The One You Feed - Timber Hawkeye
Episode Date: August 20, 2014This week we talk to Timber HawkeyeTimber Hawkeye is the author of the very popular book Buddhist Boot Camp. He offers a non-sectarian approach to being at peace with the world. His book was crea...ted from a series of blog posts and emails that friends encouraged him to publish. The book is a straightforward, plain spoken discussion of ways to live a better life. In This Interview Timber and I Discuss...The One You Feed parable.How feeding one wolf makes it stronger and more likely to show up again.The process of creating his book.Fight Club and the Parable of the Two Wolves.Leaving  his corporate job to live in Hawaii and live a simple life."It's not the table, it's who is with you at dinner."That happiness is not waiting for us in the distance but is available to us now.How exhausting the pursuit of happiness can be.The difference between feelings and emotions.Making our own choices, paying our own prices.We are the victims of our own choices.The suffering we create for ourselves.That pain is inevitable but suffering is optional.Feeling are not facts.Naming our demons and feeding our faith.Going beyond setting intention to setting actions.Explaining our anger instead of expressing it.How quickly we cross the line from discussion to argument.How vulnerability helps us to connect,That your mind is like a spoiled rich kid.How what you will allow will continue.Timber Hawkeye LinksBuddhist Boot Camp homepageBuddhist Boot Camp FacebookBuddhist Bootcamp on TwitterTimber's TEDX talk 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.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
What you allow is what will continue. I mean, that's true every aspect in our life.
You know, if someone treats you a certain way, if you allow it, they're going to continue doing it.
Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance
of the thoughts we have. Quotes like 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 reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast.
Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Timber Hawkeye, author of Buddhist Boot Camp.
Timber's book aims to offer a non-sectarian approach to being at peace with the world, both within us and around
us. Here's the interview. Hi, Timber. Welcome to the show. Hey, thank you for having me. So,
our podcast is based on the parable of two wolves where there's a grandfather who's talking with his
grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. And he says,
in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always, always at war. 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 grandson stops and he thinks,
and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off the podcast by asking you what that
parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. That parable and most people's lives
gives us an opportunity to reflect within and see if there are two worlds within us.
an opportunity to reflect within and see if there are two worlds within us. And immediately,
I think back to even in cartoons, you see when someone's torn between making a decision,
there's like an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. And growing up with cartoons,
like many other people, I've always been aware of this internal conflict, this dialogue going on within me of two opposing thoughts and always curious why I choose the
one I choose and why sometimes one is louder than the other or easier to follow.
And I think ultimately looking back and applying today, the one we feed so to speak the one we answer
to more frequently is the one that gets louder and louder and so if within us let's say instead
of two wolves or a devil and an angel there is uh one side of us that is the ego which is very uh concerned with itself and and that's about it
it just wants uh what feels good what looks good um it's just concerned with its own benefit
and and and disregards other people and then the other side of us really truly understands that when we do anything for the benefit of others, we inevitably benefit because we're all one in the same.
So it could be depicted as the Buddha within and the ego within, if you would.
So for me, it's always been a practice of realizing that the one I listen to more often gets louder.
And the one I honor and I say, I hear you, but I'm not one I listen to more often gets louder, and the one I honor,
and I say, I hear you, but I'm not going to listen to you anymore, gets quieter.
Yeah, that's such a great, great observation about how which one we feed gets more,
gets louder. I always think of the, you know, keeping with analogies of animals is like these cravings or the bad wolf, so to speak.
The less I feed it, it's sort of like a stray cat.
It just stops coming to the table as often because it just knows it's not going to get fed as often.
However, when I do feed it, boy, it's right there, relentless.
Exactly. I think of it as if you've watched the movie Shrek, you know, I think of the ego within kind of like donkey that just really annoying nonstop jumping up and down, can't get him to quiet down.
And the Buddha within is quite literally how we would imagine him to be just sitting there very quietly and just patiently and saying, you know, thinking, you know what to do.
very quietly and just patiently and saying, you know, thinking, you know what to do.
