The Reset for Anxiety, Overthinking, and Losing Yourself in the Wrong Story | Diana Winston

28:03I think he also said you become a connoisseur of your neuroses. And And so that kind of humor really allows you, I think, to ride these waves with a little bit more sophistication. Oh, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And being able to laugh at yourself, big one. And what's great is our families help us laugh at ourselves. Not the ones that do it in a harsh way, but the ones that point out your foibles and we all laugh about it. I love it when my husband and my daughter gang up on me when I do something stupid. It's like funny. And I just go, yeah, yeah, that was really, really dumb. Oh, well, you know, it's cute.

28:45I prefer it when my son and I gang up on my wife. But, you know, I can deal with it when they gang up on me. So tell me a little bit about the practice you've crafted for the Reset Meditation Challenge that goes right at this issue of breaking out of old patterns. So I have a meditation that I'm calling a four-part reset for when you're in the midst of a difficult emotion. You can do it right on the spot, or you can also do it afterwards and reflect on it. But it's mainly for like right here, right now, I'm really anxious or I'm really angry or whatever is happening. So the first step is grounding in your body.

29:21Like just, you know, grounding, that word, it's a funny word because I think that it, like get grounded, people, or something. But really it is very powerful practice of feeling your feet on the ground, feeling connected to the earth. That's the first part because that helps us when we're lost in emotion and it's really intense. We're sort of up in our head and up in kind of like the upper part of our body. So getting grounded is the first step. The second is notice the emotion, right? Like, what is it? How do I feel in my body? My heart is racing, my stomach is clenched, my jaw is tight. So it brings us into the actual experience.

29:59And just like with that other reset, we allow whatever is here to be here. And this is really key because what we could do is be like, oh, I'm feeling fear, but I shouldn't be feeling fear. So see if you can just be like, yeah, fear is here and breathe into it and feel it. And then the third part is to offer kindness, because when we're lost in a difficult emotion, kindness can be super helpful. And then the last one is what I call enlisting the wisdom mind. What I mean by that is, often when we're in an emotion, we're just lost in it. But sometimes there's another part of ourself that knows that we're okay or that this is maybe we're having a more extreme reaction to something that we need to be.

30:46Or, you know, there's a lot of ways that our wisdom is a bit buried when we're in the difficult emotion. But if you do the first three steps and you ground, you notice, and you bring in some kindness, that allows the intensity of emotion to drop. And then we can start to let the wisdom mind kick in. And it might say something like, you'll get through this. Or it's not as bad as I think. Or you might ask yourself a question, do I really know this is true? So we can use our wisdom mind. And this is where we start to, in the long term, begin to break the habits. Because prior to mindfulness of emotions, we're just in it.

31:27We're just lost in the emotion. We're having the difficult emotion all the time. But now with mindfulness, we have different tools to wake us up from the kind of primacy of our drama into a recognition that, oh, okay, I might be able to get through this, or I'm not the only one, or I can find a place of ease, even in the midst of the difficult emotion. And you've come back to this several times now, the idea of being kind to ourselves. I imagine there are people listening to this who kind of resist it either because they think it's going to make them go soft or, you know, or they're going to it's like letting themselves off the hook or because they just kind of find it cheesy.

32:07I say that because I felt all of those things. Yeah, I was going to say, weren't you one of those people? I was until I got over myself. But what do you say to the old me? There's a beautiful quote from feminist theorist Bell Hooks, and she says, self-love is the foundation of our loving practice. Without it, our other efforts to love fail. It's a longer quote, but she talks about her friends who think that being loving to yourself is selfish, that your friends say you shouldn't be focusing on yourself. But actually, the profound wisdom in that is that it is the foundation of our ability to love others.

32:50And so, first of all, what I would say to a skeptic about it is take your time. Don't believe anything I say. Try it yourself and see what happens. If you're kind, what happens? And, you know, and the question is, like, how do you be kind? Because that's like, that's hard. So sometimes it's just imagining someone you love being kind to you or imagining your dog. So you can imagine your dog or somebody kind in your life and kind of channel that energy and direct it toward yourself. Yes. Yeah. So that's one way to do it, especially when it feels impossible to do it for yourself. Some people use touch, which some people hate for some people.

