The One You Feed - Mini Episode- Tending Our Own Gardens

Episode Date: February 8, 2015

[powerpress]  An approach to dealing with all the craziness out in the world: tend to you own garden.  Some of our most popular interviews that you might also enjoy:Kino MacGregorStrand of OaksMike Scott of the WaterboysTodd Henry- author of Die EmptyRandy Scott HydeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 hey everybody it's Eric from the one You Feed with this week's mini-episode. But before we jump into that, I'm going to make a small announcement. Although that sounds awfully formal for what this is.

But I basically wanted to say that several of you have been asking over a course of months whether I work with anybody individually on helping them to feed their good wolf or make behavior change patterns or get ideas for how to move their life forward. And up till now, I've been declining those requests. However, I'm going to start considering some of those on sort of a limited basis. So if that's something that sounds like it might be interesting to you, drop me an email at eric at one you feed.net. And I can talk you through the details of what that looks like. With that, let's go into the mini episode. So the topic this week came from a listener on Twitter

and I had tweeted out a quote from Oliver Berkman. He was our second guest. Great interview if you haven't listened to it. I'd go all the way back and get that one. I loved that one. But the tweet said, your beliefs about the world are what cause you distress, not the events themselves.

And this person wrote me back and said, your beliefs about the world are what cause your distress, not the events themselves. And this person wrote me back and said, I would like to believe this, but recent events in the Middle East are distressing to many. Help? And I found that to be a really great question or a really profound statement because it gets to the heart of how far do you take this idea that our beliefs about the world are what cause our distress. We've talked on the show an awful lot and I've done a mini episode I think on the idea of the second arrow. So there is one type of place where it's clear that our beliefs about the world are what causing our distress. So for example, if I break my arm, I've got the pain of my arm. And then if I go on and think about how stupid I am, and all the things I'm not going to be able to do,

that is a, those are stories I'm projecting onto that. That's the second arrow that I'm adding to that. So I think that's pretty straightforward. And it's something that I think is important to watch out for, and can be really helpful when we catch those and stop those. But this is a very different kind of question. There are genuinely horrible things that happen in the world to people all the time. And the question is, are those only horrible because of our beliefs? And I think the answer to that is probably no. But this is not a deep philosophy podcast, so I'm going to stay away from that.

And I think I'm going to talk more practically about what do we do with those kinds of things, because it is, those things are distressing. And so I think the first thing is to think about what distress means to us and what are our reactions to that. In the beginning of the course I did on the seven habits of highly effective people, we talk about a concept, it's Stephen Covey's, I'll call it his circle of concern and circle of influence concept. And the way to think of this is if you've got a really big circle, that's in within that circle are all the things that you're concerned about. And then there's a much smaller circle, that's your circle of influence. And the things that are inside that circle are the things that we can actually do something about or have some sort of impact on. So you can imagine that that

you've got the big circle with everything in it that you are concerned about and events in the world that are horrible, whatever they might be, would fall into that category. And then the much smaller circle is your circle of influence of where you can actually apply some effort. And so one of the ways that I like to think about this is, and what Covey says is that if you spend time in your circle of concern, but not in your circle of influence, your circle of influence actually gets smaller. And that is because we wear ourselves out fretting about and thinking about and worrying about things that we have no ability to do anything about.

Whereas when we spend more time in our circle of influence, then that circle of influence tends to grow. And one of the things that's right in the heart of the circle of influence is our thoughts about the world and how we see the world. One of the things that is probably not in our circle of influence, at least initially, is some of the events that are happening around the world in distant places that we find to be horrible. So what do we do with this? It's something that is painful to watch often, to hear about. If we're compassionate people, our hearts go out. And yet we've got this, there's very little ability to do anything about it. So the first thing that I would say is, if it's something that matters a lot to you, that you deeply care about, and you can find something to do about it that you think is helpful, then by all means, I would recommend that you do that. The challenge, of course, is that the number of things in the world that are really difficult to stomach

are far more than any of us could take on as one person. Any of those problems consumes an entire lifetime. But I do think it's important to say, all right, is there something I can do about it? Is there some action I can take, send money to a charity? Is there something I can do that's going to allow me to do something about this? If the answer to that is no, that there's nothing I'm going to do about it, then I think we get into a slippery slope. I don't want to be a calloused person who doesn't care about those things. And yet a lot of times, spending a lot of time caring about those things makes it much harder for me to care about the things in my life

that are right around me that I can do something about and have some sort of impact on. So it becomes a question of being very realistic about the way the world is and realistic about what our own abilities and capabilities are. The French philosopher Voltaire in his famous book Candide has a quote where he says that we must take care of our own garden.

And I think the idea is that what he's saying is that we have a space, we have our own garden, however big that might be, you can call it your circle of influence, that we are able to work within. And that if we work within that, we are very effective in the world and we are able to work within and that if we work within that we are very effective in the world and we're able to do a lot of things that matter both for ourselves for the people around us and the broader world but if we let the world set our agenda and the things that are happening in the world set our point of view, our mindset, and where our energy goes. We have very little that we can do and we're buffeted about by the storms of life all of the time. So I think that circling all the way back around to the quote, your beliefs about the world are

what cause your distress, not the events themselves. I don't know how, you know, I don't, I think there's a fundamental truth in there. I also think that any statement you can take way too far into too much of an extreme, but I do think there's a practical lesson in there, which is what do I do with these things that are in the world? And so for one, I've mostly stopped really paying a lot of attention to the news. And I know a lot of people think that that is sticking your head in the sand and hiding. And I've thought that often. And I sometimes still do think that, actually. But what I think is important to think about there is how little I do anything with those things.

So I can listen to NPR all the way to work, and I know what's going on. But by and large, I may be more educated or informed, but I doubt that I'm any more effective at work. I doubt that I'm any kinder to the people around me. I doubt that I'm better at caring for my family. I actually think I'm probably less able to do some of those things. At least it seems to me as I've observed myself when I am doing that and when I'm not doing that, observed myself when I am doing that and when I'm not doing that, what my reactions like are in the world. And so although it may be, you know, I choose to not think of it as sticking my head in the sand. I choose to think of it as, as Voltaire said, tending my own garden, taking care of that circle of influence in which I can work. And by doing that, increasing the size of

that circle of influence. An example in my own life would be this show, right? So I'm not going to be as bold to suggest that this is some huge circle of influence, but I'm certainly reaching more people than I ever have before. And that is a direct result of really choosing to tend my own garden pretty diligently that allowed me to get to a place that something like this was possible. And so I have some personal experience in the fact that this concept is a very useful one. So I don't think, as I said, we're not a deep philosophy podcast. I don't have the answer to why is there suffering in the world and what should we do about all of it. But I do think I have some thoughts on how can we be live more effectively live better, live a more powerful life within those things that are happening in the world. So hopefully you find some of that helpful.

Again, if you are interested in working with me individually, let me know. Send me a note at eric at oneufeed.net and we can talk through it. Another episode out on Tuesday as always. Hope you have a good week. We'll talk again soon. Bye. Thank you.