And that's it. It doesn't jump up and down. It doesn't yell at you. It doesn't, you know,
it just sits there because you intuitively know what to do. I think intuitively, innately, we are that Buddha nature. We are that loving, giving, compassionate, kind, forgiving person. We've just
learned not to be, you know, it's, it's kind It's kind of like we're that stray cat that came
to the table and our teachers, parents, and preachers all kept feeding us. And so we keep
going back for more, not realizing that that which we're actually looking for is not outside
ourselves at all. It's been there all along, but we crave so much
the validation from other people that we will do pretty much anything to get it. Does that make
sense? Absolutely. So maybe you could tell us about how your book, Buddhist Boot Camp, came to be,
and then maybe even a little bit back further than that, how you got into Buddhism and kind of what your path to the book has been.
It's an interesting journey because I never actually set out to write a book.
I do not identify myself as an author in any way
because what happened was I decided to leave the corporate world, you know,
and quit my job, move to Hawaii, sell everything I own,
and just go there with a
backpack and a volleyball net and lead a very simple and uncomplicated life. It occurred to me
that happiness and everything that I'm looking for in life is not going to be attained by staying
in that cubicle under fluorescent lights. So I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew
what I didn't want to do. And my friends and my family were all freaked out. Of course, you know,
I've been doing this for 10 years. It's very easy to say you're proud of your child when
he lives in a condo downtown with a sports car and the designer furniture and clothes.
But when he gives all that up and moves to an island without a job or an apartment lined up, you get a little worried.
And my friends and my family asked me to keep in touch with them.
And so for the first eight years or so, I wrote them an email every month to let them know what's going on with me.
years, a really good friend of mine challenged me to go back and take all those emails and make them public because she felt a lot more people can benefit from what I was sharing as I was learning.
And that was the birth of the Buddhist Boot Camp blog and Facebook page, which a year later
was published into a collection of these essays, if you would, that are really just, you know, like anybody else who
publishes a book, like my friends and my family are going to read it. And that's that. And before
I knew it, it became this international bestseller in multiple languages. And there was so much
hunger for the message. And I realized that, you know, this isn't my story. This is our story. we're all in this together and i don't think i
realize just how applicable it is and how uh the demons we're all battling so to speak are all the
same so that's really the story behind the book if you would the name has nothing to even though
it's called buddhist boot camp there's really very little in there about Buddhism.
I love the movie Fight Club, which has very little to do with fighting also.
And when I thought about my life and I thought about this internal struggle, I don't know if you're familiar with Fight Club, but it's very much the story of the two wolves. Because these two characters are the two wolves inside all of us.
The two voices within are actually portrayed in the movie as two different people you know that are literally
beating each other up so when i watched that i was like this is like buddhist boot camp this is
this is just all the the buddhist principles packed into a very direct, rigid method of delivery, which I was very hungry for, I guess.
It really resonated with me when it was that black and white. It was that direct.
There was no sugarcoating. It wasn't very gentle. And that's very much my background. I was raised
very military. And I think that drew me to 10 years of working in law firms, which is very rigid.
So when I thought about giving my diary a name,
the name Buddhist Boot Camp seemed like a good fit
because that's what my life has felt like.
And so how did you arrive at the decision to,
so it sounds like you've been working in a law firm
for about 10 years and you made the decision
that you were going to kind of give that up.
What was going on that prompted that? It was quite simple. Another paralegal at the
law firm was celebrating her 30 years at the firm. And the thought that she celebrated 30
years in a cubicle just terrified me. It just gave me a glimpse of what my life is going to be like if I don't make a change and I don't make it quickly.
And I knew I needed to get out.
So I did.
You know, it's really that simple.
And granted, you know, for years I've been reading a lot of material about simplifying your life.
And, you know, I've been practicing following that recipe of making a lot of money, driving a sports car, getting the condo downtown, having all the designer, everything there.
And I thought this recipe that we're being sold tells me that I should arrive at happiness by this point.
What's going on?
Why am I not there yet. And yet when I visit Hawaii and I, I, you know, I'm just playing beach volleyball and eating off of paper plates on the sand, I feel more fulfilled and content and happy
than I do with my Corbusier Italian dining table in my condo downtown. Like, and I realized that
it's not the table, it's who's with you at dinner. So, so my values changed. I got to look at the
world through a different lens.
So the things that used to matter so much no longer mattered.
And Hawaii just made the perfect sense to me because in Hawaii, nobody cares about design or anything.
You know, it's really just leading a very simple life, enjoying nature and being outdoors with your ohana, your family.
and being outdoors with your ohana, your family.
