The One You Feed - Navigating Modern Challenges: Practical Spirituality and the Quest for Joy with Shabnam Mogharabi

Starting point is 00:00:00 If we are curious and we are constantly exploring the world at asking questions, not always seeking answers, but really thinking about what are the biggest questions we have to grapple with, that's actually what opens more doors to enlightenment. And so that's why education is really important to me, because again, there's spiritual roots for it from my perspective. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have worked. recognize the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or

Starting point is 00:00:35 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.

Starting point is 00:01:10 We live in a world that isolates us, floods us with bad news, and erodes our sense of meaning. Shabnam McGarabby is fighting back with joy. She's the founder of the Joy Brigade, a storyteller and co-author of the Soul Boom Workbook with Rain Wilson. In today's episode,

Starting point is 00:01:29 we unpack how joy isn't an emotion, it's a mindset. She shares how her faith, her family, and years of work in positive psychology have shaped her view of resilience, creativity, and what it really means to feed the good wolf. This one is rich, thoughtful, and grounded in real tools. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hi, Shabnon. Welcome to the show. Hi, Eric. It's nice to be here. I'm excited to have you. on, you recently co-wrote a book with Rain Wilson, who's been a guest on this show a few times, and it's called The Soul Boom Workbook, Spiritual Tools for Modern Living. And we're going to get into a lot of that book here shortly, but we'll start like we always do with the

Starting point is 00:02:15 parable. And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild. 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. They think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins?

Starting point is 00:02:41 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. I love that parable. I've actually quoted that parable before. So it's a powerful one. And I think in my current chapter of life, I have small children. I have a five-year-old and a two-year-old. And the first thing that I think of when you say that parable to me is my kids.

Starting point is 00:03:08 Because, you know, in parenting, it's very easy to be, we got to go, put on your shoes. Why are we late? You know, et cetera. But what you praise and what you encourage and what you notice in your kids is what grows. And so when you say the one you feed is the one that grows, I immediately think. think of parenting and how hard it is to focus on the good and praise the effort and praise the good qualities in your kids and to really try to help those be the ones that grow. Yeah, I think that's a beautiful example. And I think a lot of people when they hear this parable think of their kids. I know

Starting point is 00:03:44 a lot of listeners over the years have said, like, I've taught this to my child and it becomes a shorthand we can use with each other. And the other thing that strikes me about that is that in order to do that with your kids, you actually have to know what you're trying to grow, what you're trying to cultivate, right? So there's a period or a process of understanding that and being conscious of it so that you actually do realize what you're feeding. Yes, that's so true. And I do think that even those priorities change over your life. You know, I think sometimes you can, in my 20s, I probably prioritize success and career far more than I do now where I far more prioritize community and kindness and strength and resilience, right?

Starting point is 00:04:28 So I think that also has made a difference in the chapter I'm in personally in my life and how I focus on certain things with my kids. It's really interesting. The other thing that it makes me think of is it's also kind of rewiring your kids' brains in a lot of ways. You know, evolutionarily, we're so wired to focus on negative and fight or flight or is this a risk, right? And so I sometimes also think that half of parenting, is trying to get my kids to, you know, assume good intentions and start from a place of kindness and,

Starting point is 00:05:02 you know, don't assume that everyone's out to get you. Don't assume that they meant to be mean, that maybe there was something else going on, right? And so rewiring even the way that your eyes are trained onto things, teaching your kids how to do that so hard. It's so hard, but it's also kind of what I think about when you're thinking about what you feed. Yeah, my son is at the other end of spectrum from your children. He is 27. So we're at a very different place, but I often wish that I had had him in some ways later in life because I think I had clearer ideas of what was important to me and what I thought was worth modeling and teaching them than I did when I was 28 years old. That's so true. And I, you know, I didn't get married until I was 39. And so I do feel like

Starting point is 00:05:48 being a late in life mom complete, I think I'm a very different mom in my 40s than I, then I would have been in my 20s. Very different. Totally agree. So I want to get in the book in a minute, but I want to hit a couple of other ideas that I've heard you talk about. And the first one is one that will tie back into the book also. And I saw you do a couple things. One is you recognize recently. You said, I can't tackle every issue that I care about. I need to focus my energy efforts in time. And so you narrowed your efforts down to education, women's rights, and immigration. And I think all of us are wrestling with this overwhelm of all the suffering that's in the world. Now, I think that's always been there. I think there's been more suffering

Starting point is 00:06:35 in the world than any of us could calculate always. Yeah. But I think we're getting inundated with it more than ever. And so I love this idea of bringing it down to a few things. And I want to tie that back to a key part of the book, which is that we're going to do this spiritual work inside of so that we can then take that beauty and goodness that we've hopefully cultivated out into the world. And I just love you to start there. Yeah. It's interesting that conversation or that post came about because I was talking to a friend who was saying, I just, my list is so long. My list is so long of the issues that I want to support the donations that I want to give, the volunteer hours I want to give. And I'm just overwhelmed even looking at the list. And I said,

Starting point is 00:07:23 And I remember telling her, like, well, then cross things off the list, you know, like, cross things off the list until you get down to like the three to five that are the most important to you, that if you don't spend time on anything but those three to five, that's what would matter. In the book, actually, we talk about a famous quote that says, listen to your heartbreak. Like, what breaks your heart the most and kind of triggers your inner activist most passionately? And that should be what you're drawn to. So for me, it happened to be those three topics. I'm a child of immigrants.

