The Tim Ferriss Show - #94: Tara Brach on Meditation and Overcoming FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)

Episode Date: July 31, 2015

Tara Brach (@TaraBrach) is a PhD in clinical psychology and one of the leading teachers of Buddhist thinking and meditation in the Western world. She is the founder of the Insight Meditation Community in Washington, D.C. and her lectures are downloaded hundreds of thousands of times each month. I was first introduced to Tara's work by another guest on this podcast, Maria Popova. Soon thereafter, a friend and neuroscience PhD recommended her book, Radical Acceptance, as life-changing. It exceeded all expectations. It’s my hope that this tactical conversation offers you techniques for addressing loneliness, anger, self-hatred, the “trance of unworthiness,” and much more. Tara’s had a measurable impact on my life, and I wish the same for you. For those who know my fondness for Stoic philosophy, I think Tara’s work is a fantastic compliment to Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and the other favorites. Links, resources, and show notes from this episode can be found at http://fourhourworkweek.com/podcast This podcast is brought to you by Vimeo Pro, which is the ideal video hosting platform for entrepreneurs. In fact, a bunch of my start-ups are already using Vimeo Pro. WealthFront uses it to explain how WealthFront works. TaskRabbit uses it to tell the company’s story. There are many other names who you would recognize among their customers (AirBnB, Etsy, etc.) Why do they use it? Vimeo Pro provides enterprise level video hosting for a fraction of the usual cost. Features include: Gorgeous high-quality playback with no ads Up to 20 GB of video storage every week Unlimited plays and views A fully customizable video player, which can include your company logo, custom outro, and more You get all this for just $199 per year (that’s only $17 per/mo.) There are no complicated bandwidth calculations or hidden fees. Try it risk-free for 30 days. Just go to Vimeo.com/business to check it out. If you like it, you can use the promo code “Tim” to get 25% off. This is a special discount just for you guys. Enjoy!***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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but I'm not going to ask you to call me that. And this is another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where my job is to deconstruct world-class performers or teachers, oftentimes both in many different areas. And that could range from chess to sports, to acting, to government, to military. And this time we have an incredible meditative thinker and teacher, specifically in the Buddhist tradition. So Tara Brock, I have been looking forward to speaking with Tara for many, many, many months. Tara is a PhD in clinical psychology and one of the leading teachers of Buddhist thinking and meditation in the Western world. She is the founder of the Insight Meditation Community in Washington, DC, and her lectures, which are fantastic, are downloaded hundreds of thousands of times every month. I was first introduced to Tara's work by another guest on

this podcast, Maria Popova, who's amazing. You should listen to her episode as well. Soon thereafter, looked like the universe was conspiring. A friend who's also a neuroscience PhD recommended her book, Radical Acceptance. She claimed it was life-changing and all of my red flags went up and it ended up exceeding all expectations. It really had a profound impact on my life. So it's my hope that this tactical conversation offers you techniques for addressing all sorts of issues ranging from loneliness to anger, self-hatred, the quote, trance of unworthiness, end quote, and much more. Tara has had a meaningful impact on my life. And of course, I wish the same for you. That's why I invited her to be on the podcast. And for those of you who know my fondness for Stoic philosophy,

I think Tara's work and certain facets of Buddhism, in fact, are a fantastic compliment to all of my talking and reading about Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and the other favorites. So without further ado, please enjoy a conversation that I really enjoyed and a wide ranging romp across all sorts of subjects and topics with Tara Brock. Tara, welcome to the show. I'm delighted to be with you, Tim. And I am having a bit of deja vu all over again, as one very wise man once said, because I've heard so many of your guided meditations. It's surreal to be talking to you live.

Do you get that a lot? Do you have people come up to you and have to do a double take with your voice or people recognize you in restaurants because they've heard your guided meditations? Yeah, that. And they'll say, oh, you look so much littler than I thought. And then I'll start speaking, and they'll go into a kind of hypnotic trance or something. I've been introduced to you through many different people, and eventually, almost in the same way that meditation kind of knocked on my door until I finally answered. Maria Popova, who runs a site called Brain Pickings, is just one of my favorite people

and brought you up on this podcast, in fact. And then a number of my other friends, I have a friend named Olivia, who also brought you up. And it just got to the point where specifically, uh, your guided meditations and radical acceptance had been introduced into my, my life or my slipstream, my consciousness, so many different ways. I felt like perhaps it was time for me to sit down and take a look at things. And so first off, I wanted to just thank you for the work that you do, because it's had a very positive impact on my life and based on the response of my audience on many people who are likely listening to this interview. So first off, I just wanted to thank you for that. Thank you. I appreciate hearing it. And it's very mutual, but I won't go there right this moment. So thank you for how much what you're doing ripples out.

I'm just every day slogging along in my own way. Although if people could see it, sometimes I think how the sausage is made. Not so much worry, but part of the reason I usually decline journalists who want to follow me around for three to five days. I'm like, you might be envisioning something that is very different from my reality. I think you see me like snowboarding in the Alps and then taking some type of zip line like into a bathtub where I'm reciting poetry or whatever the image might be. I have no idea what the image is. Most of the time, it looks like I'm just sitting there. I know, it can be awful ordinary from the inside out, or extraordinary both.

So I was hoping we might start where things began, and to rewind the clock a little bit and just give people a retrospective of how you got to the point where you're teaching Buddhist meditation and mindfulness and so on. And I have a little bit of the background from Radical Acceptance and having read that, but for those people who are unfamiliar with your work, maybe you could give just a brief overview of your background. I think that would be a helpful place to start. Sure, sure.

Well, if I go back more to the teens, I remember when I first went to a class on imperative religion and got a whole mess of them introduced. And I decided that Buddhism was at the very bottom of my list because it's just like, you know, why would I want to give up desire? I was a total hedonist and I love my desires, you know, whether it was, you know, nature and athletics or drugs or sex or parties, you know, it's like, why give up desire? And it wasn't, it was about another five years until I got it. That wasn't the message. It wasn't give up desire. It was, you know, not be, not have desire, be a tyrant over your life, you know, not be possessed. But so I, I was, you know a thrill-seeking and also type A kind of a teen, very hardworking and hard-playing. And where was this? I grew up in Montclair, New Jersey,

which we all called the hub of the universe because it seemed like the center of everything. And then I went into college thinking I was going to be a lawyer. And when I graduated, I moved right into an ashram. So something happened in there. That's quite an abrupt transition. I'm so curious. I mean, what triggered that? Was it a conversation, a particular movie or book? I mean, how did you go from preparing to be a lawyer to going to an ashram? Well, there are a number of influences. Part of it's the times. I went to college and it was social activism and I was very anti-war, very involved with left-wing politics. And the combo of that with psychedelics combined with just the whole, you know, coming, the East, East coming to the West and introducing yoga. I began to do yoga in my junior or senior year in

college and my reality shifted, Tim. You know, it was like, I still, I had, I've always had an interest in, you know, learning and academics to some degree, but I was like, I was passionate about discovering, you know, what is the nature of the universe? What is reality? And I've always fascinated with the psyche, like how do these minds work? So I knew that some, I knew I just kind of had to give myself to that. So when I graduated, I went to what's called a summer solstice gathering. It was a big yoga meditation gathering. And there was just this experience that there was a mystery that was so much bigger than the world that I normally lived in, that that was the thing to commit myself to. So I really literally went from college right into an ashram community.

An ashram, for those that are listening and don't know, it's a spiritual community where practice yoga and meditation. We'd get up at 3.30 in the morning and start with a cold shower. The beginning of the day was just getting into a cold shower and then doing a lot of very vigorous yoga and chanting and meditation. And, you know, after a few hours, I'd enter the day feeling just absolutely ablaze with, you know, both energy and also very, very peaceful and happy. And then during the day, because, you know, I carried all my type A stuff into ashram with me, I was just, I was kind of a, you know, a pretty driven yogi.

You're a varsity player. You've got it. It's amazing. We do that. I've seen pretty much everyone I know get into spiritual life or spiritual practice but bring all their normal egoic, neurotic stuff into it. So I did that. And I remember, I mean, we all have different ways of doing it. For me, I had this idea that if I worked really hard at it, I could get enlightened in six or seven years. And I have no idea where I got that number from, but that was my, you know, I just kind of figured I'd really throw myself in. And so I would sometimes go to different teachers and say, well, so what else can I do? Because, you know, I was pretty, you know, I was going at it. Like as a group, we would get up at 3.30 in the morning, but I'd often get up at 2.30 so I could get a little extra in.

And I don't say this, by the way, with pride. I mean, I was, you know, I've learned since then. But so I'd ask this question, you know, I've learned since then. But so I'd asked this question, you know, what else can I do? And to a T, the response would be, just relax. And then I go, oh, just relax. And that would become my next, you know, practice. I'm going to do this now. You're going to wake up 30 minutes earlier to relax. Exactly right. Exactly right. It's like race, race, race to get there and wait.

But, you know, anyway, so that was kind of, those were my earliest years in the ashram. I was pretty driven and trying really hard to purify and become a better person. And, you know, I got drawn both because I intuited, you know, this mystery. I intuited a kind of love that really was possible to inhabit and express and an awareness that was very vast. And I also was drawn because I wanted to become a better person. And I spent a lot of my earlier years feeling like I wasn't enough. I needed to be better. So it was also kind of a self-improvement project at the same time. How did you feel you weren't good enough? Or what were the things you hoped to improve?

Because I'm a head case about this stuff. So this is not, uh, this is not me talking down, um, in any way. I, I struggle with a lot of these, uh, I think issues. So I'm asking as much for myself as anyone else. Yeah. Yeah. Well, um, I've come to call it the trance of unworthiness in retrospect. And I like talking about it because I feel like most everyone I know, it feels like a pervasive suffering in our culture that we have this sense that we should be better, that we're, you know, there's a cartoon I love with this dog on a psychiatrist's couch. And he's saying, it's always good dog this and good dog that, but is it ever great dog? Sounds like a New Yorker cartoon.