So that was the big shift,
is getting a really quick glimpse of what my life is going to be like if I don't make a change. 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 Really 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.
So you talk about, in the book, at one point you say happiness, and this ties back to what we were just talking about.
Happiness isn't waiting for us in the distant future somewhere.
That will only manifest itself when we reach certain goals.
Happiness is available to us right now.
And the other thing that you go on to say is that you talk about that this mindset affects how we approach almost everything else in life.
Instead of being grateful for what we already have, we exhaust ourselves with cravings and
longing for what we haven't yet achieved. Yeah, we have this illusion, especially here in this
country, of the pursuit of happiness. We're not entitled to happiness here, by the way, just the pursuit thereof. And that's just exhausting.
And it occurred to me, I was at a guided meditation exercise and we were asked to think back to the saddest moment in our lives.
And, you know, there's a huge room full of people being guided to the details of that moment, of that really sad moment that we experienced.
And everyone's posture in the room changed. We all slouched in our seats. Some people started tearing. Some people started crying.
And we started feeling all those feelings again. And then we were asked to think back to the
happiest moment in our lives. And everyone's posture in the room changed again. Their faces
lit up. And the power for me behind that exercise is that we were in complete control of how we felt.
You know, Carlos Castaneda said that we can make ourselves happy and we can make ourselves
miserable.
The amount of work is the same.
So it occurred to me that if I'm going to exert any effort, why not?
If I'm going to believe the stories in my head, why not make them good stories?
And there's another chapter in the book that discusses the difference between a feeling and an emotion,
and a feeling is perfectly natural, but an emotion is a feeling with a huge story attached to it,
and we create these stories that are not necessarily true, and then we believe them,
and they have everything to do with how happy we are.
Am I making any sense or going completely off topic?
No, absolutely making sense.
I have a question for you, though, and I'm going to ask this for one of our listeners, because I can already
see the email he would send and ask me on this. And he says it all the time. He says, well, it's
really easy for Timber to be happy, because he's got a charmed life where he went off to Hawaii
and plays beach volleyball all day. But I've got kids and I've got responsibilities,
and I'm still in that cube, and I don't have a good viable option. How do I find happiness within
that? Yeah, I think, you know, that's actually, that was my audience when I wrote those emails.
Keep in mind, I was writing this stuff to my friends who were still at the office in the
cubicle. And what they found so inspiring is realizing that that life in the
cubicle and the kids and all that, that's not the end all be all. You know, I've been there.
And the fact that I got out and created a whole new life for me after the fact was very inspiring
to them that when their debt is paid off, when their kids are off to college, they do get a
chance to start all over and it doesn't have to look the way they think it's going to look.
And when people would say to me, oh, you're so lucky you live in Hawaii. I'm like, luck had
nothing to do with it. You know, I planned my life this way. I exchanged a lot of things that a lot
of us do on a regular basis, like going out to eat, traveling and all that stuff. I exchanged it
or some people would think sacrifice it for living the life that I can live in a place like Hawaii.
You know, it's not a sacrifice in my eyes.
It's a swap.
I swapped, you know, making a ton of money to having a lot of free time.
And yes, initially it was just for playing beach volleyball.
But then I decided, well, what's a
better use of my time? And that's when I started studying both religion and psychology simultaneously
to understand better, not just what people believe, but why they believe what they do.
Yeah. And what I think is interesting about that is the idea of that happiness is available really anywhere, including in the cube.
And I wrestle with this sometimes, and people who listen to the show will know,
that we talk a lot about this idea of, okay,
because a certain amount of dissatisfaction is what drove you to Hawaii and to that life. And so what's the, you know, how do we manage this blend of, you know what, I want enough dissatisfaction that pushes my life in positive directions. And yet, if we're not careful, we'll end up in the trap that you just talked about, which is always thinking, well, I'll be happy when I'm in Hawaii, right? And there's plenty of unhappy people in Hawaii, right? I'm sure.
Oh, absolutely.
And so we know that it's not out there.
No, I'm not in any way suggesting that people sell everything they own and move to Hawaii. It is
not for everybody. The idea that happiness is right here available to us just boils down to we make our own choices, we pay our own prices.
My sister was complaining to me at one point.
She was saying how she's got this house and this mortgage and her husband's working and she's got these three kids and she has to take them to gymnastic practice.
