How To Communicate Effectively With Difficult People: When to Tell the Truth, When to Push Back, and Why Kindness Isn't the Same as Being Nice | Sharon Salzberg

29:52And so this woman said, have you heard from my daughter or her husband? And he said, oh, yeah, he was just here for dinner, and then he remembered. And so he quickly said, well, he went to India with her, and he didn't stay as long, so he came back, and right away, she really felt she was not being told the truth. So everybody hung up, and then she called a neighbor and asked them to call us to see, you know, maybe we would tell her the truth, even if we wouldn't tell herself the truth. And so these strangers started calling us and we had to lie to everybody else. And then we realized she was going to call around to other numbers she had.

30:32So we had to start calling people and saying, you know, this woman's going to call. You have to lie. And this is what you have to say. And it just kept getting more and more and more complicated. And right in the middle of that, ironically, we started getting these anonymous obscene phone calls. And, you know, normally you might just say, well, I'm not going to answer the phone for a while. But in this case, we had to answer the phone in case it was someone we had to lie to. And then finally, whoever was talking to her couldn't bear it anymore. And she said, I'm going to tell you the truth. She went to India without him.

31:06She's fine. She's coming back like tomorrow or something. You know, it's really okay. And the woman had been lied to so much. It's like she didn't know what to believe anymore. She didn't know what was true. and even stranger it's like we hardly knew what was true anymore because we've gotten so engaged in this web of deception so even on that uh blatant level i think the tool we have which really is a blessing is just self-reflection like how does this make me feel and what's the consequence of living in this way and what would happen if i chose to skillfully tell the truth in these circumstances.

31:50Just to go back and underline I language, that is the letter I language. And so speaking in your own experience, as opposed to quote unquote, you language, which is often accusatory, you're a dirtbag, whatever. I have trouble with you when you do X is often a much more skillful way to communicate. And as you pointed out, really in a broad understanding of truth is a more truthful way to communicate. But then you went on to tell the story about how lying can be disastrous. I completely buy your argument, and I think everybody listening will buy your argument that if you're even 3 % mindful while you're lying, you'll see that it doesn't feel good.

32:44But are there not circumstances where a white lie makes sense? My wife, who always looks good no matter what she's wearing, but say hypothetically she was wearing an outfit that I didn't like. This has never happened. But just say she was wearing an outfit that I didn't like and she asked me how she looked. What is wrong with me saying you look great so I can get us out the door and we're not late to the party? Well, there are questions of intention, you know, which is always a crucial kind of factor in looking at ethical conduct, which we can talk about. But there's also, you reminded me, and I was very amused by that.

33:23You know, I've had many conversations with friends where somebody may present their creative work to you and you really think it's terrible or not very good, and what do you say? So we practice like someone told me once, they say, I couldn't be more surprised or you must be very proud of that rather than saying, I don't know about that. But again, you know, context is also very important. It's like if someone is sincerely asking you for feedback, that's a different thing. And then saying it as much and, you know, not like you're a terrible writer, you know, but I found myself a little lost here.

34:03I wonder if there's a way you could say it. Or, you know, I so much yearn to know what your experience really was in this moment and what was going on inside. Or, you know, there are ways of offering feedback that are a little more encouraging than, you know, this is a waste of time. But then there are just these sort of more detached things, you know, like you're not really being asked for feedback. You're being asked for praise. And maybe you can't get there, you know, in an honest way. But it's fun to imagine what you would say. And then if somebody said it to me, I started thinking, huh, I didn't like what I did.

34:38I guess they're just trying to, you know, find a way of cushioning the blow or something like that. I remember I sent my brother, who you also know and are friends with, I sent him a version of my forthcoming book several years ago that was long and baggy and self-indulgent. And he wrote back, you put your full self into this. It's perfect. That's great So but you said something before that I want to pick up on that that intention matters here You know this is actually like become a contentious issue intent in some progressive circles there the argument is It's impact that matters not your intent I personally actually I'm not sure I fully agree with that But, you know, how would you think of one's intention in the context of right speech?

35:33Well, I had a great conversation once with Anu Gupta. I don't know if you know his work. Yeah, he's been on the show. Yeah, yeah. So asking him that very question, because it's true in social justice, framing impact is much more important than intention. But you can't deny that in terms of classical Buddhism, intention is really key. And he readily reconciled those points of view. And the framework I usually use is an action, something we do, something we say, something we hold back from doing or saying, which is also a kind of action, has different elements to it. And the first is intention or motivation.