It does, doesn't it? Yeah. So I'd say for myself, I think the biggest areas of feeling unworthy or not good enough was a sense of being selfish or self-centered, like in some way my own needs come first. And also feeling, I remember in high school and first years of college being out of control with my eating and feeling overweight and being really, really ashamed of that. So I felt that, you know, something was wrong with me there. And that I just in some way was falling short, whether it was as a friend or a daughter or whatever. And I had a lot of insecurity about, you know, I was just very driven to seek approval.

And so I could see the different ways that it played out, but it was definitely the core sense of not good enough. And that really became the seed of writing Radical Acceptance was both through my own experience of not enough, and then as a psychologist, and then as a spiritual teacher, just seeing the torment. Like, how many people are not able to enjoy their moments because in some way there's a sense of something's wrong. I'll share with you one story that really hit me, and I think it's in radical acceptance of a woman who was in a coma, and her daughter was by her, and her daughter told me this story. And she was dying, and at one point, her kind of eyes bolted open, and she

looked her daughter in the eye and said, you know, all my life I thought something was wrong with me. And then she closed her eyes and that was it. That was her last word. She died after that. And for my friend, for this young, for the woman, it was kind of a parting gift because she realized just how sad it is to spend so many moments at war with ourselves. And part of when I teach about the trance of unworthiness, we can start to see how if we're really not trusting ourselves, if we're filled with self-doubt, it's very hard to feel intimate with other people. There's always a sense that, yeah, it's like they'll find out. It's like, if I'm right now talking to you and I feel like there's this core deficiency,

it means I won't be able to be spontaneous or, you know, respond with tenderness. It's like there's always a defendedness. So anyway, that's a long way around saying that that became very clear to me at the end of college and the beginning of living in an ashram that I really wanted to, in some way, I needed to befriend myself. That became a very clear thing. It wasn't just a psychological thing. It was very much a part of spiritual awakening that I needed to really befriend this life.

And when you were having this ashram experience, when did things change? When did you leave the ashram? You know, the ashram, the strengths and the positive aspects were, you know, it made it very easy to have a very regular, strong practice. And the nice thing about having a group of people, and I really recommend this to all of us, is that to periodically be able to practice with other people and exchange what's going on, that sense of community can keep nourishing and enlivening what's going on in terms of awakening.

And the ashram had a lot of rigidity to it, Tim. It was, you know, I joined when I was 21 and I came from this very kind of liberal background. I was very independent, and yet I joined something that had quite a hierarchy. It was very patriarchal. It was really very different from what I would have thought for myself, and gradually those qualities of the kind of rigidity just made it so I needed to continue on the spiritual path, but not inside the ashram environment. So I left, right? I left, I stayed for 10 years and I had an arranged marriage. This is something that's not so typical in the West, you know, to have, you know, had all the normal longing to, you know, fall in love and Prince in shining armor

and get married. And instead I, you know, I was assigned to my husband and, um, I don't know if I should speed over that one or not. Uh, you know, we, we might, I might come back to that, but you can please continue and then we might come back to that. Okay. So, you know, so I went along with a lot of stuff because, you know, again, I was having very intense altered states of experience that were very lovely. I learned to concentrate my mind and, you know, had a lot of devotional experiences and so on. But the structure and the authoritarianism of the community got to me. And so I left after 10 years, and then right after leaving, got pregnant and had my son, Narayan. And if you wouldn't mind, there's one particular story about the ashram, I mean, this being called out in a group setting that I think,

I mean, it really struck me as a turning point, perhaps, or an important event at the very least, if you wouldn't mind describing that, uh, I think that could add some context as well. Sure, sure. Um, yeah, our, I had been trying to get pregnant, uh, you know, and, and really eager to have a child and I finally got pregnant and I went to a gathering, you know, we would gather for about a month in the mountains. And I remember it was very, very hot and it was very rigorous activity at our gatherings and I miscarried. And so I wrote a note to the spiritual leader of the community and basically said, you know, we might want to warn some people that if you're pregnant and you're in this kind of heat, you know, it might not be a good idea. And I think that that must have made him feel like I was saying, well, your teachings, something about your teachings caused me to miscarry, which of course wasn't what I was saying. But I was in a group of several hundred people

when he had me stand up and he said, you know, you're trying to blame your miscarriage on such and such and you miscarried because of your ego. And he was very, it was very crude and very, it was abusive. It was an abusive behavior to, here I was two days after a miscarriage to, you know, have me in that vulnerable a place, berated in that way. And so that, I'm glad you brought it up because that, you know, I'd already had a lot of misgivings about ashram living, but his behavior made it utterly clear to me that, you know, I couldn't be part of something where the leader would treat people in an abusive way. And interestingly, I have had no abuse or trauma on that of any real sort in my history, I think if I had already been an abused person and I'd already had trauma in my nervous system, that it would have been much more difficult for

me to process that. But as it happened, after that experience, for the hours after it, I remember going into a little kind of a chapel and crying deeply, you know, the humiliation of it, the pain of it, the hurt of it, the kind of the betrayal, like how could somebody I'd kind of trusted do that? And then I got to a place where either it became very clear to me that either I was going to in some way believe that he knew something and use it against myself, or I was going to absolutely get behind myself in the sense of really dedicate to embracing myself, not to buy into some badness. Because it could have easily played into the trance of unworthiness. It could have been, it could have been the killer, could have been the

nail to the coffin. And, but what it made clear to me is that I, I really want, you know, that it was intrinsic to the spiritual path to trust and embrace the life that's here. And that doesn't mean, Tim, that I felt like I, my ego, that I was, you know, ego-free and that I didn't make mistakes. And, you know, I mean, I'm like, you know, very, very aware of all my imperfections. It more meant that on some fundamental level, I was going to trust my goodness. And so it was a turning point because it was after that betrayal that I chose to really, I really committed myself to accepting myself as I was. And since then, I ran into this quote from Carl Rogers, who says, you know, it wasn't until I accepted myself just as I was that I was free to change.

Yeah, this is, so I'm glad you brought that up. I was actually going to bring up that exact quote later in our conversation. And we'll get to that just because I found it very challenging and I've talked to many friends about this, the balancing of acceptance versus proactivity or the acceptance versus being proactive. And we'll come back to that because I know this is something you've spoken about before, but the ashram then at that point is a closed chapter of sorts. So you embrace, decide to do what many people perhaps would not have done because of their background or circumstances, which is really sad. And you see this a lot in closed communities. But you took the path of sort of accepting, trying to accept yourself as opposed to accept this negative version of yourself that had been reinforced by this leader.

At that point, where did you go with your studying and or your teaching? I left the ashram. I had been doing a lot of teaching while I was in the ashram, yoga and meditation. And I left and got very drawn. My meditation kind of started shifting and I got very drawn to mind and settle the mind and have access to experiences of a lot of peace. And it can be very, very profoundly pleasurable. And I love that, but what it didn't teach me was mindfulness, which was really how to open up into the present moment with a very kind of profound quality of just simple acceptance and presence, to really notice what's going on right here. So I got drawn to Buddhism because that capacity for mindful presence became more and more what drew me.

So after I left the ashram, I started reading and then going to retreats that were Buddhist meditation retreats. And I also had a child. So I was juggling a few different worlds there, but they came together okay. And since I promised to come back to it and arranged marriage, I'd like to talk about this because, and I want to hear your thoughts on a couple of things. So I've had conversations half-jokingly, not totally jokingly, with friends who are, say, Indian and who have friends who've had arranged marriages. And some of these friends live in, say, New York City, and they have this

paradox of choice conundrum where whoever they're dating, however smart or attractive or kind and so on they might be, they are passing so many people on the street that they worry might be just a little more attractive, a little more of this, a little more of that, that they hop from one person to the next, to the next, to the next in relationships. And if I have a few drinks with them, sometimes they'll joke, you know, it'd be a lot easier if I just had an arranged marriage because it would take the decision making out of it on some level. Or, you know, perhaps my parents could say, not this is the one person, but here are the five people you have to choose from. They're all really great people. Take your pick.

And I'd just love to hear how your arranged marriage was arranged. Like what were the criteria? How were you two paired? And just your general thoughts on that entire experience. Yeah. So maybe just to make a broader comment that, you know, for some people from some traditions, it may well be that, you know, given a handful of people that there may be somebody in that handful, that it really does work better for them. And so this is not like a judgment that culturally this is a bad ritual, you know. And in this particular case, it happened, I'd say, a good number of times, maybe three-quarters of the marriages of the, you know, we were all in our 20s when we first joined the ashram, were arranged by the head of the whole organization. And so mine was.

And it was not done by any criteria that any of us could ever think of. It was very much that there was a man who lived in Canada and needed his green card. That's what it was. And he was part of our larger community, and they wanted him to be able to move into the country and get a green card. And so they were looking for somebody to match him with. And they knew I was single. And they made the arrangement for me not only to marry him, but I had to leave where I was living, which was Boston, and come down to Washington. So it seemed in my mind to be absolutely this crazy groundless pairing. I couldn't imagine. I mean, it was just so far

from what I ever imagined for myself. And when I met him, he was a perfectly nice person, but very, very far from anybody I would have naturally in my own choosing have picked as a mate. So it was really, really rough. I was very upset by it. I pleaded not to have to do it. And ultimately, it was my sense that, well, to be dedicated to this path means to go along with this. That was somehow or other how my mind construed it, that I needed to surrender. I needed to surrender my wants and just do it. And I'm still, and I can say right now in my current state of mind, kind of astonished that I would have viewed

it that way. Because as I say, I came out of pretty independent thinking people, but that's what happened. And I married him and it turned out that he was, as I said, a very, you know, a wonderful, wonderful human. And he continues to be a dear friend and brother. I mean, he really is. He's very, we're very much, we had a child together. We, even though we divorced, we co-parented and were good friends. And I think, Tim, that part of it is because we didn't fall in love in a romantic way, when we decided to divorce, there wasn't the kind of painful tearing apart that brings up so much anger and senses of betrayal and so on. We were able to move on together.

This is very interesting. Yeah, you didn't have the, I'm not sure if enmeshing is the right word, but you didn't have that, a lot of the components that create the complexity and sort of, I suppose one could say irrational anger and exaggerated anger directed at the other person just didn't exist. Exactly. I mean, the more attachment there is, the more the falling, when we come apart, the more pain and feeling of vengefulness and everything flies up. So, no, it didn't have that.