And then after that, she has to take her son to soccer practice.
And I just stopped her and I said, is this not exactly the life you always wanted? The husband, the three kids, the gymnastics practice, the soccer,
the making dinner and all this stuff. And she looked at me and she goes, it is exactly the
life that I've always wanted. This is where I derive my joy. This brings me happiness.
And so what I was left with is then why are you complaining about it?
So a lot of time, it's not the things that are outside of us that make us unhappy. It's our
perspective of them. We look at our own children or at our own job instead of I'm so grateful to
have this job, this cubicle in a world where so many people would die to have this job,
you know, or these kids that are so wonderful that many people would die to have this job, you know, or these
kids that are so wonderful that I've always wanted to have a family. And here I am living my dream.
Instead of looking at it like that, we look at it as a detriment to our happiness.
Does that make sense? It's a shift of perspective and it all ties into gratitude.
Yeah, it totally makes sense. And I think the thing, and I have that where I've got the kids to get, you know, one's got to be here, one's got to be there.
And the thing that helps me most with all that, and I think it's exactly what you did with your sister, is I just remember these are all choices I'm making, right?
I could choose to not take the kids to soccer practice.
I could choose to go to Hawaii and leave them here in Ohio.
Those are all choices
that are mine. But I like what you said. You said, we make our choices and we pay our own prices.
A friend of mine used to say, it pays you money, it takes your choice, which I'm not sure is the
same thing exactly, but it makes me happy to say that. But you do say we are the victims of our choice. And I think the other thing that this
whole conversation points to is that no life is without some degree of struggle, without some
degree of, you know, I'm not in the greatest mood. And that's where we a lot of times get
ourselves caught is thinking that I should never feel anything other than ecstatic.
And if I don't, then there's something wrong with my life.
And I think that's an interesting way to look at it.
Yeah, people ask me if I'm happy.
I'm always happy.
And I'm like, of course I'm always happy, but I'm not always in a good mood. Right.
You know, and that's a big distinction.
As far as struggle, the temple keeper in Hawaii had a sign on her wall that said, struggle is not a requirement. And what it entails is, I think our biggest challenge is that we identify with our challenges.
frustration, we say, I am frustrated. If we experience anger, which is a perfectly natural feeling, instead of honoring it as a temporary feeling that we're just experiencing and it will
pass, instead of saying, I am feeling anger right now, we say, I am angry. This is really,
really detrimental to our happiness because we are identifying ourselves with a temporary,
transient feeling. And when we say, I am angry, it becomes part of our identity. And we look at
the world through that lens of an angry person or a victim of these feelings that we have.
You know, it's just this really interesting switch in even vocabulary that can make a huge impact.
You know, our words have tremendous power and we have to be very gentle with them. And when we say I am anything, it becomes part
of our identity. And that could be really, I mean, if you tell yourself every single day,
oh, I'm so depressed. Oh, I'm so challenged. I'm struggling so much. My life sucks. You're going to end up
believing it. Now, everything we're talking about here, I just want to make sure to clarify.
This whole happiness is a choice. It is a perspective. It is a way of looking at the world.
This does not necessarily apply to those who are challenged with some chemical imbalance,
those who actually suffer from depression. That is not something that we can just tell people to snap out of.
What we're talking about is not a blanket statement that applies to everyone.
I just want to make sure that that's clear, that I'm not in any way minimizing
the challenges that some people are most definitely faced with. I'm talking about the suffering that we create ourselves
by negative talk in our own head.
Am I clarifying that distinction?
Oh, very much, and I think that's a distinction
that we talk about a lot on the show,
is that there is some amount of pain and suffering
that just comes with life, right?
It's the first noble truth.
It's what we layer on top of that, that we do to ourselves, that we are able to control.
The analogy I always make is feeling bad about feeling bad, right?
You've just made it worse.
And that's what the Buddha taught.
That's the noble truth, is that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.
And it's really important to make that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.
And it's really important to make that distinction because we'll experience pain, but if we just honor it as temporary, like everything else, it's a lot easier to hold than to identify myself as a victim of that, rather than a survivor of that, then I will always be a victim. I will use that as a justification for how I'm feeling
today, even though it happened 25 years ago. So yeah, these stories in our heads that we create
constantly, and it could be something as simple as we have Buddhist boot camp meetings constantly
globally.