33:33It's sweet, like just to put your hand on your cheek or on your chest or on your belly or something. finding ways to and then of course you know in the traditional practices like in the metta or loving kindness practice we'd say phrases and that's what may i may i be safe i like to start with somebody else who's sending it to us rather than trying to do it for ourselves because that feels hard for a lot of people but then you can also send it to yourself at different times in life you can send it to yourself for when you're you know a child or a little baby and that that can sometimes bring it up but but the most important thing i think just getting to the people who are skeptics about it and is try it.

34:11You know, I didn't like, I didn't really like it doing these kindness practices myself for about 10 years of my practice. Whenever I would be on a retreat and they'd offer it, I would just leave the room. I did. It took me a long time before I realized how powerful it was. And for me, partly it was because the insight practice was so strong and interesting that I didn't want to do another practice. I just wanted to stay. But And not that my insight practice wasn't infused somewhat with its own level of kindness, but it took me a long time before I started doing the traditional practices. And then I found I really loved them.

34:46And I only did them after I had left a nonprofit job. I was totally burned out and exhausted and needed kindness for myself really clearly. And it was like a glaring neon sign, be kind to yourself. One other thing I would say to skeptics, and then we can move on, is just pay attention to the science. The science is really strong, not only from Kristen Neff, who's the godmother of self-compassion, which has shown that you can learn to relate to yourself differently, but also from Ethan Cross, another veteran of the frequent flyer on the show who's at the University of Michigan, whose work has shown that you can sort of rewire your inner dialogue, your inner chatter.

35:29That's the term he uses, where you just talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend. Kristen talks about this, too. Ethan has shown that if you use your name when you're talking to yourself and you can just do bro or dude or sweetie, whatever, that it actually increases the impact. Bruh, as my son calls me. Yeah, they all do. Your daughter calls you that, too. Yeah, I like it. I love it. I love when kids call their moms bruh. That particularly makes me laugh. Yeah, but so talking to yourself that way, there's just so much compelling evidence that it has benefits in terms of reaching your goals and self-reported happiness, anxiety, et cetera, et cetera.

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40:30behave in our relationships, our relationships change, and we model it. And the relationships themselves can be an interesting place for more waking up, more self-understanding, more kindness, more compassion, more freedom from difficult emotions. So one of my dear friends and colleagues, Donald Rothberg, developed a whole methodology on working with judgments. And judgments are this really fantastic place to learn more about ourselves and to have the development of more compassion, understanding, and also even wise action. So judgments are harsh, primarily negative thoughts about ourself or other people or situations or the world.

41:13And they could be about people we know. It could be about people we don't know. I mean, judgments are these typically harsh, negative thoughts. And they're accompanied by some kind of reactivity, like aversion in our body, tension, aversive thinking, and they almost always lead to suffering of ourselves or others. They can be mild, they can be strong. But what's interesting about judgments is there's a significant amount of truth related to them, and that's the hook. So what typically happens when we think about judgments is like, oh no, I shouldn't judge, right? There's something wrong with me that I'm judging, or I'm not spiritual enough as I'm judging.

41:56But actually, there is truth in it. And maybe, for instance, we're judging a person for acting in an obnoxious way, and maybe they actually really are. But we can see something clearly, but with a judgment, we typically have so much reactivity about it. And so the long-term intention with judgments is to preserve the intelligence and the insight, but separate it from the reactivity and then also see what we can learn there. So judgments become, they move from being a reactive thing into more of a discernment. And I can give, I'll give examples of this, but I just want to kind of lay it out for you.

42:39So rather than rejecting a judgment, they can be kind of a doorway into a deep learning about ourselves. And they can also be a place that we can cultivate compassion and there can be a profound reset of how we judge. So that's the overall picture because there's actually a lot of wisdom in the judgments. So what are the tools you recommend we use with these incredibly seductive mental phenomena? Some of the tools are just like a self-observation, noticing that you're judging, labeling it as judging, feeling it in your body. I'm just rushing through it, but I want to kind of give you a good example.