So, I'd love to talk about meditation and mindfulness. And we'll get to that looking at the different types of meditation. But I'd love to ask you a couple of questions that are just on my mind right now. So you mentioned enjoying the desires, the sex, the drugs, the this, the that, which all sounds pretty fun, quite frankly. Is it possible to be a mindful hedonist? And if so, is that a bad thing? A mindful hedonist, that should be my next book. I like it.

I think it's possible to take tremendous pleasure in this world. In fact, you know, one teacher says, why fixate your desire on one thing? You want to just desire it all. And the more we're in that kind of receptivity where there's just an amazing appreciation for the simplest things, for everything, actually there's a lot of freedom in that because there's not a lot of clenching and holding on and having to control. Where the idea of mindful hedonism could fall in its face is if we become attached to the particular currents of hedonism being a certain way. So, you know, if we become attached to always having a certain food and then we end up getting addicted, or we get attached to a certain chemical substance and it then becomes harmful for our body, or we take hedonistic pleasure in being with one person sexually,

but then it turns out that it doesn't work out with that person. So if you see what I mean, when there's attachment and it's a tight holding, it actually causes suffering. Totally. Totally agreed. And I think that I have a friend who uses hedonistic as this, he says it with this sort of bitter cutting edge to his voice. He's a very close friend, I won't name him. But I think that it's,

it's, it's kind of got a bad rap. I mean, not to say that, that everyone should aspire to be a hedonist, but I think that there's a, also from, from my own experience,

at least in just looking at modern technologically enabled culture, there's a, there appears to be a disconnect where a lot of human beings do not know how to enjoy sensual pleasures. And by that, I don't mean purely sex. They don't feel at home in their own bodies. They don't walk around barefoot. They don't have these types of sensory experiences that it can be so rich. And I feel like the baby just kind of gets thrown out with the bathwater a lot. And I'd be curious to hear how you might recommend someone experience pleasures without developing a harmful attachment.

So for instance, before we started recording, I was chatting with you a little bit about fasting. And I've been experimenting with fasting partially just to prove to myself that I am self-sufficient and can survive fasting. I mean, it's been a very empowering experience for me. And similarly, I did an experiment with my audience a few months ago called NobNom, which I got a lot of grief for, but it meant no booze, no masturbation for 30 days. And so we had about 10,000 people do this experiment. And it was very empowering for everyone involved, even those who didn't make it the full 30 days. But aside from these intermittent periods of abstinence, these experiments, are there other ways or practices

that help someone not develop attachment to, I suppose, anything, but certain pleasures certainly would fall in that category? Yeah, it's a wonderful question because really if we look at our lives, where there's suffering, if we're not happy and if we're not at home, it's really because of the sense of I want things different. I want more. There's not enough here. And that's attachment. It's like I have to have more.

It's a have to have feeling. And so my experience is that the more we actually are in the moment and in the senses, like right here, right now, the more we decondition grasping. So the very training of, because grasping comes like you have something and then you have the idea that you need to have more to be happy. But if you actually let go of the idea and just experience, directly contact the sense of the pleasure in the moment and just notice that. And then if there's this arising of a sense of wanting more, you just notice that and then you come back right to your body again.

It's staying in the moment that actually interrupts the chain reaction that leads to grasping onto things. But that takes practice. I mean, it's like for most people, as soon as we have the first few spoons of ice cream, it's kind of like we forget and we just spoon it in and we don't taste until at the end there's something lingering and then we have to have more and we're already leaning into the future. So to stay with each bite, there's actually a fulfillment in it. And we don't go down that track of having to have. Right. And it's, it's, I'm glad you mentioned the, the eating. My girlfriend has done, who's, as I mentioned before we got started, a massive fan of yours, has done quite a bit with women with eating disorders. And I know you've spent a lot of time thinking about this, but she's had a lot of success with her past clients simply saying you're allowed to eat whatever you want to eat, but you have to really enjoy it and focus on the experience of eating that food. And just by not forcing,

but facilitating that mindfulness, a lot of those people didn't go on autopilot and consume the 12 scoops instead of one, for instance. And she was trying to stop me from drinking wine last night. She said, you're allowed to have another glass, but I want you to think about it first. And I was like, oh, you got me. Anyway, but it was a very nice sancerre in my defense. But I'm going off the rails here. Let me steer my thinking back on track. One of the challenges that I have is for instance,

anger. Uh, this is, I've, I've been rewarded in life for a lot of, I feel, um, aggression, sort of bull in a China shop type of, uh, aggression sounds very, uh, has a negative connotation but being being very very proactive with trying to accomplish the things that i set out before me whatever those things might be and a maybe side effect of that is a lot of anger directed at myself directed at other people and i'd love for you to talk about this was this was that I just really, when I talk about radical acceptance, this is one of the examples I bring up or one of the stories. Could you talk about Mara and inviting Mara to tea? I'd love to, but can I ask you a question about the anger? Sure. Yeah. Do you feel like it causes you suffering? And if so, how do you notice it as suffering? Because I get that you've

gotten rewards for aggression. Yeah. And the answer is yes, absolutely suffering, which is part of the reason that I finally started attempting to meditate regularly, and I've done a fairly good job, was because I recognized the suffering was not only undesirable on so many levels, but unsustainable. I mean, it was, and I'm not the person who came up with this, this was an analogy, but the acid hurts the vessel that is storing it more than anything that it happens to be poured upon. And I was just carrying around this acid all the time. And I recognized it wasn't a sustainable, it wasn't sustainable in any way. So yes, definitely suffering. I'm never good enough for myself ever, for instance. And this is where I have so much trouble because I won't mention names here,

but I'll give you just the type of anecdote that on one hand, people could say is ridiculous. On the other hand, I really enjoy, and maybe you can read into my pathology here. So there was a very famous tech entrepreneur who was a billionaire several times over, and he was playing chess with a very well-known competitor at one point and this billionaire lost and he stood up and swiped all the pieces off the board and kind of stormed off and the other guy said wow you're really you're really bad at losing and he said show me a good loser and i'll show you a fucking loser. And now that's a very, uh, that's a very, uh, exaggerated example perhaps. But I mean, so if you look at some of my favorite movies,

right, like miracle, which is a Disney movie, but it's amazing. It's about the, the U S hockey team when they, they were, I think expected to be number 16th or 17th and made it all the way to the gold medal match against the Soviets who at the time, expected to be number 16th or 17th and made it all the way to the gold medal match against the Soviets, who at the time were thought to be invincible. And just the extreme nature of the training and the pushing and how hard they had to push to even make that remotely possible is attractive to me, right? And so as a competitor, and I'm going on a little long-winded bit here, but I was always taught, and in fact, maybe I just taught myself, second place is first loser. I would rather be last place than second place because second place means you tried really, really, really, really hard, but just not hard enough. You tried 2% less than the person who got the gold medal, and no one remembers the silver medalist ever.

So it's that. Let me ask you a question about that then. If you had to step back and look at your life, what is the most important place that you would want to win a gold medal? I mean, if you really think, at the end of your life looking back, if you could be the very best in something, what do you most want to be best at? I would say creating learners who are better than I am. And, uh, and if I do that, I feel like I can create a benevolent army of tens of thousands,

maybe hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of world-class teachers. And that just self replicates. So I think that would be the answer. One, I know we're bouncing around here but it's okay when I started meditating regularly for the first time it was only because I had two people I could identify with recommend it to me when I was really

in a very two dark places so one was Chase Jarvis who's a world class photographer he's been on this podcast another was Rick Rubin legendary music producer who also has been on this podcast. Another was Rick Rubin, legendary music producer, who also has been on this podcast. And in this particular case, and we'll get into the different types of meditation, they said, why don't you try TM? Okay, so Transcendental Meditation.

And because these two guys did not strike me as very woo-woo or overly detached from the stresses that I faced. Does that make sense? Like they were negotiating contracts. They were dealing with difficult people. They were really on the front lines of their own respective wars, if you want to look at it that way. And so I was like, okay, if they're recommending this thing that I've kind of discarded as not a fit for me, right? I've always shied away from using the word spiritual, for instance, but because it came from these two people, I decided to give it a shot. The, and then I started seeing the benefits of meditation. I mean, even if I just looked at it through the lens of my type, a personality full of ambition and piss and vinegar and self-flagellation. I was like,

if I meditate in the morning, I get more done with less stress and there's less flailing. So for that reason, for that reason alone, I will meditate. Right. Uh, and then I remember getting to a point after meditating for the first time ever in my life consistently for about, I don't know, let's, let's call it two weeks. I was, I was on a road trip with a friend of mine who had had a very similar experience. And, and, uh, she asked me, do you ever worry that you're getting too chill, that you are losing your edge, that you're not doing things you should because you're too accepting of whatever happens as being okay. So I struggle with that. of enjoying the benefits of meditation and how much I would say happier I am and how much more content I am when I meditate regularly with the nagging concern that perhaps I've taken it too far and I'm,

I've just become lackadaisical or complacent. And when I talk to my friends who are like world-class performers, type a personalities, they all have this kind of this concern, right? Like what if I lose my edge, right? Like what if I lose the thing that has allowed me to be the top, you know, in the top 5% in my field, as opposed to an also-ran. I'd just love to hear your thoughts on that because this is something that hasn't stopped me from meditating because I feel like that's my medication on some level to keep me from not being a huge pain in the ass to myself and everyone around me. Well, how about this? Here's the way that I think is, that I like to frame it,

is that meditation is evolution's strategy to bring out our full potential. Oh, I like that. Okay. And just the way we know we need physical exercise to maximize our body's health, we need to mentally train too. And so meditation is very broad. There are many different kinds of meditations, but a training of the, I'll call it the heart-mind, really what it does in a very specific way, this is what research is showing, is it activates a part of the frontal cortex

where there's kind of neurocircuitry that really has to do with being able to have a larger perspective, being able to have better executive functioning, being able to have more empathy, being able to have more compassion. And it started evolving in the human species. It's what led us to form tribes and be able to start collaborating more. And it's collaboration that's actually allowed us to have the greatest of the scientific kind of breakthroughs and so on. So if you look at it in terms of evolutionary development, both your own evolution and also as a species, the more that we learn to direct our attention, the more we have

access to what's called like a whole brain thinking where we really can be creative, where we really can be spontaneous. It's almost like it evolves past the identification with a separate self into something more whole. And I think often of Aldous Huxley describes this reducing valve of awareness where in the egoic state, the mind just takes in the information so we can, you know, survive and do our daily functions. And it kind of blocks out a lot of the vast mysteries of the universe. And as we meditate, that reducing valve doesn't reduce so much. So we actually have more of the flow of a kind of universal intelligence and creativity that moves through us.