Starting point is 00:07:55 You know, I'm a child of refugees. I'm a woman. I'm the oldest of four sisters. My mom is one of four sisters. So I've always kind of cared a lot about women's rights, particularly given the background that they grew up with and the culture they escaped. And so I think there's certain things that I just,

Starting point is 00:08:09 I'm drawn to and trigger me more passionately. And so that was really important for me. And we tried to do that in the book as well, right? So one of the things that was really important to us in the book is that the book didn't just stay internal and it didn't just stay as a source of self-reflection, right? Because so many spirituality books and so many spiritual practices today are about, let's go internal, right? Let's be mindful. Let's meditate. Let's look internally. Let's self-regulate. All of which is super important. But we wanted to take an extra step and say,

Starting point is 00:08:42 okay, now that you did the spiritual work, now that you did the inner reflection, how do you then take that and actually actually practically, practically apply it in the world, right? What does it look like to have spiritual values inform how I think about immigration? What does it mean to have spiritual principles inform the actions I take around education, right? That was a really important kind of overarching framework for us. And it's also, frankly, you know, when I think about the things that it matter to me, like I believe that education is the source of all growth, right? If we are curious and we are constantly exploring the world and asking questions, not always seeking answers, but really thinking about what are the biggest questions we have to grapple with, that's actually what opens more doors to enlightenment.

Starting point is 00:09:26 And so that's why education is really important to me, because again, there's spiritual roots for it from my perspective. So I think all of this is interconnected, and that was really important for us in the book, to not just stay internal. I think what's interesting about that is in the book, you do try to reopen the idea of religion to people. So to not only see all the bad about it, but to be able to see if it could work for you, not saying it has to work for you, but if it could, and open that up. And I think that's one of the things that's happened is spiritual practices have decoupled from the tradition they came up in. a lot of what gets lost is that ethical element, right? Because a religion has practices, it has a community, but it has beliefs. It has beliefs. It has ethics embedded in it. It has morals in it. And so what we've done, and I think it's largely to the good, although people

Starting point is 00:10:25 debate this forever, is pull a lot of the practices out of the tradition they came up in, but then they're unmoored to any of these ethical concerns. And I think what you're doing is really trying to tie that back together, whether it's through organized religion or whether it's being really clear for yourself about what matters in the world. What do you believe in? Brain and I are always saying that we threw all the kind of spiritual wisdom out with the religious bathwater, right?

Starting point is 00:10:55 So we all said, for very good reason, we all said religion kind of sucks and is bad and is responsible for a lot of bad things. And a big swath, especially in America, more than, you know, 35% of people now call themselves spiritual, not religious, right? I'm real good with spirituality and the idea that there's something bigger out there, but I'm really not okay with the religious doctrine that comes with religion. And what we try to do is say, let's say, yes, truth, we accept religion has been responsible for a lot of bad things. That being said, let's train our eyes onto what was good about religion, which is that it did offer a moral framework. It does offer community and belonging, a support network for when, you know, things go

Starting point is 00:11:37 badly in your life. You know, so many people, someone passes away and the church comes together. There's potlugs. People are at your door, right, because that church community shows up for you. So there's a lot of good things that come with religion. So our message in the book is not go back to religion. Our message is train your eyes to think about what's good about religion and then figure out for yourself, what does a moral framework look like for you? What does community look like for you? If you were going to invent a new religion with its own kind of practices and rituals, what would that look like? So to think about the good things of religion and how you to shape that and bring that into your own life, because we really did say religion bad and we threw out all of the good

Starting point is 00:12:16 things that came with religion along with the bad. Yeah. And I think there's plenty of, as you say, good reasons for that. And they are systems that endured for a long period of time because there was some degree of coherency in them. There's also control, there's power, there's all sorts of stuff, but there's also some degree of coherency. And an example I can give is I'm a recovering addict, alcoholic, and I was in 12-step programs for a long time. And then I sort of hit a period where that just didn't feel like the right place for me. But I was worried because I was like, Well, if I just walk away from that, like, what all am I losing? What all am I missing?

Starting point is 00:12:58 And so I sort of reverse engineered. Like, what am I getting? Oh, I'm getting community. I'm getting a program of transformation. I'm getting an opportunity to be of service, right? I'm getting all these things. Can I piece those together? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:13:12 But it's harder, honestly, than just go into one place and getting it all right there, right? So I'm an example of kind of- You don't join a bowling league and then be like, check, check. check. I got all of these other things. Exactly. And the book is really good at walking through that. And the other thing I love about the book is it's a workbook. And I think that in today's day and age, we all have, not everyone, but by and large, we have all the information we need. What we don't know how to do is bridge that sort of knowledge to action or knowledge to embodiment gap. And that's what this book is really focused on, is first figuring out what's important to us and then how do we live that?

Starting point is 00:13:50 Yeah, both Rain and I are obsessed with and have done multiple times The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, which is a, you know, a seminal book for artists and creatives to really explore their creative voice. And so we wanted to create something that was the artist's way for the soul, the artist's way for spirituality. How do you create an experience, a set of activities and exploration of our spiritual lives in a way that gets people engaged with it? Because you're right. All the information is out there. I can go to chat GPT right now and say, They give me all of the ancient spiritual wisdom about X topic, and it'll spit out a diatribe for me, and I can tell it to write a 10,000 word paper, and it will do it. But what it doesn't do is bridge that divide. And the thing is, you know, oftentimes, I think when we are told, oh, practice kindness, we get these mantras of, oh, love your neighbor like you love yourself. Well, what does that mean? And how does that actually show up in our lives, right?

Starting point is 00:14:48 what are the actions we can take or practices we can do or even explore that idea. Does that make us feel a certain way? Does that make us not want to do it? Does that make us a no, but wait, you know, I want to prioritize my family versus my neighbors, right? So how do these lessons, these ideas land with you? But then also, what does it actually mean to practice that in the world? And so we didn't want to stay in the theoretical. We really wanted to stay in the practical. This is very much so practical guide to spirituality. So the artist's way is a great example. I love that, an artist's way for the soul. And in the artist way, there are some core practices that she recommends. The two most famous ones are morning pages and the other are artist dates, which you, in a LinkedIn post, mentioned you were taking artist dates back up. I know. It had been a while and I was like, I need to do these artist dates a little bit more. Has it been going hard with a two-year-old. Of course. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're not as long as I would like them to be. it used to be that I could do like a two-hour artist date and go to a museum or like a paper shop or whatever. And now it's like, okay, if I get 30 minutes, that's going to be great. Yeah, yeah. So to tie this back, to make this analogy between the artist's way and this workbook, what are a

Starting point is 00:16:04 couple of the core things that would make up the soul boom workbook equivalent of an artist date or a morning pages? That's a really good question. One thing that we come back to over and over again in the book is that ideally you're not doing these activities on your own. Over and over again, we say that spiritual work is not meant to be sole, singular work, where it's individual and isolated, right? Soul work, spiritual work is not isolated work. It is communal work. And it works better. Your soul thrives better when it's in community. So we encourage people to do the book alone, but to also do it with others, to start a spirituality book club or a soul boom work club. where they can actually do these ideas with others.