43:25When our minds, when we're not lost in the reactivity, similar to what we talked about earlier, there's more compassion that can be brought in. We can attempt to understand what is the wisdom, right? So, that's the tricky thing with the judgments, like what is the wisdom underneath? So, I'll just give you an example from my life. I have a teenage daughter. She's almost 17. And this is a funny summer for her because, you know, when they're 16, they're not quite old enough to get a real job, but they're too old to do the fun things that they used to do when they were little. And so they're kind of sitting around a lot.

44:03And I could feel my judgments arising about it. Oh my gosh, she slept till 11 this morning, and then she just spent half the day on TikTok and, you know, and just what's going to happen, like judgment kind of combined with some worry, like what is she doing with herself? What is she doing? Right. So there was this judgment and it's, you know, it's, it's funny, like we don't like to judge our kids, right? So there's a little bit of shame, like, oh, I shouldn't be judging my child. I love this person more than anyone, but then I'm judging my child. Like what, what is going on here? So, so there was more judgment, you know, I said to her, like, what do you want to do this summer?

44:39and she said, I just want to drive around and see my friends. And I was like, oh my gosh, what's going to, and then I would go into these stories like, oh, that's going to look great on a college application, driving around and seeing your friends, right? You know, so this, all this story and all, and then I felt bad that I was judging her. So it was like a whole constellation of suffering. So how do we wake up from that, right? How do we wake up? So that's where these judgment practices are really profound. So, what I did was I started noticing what I was feeling in my body and offering some, here we talked about offering kindness, like, okay, yeah, you're really upset.

45:18You're not, like, what's here? And I started noticing that as I could feel the judgment, with judgment, there's always a feeling of self-righteousness, like that feeling like, oh, I'm right, you know, this person is doing something that they shouldn't be doing and I'm right. So if you let yourself actually feel the self-judgment, it's quite interesting. It feels kind of like, for me, it feels like a sort of like a powerful like pressure in my stomach area. And I kind of pause and allow that to be there. And then I might ask myself, like, what is, what is, what am I really wanting? What's going on here as I begin to, as I bring some kindness, feel it, notice it, notice that I'm lost in it, like what's really going on?

46:03And when I investigate, what I find is, you know, what the truth is. Like, I want my child to be happy. I want her to be okay. I want her to be engaged. I want her to, you know, I have all these like hopes and dreams for her and all of that is like true and real, you know. and but the reactivity is what's wrong with her she's lazy she's on tiktok all day what's going to happen what's going to happen to her brain right that's all the judgment but the the wisdom in it is the care that i have for her and so when i can calm down from the reactivity and find out what is true then i start to feel also more compassion for her and for me like of course you're worried about her.

46:47You love this being. You want her to have a life that is joyous and connected. You don't want her to have a life that's like shut down and in screens all the time. And then once I'm calm and connected and clear, then I can relate to her differently. And then we can talk about it in a way that's not reactive. Because there's a way I could talk to her from my judgments. What is going on? Why are you still on the phone? Blah, blah, blah. Get to work. Go find a job? Why haven't you found a job? You know, those kinds of things. Or let's talk about this together and let's see what's going to work. And spoiler alert, she did find some good things to do this summer, so it wasn't entirely.

47:24But anyway, I hope this is getting, I just wanted to give you like a real example to show how we might use this judgment thing that's typically seen kind of negative as a way to have more connection and more compassion, understanding of ourselves. So if I'm hearing you correctly, it's kind of a two-step process. The first is to like, you know, get in touch with what you're feeling, send yourself some kindness, relax the nervous system so that you can see what the wisdom is beneath the judgment. Get below the reflexive aspects of it, the self-righteous aspects into like, oh, no, I'm experiencing all of this because I give a shit.

48:03I care on some deep level. Sometimes I talk about it moves from being a judgment to a discernment. So, a judgment is all the reactivity around it with the same discernment. The discernment is buried in there. You know, the discernment is, my kid needs something to do for the summer. That would be helpful for her, right? But the judgment is, what's wrong with her? Why is she being so lazy? She's sleeping in, blah, blah, blah, you know, all of that. So that's just like kind of like a family example. But we can, so we can do this when we have judgments with anyone and anything. And if we don't reject our judgments, but actually use them as a kind of like a portal to self-understanding and more compassion, it's like really, really interesting.