36:15And that is a crucial distinction. You know, if I was picking up an object and handing it to you, all anybody sees is my hand moving down and picking up something and moving it forward. But what is in my heart? What is the intention? You know, maybe I'm giving it to you because I like you and I want you to have it. Or maybe I don't like you and I think you're not going to be able to figure it out. You know, it's going to drive you crazy. Here. You know, so it's like the same smile and the same gesture, but it's coming from a totally different place. And so, it's a potent, potent form of a seed that we're planting.

36:49But the next aspect of an action is, you could say, the skillfulness of the execution. It's mindfulness in context. It's cultural context. It's cultural sensitivity. It's understanding, like, maybe I'm giving you this object out of a very good intention. I don't want to throw it to you, or maybe I only have one and there are 50 people in the room. Maybe it's best done privately. We have to really pay attention to where we are and who we're talking to and, you know, what's the context. And that's sort of where the impact part comes alive, you know, that we need that sort of sensitivity and awareness.

37:30and those two things are not antithetical to one another, they're just different. And I often emphasize that difference because in teaching loving kindness, meditation so much, a great fear, and it's a reasonable fear people express as well, were I to develop a more loving heart, doesn't that mean I have to say yes, I have to give them more money, I have to let them move back in, I have to let them keep hurting me? And the answer is no. You can come from a very and genuinely compassionate motivation, but I call it your best guess of how to behave in that moment, in that context, most skillfully could be strong boundary or feeling or being kind of fierce.

38:16you know, and it might be gentle, it might be strong, you know, it just depends. And that's discernment and wisdom, hopefully, and understanding. But that doesn't mean you're not coming from a compassionate place. And so, that is a model I use endlessly in trying to describe like, yeah, loving kindness doesn't consign us, you know, to being a doormat, it frees us. Because we can use discernment for how we think we should behave or speak or respond in a certain moment. And it's always good, I think, to know your intention. Then in the context of white lies, if your intention is to be compassionate, a lot of people think, well, then why can't I tell the white lie?

39:03You might be able to, you know. It's also true, though, that sometimes those are consequential and you don't necessarily want it to unfold. It's like, what if you told your wife she looked great and she went out and bought 15 more outfits, just like that one? You know, depending, again, it's very contextual. You know, you might just say, yeah, you know, it's great. Or you might say, wow, you know, it's good. But you know what I really liked was what you wore yesterday. I don't know, something like that. I've just really personally where I've because I've done enough. I'm not I'm by no means an advanced meditation practitioner, but I've done enough practice to have a decent mindfulness quotient.

39:49It just feels so terrible when I lie that. I just tell the truth, but I try to tell the truth kindly, you know, like, you know what? I actually I don't love that, but I, you know, I recognize that I'm not I don't have sophisticated fashion taste. So if if you like it, I'm good with it. But, you know, I like the outfit you tried on right before it, you know. So there's I think there are ways I think that personally, I think there are ways generally to avoid the white lie. Yeah. First of four questions. We've covered it. Is it true? What is the second of the four questions? Is it helpful? You know, they say that to make a commitment to say that, which is true, doesn't mean that you want to blurt out everything that comes into your head, you know, and maybe somebody doesn't need to hear that, you know, you didn't think their book was great or, you know, maybe it's worth being restrained.

40:49strained. Maybe it's worth saying something later. Maybe it's worth not saying anything at all. Like if somebody is about to give a talk, a public talk, and you know they're pretty anxious about speaking, you know, maybe that's not the time to say, you know, I heard this great talk by this other person, and that's going to be hard to beat. Not helpful. And again, it comes back to motivation. Like, what do you want? And that's something I've often said if I was going into an organization or a company to teach. And I'd say before a major meeting, before a big conversation, something like that, ask yourself, what do I really want to see come out of this?

41:30Do I want to be helpful? Do I want a resolution? Do I want to mentor somebody? Do I want to grind them into dust? Do I want to be seen as right and superior? Take a look. And that's one way of really coming back to see what your intention is. And if it is genuinely to be helpful, then that, again, kind of contours what we say or if we'll say something and how we'll say it. Your next door neighbor and our mutual friend, Joseph, he has this whole rap he likes to deliver around the ancient Pali term, Sampapalapa, which is translated as useless speech. And we do this all day long, many of us. We just say stuff for the sake of saying it.