And we talk about getting really frustrated, especially here in Southern California with
traffic.
You have a lot of people who get very angry when someone cuts them off on the freeway.
And because we create these stories about, oh, you think you're more important than me,
or it's all those people in the BMWs. And then you create a story that all BMWs are evil. And then the next time
you see one, it makes you angry, even though it's not even cutting you off. It just triggered that
story you told yourself. And this woman raised her hand and said, you know, whenever someone
cuts me off, I just pretend they have to pee, you know. And although that's still a story that we're telling ourselves, it's a much
better story. It doesn't, it doesn't trigger any anger. It actually, you know, makes you even
giggle and go, Oh, go ahead. You know, sorry. You know, like it's something everyone can relate to.
It's way lighter and it doesn't ruin your day, you know? Right. So, yeah, i've read about it for years about the stories that we that we tell
ourselves and as i've practiced meditation more and more i'm starting to be able to catch those
stories getting created uh a lot sooner and and kind of what you said a minute ago about
not identifying so clearly with i am angry or is i've been – the metaphor that I love and one of our guests a while ago talked about it in regards to meditation is sort of like sitting behind the waterfall, right?
And the waterfall is your mind and you're sitting behind it watching it.
And that distance is so helpful to think about everything in that way.
You know, I am, you know, I'm feeling depressed or it's a, it's a different, it's a different
thing than identifying with I am. And it's getting, once you start really, at least for me,
once I start really hearing the voice that's in my head more consistently, it's,
it becomes really,
uh,
illuminating as to like,
Oh,
no wonder I'm in a bad mood.
Right.
Cause listen to what's been going on for the last 30 minutes.
And I,
I just noticed how fast it happens.
It's,
it's stunning how fast one simple little,
uh,
feeling or,
or twinge of pain or anything leads to a fairly elaborate story, which usually ends with, you know, and then I'm miserable.
Yeah.
And so it's important not to believe everything we think and to remember that feelings are not facts.
You know, so when we feel them, we just, like you said, observe them rather than identify with them and just sit there and go, wow, look at that story being created. You know, my friend has a practice of
naming her demons, so to speak. You know, if you're prone to anger, give your anger a name.
And so when you're in a situation and you feel it bubbling up, we always feel it bubbling up.
It never actually sneaks up on us. And we can just say, oh, there's anger, you know,
whatever you want to name him, Andy, you know, there's Andy, you know, and he wants to rear
its ugly head. It's like, I see you, Andy. And it's interesting that the minute you see it and
it just wants to be recognized. It just wants to be acknowledged. And you keep it at bay because
we always say, you know, something came over me, right? We become someone we don't want to be.
We don't have to.
We can stay true to who we are to listen to that other wolf and just say, I'm not going to feed you, you know, cat, go away.
And it will eventually make it less of a habit to show up.
It's not about doing away with our ego.
Then we're putting a lot of energy into the ego, which the ego loves, and so it gets bigger.
It's about feeding our faith. It's about putting more energy to what we want to grow
into our Buddha nature, Christ nature, whatever you want to call it.
nature, Christ nature, whatever you want to call it, that's my invitation is for all of us to actually make a list of our guiding principles of our values and write out a paragraph. What kind
of person do you want to be? Patient, kind, compassionate, giving, forgiving, write it all
out. And then that's where the hard part comes in. Cross-reference it with the person you actually are, you know, with your actual behavior in the world. And you'll immediately see where
you have work to do. You know, you're like, oh, I'm not as patient as I'd like to be. I need to
work on that. And the beauty in that is that you're inviting yourself. No one's telling you,
you know what your problem is? You're telling it to yourself. And then it's like, wow, like,
I can be the best version of me.
It's just it's up to me.
And it's not about what I believe because my, you know, your beliefs don't make you a better person.
Your behavior does.
So, you know, much like in yoga, they tell us to set our intention for the day.
I invite people to actually set your action for the day.
Go a step beyond intention, you know, 10 for the day. Go a step beyond intention. Ten minutes a day. Take yourself slowly
closer from the version of yourself that you want to be. Bridge the gap between that and how you
actually behave in the world. Yeah, with really small steps.
Really small. I mean, never discourage progress, no matter how slow. It's just really small. It's
not about selling everything you own and moving to Hawaii. It wasn't that quick. I mean, never discourage progress, no matter how slow, you know, just really small. It's not about selling everything you own and moving to Hawaii. You know, it wasn't that quick.
