically, you know, we have tendencies of various kinds. We do the best we can with them. But where the great opportunity is, really, is to deepen in our capacities to be with our minds, not identified with it, first. And second, to grow more flowers there, to really tend to the garden and to focus on beneficial experiences in which we can dwell, right? And then increasingly become what dwell within us as we turn beneficial states to traits. And I would really encourage that for people

because it's so hopeful. You know, we could be pulling weeds forever in the garden of our mind and certain weeds will never leave. You know, we can be pulling weeds forever in the garden of our mind, and certain weeds will never leave. You know, the impact of certain traumatic experiences, it will always hurt to think about what happened, let's say. But what we can do is grow the good alongside all that is else there. And then we have more of the good inside ourselves to offer to others, too. Beautiful. Well, Rick, thank you so much. It is always such a pleasure to have you on. Oh, same here.

We'll have links in the show notes to your book, to your website, to all your stuff. But again, thank you so much and such a pleasure. Very much myself. And you're growing and feeding a lot, a lot of good 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 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 really know really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign jason bobblehead the really know really podcast follow us on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts