What To Do When Life Won't Let Up | Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren

26:16Everything is just a kind of rigid billiard ball structure or whatever it is. Like that's just having lived in a world like that. It doesn't feel as full of possibility to me. So I think that there is this basic freedom that we're allowed, which is to choose. And William James used to talk about this. He called it the will to believe. We're allowed to choose what we believe. and our beliefs have a profound effect on our happiness. And it's something that everyone needs to look at in their life. And it's something that really, when I was in a more science-y frame, I would have rejected outright as being like, who cares what you believe?

26:50What matters is what's true. But now more and more, I mean, the belief that the tools of science can show you exactly this to be true is itself a belief. So I think having a stance of humility and then being interested in what your relationship is with the world is very, very important.

27:05Sebene Selassie:I saw a Benjamin Franklin quote today. He said, the older I get, the less I trust my own judgment. Seb, can you talk a little bit about how you've been applying the trust life mantra in your own life recently? Yeah, so I'm pretty open about my cancer stuff. In the past few years, I've had really tough diagnosis and treatment and it was getting better, but now it's starting to turn. So the kind of tests and scans are showing that I'm much worse off right now than I was six months ago. It's not the worst it's ever been, but it's going in the wrong direction. so I've had to really work with this and not immediately go into the fear and control which is how fear shows up a lot for me is sort of that like speedy amphetamine control energy of like okay now I need to like plan everything and control everything and do all the things to boost my immune system or research all the weird sounding diagnoses and mutations of my genetic codes of cancer and that's not helpful.

28:22Maybe it was helpful in the past. And I don't regret that because it helped me sort of manage where I was. But now I'm in a very different place where I do need to lean into this trusting of life and trusting how things are and acknowledging the multitude of realities of my life. Yes, there's cancer, there's challenges in my body from the treatments I've had. And I work with those, whether it's pain or fatigue or immune suppression, but I also have a lot of amazing things going on. And I really want to not drain my attention away from those by worry and obsessive thinking and planning. So it's really finding that measure of not rejecting the feelings or the realities of what's here and what's coming, but also not having that take over all of these other aspects of life that are also here and true.

29:18Sebene Selassie:I hear a combination of techniques there, and I could be, you'll correct me if I'm wrong here, but there's a nice little mantra from Joseph Goldstein, the great meditation teacher, who says a thing you can say to yourself when you're in the grips of something hard is, it's okay. By which he does not mean everything's okay, but it's okay to feel this thing right now. So I hear a combination of that plus just gratitude for the good stuff that is also there. Yeah. And a lot of surrender. I've really been working with surrender because I've started to understand more deeply how fear shows up as control for me.

29:53It's one of the ways. It's the main way it shows up for me. that surrendering and kind of lessening that grip of control. So I put my trust in my oncologist, who's a wonderful person and a great oncologist to do what she does instead of trying to be on top of that data and information and consult with her and ask her questions and know what's happening. But I can take care of myself in the ways that are best for me to take care of myself. So, you know, my practice, taking care of myself in terms of my actual body and energy and making sure I get enough sleep and I'm eating well and I, you know, working out with my trainer or whatever it is I need to do and spending time with my friends and feeling supported and feeling love and experiencing joy.

30:41So for me, it's understanding myself too. So it's okay and the gratitude are really important, but it's also knowing my patterns and being able to work with them in ways that support me in the best way possible.

30:57Sebene Selassie:So it's okay, gratitude plus like a good owner's manual on your own mind-body system. Because somebody else's response to fear might be collapse, right? And that's okay too, but then what do you need to do to make sure that that doesn't become the default and start to affect you negatively? Listening to you talk, I did a little bit of the typical making it about myself for a second. You don't become an anchorman because you lack that propensity. I've made some oblique references to my professional stress over the last couple of years. and I think about it like it's interesting I have a similar feeling about the last two years as I think I'm hearing coming through in your comments which is the last two years have sucked on a number of levels and they've been two of the best years of my life I don't think they've been great because of the shitty stuff more that all the practices I've learned over the last 14-15 years just are having compounding effects and so that is I think more true than the shittiness of the situation.

32:00Sebene Selassie:Does that make sense? Yeah, you see the fruits of your practice in a much deeper way when you fertilize that tree well with a bunch of shit. The greatest title for a Dharma book ever is, I forget the name, is Ajahn something. Who ordered this truckload of dung?