So I do think of it that this training actually can allow us to access our greatest potential. Now, here's a couple of pieces to it. That in the egoic state, dominance and competition are really the way to flourishing. And for those people not familiar with the term, the egoic state is just the focus on I? Yes. Yes.

That it's very self-focused so that we're doing things so that we can, I can be the best because I want to be recognized because I want to be special because I'm an important person. So it's that kind of thing. Sounds like my writing. I'm kidding. And when you think of the moments when you're happiest, it may give you, we might get an initial rush of chemicals when we feel personally recognized and personally the best. Or I know I wrote in my most recent book, My Special Person Complex, you know, where I get caught in, you know, feeling important in some way. And yet that's not when we're happiest. In fact, you know, the way that you can sense it in an evolutionary ways, we are a species, learning to identify with larger, wider and wider circles of beings. We're able to feel a sense of, as you and I talk, that it's not me proving something or impressing, but there's some collectivity that's going on between us that's creating an entirely new field. No, I could not agree more.

And also, just to speak more because I've had a lot of caffeine, the fact of the matter is if I want to have the impact that I mentioned and to create hundreds of thousands or millions of world-class learners, the more effective way to do that is by having a team to help me. So whether I'm collaborating with five people, ten people, or a hundred people, or even fewer potentially, having a very short fuse has been a major handicap for me. That's exactly where I was going, is that the thing you most want to experience and to produce

for you, Tim, is world-class learners and world-class teachers, which I'm imagining, if I read into that, would then allow there to be more creativity, healing, and well-being on the planet Earth.

Yes? Definitely. And more problem solvers. So you have more problem solvers who can also train additional problem solvers, right? So it becomes this sort of benevolent virus. I mean, maybe that's not the right phrasing to use, but a sort of wave of problem solving that is hard to contain. But that only happens when we are operating in a collaborative way.

So the very domain that you are engaged with is really a more evolved domain. It's not the competitive domain. It's going more towards collectivity, towards belonging to a field and you're working to wake up to that and engage other people in it. So in a way, when you ask that question, what will keep my edge? Well, really the new edge that we want to keep is our capacity for empathy and collaboration and mutual creativity. Right, right. Yeah, I'm sharpening the hatchet when it's like, no, dude, you've got to sharpen the saw. It's a different tool.

You're spending your time. That's exactly right. And interestingly, with meditation, what it does is it actually serves that. You become better at that. Yeah, I've been really profoundly affected by, uh, a daily practice. And what I, what I'd love to do to get granular for people is to talk about perhaps some thought exercises or practices that people who are currently working 80 hours a week and feel

like they can't take a lot of time to meditate, could utilize. And I'm not sure if the sacred pause is a good one to talk about. I really enjoyed that discussion. But could you also, because I feel like among my group of friends, this would be very interesting for them to contemplate. Could you talk about little exercises that people could use if they want to not flame out? And what I mean by that is I know a lot of type A personalities who are like, if I'm going to meditate, I'm going to meditate. And so they try to block out like an

hour every morning for like five days a week. And of course they don't make it to the end of the week. It becomes too much. So I'd like to prevent that, you know, these, these driven people from defeating themselves, uh, which is what I did for a long time. But the, uh, the inviting Mara to tea, um, I'd love for you to describe what that is. Uh, and, and then I'll let you run with, with the discussion wherever you want to go. Okay. So in the Buddhist mythology, and this is to me one of the most amazingly contemporary, relevant kind of principles in the universe, the Buddha's awakening to a larger reality came through. He sat this night under what's called the Bodhi Tree. The Bodhi is the Tree of Awakening. And through the night, the god Mara, who represents anger, greed, pride, aversion, passion, jealousy, all the forces that can take over and create misery, attacked him. And, you know, so there were arrows and flames of light and spears and so on coming at him.

And, you know, he sat through the night and practiced this quality of presence so that all the attacks, each of the weapons turned into a flower petal. So by the morning star when it rose, there was a heap of petals that is in front of him. But interestingly, Mara did not just vanish in the Buddha's lifetime. Mara would keep appearing. And so the Buddha would be teaching in a field somewhere. A lot of people gathered and Mara would start lurking in the outskirts. And the Buddha's loyal attendant would be freaked out and he'd say, oh my God, Mara's here. What are we going to do? The shadow has come. But the Buddha would kind of say, chill, it's okay. And then what he'd do is go right to Mara and say, I see you, Mara. Come, let's have tea. And what those two communications really say, I see you, Mara, is mindfulness.

I see you. I get in this moment what's happening. Okay, there's fear. There's anger. It's this capacity we each have to pause and just recognize this is what's here right now. It's an honest recognition. So he said, I see you, Mara, and that's considered the first wing of presence, seeing what's here right now. It's an honest recognition. So he said, I see you, Mara, and that's considered the first wing of presence, seeing what's here. And then the second, come let's have tea,

is instead of fighting what's here in the moment, there's making space for it. There's getting to know it. It's a quality of heart. It's a quality of heart space that lets the life be just as it is in the moment. And these two wings of presence that you see in this myth really are the very foundation of a meditation practice, that in any moment that we can pause and say, you know, you can ask that question, so what is happening inside me right now and and i invite all of you who are listening just right now just to you might just check in what is happening inside me right now you might check the feelings in your body sensations if there's a mood this is the first wing of mindfulness that we say,

okay, so here's what it's like right now, very with our senses, very embodied. And then the second wing, which is let's have tea, is really like saying, I'm just going to allow how this experience is right now to be just as it is, and to bring some interest and some care to it let's have tea so it's a way of being with ourselves that's intimate that's full and

naturally it extends because if you can say to yourself okay here's what's happening there's some anxiety and okay let me be with it Then when you run into another person and they are aggravating in you in some way and judgment comes up or they're intimidating you, you can say, oh, okay, so this is Mara again. I see you, Mara, and you're saying this to yourself. I get that this is intimidating and let's have tea. So you create a space of presence for what's there. And in response to what you said earlier, couldn't this be passive or kind of a chill stance? It's really out of that presence that we can then act in a way

that is most intelligent and most empowered. So this radical presence and radical acceptance that I'm describing, these two wings of what's going on and let's have tea, that's not our permanent stance. That's the grounds for action. It's like we've come home into the moment, we've come into some stability and balance, and then when we respond to the world,

we actually are responding from our full potential. We're not in a reactive mode. We have our internal house in order. I mean, it's, we have... That's exactly right. We've, you know, we're online again in a way, because what happens is when we're reacting to the world, we kind of cut off from some of the

parts of our frontal cortex that actually can make us most effective. And I'll give you an example, a story that's always touched me. This is a surgeon or commanding surgeon in the army who took an anger management course. So this has to do with anger dim. And he took this course, and it was very much based on mindfulness, based on what is happening in this moment, and can I open to this, okay? So he took the course because he was ordered to, actually. Always a good start. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah and um and he and then as the story goes he went

the end of the day to a supermarket to um you know because he needed to fill up on supplies and he gets into line and in front of him there's a woman with just a few items in her cart and not only that um she's got a baby, and this is not the express line, and so he starts fuming because why doesn't she get in the express line? She's in front of me and taking time. She hands the baby to the clerk, and they are oohing and aahing over this little girl. And so he is triggered, and he remembers mindfulness. Okay, the first step with mindfulness is you pause, and that's a sacred pause.

You sense, okay, something's going on. Let's pause. And then the second step is, okay, so what's going on inside me right now? You know, what are we seeing? And he, you know, so he noticed there was anger, and then he could feel underneath the anger that anxiety, and many of us know the anxiety of when we're busy and on our way, and it feels like

our whole world's going to fall apart because we're going to be late or not prepared. So he could sense his anger and fear underneath the anger. And then as he had tea with it, as he just stayed with it, he found some more space and some more presence. So when he looked up and he saw the little girl, he thought, oh, she's cute. And when it was his turn, the woman had left with the girl, he said to the clerk, you know, that little girl was adorable. And the clerk beamed at him, and she said, oh, thank you. Actually, that's my little girl.

My husband was killed in Afghanistan last year, and my mom brings her by every day, twice a day, so we have a little time together. Wow. Yeah. I share that story because if we don't pause and deepen attention, we live out patterns we've been living our whole life to keep us separated from ourselves, our highest self, and each other.

And, you know, we don't know what's going on for others. You know, it's not like everybody has just endured that kind of a loss, but everybody's struggling hard. And we're so quick to take personally and to read our lives into things. To be able to pause and both bring mindfulness and attention inwardly and then outwardly, this is what's going to change the world. This is what's going to allow us to step out of reactivity that fuels wars and actually be more collaborative. This is evolution. I really appreciate that story also because it brings to mind,

for those people out there who are struggling with some of the same things as this, the gent in the story or, you know, the kind of things that I'm very, sometimes the anger very often takes the form of impatience, or maybe it's the other way around, I'm not sure, but very impatient and generally always have been. and takes the form of impatience, or maybe it's the other way around. I'm not sure, but, uh, very impatient and, uh, generally always have been. I mean, ever since I was like a little kid, if, if I sat with an empty water glass in a restaurant and my mom thinks this is hilarious, but also kind of annoying, I would just like get up and walk into the kitchen and grab a pitcher of water,

like not known for my, uh, my patients. And, uh, there are benefits to that sometimes. But what I started doing a few years ago, and in fact, what I think helped prime me for meditation was reading quite a bit of Stoic philosophy, which I think has a lot in common with certain types of Buddhism or teachings of Buddhism anyway. But a couple of things really helped me. The first was trying in the morning to basically do what Marcus Aurelius did. So Marcus Aurelius, who wrote meditations, but it was really basically a journal that was never intended for publication, was at one point the most powerful man in the world. And he would wake up, and this sounds depressing to some people, but I don't find it depressing.