Starting point is 00:16:50 So one of the core practices is, you know, community building, do this work together, explore these ideas together. The second thing that I think is a critical element, or at least what we come back to over and over again in the book, is one of the core ideas that we kind of go through the book recognizing is the idea of noticing. We talk about it very specifically in the last section of the book, but all throughout the book, we basically ask everyone to have a practice of noticing, noticing their own internal emotions, noticing what things calm them down, noticing what elements of their life they're

Starting point is 00:17:26 grateful for. There's a practice of noticing what's going on externally, what's going on internally that doesn't happen, right? We are so externally focused. We're bombarded with information and thousands of videos on YouTube and, you know, Netflix shows and TikTok videos. So we're so distracted. Our attention splines are declining, we're not good at noticing anymore and we're not good at paying attention. And so I think attention and noticing is a through line of the book that over and over again, we're asking the reader to pause and notice. Notice what's happening in their community. Notice what needs there are in the people around them and the neighborhoods around them. Notice how certain things make them feel. Notice how certain things improve or decrease their mode. Notice what adds, you know, gratitude to their life and what does it, right? So really, being intentional about the attention that we're paying and the noticing that is happening in our lives. So I would say those two things are consistently throughout the book as core practices.

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Starting point is 00:19:47 There's one other also that I liked, which was the, you call it a spiritual workout plan, but a structured 30 to 45 minute daily routine divided into three phases. Can you talk us through that? Yeah, one of the other practices that we have is called the spiritual workout regime. And essentially we say, well, we have workout regimes for our bodies, right? Like we all have our warm up, you know, intense workout, cool down methodology, whether you're a runner or you're a weightlifter, you know, you do crazy high intensity stuff, whatever it is. But we don't really do that for our souls.

Starting point is 00:20:23 And so what we did is we kind of created a framework where we said, okay, what would your warm up period for your soul look like? Would that be, you know, spending five minutes in nature, listening to music, would that be saying a prayer? What would warm up your soul in the morning? And then what would the intense kind of workout of your soul look like? Would that be journaling? Would that be talking to someone? Would that be reading religious script? You know, what is the exercise that is the intense soul workout? And then the cool down period, right? Is the cool down period, you know, again, texting someone? Is it connecting with someone? Is it saying a prayer? Is it music? Is it lights? Is it lighting a candle? What is the way that you cool down kind of that intense soul workout? And to really make that a 30 to 40 minute practice every single. day, right? If we work out our bodies every day, but we don't work out our souls every day. And so what is the 30 to 40 minute practice that we can get into a habit of doing that really takes us

Starting point is 00:21:18 through that arc of like, I'm going to slowly ease my soul into being awake today. I'm going to really intensely work it out and then I'm going to cool down so that my soul is regulated. My soul has really gotten its reps in before the day starts. Speaking of practices, a very common spiritual practice is meditation from one angle. For another, it's prayer. And you talk about there's a contemporary American divide that's not just political, but there's one in which there are people who have a prayer practice and they believe in strongly, but they have no meditation practice, no contemplative part of that. And then you have people who have contemplative practices, meditation, but won't go near a prayer. Talk to me about that divide and how each side could perhaps see some of the

Starting point is 00:22:08 benefit of the other. Yeah, I see this all the time. We have so many friends who are devout prayers. You know, I believe in God. I feel like I'm speaking to God and I'm communing with the divine. And then they're like, but meditation, I don't know, that's stillness. That feels a little too, you know, kumbaya for me. I don't get it. I don't understand. And then the other camp, which tends to be kind of younger, more spiritually curious and not necessarily as religious people often tend to be like, I have such a strong meditation practice. I spend a lot of time in internal presence and focusing on my internal state of calm. But then prayer, like, who am I talking to? Who is this thing out there that I'm talking to? And people really have a

Starting point is 00:22:49 hard time with the other camp. If they have a really strong practice in one or the other, it's like the other camp does not make sense to them. There's a famous quote that says prayer is talking to God or talking to the universe and meditation is listening. And you can't have any conversation, right? You can't talk to anyone where it's just one of you talking and the other one listening or one of you listening the other time, right? Like a conversation, a true dialogue has moments where both of you are speaking and both of you are listening. And that's what we're trying to say in the book is that the best balanced practice is where you can speak to the universe, speak to the divine, but you can also listen to it and see what it's trying to communicate to you.

Starting point is 00:23:32 It doesn't mean that it's easy. You know, Rain has a lot easier time meditating than praying, and I have a lot easier time praying than meditating. And it's not that one is easier than the other. Sometimes you're more drawn to one than the other, or one comes more naturally to you than the other. But I do think the practice of both creates a dialogue. I think that personally I'm not a believer in a being that is.

Starting point is 00:23:57 hearing what I'm saying and responding. And yet, I also find that praying is a way of me saying what matters and a way of me setting an intention and a way of me recognizing that all the power that there is isn't contained in here. There is power out there. I don't quite know how to frame it. I don't know what to call it. But just that recognition of that works for me. And again, everybody's different. I know you like Rainer from the Baha'i faith, so you have a different belief structure than I do. But that's how I've reconciled prayer for myself is, you know, the setting of intention and the recognition that there's power out there. We talk about, I think it's Anne Lamott, who has kind of a framework for prayers and says that all prayers fall into three categories, right?