32:21Sebene Selassie:Ajahn Brahm. Great, great book title. Coming up, we're going to take your questions. We've got some great voicemails from listeners. One's about work-life balance. We've got one about obsessive thinking. I might have called that one in with a ventriloquist. And we've also got one about a great question, meditation practice versus napping. Keep it here. Much more Meditation Party coming up.

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34:48Sebene Selassie:okay welcome back to meditation party we're going to take your voicemails now we love these voicemails by the way all right the first call is from sana and it's about uh work-life balance take a listen

35:02so i really love periods of my life where my softness flourishes where i can be present move more slowly, have more mindfulness, feel my feelings. Often this is during very small snippets of my life where I feel like I can cocoon. I can build a bubble around myself and my family to truly just enjoy and be. Then the remaining 95 % of my life feels tough. Family crises, constant planning to do, especially when you wear the hat of planning for your nuclear or your extended family, or you're in any sort of caregiving role. Work stress of managing and planning there, juggling commitments of being present and obligated to family and friends.

35:52Just saying it makes me exhausted. So how do you balance the two? How do you live a life more in flow? But how do you code switch between that and like the intensity of being on and being in planning, orchestrating, doing mode for both work and motherhood and family responsibilities while wanting to be in soft mode, in flow with yourself, grateful, open-hearted, inquisitive, curious? is, I would love to know how to marry those two together better.

36:28Sebene Selassie:I mean, there's an easy answer to that. You know, suck it up. Put your suit, coat of armor on, and you know, life is meant to suck. Bear down. Bear down harder. What's the real answer, Jeffrey? I don't know if there's a real answer. I really appreciated the question, Noah, and the place from which it was delivered. She had a very awesome manner. But this is my life. So, I mean, I think for me, the way I can only just speak personally, the big, big picture for me is that I have to just accept that there are times that I'm going to be completely run over by my life. And often those are very long periods and I'm not going to have the space and perspective to be at my best and responding perfectly.

37:07And I'm not going to feel at ease. And actually, when I come to that recognition, I'll recommend a book here because this kind of helped me get there. It's a popular psychology book about acceptance and commitment therapy called The Happiness Trap by like an Australian writer. Acceptance and commitment therapy is basically like repurposed mindfulness. But The Happiness Trap is if you think that when you're unhappy, you shouldn't be unhappy because you need to be happy. That's the trap. You know, you're now living in a world where there has to be the condition of happiness for things to be OK. So just accepting that there are going to be hard times when you're not happy and then times when you are happy is part of the outlook.

37:49But what's really interesting in that book that really helped me that I hadn't really thought about before was the commitment piece. And the commitment piece is basically saying at any moment, there's an opportunity to move towards your values or move away from your values. and so in moments of extreme challenge where you're just getting run over by life what i found was in a lot i had a background narration by this shouldn't be happening this shouldn't be happening i want to be happy right this these things shouldn't be happening or this stuff with my kids shouldn't be happening but when instead i could say you know what this is happening and this challenge is building my resources to be with future challenges or there's a strength capacity training here that I can kind of feel or I can kind of do this thing where I flip it around and right in this moment when everything's falling apart, I can kind of see that this is actually moving me towards in the direction of just like gleeful flowing with it no matter what and dancing with it or whatever.

38:47So at any moment, you have this opportunity to kind of just say, how can I experience this differently? I can't get away from the fact that this is extremely challenging, but is there a way I can make this so it's moving me towards my values? Or maybe your value is social justice. Like when I can see more clearly this privation or this hard thing happening in the world or this injustice, and that's moving me towards being able to speak out more strongly about it towards the future. Do you see what I mean? And since I've been implementing this, because I don't have the time to sort of lubricate my life with the formal practice, I just do not have that.

39:21What I'm doing is more like moment to moment applying this, accept that, yep, this is unhappiness. That's okay. How can I make this something that's moving me in a direction that I want to move in? And that makes all the difference.