48:49It's an incredible practice. In the interest of time, I want to get to the fourth because this is where things get weird in a good way. the fourth way to awaken per the great Diana Winston is awakening as transcendence. Yeah. So this is where you start getting into, you know, at the far end of the spectrum, you know, enlightenment and nirvana, but on a more down to earth side of things, it's like kind of getting over yourself, self-transcendence in ways that can be really meaningful. So yeah, say a little bit about this. Yeah, this is sort of the fun and interesting one and also a little hard to understand, I think.

49:31I mean, obviously, that's the nature of it. So I guess we could think of this as like the deep reset. In different, you know, like in Buddhist traditions, there's this idea of like an enlightened experience where you have a moment which completely transforms your life and you never go back to what you were before. Or what I see is over years of teaching and my own practice is that people have many, many experiences that are in this territory of, I'm saying it transcendence, but it could be, we can use other words. And it can happen in meditation. It can also happen in other places. It can happen.

50:10We have transcendent experiences in nature. We have transcendent experiences in, I mean, people talk about it with psychedelics. We have experiences in sex. Like we can have these peak spontaneous experiences where we feel feelings of oneness and connection or profound equanimity or joy. And it's all available. Like the human mind and body has the capacity to experience these transcendent states. And sometimes these transcendent states are like profoundly kind of like empty. I mean, that word is confusing, but like not a sense of self disappears, right? So, you're with a lover, like you could the other person and you merge and there's no sense of me.

51:03Or it can be an experience where you feel one with everything, right? There are a lot of experiences that people describe. There's this really interesting book from the 70s, which was by Philip Kaplow-Roshi, called The Three Pillars of Zen. And what he did, unlike anything I've ever seen since or before, was that he interviewed people who had so-called enlightenment experiences in Japan. and he was studying Japanese Buddhism and he interviewed, I don't know, all these people, a lot of Japanese people, some Westerners, and he just wrote little stories about what their experience was. And what it appeared to me was that there were different, some people experienced it as like a profound no-self and other people experienced it as a profound oneness with all things.

51:50And there were different ways of experiencing it. So this is possible for We're human, the humans to access these beautiful states. And then, you know, and then and that's like really big awakenings, but we can have little versions of it, too. So most of us can remember being about 15 and feeling completely invisible or worse, extremely visible. But for the wrong reasons, I remember one year when I was a teenager, I had a pimple in the crevice of my nose for the entire year. I didn't like that. Either way, even if we have painful memories of that age, most of us tend to soften it in memory, and it was actually harder than we remember it now.

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54:46So how can we get little tastes of enlightenment in our daily lives? Well, I often do something even with total beginners. I have a meditation in one of my books called, I call it Recollection. and I just say to people just take a moment to reflect on a time in your life where you felt connected peaceful a sense of connection so I offer the kind of language that I mean we could do this practice right this second so just and this is also part of the reset meditation series so just everyone take a moment and pause and take a breath and if you're driving keep your eyes open thank you and see if you can bring to mind um a time in your life where you felt a sense of peace ease connection openness joy and this doesn't have to be a big dramatic moment it could be something kind of small or tender, could be with your animals or your best friend, or could be out in nature or even in the midst of art or creativity, but this place where this sense of me felt more expansive, more connected.

56:08So just see what comes to mind as I say that to you and let it come to mind.

56:16And if you can't think of anything, maybe imagine this possibility. And then if you can, where were you?

56:26Can you see or sense or feel where you were? What did you hear?

56:33Any smells, any tastes? Like what was around you in this moment? And most importantly, what did you feel? Say if you can remember what you felt in that moment.

56:48Say if you can let that be here. Okay, so we'll stop in a little meditation here. Dan, what happened for you when you did that? Well, my son and I had a boys weekend and we went out to the beach on Long Island. And on Sunday afternoon, we went over to my friend Jonathan's house, our friend Jonathan's house, Deb and Jonathan's house. And there were four families there, three of whom we know really well. And Alexandra and I walked in and just like so many people hugging us and offering us food and dogs licking us and little kids being adorable in the pool. And it was just a very warm experience that I've been thinking about a lot since it happened.