Starting point is 00:24:46 There are the help, the thanks, and the wow, right? These are the three categories of prayers that almost everyone, you know, gets drawn to it sometime. Whether you believe in a good, God, or you just believe in there's energy out there that's at some point you kind of look to the sky and say, oh, my God, I need help with something. Or, oh, my God, I'm so grateful for X, Y, Z. Or, wow, this is amazing. And I'm moved by the beauty of it. That those three impulses to kind of look external is a very human impulse, whether or not

Starting point is 00:25:14 we have language for the thing that we're expressing it to. And language is important. I think we do spend some time in the book asking people to, like, lay. things, right? Like, okay, if God is not, if God is not like, you know, Santa Claus on a cloud being like, you're naughty, you're nice, right? Like, then what is it, right? And how do we put language around this thing? And actually, Rain and I are developing and raising money right now next year. We're hoping to get this off the ground, fingers crossed, it's moving forward. But we have a documentary that we're doing that rain will be in and be the face of called the notorious GOD. And it's about God in the world and

Starting point is 00:25:52 God in America because, you know, we, it's on our money. It's in the Pledge of Allegiance. It's in our schools and our governments. And yet what God are we talking about? And what, what is the language we're using around this God in the modern world? Is it, is it an AI singularity that we're all just kind of plugged into the matrix? Is it science and just our brains wanting something bigger? Or is there something grander out there? And it's rain really going on kind of a somewhat comedic, but also a spiritual journey to figure out what is the language around this thing that is everywhere and yet we don't really know how to talk about it. Language is really important, right? Like you you are drawn to something out there. You just don't know what to call it because God feels weird to

Starting point is 00:26:33 you. And so we're like, that's okay. Like the idea that we humans are drawn to something bigger is the idea that we want people to think about and put language for themselves around. Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask you something. What's one thing that has been holding you back lately? You know that it's there. You've tried to push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way. You're not alone in this, and I've identified six major saboteurs of self-control, things like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, emotional escapism,

Starting point is 00:27:09 that quietly derail our best intentions. But here's the good news. You can outsmart them. And I've put together a free guide to help you spot these hidden obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can use to regain control. Download the free guide now at one you feed.net slash eBook and take the first step towards getting back on track. The book does a really nice job also of not just giving you a writing prompt and leaving you alone, which is valuable. but I think when asked like define spirituality, a lot of us are just going to not know what to say. And the book really has lots of examples of different types from different faiths.

Starting point is 00:27:54 You get to choose like, oh, that one's kind of close. I resonate with that. I don't resonate with that. I think it makes it easier than just being given a writing prompt and being left along with it. It's funny because I consider myself a writer. I like to write. I studied journalism. Like, this is my background.

Starting point is 00:28:11 and I like to write and I like to tell stories. And Rain likes to write, right? He's written multiple books. Rain likes to write. But when we started putting the book together, when the very early days, we realized a lot of the prompts were writing prompts. And we had this kind of moment of, oh, wait, not everyone likes to write. And people like choices, people like BuzzFeed listicles, right?

Starting point is 00:28:32 Where you can kind of look and say, like, I feel like this more or that more. Some people prefer to draw. Some people prefer to listen to music, right? Like, what are the ways that we can engage? people's preferred methods of expression and learning into the book. And so we actually went through and did a whole pass where we cut half the writing prompts and tried to turn them into actual activities because of that reason, because sometimes you're like, sometimes a blank page is daunting and you don't know where to start and you just need a little bit of more help or

Starting point is 00:29:03 prompting your handholding to think about things. So I think we were trying to hit like all the nuances of the ways people learn and express. So I'm glad to hear that it worked and it resonated. It did. It definitely did. There's a great story in the book that you tell about being in college, I believe, and visiting a mosque and how you reacted to it then and then sort of you react into it now. Would you share that story with us? Sure. You know, I was I was 20, 21 and kind of a self-righteous college students, I know best. And I was part of the Interfaith Council at my school at USC. And I really enjoyed the Interfaith Council. It was like this great community of people talking about God in a place where most people don't talk about God, which was nice. And one of the things that we did is we actually went to different houses of worship and visited them. And so, you know, we had gone to a Catholic church. We had gone to a Protestant church. We had gone to a Buddhist temple. And then we went to a mosque. And when we went to the mosque, I remember we walked in and they separated the men and women, right? The men were taken to the front to this really beautiful room with a chandelier and lots of light and beautiful carpets.

Starting point is 00:30:19 And the women were taken to this back room that was not as beautifully decorated. And we were told to cover our heads with wrappings that were very strongly perfumed. They like smelled, it kind of reminded me of my grandmother's like face cream. Like it was like really strong. And so I'm sitting in the back of this mosque and they start doing the prayers. And my brain could not focus on the prayers because all I kept thinking is like, how come we women are relegated back here? Like we're in, you know, I joked that we were in the nosebleed section of the mosque. And I'm wearing this like, you know, super perfumi wrap.

Starting point is 00:30:52 And this feels kind of insulting that we're here visiting and trying to learn. And I'm being put in the back. And I was the president of the Interfaith Council. And I was like, you know, my righteous, like, oh, this is so offensive. This is so offensive. Well, anyways, like, in a blink, the prayer is. ended, right? And I was like, oh, well, I didn't pay, I didn't really pay attention to the prayers. And we go out into the courtyard, which is really beautiful. It's got a fountain and stained

Starting point is 00:31:14 glass windows. And everyone, everyone around me is like, that was amazing. That was so beautiful. And I was about to, like, kind of like, vent about, oh, what was that seat, right? And and then I'm like, oh, wait, they all seem to think that was really beautiful. Did I miss it? Did I miss what happened? And yeah, I wasn't paying attention, right? This goes back to the idea of like noticing and paying attention. The thing my eyes were trained to focus on were the kind of unhealthy comparative like, oh, I'm being, this is insulting, right? So fast forward, actually a few years ago, I was on another interfaith group and we did another kind of tour of buildings and we go to this mosque and the executive director of the interfaith group, you know,

Starting point is 00:31:57 belong to. And I brought my own scarf. I brought my own scarf that time. So there was not like strong perfumes. And even though again, the men and women were separated, I really said, you know what, Shabnam, just really just focus on the beauty of the prayers. Like, this is you're joining this community in their prayerful moment. And that was all I focused on was just the sound of the chance. And it was beautiful. And I was just, it really was a beautiful experience. The reason I told that story is because I think sometimes we get so caught up in the boxes and the, oh, this is what it should be.