39:33Sebene Selassie:I love that. We've never done an episode on ACT acceptance and commitment therapy. It's a thing I've mentioned in my presence quite a bit. So maybe we should get that happiness trap person on the show. As you were speaking, it reminds me of something that's helpful for me, which we actually talked about in the last episode briefly, the last episode that posted back in February that we'll put a link in the show notes if you want to check it out which is setting intentions which used a funny term when we were discussing it you said initially you were just blanket annoyed by the notion of setting intentions and I had the same I mean this is a recurring theme I was dismissive when I first heard of intention setting because it just struck me as like classic new age pablum but actually it's it's like Babe Ruth pointing out of the ballpark and saying I'm gonna hit this home run and it's just setting the direction.

40:24Sebene Selassie:And I think for somebody like Sana, whose voicemail we just listened to, or anybody else who's busy, whether you have kids or not, and you find yourself in these moments of stress or overwhelm, if you've set an intention first thing in the morning, and hopefully I found it very helpful to set it before anything I do, if I can remember it, right? Before I meditate, before I exercise, before I go to bed, when I wake up, I would like to get better at setting it before even small things, brushing my teeth, whatever. And my intention is I dedicate the benefit of whatever I'm doing now to all beings, right?

40:58Sebene Selassie:That is, as I like to say, the view is so much better when you pull your head out of your ass. And that is the head out of ass removal mechanism for me on the regular. And to me, that sounds like commitment. Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. And I'm just thinking that there's another piece too. I think a lot about those transitions when something is really hard and the next hard thing is coming I think about what can I do in the moment to have more softness around this just the words that she used or more smoothness like and it's kind of an equanimity practice can I it's like you're a dj you're trying to put two songs together and then one is really slow and one is really fast you know it's not going to be well but nevertheless you do the best you can to kind of match the beats together so you can kind of smoothly go through it and for me it's like how can I suddenly decide to enjoy this moment in my body?

41:47How can I make my body feel more fluid or more sexy or more open or more supple in some way? And just having that kind of intention can actually turn, transform really challenging moments and really challenging periods into something very different. And so I think the play part of that, like playing with implementing in the moment practices, that's definitely part of how I survive. I don't know if you could get any sexier.

42:12Sebene Selassie:That would be dangerous. Don't do that. I'm worried. I'm curious, Dan, how is your intention setting going? And how do you remind yourself to do that? I mean, it's a little bit. It's why I got a tattoo, F-T-B-O-A-B, for the benefit of all beings, way more earnest than I generally am in my life. There were so many people that brought me in this direction. Spring Washam is a teacher that, she's a meditation teacher. She wanted me to get it tattooed on my chest, and I don't have that kind of courage. And also Richie Davidson, who's an eminent neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin. And he talks about how he's very systematic of doing this intention before anything he does all day long.

42:54Sebene Selassie:And he and I were speaking late 2023. And that's what kind of put this intention setting thing on steroids for me. And actually, we were talking late 22. And then six months later, I got the tattoo. And I've just been trying to up my game for a while. and it's a little bit of faith. You know, I don't know that I'm, I'm giving this a lot of time because it's cutting against, for me, a lot of wiring for selfishness. And by selfishness, I mean that in a kind of, in a broad way. It's not just that I'm not going to give you my five bucks if you ask for it. It's like a self-centeredness, a reversion to what's often called in neuroscience circles, the default mode of thinking about myself or ruminating or worrying and having a broader view, which is so helpful to me and everybody else around me.

43:47Sebene Selassie:And of course, that's essentially the same thing on some deep level. And do you feel like it is, I'm going back to the cosmology stuff, but do you feel like it is then having impact when you set that intention or is it mostly for you to rewire? I'm not there yet. I'm open to it, but it's not what's going through my head. But it's more like it's not in the neighborhood of petitionary prayer for me. It's more like, yes, I wish all beings could be free from suffering. And that's genuine wish. But I'm not sure that my wish is connected to any specific outcome. And I'm cool with that. The only outcome that I do have some attachment to is like, can it make me more fluid and sexy like Jeff?

44:34But don't you also like, I mean, the intention of your work and, you know.

44:38Sebene Selassie:Yes. that you want your work to benefit others yes so i've gotten my head many times about the selfish motivations and for my work and i try to remember that in my tattoo f-t-b-o-a-b-a stands for all beings and i'm definitely part of that no matter how down on myself i might get and so that's an interesting dynamic tension too like wanting to profit in a broad sense from what i'm and also really keeping my eye on the prize, which is genuinely being of benefit. And so I get that wrong all the time, but it is something I play with. Should we do another voicemail here? We've got a call that came in from Glenn, who is asking about something that hits home for me, obsessive thinking or overthinking.