I mean, I guess I could say, yes, it took over a year to actually put everything in order and put
that together. It's not about making rash decisions because then you go, at what point,
at what thought actually led me here? There's, it was a series of thoughts. It's a series of steps.
Right. You can never end that trace backwards no so yeah very gradual and being gentle with yourself is really important you know if you
slip one day and you do get angry you know for whatever reason to say that's okay i'll try again
tomorrow you know i am only human and i'm just starting out this process so you know let's just
try better tomorrow and we get better at it. 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 gonna
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. God 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'll find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You have a line, speaking of anger, that I really like, which says,
Explain your anger.
Don't express it.
And you will immediately open the door to solutions and understanding.
But what I really like about that is that the explain part is there. Because I think that's where I get lost is I go, I'm not going to get angry.
I'm not going to get angry at,
I'm not going to express this anger to the people around me, but then I don't do anything. And then I'm stuck with it. Right. And, and I'm, and I realized that's not, that's, that doesn't work.
No pain doesn't decompose when you bury it. Yeah. Right. It's important to none. And people say,
no, it's important to express your anger. Otherwise'm like okay explain it you know because the anger is just a way of expressing something there's some there's
some thought that something that is being misunderstood some trigger that's being pulled
or button that's being pushed and if you just take the time to explain you know this is what's going
on you don't have you don't have to bite someone's head off and then go, oh, I understand.
Because that's just it.
Most of our arguments with other people are due to misunderstanding, right?
And the only way out of that is through explanation.
And it's, yeah, explain your anger.
Explain what it is that you're feeling.
Don't express it.
And yes, anger is not in and all by itself a terrible thing.
Anger can actually propel us forward to take action, you know, about something, some injustice that we see in the world.
But, I mean, compassion does the same thing without the ugly side effects.
without the ugly side effects.
So explaining it actually gets us more in touch with the underlying feeling behind it
rather than the expression.
Yeah, as Johnny Rotten, or a.k.a. Johnny Lydon,
says, anger is an energy.
But I agree that just letting it loose wildly
does not help.
And I more and more have learned about how anytime you get more interested in winning the argument than you are in the original thing, then you've kind of crossed that line.
And it's amazing to me how quickly into an argument with somebody most of us cross that line.
It happens very quickly that we are all of a sudden beyond the
point of being rational. Oh, yeah. The moment you raise your voice at someone is the moment you're
no longer trying to make a connection with them, but you're trying to prove yourself right,
superior, and then inferior. It's no longer about coming to an understanding. It's all ego at that
point. And how often does someone get your explanation better if you yell at them? It's all ego at that point. And how often does someone get your explanation better
if you yell at them? It's not going to happen. So the point is to remember, okay, what is my
intention in this conversation? Is it to prove myself superior? And if that's it, why? What
other people think about me is none of my business. Why am I so concerned with that?
So yeah, remembering our true intention is really important.
And I know it's hard in the heat of the moment, but again, it's practice.
That's why it's called spiritual practice.
It's ongoing.
Right.
And I think there's that feel superior, and I think there's so much fear underlying all
of that.
When people get angry, I've been able to notice that more,
and it's a good way to deal with somebody who's really angry,
if I can sort of realize, like,
I think that they're really actually afraid of something.
What is that thing?
Yeah, exactly.
And a lot of people are not comfortable with vulnerability.
We're taught as a society that vulnerability is a sign of weakness.
I believe it's our greatest strength.
And we are scared to be vulnerable with people and tell them what's really going on with us,
what we're very afraid of, because we're afraid of being judged.
So you've got fear on top of fear on top of fear.
And in my experience, and what I tried to do with the book and online,
is just be really honest, very vulnerable.
And what I found is that people don't necessarily judge me for it.
They actually feel like they can relate to me more,
not judge me, if that makes sense at all,
because we're all the same, really.
We're all battling the same demons, like I said earlier.