Starting point is 00:32:28 This is what it shouldn't be. And I got offended by that, right? Like, we get so caught up in those unimportant things that we miss the beauty that's right in front of us. So that was kind of why I told the story, but also like to illustrate that our perspectives also change, right? When I was 20 and an idiot, right? Like that was my take on the mosque experience. And fast forward 15 years later, and I could really truly appreciate the beauty of it. And I also think that wisdom, unfortunately, is wasted on the older, more experienced people. And it's unfortunate that we skip it in our 20s and it takes time to develop.

Starting point is 00:33:06 I love that story, too, because I think it is a very common thing, and I've done this to myself multiple times throughout my life, where I want a spiritual community, so I find one. go to it. And all I really see is the ways it doesn't align with me. It's a little bit like, you know, as an addict, the first time I was at meetings, right? All I wanted to do is be like, I'm not like that. I'm not like that. I'm not like like. Like I just wanted to more or less disconnect myself right out the door. And I've noticed that in spiritual communities too. And that that ability to try and both focus on what is good and also to learn to have a certain fluency with translating ideas. Like, okay, they're doing this thing and they're saying that. What does that mean to me? Yeah. Like, how can I find a way that that does mean something to me? How might I change

Starting point is 00:34:22 it a little bit so it matters to me? Or how might I reinterpret it? And that flexibility, I think, if I had known how to do that better when I was younger, I think I would have had more spiritual community throughout my life. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good point because it is about fluency. And again, it comes back to language. You know, we put everything into the boxes that we understand and our brains like to use language around, but it doesn't mean that that's how everyone else speaks. And then trying to understand the way that ideas are being communicated from someone else takes a lot of time and effort. It's really hard. It's really hard. It's really hard. And so I did tell that story because I was like, I recognized that I was an idiot at 20

Starting point is 00:35:03 and wasn't able to like speak that language in the way that I can now. Yeah. And at the same time, the fact that women are separated from men might be something for you that's like, that doesn't work for me. So this is not like you just have to accept the way every tradition does things. I think we all have to find our own balance. But I don't have to train my eyes to it. I don't have to train my eyes to only focus on that one thing that doesn't resonate with me. Right. And again, people are different. My bent is I need to work harder on finding what I do agree with. That's just the way I am. I will talk myself out of nearly any group. So I love that story because I think it shows the very real thing that happens to all

Starting point is 00:35:48 of us. Thank you. Thanks. There's a section in the book that's really about creativity. And you guys say that we believe creativity is a primal force on the planet. Every time you hear drums in a crashing wave or you stop to admire the way vines curl around your fence, like they know exactly what they're doing, you're engaging with something ancient. And you say at Soul Boom, we believe that the universe never actually stopped making things. It just started using humans as the vehicle for creation. Talk to me about why creativity is so essential to the view that you have of spirituality. Yeah. I really love that entire section of the book. It's one of my favorites because it explores beauty and nature and art, music, painting, dancing, play. It really explores a lot of what is

Starting point is 00:36:39 human expression, right, at its core. You know, when you think about creation, whether you have a biblical view of it that God created the universe or you have a more secular scientific view of it, there was a big bang and something magical came out of that. There was some action, there was some moment, there was something that sparked and things existed that didn't exist before, right? And that's creativity, right? That is, you know, developing and building something into fruition. And so if the whole world, if the whole universe, if the whole galaxies started with this

Starting point is 00:37:15 act of creation, then how are we able to move through the world without connecting into that creative force? And so it was really important to us to dig into that because, again, you know, while this is a book about spirituality and our souls and finding expressions for that, the vast majority of the ways that we express ourselves as human beings is not through spirituality. The vast majority of ways we express ourselves is through poetry and art and music and dance and movement. And so we thought it would be really remiss of us to not talk about that aspect of human expression and how it does actually reflect kind of a primal creative spiritual force and existence. So the book has a lot of

Starting point is 00:37:58 like that section in particular encourages you to get out into nature and feel the sense of beauty and awe and wonder that comes with that. It encourages kind of thinking about music and the role that music has played in your life. It encourages thinking about art and art that has profoundly moved you. And then it encourages you to also express, right, whether that's through writing or drawing and personally expressing creative impulses. And I think, that's really important because that playfulness is such a important part of what keeps our souls bright and light. And we oftentimes don't consider it a spiritual practice. But I feel like if you've ever listened to a song and your entire being has come alive listening to that song, you know,

Starting point is 00:38:41 that music, right? Music has a spiritual, you know, impact even if you've never called it that. And so I think exploring that, it's like one of my favorite parts of the book. Yeah. I, I, completely agree. I did a talk. I don't know. It's been a couple years ago about creativity in the spiritual life because to me they seem, you know, like you, I look around the world and I'm like, it just seems like that nature just makes things in abundance all the time. The number of different species and it's just mind-boggling. And you look at them and you're like, who came up with that idea? Like, they look crazy. And as you were just talking, I was thinking about watching in a nature channel just the other day and I was just on silent and I was just kind of watching

Starting point is 00:39:24 it and I remember looking at some of those and I think like if I produced something that looked like say my art was like a hippopotamus right you might look at it and be like that's a ridiculous looking thing but they're there they work like you said that spirit of play gets lost and you get caught up in the making something that is good which is the biggest barrier I think it's partially why, you know, going back to the artist's way, Julia Cameron's just encouraging you like, just right. Don't stop. Don't pause. Don't think. Just let it flow out. Because when we're trying to control too much, that pretty much blocks the creative energy. At least it does for me. No, I agree. Actually, Ira Glass has this beautiful thing that he said that people have turned