And he would say, you know, today I am going to, and I'm paraphrasing, but run into people who are ungrateful, rude, entitled, et cetera. And basically I, I, I need to be prepared for that and not overreact to it. And along the same lines, you know, in the mornings, what I've tried to remind myself of when I journal, usually after meditating is, you know, in the mornings, what I've tried to remind myself of when I journal, usually after meditating is, you know, everyone is fighting a battle, you know, nothing about number one. And then number two, and I think this is, this was extremely important for me. And I can't remember who told me this initially, but it was don't ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence. And I actually added to that. And I was like, don't ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence or busyness. I mean, I'm amazed sometimes, and I know I've done this in the past, but when somebody will come up to me, I've never met sort of slighted them by reading the email and deciding it was unimportant and ignoring it,

which was not the case at all, has virtually guaranteed that I will not respond to their email because they got so pissed off and flew off the handle and I have no idea what their name is in the first place. But let's look at a couple of different types of meditation. I'd love for you to sort of describe. Actually, let me take a step back. Let's talk about your personal experience. So what does the first 60 to 90 minutes of your day look like, your morning routine? Well, I am woken. If I don't wake up myself, I get up real early.

I mean, I naturally wake up around, well, not real early, but 5 or so, 5.30. But if I don't pop out of bed, then I've got a dog that will climb on my chest and lick my face and nudge me out of bed. She does that because we go right away straight from, we go right down to the river. I live right by the Potomac River. So I usually hike for about three to four miles in the morning. It's the first thing with my dog, and it's almost any weather. And that's no breakfast, no coffee initially? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just go out. I just leave.

Because I find for myself, I've always been very physical. And so, and when I was younger, more athletic, and that's a whole other story because I did lose it for a while. But I find that for me, just moving and moving vigorously and being in nature is, you know, if I had to say what my religion is, it's, you know, being in nature. I just love it. So we go and we do this kind of up-down hike by the river and in the hills. And then about an hour into the hike, I have a place by a stream that I'll stop. And then I'll do a meditation there. So I do a standing meditation there. And it could last anywhere

from 20 to 45 minutes. And then we do the rest of the hike and I come home. What does that standing meditation, what is that comprised of? What does it consist of? So if you could just walk us through what that standing meditation is, sort of internally, what you're focusing on or not focusing on, etc. Sure, and any one of the components... The first part is really pausing. It's like getting that, oh, okay, I've stopped this forward motion. It's like we always have this sense that we're on our way somewhere.

So there's really a sense of, okay, I'm pausing to be right here and that this moment matters as much as any moment in the whole universe. Because we tend to think that this isn't what's important. It's yet to come or it's back there. So to really just pause, And there's a beautiful quote from Viktor Frankl that says, between the stimulus and the response, there is a space. And in that space is your power and your freedom. So that's the beginning. It's just getting, okay, pausing and arriving. And are your eyes open or closed? Well, sometimes I'll start open and really take in the, you know, I'm right by a stream

and right now there's, you know, incredible, you know, the birds and the sounds of the currents and everything. It's quite lovely. So I'll take it all in, but I'll close my eyes eventually just to kind of quiet my mind more. So I begin very much with a kind of sweep through the body, you know, with my awareness. And I will, kind of starting from the head down, I'll just soften and relax different parts of my body so that I'm feeling the life from the inside out. So I'm feeling a sense of sensation. So if you're listening and you just close your eyes, and I sometimes will use the image

of a smile to help to deepen that sense of presence and ease that you can sense the eyes smiling. You can smile into your eyes and feel the corners of the eyes up a little and let the brow be smooth. So there's just a way of softening in the eyes because when we're thinking a lot, when we're in that home movie that's filled with a kind of incessant inner dialogue and a lot of fear usually or stress, the little muscles around the eyes are tense. So by softening the eyes and letting the brow be smooth, that actually helps the mind to quiet some. And you can actually put a half smile on the mouth,

and it's amazing, there's a lot of research on this too, that if you have a little bit of a smile and you can feel the inside of your mouth smiling, that that actually sends a message to your whole nervous system to you can relax the whole fight, flight, freeze constellation and access more of, in evolutionary terms, it's called attend and befriend, that there's just more of a benevolent witnessing when there's a slight smile. So that's another trick.

And again, even if you're not sitting for a long meditation, just pausing and closing your eyes and relaxing the eyes and having a little bit of a smile itself, just even a 30-second pause can shift you from the sympathetic nervous system, which is really very defensive and aggressive, to the parasympathetic, which is much more ease-filled. So I sweep down the eyes, the mouth. I go to the shoulders and let the shoulders fall away from my neck some so that I can just soften in the shoulders. And even again, as you're sitting, you might feel the shoulders from the inside and see if it's possible to have a little bit of that melting of ice to water. Ice to water.

And then water to gas. Kind of letting go. And it's really, really helpful to let the hands rest in a very easy, effortless way because when I have my hands by my side or if you have your hands in your lap, because again, when we're stressed, we have these micro-muscles that tense in the hands. So by consciously softening your hands, you're actually deconditioning that stress reaction. This was actually a question that a number of readers had, which was sort of like Ricky Bobby, I think, and Talladega Nights. No, it was Anchorman.

I don't know what to do with my hands. I don't know what to do with my hands. I don't know what to do with my hands. And so they were asking, when I'm sitting in a sitting meditation, does it matter what you do with your hands as long as they're relaxed? It doesn't. There are what are called mudras that are hand positions

that in a refined yoga kind of perspective have energy circulating a certain way. But the deeper purpose of practice, if you're training your mind to pay attention, if you just soften and relax your hands, there'll be a flow and you won't be perpetuating tension. Do you want your hands together? They can be touching lightly, but you can also place them palms down right above your knees and just let it be a light touch there and just feel the contact, the warmth, the tingling, and that's fine too. Yeah. I've sometimes placed when I'm sitting

with my back straight, and I always have a cushion behind me because I find it too stressful to do freestanding, but if I put my arms, this is going to sound like probably the worst idea ever. But when I sort of sit, I sometimes sit in a posture that's similar to what I used to do for judo before practice. They would have you do mokso. They'd have you do a short meditation before and afterwards. And you basically put your palms close to the crease in your hip so that your elbows are kind of flared out to the sides a bit. But for my 20-minute meditation,

I can tell almost to the second when it's 20 minutes because my wrists start to tingle. But I don't want to interrupt the description of standing meditation, but are you doing the sweep then? How long do you do the sweep from top to bottom? By the way, what I'm describing, most people would do this sitting. This just happens to be me because I just like being outside when I can. But everything I'm describing, for those that are listening,

sit in a way where ideally it's comfortable, but you can sit up tall because really you want the posture to invite forward the qualities of mind that matter to you. So we want to be alert and we also want to be at ease. So the idea is sit comfortably, but sit with your spine tall. And I would not use the kind of thing you described him as. There's good reasons for judo, but for training and meditation, let it be more relaxed. You don't need anything that adds tension to the body. So, yeah, if I was going to continue,

because I'm actually, I realized I was moving right into a guided meditation, but just to sweep through the body and sense is there anywhere that can relax just a little bit more right now? And what you'll find is if you ask that question, you'll notice that without even knowing it, the body tenses. And to re-relax and re-relax is really, really helpful. And I want to emphasize just a couple of things that have been helpful for me, and feel free to veto any of these because I'm still on training wheels.

But I know a lot of people out there haven't even tried to get on the bike with training wheels. So a few things. have found that just the sitting alone has huge benefits, whether or not I feel I've been able to quiet my mind in any way. So if I sit down for 20 minutes with very upright posture, sort of imagining like a thread being pulled from the crown to lengthen the spine, and really try to float my head into a place over my shoulders and neck so that it feels weightless to the extent possible. Uh, I've found so many calming benefits, postural benefits after even a week or two, I've never had so many compliments on my posture ever. I've never had compliments about my posture period in my life because I'm built like a monkey

and a caveman and wrestled for too long. So I have terrible posture. But after a week or two, sort of having compliments, my posture and my walking gait and everything had changed and found tremendous benefits of just sitting with that upright, not hunched over a laptop pop posture. Uh, even if I felt like my meditation was quote a failure and quote, because I was just running through my to-do list or whatever for 20 minutes, uh, and unable to turn off that monkey mind. Uh, so I would just say that, um, what would you suggest for someone just getting started? Who's always been turned off of meditation for any number of associations they might have with meditation, mindfulness, what is a good place to start? So for instance, there's a guy named BJ Fogg who's done a lot of research at Stanford. And if he wants someone to start

flossing, for instance, regularly, he'll say, don't start with your whole mouth, just floss your front teeth. And he'll give them just the smallest task possible to start building momentum. That's exactly right. And that's the way we do it too. In fact, I've got a program coming out, I think in January, called Mindful 40, which is 40 days,

and you can really, really get the practice down. And we do 10 minutes a day. it's five minutes is some, you know, background and five minutes of a meditation. So I'm with you, Tim. I think starting with a commitment, no matter what, to every day helps a lot because nature loves rhythms and you can build a habit with that kind of everyday practicing. But here are the basic ingredients, is that it's useful at the beginning to have a place that's quiet and that you're not going to get interrupted and it's useful to close your eyes just because that will, you know,

there's less stimuli visually that stimulates associations and it's useful to sit still for a few minutes that will, you know, there's less stimuli visually that stimulates associations. And it's useful to sit still for a few minutes and know that you're just doing this as, this is your evolutionary strategy for bringing out your best. And just a few minutes of sitting still. And one of my friends says, you put your tush on your cush and you take what you get. It doesn't matter what happens. You just sit there. Now, there are, of course, all sorts of

very helpful guidelines on how to direct your attention that will help to not only quiet your mind, but wake up your senses. And one of the things that I most love about the effect of meditation is I'm more in my body. It's like I go through the day and I'm less in that trance of thinking where I'm in a kind of that, I think of it as a home movie where I'm just off somewhere else. And I feel more of aliveness and energy through my body. And my senses are more awake, you know, I'm more taking in the colors and the forms and the scents and so on. So it is, sit still for a few minutes, come into your body as well as you can. The breath is a very good home base or anchor if you want to kind of calmly just kind of be with the breath. And that's it for starters.