45:24Sebene Selassie:Take it away, Glenn. Hi, my name is Glenn, and my question for Dan and the team is, I'm sure that all of you have gone through where your mind constantly keeps turning different questions. I think, Dan, you brought it up before where maybe after the 14th or 15th time that your brain could stop thinking on a situation. I'm probably at 25 to 30 times either thinking of things I did or mainly trying to decide on different situations with my job or family. Just interested in how you guys, if you've dealt with that issue of constant turnover of situations in your mind and have been able to solve that or at least make progress towards that.

46:21Sebene Selassie:Thank you. Never. I was just thinking, poor bastard. I mean, who deals with that? You know, it's funny. The first thing that came to me listening to Glenn is this practice that I don't remember the name of this scholar. He's a Buddhist studies scholar, but an American, white American, who studies Khmer Buddhist practices. So these are Theravadan practices that come from Cambodia that grew out of the Khmer Rouge and the atrocities that happened there. So Cambodian Buddhism was sort of shifted by that period. And this practice developed called Stirring and Stilling, where these really intense, and you can find them online, maybe we can link to them.

47:11these really intense, almost singing, but in this very deep, soulful, moving, profound chants around suffering and the core teachings of Buddhism. And they were meant to actually stir the emotion and stir the sentiments of these teachings. And then you stilled into practice. and I remember when I first learned about that years ago I was so fascinated by that concept and realized that I could use stirring in various ways to help me then sit so a lot of times when things are just really just the rumination is really strong or the emotion is really strong I'll dance and then I'll sit or I'll jump on my trampoline and then I'll sit and it's made such a huge difference for me rather than just trying to go to the cushion or for me to the mat because I do a lot of lying down there's this way in which I honor that energy and I allow it to come and then I can more easily kind of be with it in a more spacious way and there's something energetic about that that is very powerful and there's a vocalization part of it that's part of it too so I do tend to like play music and sing and dance and then sit I think uh you're making me when you're describing this you're making me understand more clearly how I respond in those situations and because I'm a hyper over thinker over a rubinator in the Dan camp and I traditionally early on in my life I just didn't have a way to turn it off I was I understand where Glenn's coming from.

48:57I just would go around and around. And then, you know, you do develop capacity through mindfulness to kind of watch or observe it. And so much of it happens under the radar. You don't even realize it's happening. So being able to notice it can make a difference to begin to kind of pop out. And sometimes you can just watch it and let it play out. But often that's not enough. And it's to pick up Sabine's point. It's like there's a certain momentum of energy already there. and in order to really meet that, you need to meet that with action. Whether the action is external, like you move your body, you dance, you jump around.

49:30What I often do is I have a kind of ritual when that's happening and my ritual is with the I Ching. We've talked about the I Ching in the past here. Can you say what it is? Yeah, the I Ching is a ancient Chinese kind of divination system. Some people talk about it as the first computer and it's basically a set of almost like little mini fortunes that you get. You get one of 64 sort of little pithy wise kind of framings of ways to kind of reframe a situation. They're all just blanket wise anyway, because they kind of are steeped in kind of Taoist philosophy. And I find them quite appropriate to the situation.

50:07But even if it wasn't that there was an appropriateness, there's always something there that you can take away from it. And just the act of doing that, it just completely stops the rumination on it. I'm like, okay, cool. I don't need to know anything else than that. That kind of gives me the framing I need because I also know the whole question of getting it right or wrong is an illusion. There is no getting it right or wrong. There's only what's happening in this moment. Like you just make a decision and then something happens and then you're in a new moment and there are a new set of choices in front of you that you couldn't have anticipated even one moment back.

50:40So part of it is that I recognize I'm not going to get to the answer through the rumination most of the time. I'm not saying it doesn't happen on occasion. Most of them, it's just going around and around. So I just to stop the going around and around, I decide, I know the answer. It's this. And then that action stops the energy and then I can go on to the next thing and live my life. And I use it all the time and I have zero kind of rumination stuff really anymore around. And there's nothing I can't stop with that. It isn't to say I don't have still deep preoccupations that I wonder and worry at, of course, but that surface quality of like just being totally obsessed by it is, it gets shifted.