And when I share it and I say, here, this is my insecurity,
people aren't going to go, oh, you're stupid. They're going to go, oh, I have that earlier. And when I share it and I say, here, this is my insecurity, people aren't going to go,
oh, you're stupid. They're going to go, oh, I have that too. I just never thought I could say
that out loud. Right. Yeah. You say that your mind is like a spoiled rich kid, which is a phrase
I really like. I love some of these quick phrases a guest we had a few weeks ago. I keep bringing
this up because I just love it. He wanted to title his book, The Voice in My Head is an Asshole, which is wonderful. But Your Mind is Like a
Spoiled Rich Kid is really good too. You have raised it to think whatever it wants, whenever
it wants to, and for however long, with no regard for consequences or gratitude.
It's true. And so it wants what it wants when it wants it. And we can't be mad at our mind for that. We've raised it that way. And somewhere else, I think I talk about the mind's like a puppy that you try to train. At first, it runs after everything that sparks its curiosity, but then you train it to go where you want it to go. And your mind can be your best friend.
to go where you want it to go.
And your mind can be your best friend.
The voice in your head can actually be empowering and encouraging you to move forward,
not holding you back.
And when that other voice jumps in
every once in a while,
I find laughing at it makes it go away a lot faster.
Yeah.
Because it's silly.
Well, I hope my puppies are not a reflection of my mind because I have not
trained them terribly well. I love them, but I absolutely recognize that some of their behavior,
I'm like, I'm totally responsible for that. Oh, yeah. We encourage certain behavior. What you
allow is what will continue. I mean, that's true for every aspect in our life. You know,
if someone treats you a certain way, if you allow it, they're going to continue doing it that way.
If you allow a certain voice in your head to keep telling you lies, that's what's going to continue.
So it's about up to us. That's just it. The only things we're victims of is our own choices. We
allow things to take place, which means we're allowing them to continue, whether it be with the puppies or, you know, another depiction of, I've heard I don't know how true that is, but,
you know, there's something about clearing our minds, clearing our workspace, clearing our area,
purging tangible things from our lives and purging old beliefs and philosophies and opinions that no
longer apply. Because the mind doesn't know the difference. It just knows not to cling anymore.
It knows not to hang on to things that letting go is okay,
whether it be of an old desk that has three legs.
It doesn't stand on its own, but maybe one day you'll find the fourth leg.
It's like just let it go.
Just move past it, and you'll find it becomes addictive, actually,
this letting go process. and when you start letting
go of opinions that are no longer valid that's the really good stuff that's fun yeah i hope that
the reflection of my co-host's table downstairs is not a reflection of his mind i'm not sure
actually today it is he cleaned it up but yesterday it was littered with uh well i won't
yeah but but like he's said, it is today.
There are some days when I go, okay, I need some peace of mind, and I can't get there if my desk.
And so we do actually quite often, without realizing it, want to clean up our space because really what we really want to clean is our head space.
It's just the tangible is so much easier in a way. But what we're really
doing is we're sorting our thoughts, we're sorting our mind, so it's easier for us to stay focused
and clear-headed. There is a correlation there, absolutely. Well, Timber, this has been really
enjoyable. I wish we had more time, but we're about out of our time here. Is there
anything you want to leave us with related to the parable or anything else?
Just be gentle with yourself that it's a practice. If you feed that one wolf one day,
that's okay. Just don't make it a practice to do it on a daily basis. And write out that paragraph. I really want to go back to
that. Write out your core values, your guiding principles, the kind of person you want to be,
and then cross-reference it with your behavior in the world. And you'll immediately see where
you have work to do. The book, I hope, doesn't end up sitting on a shelf anywhere. I hope that when you get it, you share it with at least four other people.
That's my intention.
That's my hope.
Actually, you just gave me a great idea.
You sent me a free copy of the book, even though I had a copy of it from before.
I'm going to take it into a place that I do some consulting tomorrow, and I'm going to leave it on the table and just see who grabs it.
It should be an interesting experience. Yeah, and you can write a note in it, read it and pass it on, you know,
and people are very inclined to do that. And there's even a website, uh, forget what it's
called, but it's tracking books that way because you put a little tracking number and you can watch
where your book ends up and it's, yeah, it's quite wonderful. So yeah, my hope is that it gets spread
and shared, um, with the intention to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire everyone to be the best version of themselves there is.
All right.
Well, thank you very much.
I appreciate you coming.
Thank you.
I very much appreciate the work you do in the world.
Okay.
Talk later.
Bye.
Thank you.
Bye.
You can learn more about this podcast and Timber Hawkeye at one you feed dot net slash timber.