42:25Social media has put this on steroids. And Joseph says if you're looking underneath the intention when you're about to say something useless, often it's look at me. That to me is like if you're asking us to look at our intentions before we speak, it can be a very humbling thing if we're willing to be honest with ourselves. Well, there's also, I think that's very, very true, and there are also ways where if we have the inspiration, you know, we make some experiments. It's like when we started teaching in this country and the retreats we were offering were all still pretty much that way, silent.

43:08You know, you speak to a teacher, which is pretty circumscribed. You know, you're not talking about the last movie you saw, hopefully. You're talking about your practice and your internal experience, and you may not speak to anyone else for that 10-day period. I sat with Pandita Sayadaw, for example, in 1984 for three months. He was the only person I talked to. And so when you're about to embark in a period of silence, if you choose to, it might be two days, three days, seven days, whatever it is. and often as people come on to retreat it's the single most disquieting you know uncomfortable thing to think about and people come and say i don't know if i can be silent for two days and uh my partner doesn't think i can be silent or once somebody came and said they're doing a bedding pool in my office because they don't think i can be silent and almost always really at the end of the experience it's one of the single most beautiful aspects of having been there it's like for once in our lives we don't have to present ourselves as interesting or amusing or disturbed or anything we can just be with ourselves but we're afraid in general we're not most of us brought up to be a friend of silence and so um sometimes that useless kind of speech is It's just a way of filling in the gaps so that we're not just being.

44:37Okay, so we've done Is It True. Is there more to say about Is It Helpful? Or should we move on to the third question? Honestly, I was thinking about the experience you described of having a 360 review. Yeah. Which you can describe better than I. And so it seemed, from what I've heard about it, what I've heard you talk about it is that it really provoked some great introspection and tremendous change. And I know that your next book is going to cover that in some way, but that would be an example of something that it's a little bit like embarking on a period of silence. It's having a certain kind of audacity, you know, to step outside of one's comfort zone and experiment with a different way of giving and receiving speech.

45:33So I don't know if you want to say anything about that. Well, very briefly, as you mentioned, I had a 360 review. The first one I had was in 2018, so quite a while ago. But it was a very humbling experience. I actually remember sending the results to you because they were quite harsh. 39 pages, first 11 pages were like positive stuff. And the rest of it was just straight beat down. There were four major buckets of kind of emotional unavailability, a stubbornness, a dismissiveness, a kind of black and white thinking, overcommitment. I can't remember all the things, but those are the basic areas.

46:14And I remember coming to your apartment and talking to you about it afterwards. I was totally distraught. But yes, it's an audacious thing to do to ask for that level of feedback. I don't actually think that it's for everyone. It's often used in a corporate context. And if you don't have good coaching to go with it, it can backfire. I happen to have good coaching and also just know a lot of really wise people like you who can help me with it. the 360 reviewers, the people, it's an anonymous survey of the people you work with. And in my case, I added in like my wife and my brother and Joseph. And so it was like a personal and professional 360 review to get a panoramic sense of my strengths and weaknesses.

47:00And the reviewers, the people who were surveyed, they were actually engaging in right speech, even though a lot of what they said was some of it was harsh and maybe actually some of it crossed the line to wrong speech and that it was unkind, which we will get to soon. But it was certainly solicited. I was asking for their feedback and they were giving it. They weren't talking, you know, crap behind my back. They were they were giving me feedback in a in a in a context where I asked for it. And so it was helpful. And in the end, right? Yes. Deeply, I would say right below the birth of our son and our marriage as the most important thing that has happened to me as an adult.

47:48It provoked an enormous amount of change and drove me way deeper into your personal bailiwick, Sharon Salzberg, of loving kindness and a supporter of it. But it forced me to engage much more deeply with those practices, which has been just incalculable in its impact. I made a new friend recently, and he was telling me that his wife is an avid listener to the show. She's so loyal, in fact, that she's now wearing quince on the regular, and she wanted me to know that. I, too, wear a lot of quince, not only because they're a sponsor of the show, but also because they make really good stuff. They focus on well-made essentials that naturally become those everyday staples you actually live in all season long.