51:16And it doesn't have to be an I Ching. It could be a tarot thing or it could be a sudden shouting something out. I mean, I'm just having some kind of ritual, some kind of thing that you do to express the energy of it, to feel like there's a sense of finality and then to be able to move on is the move.

51:34Sebene Selassie:I'll throw some other possible tactics out because I mean, everybody's gonna have different things that work for them. Along those lines, Jenny Tates is a clinical psychologist from the West Coast who was recently on the show, and she recommends that when you're having repetitive thoughts, sing them out loud. Oh, love it. And it can get you to not take them so seriously. A couple of more mindfulness-y things from Joseph Goldstein. One is just to use a little mantra in your head of up and out. Just let it go, up and out. And the other is, and I think Glenn made a reference to this, is this useful?

52:09Sebene Selassie:Just, you know, is this useful? Do we need to be on, as Glenn said, number 25 of my run-throughs of all the horrible things that might happen because of X or Y? So, yeah, try any or all of those, Glenn and others. Let's do one last voicemail. This is from Adriana. It has to do with napping. Hi, it's Adriana from Washington, D.C. Around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, I start feeling like a nap would be nice. but then I tell myself a meditation session would be more productive. Sometimes I sort of combine the two. Am I ruining my meditation practice? Do I have to choose? What a failure. I mean, jeez, I can't believe we even played that voicemail.

52:56Sebene Selassie:What do you think, Seb? Well, I'm thinking about that quote that's attributed to the Dalai Lama. I don't know if he ever really said it, but he said that sleep is the best meditation. You know, you would have to really know Adriana, know the situation to know what the right, not that there's a right answer, but know how to work with this because there are some people who fall asleep every time they meditate, but they're not tired. You know, they're getting enough rest and it is some kind of conditioned habit avoidance usually or some kind of aversion to the practice. It doesn't sound like that's what's happening with Adriana.

53:33she's probably just tired and needs a nap. And so that is a perfectly valid thing to do to maybe take that time to lay down and maybe start with a body scan and bring some mindfulness into the experience, but take the nap. Also, most people in our culture are tired, not me because I sleep really, really well and I sleep a lot. My friend actually wrote a song for me in my 20s called Sleepy Selassie, proclaiming my great talent at sleeping. But a lot of us are underslept. And so meditation does turn into nappings, finding that balance so that the practice really becomes a place where you can learn and grow in that capacity of mindfulness so that you can carry it into the rest of your life.

54:24And it just isn't nap time is a balance that you have to strike, and you have to find it for yourself. Yeah, well said. I was just thinking of how much I love naps, how much I miss naps. I just don't get to nap now with the young kids. But I think different times in your life, you need different things. And sometimes the medicine you need is to give yourself that permission to have a nap. And if framing it as a meditation is a way to help you have the nap, then that's... And of course, meditation is a lot more than that. So good to try to find a time to practice at some point when you are alert because you get a lot from that.

55:04Sebene Selassie:Yes, definitely pro-napping, also pro-meditation and doesn't need to be a war. Just a couple of other things that might be helpful. One is if you don't want to nap for whatever reason and you do want to meditate, walking meditation, much harder to fall asleep standing up or walking, although I have done it. But I find walking meditation can be great. The other thing is I found, and this may be idiosyncratic on my end, is when I lie down to meditate, I'm actually much less likely to fall asleep than when I sit and meditate. So something about giving myself the permission to lie down often precludes the falling asleep, but that may not be true for you.

55:40Sebene Selassie:Anyway, we think you're doing great. All right, we're going to take another break. We'll be right back with some recommendations from the larger culture shit we're getting into. That's coming up after a quick break.

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56:18Sebene Selassie:We're in tax season now, as many of you know, And this is one of the few times of year where many of us get a full look at our financial picture, our earnings, our spending, our savings. But I have found, as somebody who worries about finances a lot, for a lot of good reasons from my parents and other ancestors who've passed that anxiety down to me, I have found that having the full picture financially more often, more frequently than just once a year is a great way to reduce my anxiety. which brings me to one of our sponsors today, Monarch. Monarch helps you see where your money's going and where your tax refund will have the biggest impact because you want to make progress with your money, not just look back and wonder where it all went.