57:39I love that example because it's not like some mystical woo-woo event or something. It was just like a real thing that happened recently where there was a lot of love and connection and joy. People have this a lot, but they often skip over it or they forget about it. So one of the things that's really important to do when you have these beautiful moments is to stop and experience it and savor it. And also exactly what you did, reflect on it, right? Remember, because when you reflect on it, it brings it back and it brings these states of well-being. And the more of these states and qualities of well-being that we can have, the more we, you know, we can live from those places instead of like feeling like they're a million miles away.

58:26They are accessible to all of us in any moment. Yeah. So when we have these moments of transcendence where we're not so stuck in thinking about, you know, how's my hair look or, you know, how far am I behind at work? And these are obviously other people's thoughts, not mine. When we're really in, to use some grandiose terms in like states of connection and love, which don't have to be grandiose. It could be a Sunday at your friend's house, but where you really are feeling that, to allow yourself to feel it and then to allow yourself to relive it. Even though you might not be in the present moment, strictly speaking, when you're reliving it, well, you can do your best to tune into the feelings that are here right now when you conjure those experiences.

59:12That's everyday, completely accessible self-transcendence. And then we start to have more and more of them because we start identifying them and seeing them. And then there's like, just the joy becomes like stronger than the non-joy, you know, like, I feel like, I always feel like people are so familiar with the negative states, you know, I live on anxiety street. I know that one really, really well. that when they start to feel these moments, they're very, like they're almost even confusing for people. I've had so many people over the years, like in meditation retreat, come up and say, you know, I'm feeling this thing.

59:47I'm not really sure what it is, but I think it's peace maybe, you know? And I'm like, yeah. But then as you start to be able to recognize it, to savor it and to, as we were talking about, recollect and then it starts to become more and more part of you and you can not have to live on anxiety streak. live on equanimity road or something. You've upgraded your living arrangements when you moved from Anxiety Street to equanimity road and ultimately Nirvana Boulevard. Exactly. Yeah. I have found specifically on this thing of like love and it's a big word. So you can, if you want, you know, connection, friendliness, whatever you want, whatever word you want to use.

1:00:33I always just go for the big swing. So let me just say love. Like the more I've tuned into that in my life, just what you said a couple of minutes ago has happened in that you said before, when you tune, savor and recollect these experiences, they, they happen more frequently, but that has happened. That has just been, these experiences have become a bigger part of my life. And I've gone from, you know, I still have a million flaws, but I've gone from somebody who I think was really, you know, heads down, workaholic, self-centered, and all of that is definitely still in me and I can definitely get there pretty easily.

1:01:18But just these little glimpses of the other way of being start to accumulate. That's great to hear. And it bears out with my experience with teaching and my own self as well. Yeah, I have this friend who, he said he was like this super petty, judgmental person. And he's like, you do not want to know me 30 years ago. You would hate me. And then now he, after all these years of practice, it's like he gets so excited by when he sees a glass and there's light shining. And it's just, there's the beauty there right in this moment. And it's like, he lives in gratitude. And it's from practicing, doing these practices.

1:02:03And it's extraordinary. He's like, he doesn't recognize himself. But he says, and there are times that I go back, just like you said, to being the way I was. But that becomes, it's like foreground background. Like the more beautiful states and the more states of well-being, they start to come more and more into the foreground. And it's gorgeous. I mean, that's why I do what I do. Well, this has been a delightful romp through four ways to awaken. Before I let you go, though, anything that you were hoping to cover that we didn't cover? I don't know. I think we we kind of covered it all. There was some stuff, but we feel like it's not that important.

1:02:40I feel I feel good about what we covered. Okay. Well, speaking of good, we're experimenting with this little closing segment, what's good? We basically just, I tried to get in the habit of asking guests, like, what's something good? It could be just a personal development. It could be a practice. It could be a TV show, a song, a book, whatever. Yeah. What can you recommend? One thing is good is I got married last year. What? Yeah, I did. Yeah. To whittle it down, your recommendation is fall in love and get married. not everyone believes in marriage but fall in love is a really good thing to make to you know boost the the oxytocin and the dopamine anyway it's fantastic but but so that's something good in my life just sharing that's awesome i love it congratulations that's really cool days ago so this will be dated for this is coming out in september we're recording in august um uh so this movie will have been out there for quite a while by the time I talk about it.