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50:05So question number three. So again, just to reset, four questions to ask yourself if you're trying to engage in right speech. Is it true? Is it helpful? The third is, is it timely? Is this the right time to say the thing? Yeah. And I think that's very connected to, is it helpful it's like um uh if you if you have a friend or an acquaintance who just got a really difficult diagnosis and it may not be the time and it may not be that helpful to um give him advice you know and a lot of people who are feeling that kind of vulnerability and you know everything the fear and everything that that goes with that kind of situation often tell me they feel a little bombarded by advice.

50:55And I use the example in something I'd written of Ram Dass, who was also at my very first retreat in 1971, and I've been a friend ever since. And after his stroke, which was a very, very significant stroke, I remember he was in the rehab hospital, and then he was still living in California, and I went to visit him in California. and his living room was piled high with, you know, things people had sent. And it was beautiful. It was really a gesture, you know, based on how much he had given the world and how he was held and the kind of regard he was held in. But sometimes there would be these notes that accompanied the whatever and it would say, like, take 15 drops of this and you'll definitely be walking again.

51:45and I could feel his internal experience of that was pressure. And it sort of translated into like, will you still love me if it doesn't work? Will you still be here with me? Or will you see me as having failed you in some way? And when I was there visiting him, one of those arrived and it was a bottle of Ganges water, water from the Ganges River. And I had a note that said something like, take 15 drops of this and you'll be okay within two weeks. And I said, don't drink that. Whatever you do, don't drink that. You'll get cholera if you drink that, you know, like for God's sake. You know, so it's the way, you know, like when someone seems to be in their most vulnerable spot, is that the time or is that going to be helpful in the end to impose that kind of pressure, which is really just about you, you know, like I saved you in some way.

52:38So again, it's really important to look at intention and to look at context to try to figure that out. Just for context on Ram Dass, for people who don't know who he is, he's a great spiritual teacher and writer. He is perhaps most famous for his book, Be Here Now, but there are some documentaries on him that are on Netflix that are worth watching. And he did have a stroke and really handled it with uncommon grace. In terms of timeliness, there's another tool from the aforementioned Dan Klerman and Mudita Nisker, who are great communications coaches in the Buddhist tradition that I found really helpful.

53:18You know, when I'm talking to somebody who is in, you know, extremists, there's something big going on, they've gotten a diagnosis, or they've made a big mistake, and they feel under siege, instead of, or they're just anxious about something, instead of moving into advice, which is not generally what people want. What I think people want and what I certainly want in these moments is just to be seen and heard, validated. A tool that I learned from Dan and Mudita is reflective listening, where you simply listen to what somebody's saying and then repeat back the bones of what they've said to you, the headline version in your own words.

54:04And that really is just giving people this incredible gift of feeling like they're seen and heard. So anyway, does that feel like an appropriate thing to say in this context? It does. I think very much so. And I tell a story somewhere, which was also from a million years ago. You know, it's like living in India. There's just this array of spiritual gurus and perspectives and methodologies. And somebody came to me once, this young man, and he said, I'm thinking of bringing my father to India to meet this one particular guru whom I'd also met. And he said to me, what do you think? And I said, well, you know, it's sort of like a hard place.

54:49It's a hard city. It'll be incredibly hot. There'll be bugs. If you may not like the food, you might get sick. And anyway, the guru's a little weird, you know? It's like the scene is strange and it might not work, but he didn't listen to me and he went and did it anyway. And it turned out the father fell totally in love with the guru and became like a disciple of the guru and became a teacher in the guru's lineage. And like I couldn't have been more wrong. and I thought back to that moment where I was like, why was I interlacing my view, my experience instead of, as you said, just listening saying, well, what is it you hope for?

55:30And what's he like? Is he the kind of person that you think would take offense at this? or, you know, just like actually having a genuine communication. I just sort of laid out, well, my experience was, you know, like this, and I'm sure it won't be okay. Why do you think it is that we rush to advice or rush to fix or rush to pontificate in these moments? Is it some unease that we're covering up for? Well, no doubt, you know. I mean, I think we're also, we tend to be rather self-preoccupied rather than connecting. You know, it's like we meet somebody and largely what's going on in our minds is, what do they think of me?