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57:59Sebene Selassie:All righty, welcome back. It's Meditation Party, the third and final segment. I love these kinds of segments where you hear recommendations. I'm always looking for recommendations. I like when my parasocial relationships blend into the curatorial. Jeffrey, what do you got? Okay, so I just finished this book that was fabulous. It's called The Saint of Bright Doors by Sri Lankan writer Vajra Chandrasekhar. And it's a fantasy book. I'm a big sci-fi fantasy junkie. And I had read about it in the New York Times. The reviewer gave it a glowing review. and it is one of the strangest, most magical, challenging, transporting books that I have read in ages.

58:46It's so unique. It's so steeped in a kind of mythical South Asian view of the world, yet it's intensely modern. And so it's about this character, Fetter, the protagonist who in the first page, as soon as he's born, his mother garrets his shadow and strangles his shadow and he has no shadow and and he's so he's in this sort of mythical magical uh space where there are devil doctors and and he goes to the big city and ends up in these weird kafka scenarios and it's a lot about administration and the mystery of these these doors that appear in these walls and know that no one understands and he just and there's a whole scientific cruise to sit and watch the doors because when you look away, you watch these things that are going to potentially become bright doors.

59:34And as soon as you look away, then suddenly there's a new door there. And it's just, it's so wild, but it's like this overlay of the mythic and the modern. And what I love about this book and just the larger, you know, genre fiction is changing. It's been living in these kind of little ghettos with like a few experts. And now it's just like the, especially science fiction and fantasy, it's the amount of lgtbq voices and people of color and like there's so much energy and enrichment and invigoration happening and i cannot get enough of it and and it's happening across and everywhere but it's really happening in the science fiction and fantasy worlds and i just so appreciate this writer and there's like a name another dozen writers i love and um that are doing really interesting things in that space but i thought i'd throw that one out there i wrote it

1:00:22Sebene Selassie:down i'm gonna order that book what do you got selassie sleepy selassie i have a few things i I took a clowning workshop a few weeks ago. Oh, my God. Her essay is great. By the way, Sabine has a sub stack, Ancestor to Elements. We should just like name it because you write these great essays and your essay about clowning is riveting. Thank you. It was seriously my most popular post, which is so bizarre. I can't believe I missed this. But I'm also just, it's hysterical that this is your recommendation. So I have a coach, Chayla Davison, who's an amazing coach. And two years ago, she recommended that I do clowning because I wanted to work on my spontaneity.

1:01:01I have a really hard time being silly or goofy. Like I don't want to be embarrassed. So I think I'm a pretty funny person, but it's all about wit. So I'd said, oh, I should try improv. And she was like, no, too much language. You should do clowning. And when she said it, I knew I should do it. But I waited two years. I signed up for intro to clowning all day workshop. and I was the only new person. Everyone there was either already a clown in multiple senses of that word. They had been taking clowning for six months or something. So I was the only person who was brand new and it was so revelatory.

1:01:41Like it should be my new spiritual practice. This clowning teacher might be my new guru. It was so fun and horrifying at the same time. I saw a lot of the same stuff I see through meditation practice, my judgment of other people, my performativity. But the final exercise, which I didn't even anticipate that I would have to do something in front of the whole group, I had to get across the room by getting people to laugh. But you can't talk and you just have to be funny. And it is the most naked feeling. And what happened is at one point she interrupted me and said, what are you doing? People are laughing, you're not moving.

1:02:20And I had been giving all of my attention to the people who weren't laughing. This one guy, especially I like locked in on him. He was not finding me funny. And that's where I went. And when I finally debriefed with her, she said, go where the love is. Why are you going where it's not? And I was like, oh man, geez. It was deep. It's like, that is the story of my life. So what is the practice of clowning though? Because you said, you know, improv is about, you know, witty repartee and being responsive to other people. But clowning, you said to me, it's like something you do with your being. What is the core thing there?

1:03:05I still don't know. I mean, the funniest guy was a novelist who had wanted to get out of his head and had been practicing for some years. And all he did was just stand there with this goofy smile on his face. And he was the funniest person by far. It was like he was transmitting humor.