Starting point is 00:40:14 into an amazing video where he says, you know, people who get into or pursue creative works oftentimes do it because they have a certain taste, right? They've got a certain taste level. And they're like, I have a great taste when it comes to music, movies, writing, poetry, art, whatever it is. I have great taste. Then they start to make stuff and their stuff is here, but their taste is here. And they're like, well, why isn't what I'm making at the level that I know my taste is? And so they don't actually put it out there. And his whole, you know, premise is, you've got to keep putting it out there because it's only when you put it out and then get better and better and better, then you start to like align your taste level with the quality of the work

Starting point is 00:40:52 you're doing. Julia Crammer does the same thing in the artist's way. And our whole point in the book is that just express because it doesn't matter if it's good or not. It is the divine. It is the spirit working through you when you play and create. It is a primal instinct as human beings to do that. And so you're tapping into something that is really powerful. Good or not. doesn't matter. It's about tapping into this force that we think kind of runs through everything and especially nature. Yeah, I just heard this fascinating. I don't know if you know the podcast's Song Exploder. It basically takes a song and it has the artist come on and they talk about the making of that song and the challenges that were in it and they dissect the different tracks.

Starting point is 00:41:35 Well, I listened to one recently for the song Take On Me by Aha. Everybody knows that song. It's sold a billion copies. And they played the very first version of it. And it was unrecognizable. I mean, you could sort of hear parts of the melody, just parts of it. But then all these years later, you have this thing. And I also didn't know this. They launched it twice in Britain, and it flopped completely.

Starting point is 00:42:05 So they just kept taking this thing because they were like, there's something here. And they just kept working on it. And I just found it a really inspiring story. and to kind of the point you're making about that taste gap. Yeah, the taste gap. And that's what he calls it, actually. Iarglass calls it the gap. And I think it's such a powerful thing to think about.

Starting point is 00:42:24 You know, because I ran the company SoulPankake that Rain and I found it together where we created daily video content. And I had so many creators and creatives and young kids who would come and be like, well, how do I make stuff that is as good as this? You know, how do I? And I'm like, well, just start making. Like, just start making and then put it out there and make it better and put it out there and make it again and put it out. Right? Like, just start. because I think sometimes our own barriers, like, is it going to be good enough? Or people

Starting point is 00:42:47 going to like it? You know, like gets in our way of just doing it. And yeah, I was constantly telling these young kids, like, just start, just put it out there. Just keep, just get going. Yeah. I don't know where I've come across this, but I've come across it multiple times where if a professor encourages quantity, like you need to take 300 pictures this quarter versus I want you to take three great pictures this quarter. The 300 group always outperforms the three. It's just time and time again, just the reps of doing it, the quantity of doing it. And I think some of that is you have to let go. Yeah. I fully believe that. I don't know what study that is, but I 100% believe it. You've experienced it in the own people that you've managed.

Starting point is 00:43:39 Yep. I'd like to pivot now a little bit to some of the work that you do outside of SoulPancake, and you've got a consulting practice called The Joy Brigade. And I'd love to talk about what joy means to you. Why are you orienting around that as an important pillar of your work? Yeah. So my company is called The Joy Brigade, and through it, I do two things. One is consulting, primarily around cultures and the workplace and storytelling.

Starting point is 00:44:07 And the second is, frankly, to do. production services through the company as well. And my mission in life is, I believe, my purpose. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what is my professional purpose in life. And I think it is to spread hope through storytelling. I think we have more dystopian stories that we can deal with. We love zombie apocalypses, but I just, that's not what I'm drawn to, nor do I think that's what the world needs more of. I think we need more stories that give us hope. And so that's what I try to do through the production work that I do. And then through the consulting work that I do, I really focus on cultures and storytelling within organizations.

Starting point is 00:44:43 And that I orient around joy. And when I talk about joy, I am specifically talking about the tools of positive psychology. So I got a certification in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. They have a whole framework around kind of positive psychological thinking. And, you know, most people, you know, when they think about psychology, it's really about what's wrong with us, right? Like what's, you know, we go to therapy and we're like, what's wrong with me? but Martin Seligman, who's considered the father of positive psychology and others in this space, you know, came about and said, hey, well, there's actually a lot of people who respond very differently when they're faced with challenges or suffering in their lives and they respond very differently. And so this field really thinks about how do our brains work and what's the psychological response and frankly, the practices that help us have a better psychological response to things. It really hits on a lot of factors, right? It's, you know, how do you create a service mindset? It's resiliency.

Starting point is 00:45:37 and developing the tools of resiliency, changing our inner voices, reframing them around gratitude, thinking about being in nature and building community and a sense of belonging. So there's a lot of qualities that help us psychologically navigate the challenges of the world. And so when I apply those principles in the workplace, it's about how do we change our cultures, how do we change kind of the practices in our cultures at work, to orient around these pillars,

Starting point is 00:46:07 of positive psychology. If you look at kind of workplace well-being, I'm getting very kind of granular with you, but if you look at workplace well-being for the last, you know, 70, 80 years, it's changed a lot. It used to be, like, it's all about, like, you know, in the 80s it was smoking prevention

Starting point is 00:46:23 and stress management and, you know, how do we get our people to live longer and reduce the cost of insurance for us as companies, right? Then we moved into the 2000s, and it was more, okay, let's think about, you know, holistic well-being, and mental and emotional, and that was great. But I think today a lot of the benefits,

Starting point is 00:46:43 right, in the workplace that we think about that we think improve culture is, you know, unlimited paid time off or hybrid work environments where remote workers can work or mental health days now that they give employees. And if you look at all the studies, Oxford has done studies on this, as has Stanford, and all the studies say doesn't affect employee happiness or engagement at all. Like there's almost no effect on employee happiness and engagement with those kinds of benefits. So what I kind of propose and what I kind of go in saying, how can we restructure cultures, is really thinking about how can you create something that is modeled from leadership