56:17You know, the day they like me, do they like me more than they've ever liked anyone before? I know I said something stupid, they hate me. You know, instead of actually, in a way, kind of emptying and being there and taking them in and noticing. And one of the detriments to being so self-preoccupied is that we lose the capacity to be surprised by people, you know, and just to have that kind of, oh, that's interesting, and oh boy, that's unexpected. I wouldn't have thought that, you know, because there's not necessarily genuine connection going on. So, I mean, I think in the case of just kind of reciting advice, you know, it's about being seen as right, you know, and having the correct opinion, and, you know, maybe being remembered as the one who warned you off against doing that thing or whatever, and it's a pretty lonely way of being in the end because we're not actually connecting in a genuine way.

57:14Fourth question is, I think, the thorniest in some ways. So just to reset again, is it true? Is it helpful? Is it timely? The fourth is, is it kind? So I have a million questions for you about this, but why don't you just set the table? Well, I would go back to that model that I was talking about of the intention behind an action and then our best guess of what's most skillful in that moment in time as a way of expressing something because we can look at what our motive is. It's like, do I want to be seen as right? Do I want to try to be helpful? Do I want to extend some compassion? This person's going through something really hard, you know, and do I just want to acknowledge that in terms of, you know, is that my intention is to say you're not so alone in some way?

58:09You know, so the kindness is embedded in the intention. One of the things I'm sort of liking these days out of current maybe pop psychology is the distinction between being kind and being nice. And so the nice part would have to do with that second aspect of action, which is the expression or the manifestation, the skillful or unskillful manifestation of the intention in that moment. And so maybe there is a time when it feels most appropriate to be strong, you know, and not to just try to please the other person, but hopefully in a skillful way to say what we feel we have to say or to have a strong boundary or to say no or whatever it might be.

58:57And the kindness is still there in that we're not trying to harm somebody. We're not trying to hurt anybody, perhaps. And yet, you know, what seems most appropriate is not saying yes and being sweet and being meek or something like that. There's another classic Sharon story that's coming to mind that's not fully apropos because it's not it's not on speech. It's not totally on point on the subject of speech But I think it is illuminating in this context That you, early on in your days in India And you were still young and new to the practice And you were listening to some teachers Talking about the importance of kindness And you said something to the effect of like What if I go out on the street And here in India And there are pickpockets all over the place What do I do?

59:48Do I let them pick my pockets? And the teacher said You should very compassionately smack them with your umbrella. Okay, I'm going to tell you what really happened. Okay, okay. Because that is one of my stories and one of my experiences. And it's so funny because we're talking about a long time ago. I mean, the Insight Meditation Society just celebrated its 50th anniversary. And we were in India before then. So, I hear this story. People say it in all kinds of different ways. So what actually happened was I'd gone to Bud Gaia and Calcutta, maybe six or seven hours away from one another by train.

1:00:29So I'd gone to Calcutta for some reason with this friend of mine. We were heading back to Gaia, to Bud Gaia. And going to the train station in Calcutta, there was something going on in the street. There was some kind of riot. So we couldn't get a cab or something like that. and the only means of transportation we could find to get back to the train station was a rickshaw and in calcutta in those days i don't know about now the rickshaws were not men on bicycles they were men running so you were in this carriage and this guy was pulling you along running so he's going down these dark side streets and alleyways and um this very large very drunken man came out of the shadows and stopped him and went to grab me to pull me off and I thought oh my god you know I'm going to be raped I'm going to be murdered um and the person I was with the man I was with managed to shove him aside and got the guy to start running again so we got to the train station got you know after the train ride got back to Bud Gaia and went to see this teacher and I was still very shaken up by it.

1:01:37And I told him the whole story and he said to me, oh, Sharon, with all the loving kindness in your heart, you should have taken your umbrella and hit that man over the head. So, that's what happened. And, you know, I knew you were going to tell that story, you know, in some fashion when you started speaking. And, you know, of course, a lot of times we hit people over the head and we think, well, it was coming from a loving place, but was it really? You know, so there we have the ability for introspection and for really self-reflection, see where we're coming from. But we don't, as you know, you know, that mistake is so fundamental that from loving kindness, we're just going to be so doormat-like, you know, that it's just not the way it works.