1:03:20Sebene Selassie:Is there face paint involved? Nothing. You're naked. I mean, not literally, but you just have to, you know, I don't even know what I did. Like I did some movements, I guess. You're so in the moment. It's powerful. Super embodied for sure. So clowning everyone. Try it. Two more things. One is the Barbra Streisand memoir on audio. It's 48 hours. and I'm not a fan or I didn't think I was and some friends recommended it or a few people had listened to it already, finished it and said, it's amazing. It is amazing. It can be tedious, but she is an incredible person and the way she reads it is, I felt like she must have dictated it, but she actually wrote it by hand first and it's just the most entertaining.

1:04:08There's lots of tea. She gives a lot of opinions about people and it's fascinating. It's really, really good. Then the third thing, I think you talked about this, is the We Are the World documentary.

1:04:21Sebene Selassie:Oh, so good. Oh, I can't wait to see it. I'm the only one who isn't there. It is Lionel Richie for president. He's amazing. He's amazing. He is incredible. Yeah. Yeah, and I don't know what was going on with Bob Dylan, but I'm really glad those black men helped him. They actually were basically teaching him to clown. It's true. Just to give some background, this is a documentary that's on Netflix. I think it's called The Greatest Night in Pop and it's a behind the scenes of the We Are the World song the recording of that song and the making of the video and there's a crazy scene where Bob Dylan's basically having a very contained panic attack where he's just shutting down because he can't sing like everybody else in the room they brought Bob Dylan who doesn't sing he just kind of declaims in a weird like monotone almost song way and everybody else is like a diva like a true diva And he's like shutting down.

1:05:13Sebene Selassie:And then Stevie Wonder and a few other guys take him over in the corner and write a part for him, which he ends up singing. And it's actually not bad. Yeah, it was beautiful to watch, actually. It was such a tender moment. And everybody's in that room. It's my entire childhood in that room. It is incredible. Although Madonna and Prince both skipped it. Yeah. I mean, I love Prince, but. I'm just going to say I hope you listened to the B-side of We Are The World which would have featured if you had noticed Northern Lights the Canadian We Are The World with Brian Adams and a whole bunch of Corey Hart and a whole bunch of like Canadians because it came out because Canada had to do the same thing it was actually on the B-side of the We Are The World but I don't think anybody could listen to it that's so adorable part of it was in French it was like a couple French Canadians of that lover boy It wasn't in, it was its own song, which was a good song, by the way.

1:06:08I can't remember what it was called, but Google it. Northern Lights.

1:06:12Sebene Selassie:There was a great Onion headline. Perky Canada has own government, comma, laws.

1:06:21Sebene Selassie:That's awesome. I love Canada. I do. I genuinely love Canada. All right, just a couple of recommendations for me. A couple of novels I read recently. Devil Makes Three I'm in the middle of that right now it's Ben Fountain is the writer it's set in Haiti it's unbelievably brilliant The Beasting anybody read that? No I heard about that it's probably going to win the Pulitzer this year I want to check that out it's very stressful even though it's just the life of an Irish family but it's I found it very stressful but it's also very beautiful and then I saw a movie that is my pick for best movie of 2023 American Fiction I haven't seen it yet it's incredible really incredible it is a movie that has it made me laugh and it was very moving and it was very smart and it was kind of a trenchant observation on American race issues and also extraordinarily funny yes highly recommend it have you guys seen poor things yet?

1:07:20Sebene Selassie:that's the one I have not yet seen it's incredible we'll have to talk about that in the next one we do here it's awesome it's super funny and it's like someone described it as Barbie on steroids and it is that. It's very sexy. Yeah. I want to come back to that word again. Comes around. Guys, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, really fun. Good to hang out. I'll tell you the word that comes through my head when I listen to you guys talk. Proud. Proud of both of you as I listen to you talk but proud to know you both. So thank you for doing this. Thank you, Dan. And we're having a sleepover this weekend.

1:07:57Sebene Selassie:Seb and Jeff are staying at our house. for the weekend. So much more. Yeah, we'll talk. Pool party. Speaking of tea, we'll be spilling some tea. All right. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

1:08:14Sebene Selassie:Thanks again to Seb and Jeff. Don't forget to check out our IRL Meditation Party Retreat. It's at the Omega Institute coming up in October. There's a link in the show notes if you want more information. It's super fun. And also don't forget to go over to danharris.com to check out our new-ish meditation app. Jeff and Seb are regular players over on the app. Finally, thank you very much to everybody who works so incredibly hard to make this show. Our producers are 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.

1:08:50Sebene Selassie:Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

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