Starting point is 00:47:20 because employees need permission from executives to do certain behaviors and habits. So how do you model something from leadership? How do you prioritize community and belonging? So how do you encourage people to share what's going on? in their personal lives and creating structure around that, right? Like every, every Monday meeting where you have your check-in, the first 10 minutes is dedicated to how is everyone's weekend, what's on everyone's minds, like really bringing kind of our whole selves to the workplace. How do you create meetings that there's movement, there's natural breaks taken into it? Can you go outside and have

Starting point is 00:47:53 those meetings? And what are the things that can bring in some of these principles of positive psychology into the ways, the processes that we have in our workplace? Because it's so wild how disconnected kind of workplace well-being has come from from actually improving employee happiness and engagement. Like we have the lowest levels of engagement in workplaces by employees in history. I think we're losing $9 trillion globally in GDP to low levels of engagement in the workplace by employees. And one, just one point increase in employee happiness translates to an increase in almost $100 million in profits at large companies. There's a direct correlation with employee happiness and engagement to

Starting point is 00:48:34 profitability and revenue. And yet we don't think about that when we're building our cultures. We're like, oh, unlimited PTO and hybrid work. Like, isn't that what people want? Great. They should be happy. But that's not actually what brings us happiness. And so taking the tools of positive psychology and implementing them, weaving them into daily practices and processes at the workplace is what I help kind of shape in that work. So that's how I think about joy and the implications in the workplace. How is what you recommend now different than the holistic well-being practices that you described in the 2000s or 2010s. What's the shift in idea there? Yeah, the shift is that it was very individually focused back in the early 2000s.

Starting point is 00:49:16 Back in the early 2000s, it was we're going to give you access to wellness app or we're going to give you access to gym memberships or we're going to give you, you know, access to a mental wellness line or a therapy line that you can call. So you as an individual have access to all of this holistic health. And what I'm saying is, well, it can't be about individuals in their own individual lives. What you have to think about is in your processes and in your workplace, do you integrate these principles into how your meetings take place, how you're hiring, how your processes unfold, what are the decisions you're making? And then is that being modeled from leadership all the way down, right? It can't just be like, okay, you employee, go invest in your well-being by going to

Starting point is 00:50:02 your gym once a week and we're going to give you that gym membership. Because if they don't see that the CEO is also like going to the gym or taking walks during meetings, you know, to invest in their physical well-being, it's not giving permission to the employees to do that. And so it's a shift to a, it can't just be an individual focus on holistic well-being. It has to be at the company. This is a priority and we're integrating it into our processes and our meetings and structures and and it's being modeled by leadership. There was a case study done at Wharton with a Fortune 100 company where literally all they did was they implemented like walking meetings, five-minute breaks so that people could run to the restroom

Starting point is 00:50:43 or whatever, water cooler conversations being more encouraged, you know, in the workplace. And the only requirement was that the C-suite did it first. And it literally every employee started implementing five-minute breaks and taking walking meetings and doing water cooler breaks, the minute that they had permission from the C-suite, they all started doing it and happiness increased and productivity increased. People felt less stressed at work and more willing to take on challenges. Walking meetings cannot be overestimated and how wonderful they are. Truly. If I could do these interviews walking, I would. Seriously. Too many sirens. Too many sirens around you for the audio quality. Yeah. But 100%. It's more

Starting point is 00:51:24 enjoyable, I think better. I mean, there's just, I love the process of walking and talking to someone. And so many people are afraid to do it. So many people are afraid to do walking meetings because they think that it sends a message that they're not at their desk focused intensely on the other person or that they're somehow distracted. And so I have literally had people ask the question of like, well, how do I make it not seem like I'm distracted or not focused? It's like, just put the disclaimer at the beginning, say, hey, I am 100% focused on this conversation. I'm doing this meeting while walking because I think better and can focus better, you know, while we're doing it. And if you just set that at the top, like almost everyone is okay with it. Yeah, almost all the

Starting point is 00:52:04 coaching work that I do, particularly with business clients. Some of it I want to be in front of the screen because there's something, there's a particular thing to teach or there's a graphic to show. But I do a lot of it walking for exactly that reason. I feel like I'm way more creative in problem solving and actually way more focused on the person somehow by walking. than I am sort of just sitting in place. Yeah, because you don't have 75 tabs open on your screen and alerts popping up on your phone. The only thing that you can think about

Starting point is 00:52:33 is the voice that you're talking to. Yeah, I want to go back to Joy for a second because listeners of the show will have heard me say this a few times that joy is a word that is being used a lot these days. You talk about joy as a state of mind, not an emotion. And so when I hear joy, though, I hear this like really exalted state, like the way that joy to the world, the song feels.

Starting point is 00:53:02 Like it's way up to joy, you know, I equated as an extreme sense of like way happy, super happy. And so the word doesn't work for me because that's not where I spend most of my time. And I hear people talking about joy all the time. And I'm like, am I an emotional cripple? Like, I don't feel that. Is everybody walking around feeling that? So talk to me about joy for the eors in the group. So I'm an e-ore.

Starting point is 00:53:29 I am a natural e-ore and I have spent 20 years, 20 years really working on myself to counteract that negative impulse and like that negative bias in our brains that is very natural and it is evolutionarily kept us safe. So I have accepted it as like this is, it's okay. But the type of joy I'm talking about is, you know, I, I do often say it's not an emotion, right? Because emotion is fleeting, right? You know, you can feel happy, you know, one second and then it goes away. You feel angry and then it goes away, right? I'm always saying this to my kids, right? Like, oh, I know we feel angry right now,

Starting point is 00:54:05 but we don't have to do anything about it. Sometimes you just need to feel angry and then it goes bye-bye, right? Like, that's a two-year-old explanation. But emotions come and go. I think the type of joy I'm talking about is how do you create a sense of resiliency in your brain. How do you put habits in your life that allow you to have a positive psychological response no matter what situation you're faced with? So that's the kind of joy I'm talking about. And the reason that I think it's wildly powerful is because I think we're facing some wildly massive, huge sociological and psychological challenges right now as a society. I describe it as three things. I talk about this all the time because I very firmly believe this. You know,

Starting point is 00:54:50 the first big thing we're facing is that we, nobody trusts each other anymore. And the entire world is actively working to isolate us, the entire world. So, you know, our trust levels, Pew Research looks at trust levels, like just an ordinary American, like are other people worthy of being trusted. And it's dropped drastically from the 1970s where it was almost 80% of people believed most people could be trusted. Now it's like in the 30s, like low 30s. Like nobody trusts each other. We don't trust our media, our organizations, our institutions, or each other. Everyone is insane and can't be trusted and who knows what their intentions are. And then the whole world is also actively working to isolate us along with that.