1:03:43My wife and I took our son and one of his friends, actually three families. We all went together to see Spider-Man, the latest Spider-Man movie when it came out on Thursday, opening weekend. So we were there the first night. I watch a lot of Marvel movies because I have an 11 and a half year old son. I'm not particularly a fan of them, but I watch them. This one was interesting for two reasons. One, because it was kind of a mix of a Marvel movie and an A24 movie. It was pretty emo. and instead of it just being about like uh spider-man defeating bad guys it was also about you know his love for his friends but on a deeper level there was a lot of stuff that we would talk about on this show like the and i'm not going to spoil anything but one of the spider-man yes yes he so he is in great distress because he's lonely and his whole body and mind start to disintegrate because he's disconnected from all the people he loves.

1:04:39And over the course of the movie, there is a lot of healing that happens in this regard. It is a major driver of the plot that he doesn't have connection and you see his body and mind just disintegrate as a consequence. Wow. Now you're making me want to see it. I'm not here to say that I, you know, pound the table and say everybody needs to go see Spider-Man. More that I'm glad that a movie that is as critical as, you know, cultural commentators are observing is kind of restoring the monoculture for a minute. Like, you know, in a fragmented media ecosystem, like a big event like this really does bring a lot of people together.

1:05:23It's cool that something that's going to reach this many people has this not so subtle message of, yeah, if you're disconnected and lonely, nothing good's happening. Well, that's great. Great recommendation. Can I give another recommendation? Yeah, go for it. There's no rule. I read a book that I just loved so much, and it's Ann Patchett's new book called Whistler. And she's an incredible writer. Pretty much anything she writes is amazing. But this one is like, in my mind, it's like a perfect book. It just, it's so beautifully written. It's so compelling, but it's really not about anything. It's not, it doesn't have like a lot of drama to it, but it's just about like good people living a good life in connection with each other.

1:06:10And it's just, it's just a beautiful book. So I highly recommend it. But I'm making a note of that Whistler by Ann Patchett. I'm going to go Amazon that. Okay. Diana Winston, it's such a pleasure to talk to you. Just to remind everybody, Diana has at least one book. There's a book called The Little Book of Being, but then there's another book. Fully Present, which I co-wrote with a scientist, The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness. And then I have a book for teens called Wide Awake, A Buddhist Guide for Teens. While we're plugging Diana's work, she, as mentioned, is teaching and leading the meditation challenge that will be running on my app, 10 % with Dan Harris starting next week, the 21st through the 25th.

1:06:55And every day you'll get a fresh guided meditation from Diana to help you reset in lots of different ways, like when you can't sleep, when you're distracted, when you're stuck in your judgments, et cetera, et cetera. I think if you've made it this far in the interview, you will be entirely convinced that said meditations will be ferociously useful. So Diana, thank you so much. Great job with this It's always great to talk to you. Yeah, so much fun. Thanks for doing this. It's great. Yeah. One last thing before I let you go. If you want to listen to this show without ads, check out 10 % Happier Plus, which is a subscription that is available right inside Apple Podcasts.

1:07:36If you become a subscriber, you'll get every episode ad free. That's new episodes and all the episodes from our vast 10-year plus archive. look for 10 % Happier Plus in Apple Podcasts and just hit subscribe. And a quick heads up, if you're already a subscriber to my app, 10 % with Dan Harris, you've already got access to ad-free podcasts. Ad-free listening is baked right into your app subscription along with everything else. So please don't pay twice. You can check out the app at danharris.com and you can check out 10 % Happier Plus inside Apple Podcasts. Thank you very much for listening to the show.

1:08:13I deeply appreciate it. See you soon. Deuces. Thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10 % Happier is produced by Tara Anderson, Marissa Schneiderman, DJ Kashmir, David Hart, and Hayden Broom. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. And Nick Thorburn of the indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. Thanks for listening. Peace.

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