And one tip that I think you gave in Radical Acceptance that I found very helpful, and it seems like such a, I wouldn't say trivial, I mean, that minimizes it, but it seems it back to the breath. I was like, what does that mean to gently bring it back to the breath? I don't know how to do that. What specifically are you asking me to do? And, and a few things really helped. Uh, one for me was focusing on the breath. I, I've always found it and still find it very difficult. I think this is partially because I'm a chest breather, but to feel the breath in the stomach. And I remember someone said, just focus on the feeling of the breath on the outer rim of your nostrils. And I was like, what? And I started doing that and it really worked well for me. So focusing sort of on the sensation of the breath at the very outside of the nostrils, I'm inhaling and exhaling.

But the point from radical acceptance was focusing on the breath. And sometimes I'll just say like, inhale, exhale as I'm doing that. And I'd like to talk about the sort of pros and cons of TM in a second. But when I would start thinking about something, whatever it would be, and not the breath, I would just say thinking, thinking, and then come back to the breath. That sort of became my cue. And I think I'm almost certain that there were examples of that in radical acceptance, but I don't want to attribute something to you if I'm, if I'm off base, but, but I started using that throughout the day too, when I would get angry, my, my way of, or impatient, my way of

sort of saying hello tomorrow would just be to say, impatient, impatient, or angry, angry. And it was just enough of a pattern interrupt to allow me a greater degree of self-control and more like responsiveness, choosing to respond as opposed to being reactive. Exactly. It is in radical acceptance, and it's one of the most important support strategies, naming or noting what's going on. It's really, really helpful. So with the breath, pick wherever the breath is easiest and most pleasant to detect. So for you, it might be the rim of the nostrils is refined enough and yet distinctive enough.

And for somebody else, feeling the whole body breathing can be doing it. And for some people, the breath itself is not a good anchor. I know people that have had trauma around breathing and that's not the best anchor. So listen to sound instead. But you're right. When the mind wanders and you want to bring it back, if you just name what's going on, if you just name, oh, thinking or worrying or planning or fantasizing, sometimes you can even name which of, you know, we call it the top 10 hits, you know, like which of the top 10 is going on right now. Okay. You know, like basically, you know, pissed at my partner for not doing his or her share

or whatever it is. You can name it. And if you name it, and here's the cool thing, when you name something, you're not as identified with it. And that's the thing, it doesn't control you as much. There's a saying that when a shaman names a fear, they have power over it. So when you name thinking, you're no longer in the cloud of thought. You're opened up to something larger and then you can choose. Is this thought useful? Is it not? Often, you know, most of the time our thoughts are very habitual and they're fear-driven and they just perpetuate a sense of being, you know, a victim or being at risk or being endangered or being stressed.

And if you can catch when you're in one of those flurries and just say, oh, thinking, thinking, it creates some space. You can relax open again to a bigger world. Well, I also, I was thinking of a quote that I actually put in the four-hour work week, which was named, must your fear be before ban it? You can, which is of course by Yoda. So if it's good enough for you, uh, the, the, uh, so sitting for 10 minutes, uh, the way I actually started, and I know this is a, it's probably a terrible bastardization, but just for those people who might find this useful, a friend of mine named Kamal Ravikant actually recommended that I try this

because I was having so much trouble meditating in a way that I could view as successful. And of course, in a way, the people who need to meditate, I'm not going to say the most, but are the people who are obsessed with doing everything successfully. And yet, at the same time, they might be the people most likely to quit. Exactly right. And I remember I heard someone say, if you don't have 30 minutes to meditate, you need three hours.

And I was like, well, okay. But anyway, where I was going with that is he said, just pick a song you really like that puts you into a good mood and focus on your breath while listening to that one song first thing in the morning, like before you brush your teeth, before you eat breakfast, but just wake up, put the earbuds in, sit up straight and with a good posture against the wall if need be, and just do that one song. That's like your state cue. And it was, I've realized that that's not something I, uh, it's not something that I use now, but I found it very helpful to just break the ice and, and have the, the sitting down for three minutes be the pass fail mark and not, uh, having to jump right into the deep end and sort of wrangle with my thoughts quite as intensely. I found that helpful.

I know it's a crutch, but... In the Buddhist tradition, they call it skillful means. It's like there are things that incline us, you know? And so if the song inclines you, I know a woman who kept saying, I don't have time to meditate because she would rush through her morning, and then she realized that her meditation time as was while she was boiling water for her tea and when she poured her tea and when she drank her tea. And that was going to be her meditation. And if you call it your meditation, you actually, you know, this might not be the language you like,

but you create some quality of sacredness or specialness or importance or meaning. And that's helpful. That starts inclining you. So I go for anything that helps to move us towards presence. No, and I have no problem with sacredness, by the way. Okay. That one's okay. I'm just such a weirdo when it comes to language and definitions. Let me ask, just before I go on one of my, my massive like left turn tangents again, uh, transcendental meditation. What, what are your thoughts on it? Uh, I, and just for what it's worth, I'm not a, uh, a purist or a militant TM

person. It just happened to be the first thing that I did consistently, but I also do quite a lot of, there are days or weeks even when I will do what people might consider Vipassana meditation. But what do you view as the pros cons of say a TM? And just to throw it out there, one of the cons for me is the fact that in most circumstances, people have to pay whatever it is, 1500 bucks for basic training and a mantra, which I think is extremely cost prohibitive for, for, for most folks. And, uh, it really had me raise a ton of red flags. Um, but I found the accountability of having a four day, four lunchtime meetings in a row to be necessary to get me to comply to doing the meditation

twice a day for four days. And so that was the main gift. It was really having a sunk cost, which made me feel compelled to do it, number one. And number two, having an accountability, which I think other people can probably engineer in a million other ways. But what are your feelings on TM?

Well, first, a lot of people from the old days found their way into meditation through TM because it was one of the earliest and most well-known. So just, you know, we have many, many people that practice mindfulness that started with TM. So, and there's with every, I think one of the things, I always have my antennas go up on any particular style claims that it's the best or the one and the only. I mean, I'm very fundamentalist about being non-fundamentalist. So, you know, it's like that one always gets to me. Cause I think that different personalities and temperaments benefit from different things. And clearly for you, having that structure served you.

So I like that. I like that there's a structure for some people. There's different styles of that structure. I, too, I offer everything, all my meditations for free. And I just feel like this came to me. You know, this is given from the universe and I want to give it back. And I, so I like whenever possible not to have to charge for something in this domain

of waking up. So that always, and I also like that it be very available to populations that are underserved or can't afford it. So that's, that's another piece. But in terms of the actual meditation, TM is primarily a concentrative practice. You're taking a mantra or a set of sacred words and repeating them and repeating them. And the benefit of concentration, which is a narrowing of the lens of focus, is that it actually collects the attention and the mind gets quiet. And when the mind's quiet, there can be experiences of bliss and serenity and peace and so on.

So that's what TM does. It gives you a break from that incessant inner dialogue. And the more you practice it, the more easily it is to collect the mind. Now, there are other ways, there are other focuses for concentration other than a TM mantra, but that's the way TM works. For me, the limitation is it doesn't allow you to see into the nature of reality. And by that, I mean, it doesn't bring a kind of presence that allows you to sense what's actually happening now. Most of our understanding of reality is conceptual.

We have ideas about things. And to really have a clear, penetrating insight, we need to be present. And TM doesn't, it's like it aims the mind at something, but it doesn't open the attention so that whatever arises, you start learning how to be with it. And to me, the power and freedom of mindfulness is you start getting the knack of being with whatever arises. And one of the things I'm very aware of is that most of us are, you know, we're aware of our mortality and we're tensing against what can go wrong. And so we go around our day and in some way there's this tension about what's around the corner that might be overwhelming.

And we're not always aware of that tension, but it stops us from fully savoring and luxuriating and being creative and alive in the moment. And what deconditions that tension is when we unconditionally open to the life that's right here and we don't resist it and we realize that, wow, there is space for what's here, even when it's unpleasant,

even when we're sensing a dying of some sort. To me, the gift of meditation is it actually teaches us how to be with living and dying. And so I don't feel that, I think TM offers a support in one part of meditation training, but it doesn't go the whole way. So aside from your own books, which I recommend to everyone listening, a few things. If people wanted to start with two or three of your guided meditations, and they view themselves as sort of stubborn, age-driven types, which meditations might you suggest that they start with well on my website there's a landing page for guided meditations and they're all you know they're all free and they usually are

anywhere from 12 minutes to you know 25 minutes and you can start them and and if you know they start off with really guiding us into presence and then they keep going. You can even stop them. I would use one of the featured ones. Those are the ones that are most generically useful, but also just play around. It really helps to have guided meditations to begin because you'll eventually internalize, you'll get an inner meditation teacher. But hearing it and hearing kind of a few different versions will give you a sense of what works best for you because sometimes I'll emphasize how to relax through the body and sometimes I'll emphasize how to really collect with the breath.

And at other times, meditations on self-compassion or forgiveness. So there's a lot of different styles and types to play with. And what is your website? It's tarabrock.com. That's straight and simple. And I'll put that in the show notes, everybody, as well as other links to resources and so on. So the Rolling Stones have, let's say, satisfaction, right?

Everybody knows satisfaction. They love it. It's a crowd pleaser. Are there any of those meditations that are kind of like your satisfaction? Are there any that appear to resonate with a higher percentage of people than others? And of course, I'll encourage people to, people are going to be hopefully enjoying these for more than one day, so they can test quite a few. But if you had to give your hits, what might those be? Well, the name, I don't remember the names, but I have featured meditations on the landing page for guided meditations.