Starting point is 00:55:26 So we don't trust each other, but then every industry is isolating us. And it's not just our phones, right? Yes, the phones have us like everyone looking down. But also, like, I get in an Uber now and I can have a quiet ride. Don't talk to me. Or a self-driving car now, right? I can order DoorDash and say, put it on my door. Don't ring the doorbell. I don't want to talk to you. I go to the grocery store and at self-checkout lines. I go to hotels and I don't even have to talk to someone to check in now. I just do it through the app. Right. So every single industry is actively isolating us, right? I don't have to go into a bank anymore. I went to the bank the other day to notarize something and it was empty because I don't need to do anything online in a bank anymore. Right. So every industry is actively working to isolate us and we don't trust each other. So like that's a huge force that is completely changing the fabric of society. The second bucket that I talk about is just, this rise of proliferation of doom, right? Like in my industry, every film is a dystopian film or series and, you know, the algorithms on social media platforms reward the fires and the death, right? And rage, at rage bait and anger. And so we have this proliferation of doom, which is contributing

Starting point is 00:56:33 to hopelessness amongst everyone, right? Nothing can change and nothing can get better. And then the third bucket is, frankly, a crisis of meaning, which is so much of what Soul Boom is trying to help reinstate with people. You know, historically, we get our meaning from family and friends, work and career, religion and faith. Well, nobody belongs to religions anymore. We're super disengaged at work and everyone's quiet quitting. And then family, we live further from family and have fewer friends than ever in history. And so all our traditional sources of meaning are also in demise. So when I look at that context, right, like we don't trust each other. We're super isolated. Everything is doom and gloom. And we have no sources of

Starting point is 00:57:11 meaning anymore. That's when I say, like, the type of joy I'm talking about, which is how do you invest in habits and tools and practices that create a positive psychological response in the face of all that, that's really important and powerful. It's not an emotion. It is how do you retrain the synapses in your brain to refire in a completely different way and have a different set of reserves that you can pull from in the face of all of this crap, all this crap that is shaping our society right now. So I'm not talking about like, oh, you know, chorus, chorus on high singing joy to the world.

Starting point is 00:57:48 I am talking about retraining our brains, retraining our brains and how we respond to this shit. Sorry for the language, but like this shit world we're finding ourselves in. Is that a good explanation? I don't know. Was that a good explanation of it? Yeah. I think it is a good explanation. I think it speaks to, you know, when I first was introduced to Zen Buddhism in high school by a high school teacher.

Starting point is 00:58:13 mine. I didn't understand nearly any of. I mean, Zen's inscrutable to me today, and I've been a student of it for 20 years. Then, I mean, I probably got like 1% of it. But what I got has kept me on the hook all these years. And what I got was there's a way to be okay and to do good and be positive in the world, regardless of all the external circumstances. And that to me is the promise that I have in sort of trying to live into ever since. And I think that's what you're talking about, right? This resiliency, this ability to be okay, even better than okay, in really difficult circumstances. Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning is one of my hands-down favorite books of all time, because it really does talk about how important, you know, what is the meaning you ascribe to

Starting point is 00:59:07 your suffering. Decency can survive, even in the worst of circumstances. He was a Holocaust survivor. Most of the book is talking about his experiences in the camps and how, you know, there are decent men and they're indecent men and decent men are still decent even when everything is taken from them because the attitude, the choices they make reflect their decency and even in the worst of circumstances. And I think that that's how I think about joy and resiliency, right? It's even in the worst circumstances, even when your mom is dying of cancer, your kid is, you know, an addict, whatever, even in the worst circumstances. What is the attitude and choice that you bring to that moment? And I think that's the tools that I genuinely believe it because I feel like they've changed my own life. They've literally changed the way I move through the world. And I've spent 20 years thinking about them, working on them, trying to counteract my own natural negative bias.

Starting point is 01:00:02 Right. So I believe they work because I know that they've worked for me. And so I'm a big believer. I'm a real, I'm bought in. I'm bought in to the joy train. Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this. Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices didn't quite match the person you wanted to be? Maybe it was autopilot mode or self-doubt that made it harder to stick to your goals.

Starting point is 01:00:27 And that's exactly why I created the six saboteurs of self-control. It's a free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to break through them. If you're ready to take back control and start making lasting changes, download your copy now at one you feed.net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts happen starting today. Onewfeed.net slash ebook. Well, that is a great place for us to wrap up.

Starting point is 01:00:59 You and I are going to continue talking a little bit more in the post-show conversation. What I'd like to focus on is a tool or two from this toolkit that people can use, you know, the Joy Toolkit. Yeah. Listeners, if you'd like to get access to this post-show conversation and get some of these great tools as well as get ad-free episodes and support a show that could definitely use your help, go to one you feed.net slash join, and we'd love to have you be part of what we're doing here.

Starting point is 01:01:28 Shabnam, thank you so much for coming on. This has been such a great conversation. It's a great book. We'll have links in the show notes to where people can get it. Yeah, thank you for having me, Eric. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend.

Starting point is 01:01:49 Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don't have a big budget, and I'm certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better, and that's you. Just hit the share button on your podcast app or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom. one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the One You Feed community.

The One You Feed - Navigating Modern Challenges: Practical Spirituality and the Quest for Joy with Shabnam Mogharabi

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