1:02:24Is it kind? The injunction toward kindness in our speech does not mean we shouldn't speak up for what we believe in in a political context online or IRL. We shouldn't go to a protest. We shouldn't have firm words with our spouse or our child or the proverbial obnoxious uncle. um it's it's about like what is in your heart as you're doing this are you are are you being firm and maybe even slightly harsh from the from a mind of of loving kindness exactly you know and and what an amazing thing that we can look back hopefully without a lot of judgment to see our intention. You know, if you're full of judgment and shame, that's not going to really work either.

1:03:20But to understand, you know, we have lots of different kinds of conditioning and things will come up. We don't have to necessarily follow them out and live by them, but, you know, we can see them and abandon that which is unskillful and cultivate the good. And I mean, what a breathtaking potential for a human life. Okay, well, here's the really juicy question, though. Is it ever okay to gossip? Probably we will. I've heard people say that it's like a tribal ritual. It's good, you know, you can find your people. But I think it's so interesting to look at not only the intention, but also the nature of the gossip.

1:04:07It's like I have, you know, I use the example sometimes of like you're about to say something about someone else that's really belittling. It's true, but it's belittling. And sometimes like I ask myself or we can ask ourselves like why? What would be the result of turning this person against this other person? Or, you know, what would be the good of this person knowing this about this other person? And sometimes we just practice restraint. But you don't have to be holier than thou or uptight or anything. You can be relaxed in your speech. Or what would it be like if you said something about another person and then they walked in the room two and a half minutes later?

1:04:50What would that feel like? And realizing just because something is ordinary or conventional or familiar doesn't mean it brings us anything that's worth having in terms of our fulfillment or our happiness in life. So it's not bad to pay attention to those elements as well. But I do want to go back to something you said a moment ago, and I didn't pick up on it, and I want to pick up on it now. which is you didn't say this, but I'm going to say it because I'm pretty sure you you will say it or would have said it. Nobody's expecting perfection here. The point is to bring some curiosity and introspection, both in the moment when you can remember and ex post facto, if you can, you know, bear it.

1:05:43But the point is not to shame yourself. You you are if you take this seriously, you are likely to see some things that are unflattering. But the shame is not going to help. As I once heard a great teacher whose initials are Sharon Salzberg say the mind filled with shame cannot learn. And so I often call in my scatological way shame. I often call it these psychic constipation, like nothing can move through if you're just stuck in a story of I'm a bad person. I, I, of course, I said that thing because my intention is to belittle to and to self aggrandize. So yeah, just say a little bit more about why shame is not helpful.

1:06:26Yeah, there was actually a quotation from Eve Ackman who said just that the brain filled with shame cannot learn. And it's really true, you know, like even some people going back to our initial conversation, some people in describing the Eightfold Path don't like that term right, you know, right speech, right action, right livelihood. and yet that that is the classical translation they don't like right because of the likelihood of somebody then judging themselves and blaming themselves and i'm all wrong and it's so terrible but right in a sense just you could say it means onward leading you know rather than being stuck you could say it means being in harmony with how things are and there's nothing wrong with wanting to be happy, you know, because it doesn't mean wanting endless pleasure or domination over others.

1:07:22It means genuine kind of happiness. And when we align ourselves with the things that will help bring it, first of all, our own happiness in that sense gives us resilience and an ability to help others, which we don't have if we just feel broken and overwhelmed and exhausted all of the time. So, we work on those things that will build that capacity up. And it's good for us, it's good for others, and that's what's right, you know, is to orient ourselves toward that. And wanting that is not greed, which people often ask me, you know, isn't that selfish to want to be happy? And I say, no, it's not greed, it's science.

1:08:05You know, if I have all this material goods and I never share anything, I feel I never have enough. That's not a happy state. And why not see that generosity produces happiness and then embark on a path? Or if I spent all my time just disparaging others, I really do think we live in a culture of disparagement in terms of speech where we're taught you will feel better about yourself if you just put others down. And, you know, we see it again and again. Like, I don't watch much reality TV, for example, you know, but occasionally in someone's house, someone will have something on. And I remember watching this cooking show, and it was just terrible, you know, instead of somebody, you know, being dismissed with, you know, that was a really good souffle.

1:08:58But I think it could have made it more interesting with more spice or something like that. It was like, take your knives and go. And it's like, you don't deserve to be alive, you know, and we call that entertainment. So we've got lots of conditioning about what happens if you make a mistake? What happens if you're not number one? You know, how should you feel about yourself? And it's a lot of work, but it's the most liberating work of all to realize we can see these things within ourselves, not as bad or wrong, but painful. and out of compassion for ourselves embark on a path that's more fulfilling, you know, and is happier.