And just choose it according to length, because there's pretty much the same content in them so got it but they're right there and they're they're easy to find and then there's also the audio talks page which gives the kind of background of understandings and so on that really help us to not only start a practice but and sustain it but really bring it into our lives because the big deal i mean you, everybody talks about sitting practice. Really, the big deal is can you and I be talking right now and still have that quality of remembrance where we're in touch with what matters,

where we're embodied enough so we can feel feelings? You know, we tend to cut off so habitually in our lives. And as you described earlier, we're so plugged into so many different virtual realities that to me, the big challenge and invitation is, can we get more real and alive in our day and less habituated and less automatic? And so that's the carryover. Outside of your own books, what, say, two to three books for people who want to delve further into meditation, mindfulness, et cetera, are there any other books that you would recommend? Well, Jack Kornfield, who I teach with a lot and love, he's a very good friend, has a couple of books that are very good.

His classic is A Path with Heart. And the other book that is, I think, wonderful, I love Pema Chodron. And Pema Chodron, one of her classics is When Things Fall Apart. So those are two right there that really, really help guide into the practices and really help heal the heart. And this does not have to be specific to meditation or Buddhism or anything like that, but what book have you gifted the most to other people or books? Might have to come back to that because sometimes I gift The Essential Rumi, which is a collection of poetry by Coleman Barks that I think is really, really beautiful,

or poetry by the poet Hapes. So sometimes it'll be poetry books that I'll gift. You know, I really value Eckhart Tolle's books. I think he's done a great job. I think Adyashanti's done fabulously, even more with his audio, you know, his talks than even his books, but his books also are wonderful. What was the name again? Adyashanti. It's A-D-Y-A. Adyashanti, S-H-A-N-T-I.

What does shanti mean? Because I've seen this word pop up quite a lot. I'm looking it up right here. Peace. Peace. It means peace. Ah, there we go. You beat me to it. You beat me to it. All right.

Well, that's a good word to use. Yep. The beginning of your day, we talked about the hike first thing with the dog, the standing meditation. And then what does your day look like at that point after that? Well, it varies, Tim, like most people. If I'm traveling and teaching, you know, because I teach different centers around the country and some in Europe, then I'm out and about.

Let's say you're at home and you can do whatever you want. That's when I'm happiest. Yeah, your ideal day. I love being here. Yeah, well, usually that means that I am writing and putting together talks. It's like being a minister. I do my weekly talk, and that's kind of where a lot of my energy goes. But I'm also involved with we have a meditation community here in Washington and a lot of socially

engaged action initiatives are going on. So I'm involved with projects like we're bringing mindfulness into the schools in the area and that's kind of amazing. I mean, just to imagine this next generation training their attention so they're able to be more collaborative, so they're able to be more emotionally intelligent, so they're able to find their center. So that one really excites me, and I spend some time working on that. In fact, Congressman Tim Ryan and I have done a number of presentations in the area to different schools, and there's thousands of kids in the area that have now been taking mindfulness courses.

So that's just an example of something I'd be working on. Is there a dedicated website for that, or can people find more information on your homepage? Yeah. Well, MINDS, M-I-N-D-S, is the group that I've been advising and that's affiliated with us. And I think it's, you know, I'll let you know before the end because I'd love people to check it out. It's amazing what they're doing, the kind of work they're doing. And, in fact, I'll tell you about one project that I really love, which is that I mentioned that Jack Kornfeld and I are collaborating on this Mindful 40,

this 40-day program. Well, we're affiliated with Mines, and we're going to be working in one very diverse, very underserved, very large high school in the D.C. area. And we're going to bring mindfulness to all parts of it. In other words, they're going to do the training with the kids. And Jack and I, this online program, we have all the faculty and admin and parents are going to be, of the group that we work with, are going to be taking it, and we've got on-the-ground mentors.

So the idea is to see if we can change the whole culture of the school by bringing this in. And there's so much research now showing the beneficial effects for kids. But to have the parents also, to me, is what's exciting. So we've been able to get some revenue, enough to get the first round going on this. And I think it's going to be a very cool pilot that can be done elsewhere in other school systems. Cool. I love, I love these types of pilots because they can really set a precedent and provide a case study that people can replicate. So, uh, I will put that whether we get to it today while we're talking or afterwards,

but for everybody listening, I'll also put a link to that in the show notes. Uh, I would like to ask a very, uh, self-interested personal question. And that is that, that I think also applies to a lot of people listening to this. So the, if I look at my circle of friends in Silicon Valley, if I look at my circle of friends in New York, and certainly I think in many other cities around the world or just in many other places around the world, there is an increasing severe problem with FOMO, as we call it here, fear of missing out. So this can manifest itself in many different ways. People feel like they can't stay away from email for 30 minutes because they'll get backlogged.

And there's a fear of missing either a problem or missing some type of opportunity. In my particular case, I've talked to a number of friends of mine who are involved with startup investing and whatnot about taking a startup vacation. I would like to take a three month, 100% vacation from new startup investments because it's become something of a source of stress for me. I think things are very unstable right now and irrational. And the feedback almost universally has been, you shouldn't do that. Don't make any kind of public proclamation because then you'll stop seeing deals. And then before you know it, you'll be out of the loop. And then you won't be able to get back into it when you want to get back into it. So this is very, and that, as you might imagine, puts me on edge. Because I found that there are certain things that I feel I need to categorically say no to, even if just for a period of time. I can't do it 80%. If I try to do it 80%, then I'll look at everything and it just becomes self-defeating, right? I won't make any progress.

So how would you think about or encourage people to think about this fear of missing out where they feel like they constantly have to be in the loop or accessible or fill in the blank? Because it seems to be a huge source of stress for almost everyone that I know. You're right, and I think it's getting more so because of the degree of the Internet because we're always plugged in on so many levels. You know the book The Shallows? Did you read that? No, I don't actually. I can't remember the name of the author,

but it's really describing how technology actually shapes and changes our brain. And, you know, whether it's the onset of the typewriter changing, because instead of handwriting, which brings out a certain part of our brain, you know, having a typewriter. But being plugged in all the time, our brain is changing, and we're actually taking in a lot more information, but at a lot more of a shallow level not so dimensional and we've lost our capacity to actually immerse and drop

into the deeper more subtle dimensions of things it's actually a change in the brain that people that used to be very avid deep readers just can't get themselves to. There's a kind of attention deficit when it comes to certain things. And what the Internet promotes is a sense of missing out because there's so much coming in from so many different angles that you always get the sense that you're missing it, that there's just something else that you need to be plugged into. And one of my favorite little cartoons is of this man and a woman sitting in the living room and he's saying to her, you know, if I ever become a vegetable, just pull the plug. At which point she goes over the TV set and she hangs out the plug.

And what I like about it is just like we get into kind of an existential anxiety when we're not plugged in, like the world is moving on without us and how to deal with it. The first is what you're doing, which is name it. Name it and really get that this is a product of the times that we're at a very speedy time and it's accelerating where there's a relationship with the Chinese word for busyness that's in relationship to heart killing. Yeah, it's mang. Yeah, you can feel it. The left side of the character means heart and the right side means death.

It's amazing. And so I can say for myself, Tim, that when I'm in that fear of not being prepared or the fear of missing out, my heart's not so open. If my son calls and I'm in the middle of it, I really am not able to take in him, what's really going on for him, because there's some part of me that's tense and on my way somewhere else. So it feels like, first of all, to have the aspiration to be free from that trance is the first step, to recognize what's going on and know that you can be a more full, more productive, more real being when you're not constantly being tugged around by that something more, something else. And then the second piece is, you know, if I think of people that are really good teachers or people that are really good writers, people that really have done the music that goes to people's soul, they retreat, they unplug, they take space, they step out of the busyness and open themselves to something bigger,

something wider, something more mysterious and fluid in order for that to happen. And for you, and I feel this in particular for you because I feel like you're very plugged into the pulse in a very good way. And your sensitivity and attunement will get even deeper if you can take sabbaticals. Agreed. Because what will happen is it'll break. We all get habitual to some degree. And the trick is, can we keep on recognizing and opening out of any of the habits that stop us from being as sensitive and attuned as possible? And so you need a sabbatical to do that.

And how would you contend with the fear of the unintended side effects of that sabbatical. Yeah, the fear. Right, so the friends I have were like, dude, you can't do that. If you make some kind of crazy public proclamation or put out a blog post about how you're taking an X-month startup vacation, you have no idea what kind of cascade of events

you're going to trigger. Like you're going to be in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there's this kind of fear mongering that I'd love your thoughts on how to contend with. First of all, part of who you are, Tim, is you guys don't have to try it out. I'll go ahead and try it. I'll let you know what's on the other side. So part of it is just knowing that, well, let me put it this way. There's a palliative caregiver who said, you know, who

was with thousands of people when they're dying. And she said, the greatest regret of the dying is not living true to ourselves, that we're living according to the expectations or the cultural fears or whatever. So your whole path is about playing the edge and not buying in. And part of what that means is that you're willing to feel the fear, but not be driven by it. So that's where we get, here's now we're coming back to having tea with Mara. For you, it's go ahead and say, I'm stepping back. I'm taking a sabbatical from, you know, whatever it is. And then your process, and it's an important process.

It's not like I wish I could sidestep this so I could actually have my sabbatical. Part of it is you are learning how to find your peace and balance and ease in the midst of those energies of fear. Right. And one of the interesting things to me is that if you go in Asia, there's these mandalas which are filled with images and right at the center of them is sacred space. And in order to get to sacred space, you have to pass through what are called the animal-headed goddesses. And they're really fear and anger and hatred and jealousy. And the point isn't that you get the only way to sacred space is to encounter these energies, but be with them, not try to sidestep them. So it's almost like it is the path to face fear. And then there's the question

of, well, how do we do that in a way that actually frees us and not freezes us, you know? Right. And for me, the way that I work with fear is, and there's a difference, by the way, between traumatic fear and the kind of fear we're talking about. Definitely. Okay. So with non-traumatic fear, and by the way, I'm doing a whole online course on working with fear in the fall, which I'll tell you more about because I feel like for almost everyone I know, really what's going to free us most, what's going to bring out most of our creativity and most let us be intimate in the world is to really learn how to work with the fears that we run away from.