1:09:38Abandoning the unskillful. Yeah. How do we remember right speech when we're in the middle of a conversation with a difficult person? Well, this is also practice. We can practice when we're not in the heat of, you know, a conversation with a difficult person. because the more we practice any skill in a kind of boring, somewhat boring, ordinary time, it is a little bit like going to the gym and you're building up that strength so that when things are harder, more complicated, more demanding, then it's more familiar. So, I would suggest that, like make it a habit. So, one of the things I decided in the beginning of the pandemic.

1:10:20You know, I was in Barry, Mass. The center was closed. All my travel plans were dashed. And so I decided I was going to undertake these practices just to, you know, make it a more enriched and useful time. So one of the practices I decided on was that I wasn't going to write an email and just press send because it is a medium of communication, which can so often lead to misunderstanding and confusion. It's so terse. And so, I thought I was going to write an email, read it again, put myself in the position of the recipient, and then decide if I wanted to edit it or just send it. And, you know, this is all these years later, I still do that, and most of the time I edit it, you know, because it's the nature of that sort of medium.

1:11:08So, we can undertake practices of speech in one form or another and bring them to bear and just experiment with them. And then when you're in the heat of a conversation with a difficult person, the simplest thing usually as a mirror for our feelings is the body. What am I feeling? What sensations are coming up? And that becomes our feedback system. So, I also often tell the story about a friend of mine who described herself as the kind of person who could basically never say no. She had a very hard time saying no in all these different situations. So, she said she'd be at work and she'd be asked to do things that really were not her job, but she would feel like she had to say yes.

1:11:55And so in her meditation practice, one of the things she did was consciously bring up those kinds of situations. and she'd imagine somebody asking her something and she really studied what happened in her body because the feeling, which is really panic, came up in her stomach before the thought, oh, maybe they won't like me anymore if I say no. And so she studied that feeling and that became her feedback system so that when she was at work and she would be asked that very kind of question and she'd feel that very thing, that was her signal to say, I'll have to get back to you. And then once she had some space, she could actually say no.

1:12:45So the body will reveal a lot of things, and that can be our signal, like maybe don't answer right away, you know, or maybe say you need some time to think about something or to say, well, you know, I think of whatever you're proposing differently. differently do you want to hear what, you know, my perspective is or something, you know, it'll just help guide us. This has been a great conversation. I'm completely unsurprised by that fact. Before I let you go, though, can you just talk a little bit about this event you're doing on the 10 % app, this eight-week series of live events around the Eightfold Path?

1:13:29I'm super excited and super grateful to you for doing it. But yeah, talk a little bit about why you wanted to do it and what it will be. I am doing several things for that app. I'm doing that series and ultimately doing a course with Andy Gonzalez from the Holistic Life Foundation, which is especially designed for people who care for other people in some way. The Eightfold Path is like our living legacy. It is the actionable part of what we can do. It's one thing to feel a sense of dissatisfaction in your life or things could be better, and it's another thing to feel creative and that you have agency and that there are things you can experiment with and try out.

1:14:25So that's really the Eightfold Path, and that will be eight different sessions. Yes, eight different sessions, all live on Sundays throughout the summer. And if you miss it, you can watch it on replay, and we're going to turn it into a course on the Eightfold Path taught by Sharon Salzberg. But she is also creating another course with our mutual friend, Andy Gonzalez, around specifically meditation and content aimed at people who are caregivers, which honestly is most of us, whether you're a parent or you have an aging parent or you as you move through the day, you you are many of us. There are moments where we are caregivers for friends who need help or maybe we're volunteers or we're in a caregiving profession.

1:15:17There are lots of use cases for this second course you will also be creating for us. Anyway, Sharon, you're the best. Thank you for doing this. Thank you so much. Thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show. 10 % Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the great indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. One last thing I want to say before you go.

1:15:54If you enjoy this show, please do me slash us a solid. Follow the show and leave a rating and a review on whatever platform you watch or listen to us on. It only takes a minute. It's free and it really helps new people find us and spread the good news that the mind is trainable. Thank you. Sincerely, I mean it. Thank you.