And in fact, there's one mystic who says there's only one really good question, which is, what am I unwilling to feel? Oh, that's a good one. And fear is what we're unwilling to fear. So it's like to become fearless, you need to feel fear and be willing to be vulnerable. Be willing to have everybody tell you, hey, you're going to go offline and then you're going to miss something. To be willing to feel that vulnerability but not be driven by it. Well, that reminds me of, I'm paraphrasing, of course, but what Mike Tyson's trainer, Cus D'Amato, said at his peak, which was the hero and the coward feel the same thing. It's what the hero does that makes him different.

And because Tyson was terrified before getting to the ring, oftentimes, which is hard to imagine, but true. I like this. Yeah, I need to, I think, make a couple of pretty big moves, which I've been meditating on, but I've been frozen and not freed, so I need to pull the trigger on a few of those I think if you could have a billboard anywhere and you could have it say anything

that you liked, what would it say and where would it be? It would say realize and live from the loving awareness that's really who you are. Where would you put that? Oh, I'm not sure. Times Square, you could put it.

I'm not sure I'd put it inside everyone's heart and mind. I feel like the Buddha said it pretty elegantly, that if you're suffering, it's because you feel like you know the buddha said it pretty elegantly that if you're suffering it's because you're forgetting who you are you're living in a in a smaller narrative and that really each of our jobs is to start recognizing how what am i believing that's limiting me what am i believing that's keeping me small separate either feeling deficient or feeling superior because you know you know, I talk about the trance of unworthiness, but I can honestly say that I am as much in the trance of specialness as

unworthiness, and both of them cause suffering. It's about really waking up and realizing that there's a basic goodness here. There's a humanness and an aliveness and intelligence and love. That's what we are. And we all have our particular qualities, but, you know, there's this basic goodness. So a lot of what I'm doing in my books and in my teachings is how do we pay attention so we can come to trust that and live from that and then look at each other so I can be listening to you and sense past any mask or persona, just that consciousness, the sentience,

the place that we're really in the same field. I have so many questions I could ask, but I know we're probably coming up on time and I don't want to consume your entire afternoon. But I do have a few more I'd love to ask. And you're mentioning knowing thyself. And actually, before I get to that, just a quick side note for people who do face a lot of fire in the public world, when I first got exposed with the success of the first book, and it was turned down by whatever it was, 27 publishers, no one expected to do anything. And all of a sudden, I was having to contend with a lot of public-facing angst. And someone said to me, you're never as good as they say you are, and you're never as bad as they say. I was like, wow, that's good advice. Don't let it go to your head, but don't get chopped off at the knees either. So the, the, I'm going to ask a couple of questions that are

less, maybe less serious than, than some of those we've tackled, but feel free to answer or not answer or however you feel you need to respond. So the first is, what music would people be surprised to know you like or listen to? Surprised. I'm not sure of surprised. I love Mozart and Beethoven. I love classical music. I'm not thinking that's surprised. I love Mozart and Beethoven. I love classical music. I'm not thinking that's going to be a surprise. You don't listen to Marilyn Manson when you're working out or anything?

Oh, when I'm working out, but you didn't ask me that. You know, my son widened my taste. So I have a capacity to enjoy a whole lot of different art forms. But I like silence. I like silence. I like quiet. So I'm not... I try to, whenever I can, have it quieter. Got it.

Okay. What about guilty pleasure that is a movie or a documentary or TV show that you really enjoy that might not immediately come to mind if people are imagining what a that that you would like is there anything are you like a big legal lethal weapon fan wait a minute what was that series i'm forgetting it now that i love so much, you know, Albuquerque and drugs and Breaking Bad. I went crazy for Breaking Bad. I went so crazy for it that I would be teaching a class and leading the meditation

and knowing I didn't want to be, I wanted to get home sooner so I could catch him. You know, I mean, I love that. Yeah. So that's one. Does that count? That counts. That counts. Do you have a favorite documentary or any favorite documentaries? You know, my favorites are more just because I have such a passion for it. You know, any of the documentaries about, there's been documentaries about the earth, you know, those kind of things. Documentaries about pharmaceutical industry, you know, it's kind of the political ones that I'm believers in that undress things, the tobacco industry, you know, there's been some documentaries on racism that are, like I just saw one called

Undoing Racism or The Illusion of Race or something. It's just, you know, right now, because we're, the times are bringing it more to our attention. It's like, we're seeing what's happening in the daily lives of African Americans, but we're just seeing like spot hits of, you know, unarmed African Americans being killed. And then this whole, you know, shooting in Charleston. It's like anything that brings that into our consciousness, that this is not some distant other having a bad experience now and then. These are our brothers and sisters, part of our world right here, who are living still in a daily way that is violent and oppressive.

You know, documentaries that show that kind of thing. Got it. This is maybe a jarring segue from that. It's okay. Go for it. And I'll be curious to hear your response to this. But what purchase of less than $100 has most positively impacted your life in the last six months or year? Of less than $100. Oh, and they have to come back to that one, Tim. We can come back to that one.

Or we can table it. Oh, oh, oh. We got some raspberry bushes that probably pretty much less. And they're like, oh, my gosh. You know, I just went out this morning and picked a whole mess of raspberries. And it's like I really like simple pleasure. So that might count. Well, that's the gift that keeps on giving, too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm so jealous. I wish I could walk out and pick some raspberries right now. So last question, last of two, but the last question is kind of a parting question. The advice you would give your 30-year-old self, what advice would you give your 30-year-old self? To profoundly accept and love myself as I am, but I'm going to add on to that. And this is more relational because I'd like to speak to a little bit relation, you know, we do a lot of training to be with ourselves in meditation, but the missing component is how do we train ourselves to be with each other? And I would say to my 30 year old self, take the chance of being more vulnerable, like let,

let your vulnerability be there so that instead of, you know, feeling angry and expressing the anger, stay with the anger enough so you can feel the vulnerability underneath it and be able to name that. And this is particularly in intimate relationships. Like with my husband, we have a ritual of, and we, by the way, we teach courses in bringing mindfulness and meditation into relationships, which is one of my favorite things in the world to be teaching. And that's the message. It's like to have the nerve, the courage to feel what's vulnerable, you know, that thing I said before about what are you unwilling to feel, to feel it and to be able to name it in the field of relationship.

Because what happens, just the way when you name something inside yourself, you're less identified, when you do it together, it helps both discover a field of intimacy that really is filled with compassion and understanding that you can't get to if you're not willing to be vulnerable. And what is the ritual that you have with your husband? Well, a couple of times a week, and we do this more than that, but formally, like we have to, like it's on our schedule each week, which is Tuesday and Friday mornings. We alter our morning routine some so that we sit down and meditate together.

And then we basically share whatever's going on. You know, it could be in our lives, but more, is there anything right now between you and I and really feeling loving and feeling open? And that's kind of the inquiry. And then to hold a space for whatever's there so we don't get into a habit of in some way covering over something and then having something build and then not be as tender and open with each other. And we haven't been married that long. We've been probably together for about 12 years, And it keeps on growing and unfolding. And I will tell you one very brief story that in one of our ritual sessions,

I had this feeling like he was kind of like staying on the perimeter and so on. So at one point I said, so how are we doing? And he had that deer-in-the-, oh my God, it's our anniversary. It's like every guy in the history of the world. Exactly, exactly. It's like my girlfriend said to me the other day, she goes, do you know what tomorrow is? And I was like, oh God, oh no. I know, it strikes terror in a man's heart, I get it. But I did it, and it was actually,

I could even feel it as I was doing it, it was a very controlling move. So he had that look, and then he pulled out his iPhone, and he said, Siri, what do you do when your wife says, how are we doing? And here's what Siri said, and I swear this is the truth. Siri said, you say, I'm okay, and you're okay, and this is the best of all possible worlds. Really? Really. In fact, I mean, he handed it to me. I looked at it and I gave up.

I said, okay, let's go kayaking. You know, I said, drop this communication stuff. Let's just go play. Wow. Unexpected turn of events. That's amazing. But I really like the idea of having these scheduled check-ins because it also avoids the bubbling over of these conversations or discussions

so that they erupt at really inopportune, uncomfortable times. That's right. Or it minimizes. It probably doesn't eliminate them, but it helps to mitigate that. Well, what happens is that when they come at the wrong time, we go into our old habitual either defend or attack mode and then actually create the walls that are the things we don't want. So it really helps, just like formal meditation.

It helps to have on- purpose sitting times so that if something needs to present itself and you need to work through something you're available and then stuff will come up at other times too but you kind of get more the knack of how to work with it then i love it and if if you could make an ask of everyone listening to this an ask or a recommendation what would that be? The real ask would be to pause enough so that you can contact what's really going on inside you and pause enough so that you can look at another and see the goodness that's there. And mirror it back some, let people know. That's very good advice.

Tara, I love your work. I'm so glad you're out there in the world doing what you do. Where can people find you on that web known as the interweb, the internet? TaraBrock.com? Yeah. Yeah, that's the simplest way. And if then get on my email list, I'm not a massive emailer. I mean, I keep being told I should be, but I'm not, but I do let folks know then the different in-person and online courses that I'm doing, the ones that are

coming up, there's one on fear that's coming up that I'm excited about. And Jonathan, my husband and I are teaching some relationship workshops. So those kind of things you'll find out about. And the guided meditations, just to reiterate that on your site are fantastic. I've listened to them while traveling quite a bit just to take the edge off. So I once again, appreciate you putting that out in the world for free. Is there anything else you would like to say before we close this, this chapter one conversation? I want to appreciate you because, you know,

I've been talking about evolution and I feel like appreciate you because, you know, I've been talking about evolution, and I feel like you really are, your curiosity and your way of interviewing, you know, one teacher says that attention is the most pure expression of love. And your way of interviewing and also moving through the world is deeply attentive and courageous and sets a model for us so um i'm it's a pleasure to hold hands oh thank you thank you that makes that makes my day i really appreciate it and um hopefully we will get to meet in person sometime soon and i would love to to see the Potomac from the perspective of where you stand with your dog. That just sounds amazing. So I really appreciate everything that you do.

And of course, everyone listening, I will take the resources, links, and so on from this conversation, book recommendations, certainly radical acceptance and others and put them into the show notes. So you can find all of that at fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast, all spelled out. And until next time, thank you for listening.