Starting Where You Are: Lovingkindness for These Uncertain Times - Sharon Salzberg

0:00You're listening to The Mindful Mama Podcast, episode number 5777. Today, we're talking about Starting Where You Are, Loving Kindness for These Uncertain Times with Sharon Salzberg.

0:14Welcome to the Mindful Mama podcast. Here it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have, and when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clark-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting course and teacher training. And I'm the author of the international bestseller Raising Good Humans, Raising Good Humans Every Day, and the Raising Good Humans Guided Journal.

0:53Have you ever wondered who the Mary was from Bloody Mary? if the Loch Ness Monster was real or if Ouija boards actually worked? On each episode of the family-friendly Unspookable, we look at the histories and mysteries behind your favorite scary stories, myths, and urban legends to get the real stories behind the scares. Want to solve your next mystery? Find and follow Unspookable now wherever you get your podcasts. New year, new you, maybe a kinder you. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm really glad you're here. And this is a powerful episode. Sharon Salzberg comes back to the podcast. Sharon Salzberg is a meditation pioneer, world-renowned author, New York Times bestselling author of 14 books, and co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barry Mass.

1:49She is author of one of the texts I use as required reading in my mindful parenting teacher training program, Real Happiness, The Power of Meditation, which I love. So if you want a good book about meditation, that's my favorite. We're going to be talking about why so many of us feel disconnected and overwhelmed, even when we're not alone. This is us parents, right? And how loving kindness can restore a sense of connection, resilience, and belonging. So join me at the table as I talk to Sharon Salzberg.

2:27Welcome back to the Mindful Mama podcast, Sharon. Thank you so much. I'm happy and honored to have you here. Okay, so I wanted to talk to you. You have a new children's book. I want to talk about that. But I want to talk to you a little bit about the state of the world because, I don't know, you've taught meditation for decades. And I wonder if, what do you notice that is uniquely challenging about practicing mindfulness in today? Like with the fast pace and the hyper connection and things getting sort of, you know, all of us getting a little more distracted by our phones and the devices and the news, etc.

3:09Well, I think distraction is the word, right? The internal experience of that distractedness is feeling fragmented. You know, and that's what people describe. They also describe a kind of almost resignation or disbelief that their lives can change, that life can change, that if they're trying to make a difference in the world, that it can have any effect. So it's not a really easy time for a lot of people. And yet, you know, I think we're moving toward value and community and not feeling so alone. Kind of discipline around those devices, as you say. Even things that, you know, I hear parents say, well, we're not going to have any phones at a meal.

4:03And you'd think, well, that's kind of obvious, right? But not so. Mm-hmm. And, you know, I think there's a real earnestness about understanding the effects of how we've been living. Yeah. I feel like we're like the frogs in the pot. You know, the water's slowly boiling, getting hotter and hotter. And we're starting to realize it now. I mean, yeah, I think as far as I can tell from talking to lots of people, it seems like we're really starting to realize it. And particularly, you know, parents, of course, are really alarmed at what's happening with our kids, right? But with ourselves, right? We're like, oh, I keep looking at this rectangle in my pocket constantly.

4:49Yeah. Well, I think, you know, those years of the heightened pandemic have taken a toll. And a sense of isolation has also come in. And also, I mean, years and years ago, I was on a book tour. And the publisher had arranged for a driver to pick me up at the hotel that they also arranged for and take me to the bookstore to do the reading. And the driver was a really pretty elderly man. It was like a new career for him. And I waited in the lobby of the hotel. And then he walked in and, you know, got me. And then we got into the car and he said, I noticed like everyone in this beautiful hotel lobby was looking at their phones.

5:40You know, no one was like appreciating like, wow, look where I get to sit. Maybe your anticipation for the person picking you up or the person you're going to meet or just going out for a meal or whatever. It's like it was so interesting to notice what was just beginning to be the norm of not actually taking in where one is and having perhaps a sense of gratitude or appreciation. Yeah, I noticed that too when you go places. You go to a special place and everybody is sort of on their phone. And I think it's really making, I think one of the effects that maybe we're feeling is this feeling of isolation.

6:22and I've noticed that, you know, it's hard to get people out sometimes. I feel like sometimes the phone kind of satisfies this need we have to connect, but in a kind of superficial, not so good way. And so people are feeling isolated even when they're around others, like in that hotel, right? Like they're surrounded by others and you can feel totally isolated. You go to the gym, you're surrounded by others, everybody's got their headphones on. From a loving kindness perspective, what's actually happening beneath that sense of disconnection? Well, it's interesting because as you describe it, the devices have been like a double-edged sword because it's also allowed, and I think this was really the hope and the belief in the kind of beginning of the wave, it's allowed people who don't have access to much sense of community where they are to find one another.

7:19And if you have a particular physical condition, perhaps, or a set of emotional distress points or something, there are ways of actually finding people and having the community be created in that way. But the consequence, I think, is a combination of the reliance or over-reliance on the digital means of connecting. And what many people point to is the dissolution of ordinary kind of social gatherings. I mean, Robert Putnam wrote a book some time ago about the dissolution of bowling leagues, and it's called Bowling Alone. And you just think, oh, here were times when people got together in a town.

8:10Maybe they had different viewpoints about different things, different political orientations, different lifestyles even, but they got together to bowl together and they formed friendship that way. And not everyone is going to a church or a synagogue or belongs to an organized religion. And so the dissolution of those ways of getting together and the preponderance, the arising of kind of digital means of getting together means that we can be very disconnected and it's going to take a lot more effort to meet people, you know, and actually have face-to-face encounters. From the point of view of loving kindness, it's really powerful, I think, to look at how many people we might encounter that we look through instead of look at.

9:06They maybe play a role in our lives in some way. They perform a service and we tend to discount them in some way. We objectify them. And just to pause and pay attention in a different way to realize this is a person. We don't know their story, perhaps, or even their name, but they are a person and we can connect in a very different way. And I think that is an internal feeling of fulfillment, you know, that we wouldn't ordinarily have. You said that people feel disillusioned earlier. And I wonder if people, you know, sometimes I think like, if it's not something we can see, hear, or touch, we discount it.

9:58You know what what I mean? Or we can't record it. I do Scottish country dancing. I love it. It's amazing. Everyone's busy dancing. No one records it. So it's almost like it doesn't exist in my room in a weird way because I can't share it with social media or something, right? When people are feeling dissolution, I don't know, how do you help them kind of connect with this idea of like a spiritual practice, like a loving kindness practice, like a mindfulness practice? How do we get to start to see the value of it or even see the value of a small, starting a little bit of it? Well, I think it's an experiment.

10:47And people at different times are moved to make an experiment. And so it really is based on one's personal experience. And so you have to put yourself out there to have the experience. And sometimes that's because we're really stressed out and we feel it and we're looking for something that might help alleviate the stress. sometimes it's because we're inspired to look more deeply and not just to live on the surface of things. And I think it can be lots of different kinds of elements. But here too, people are doing it on apps, and it needs to, I think, fortify this sense of connection more than remove us from it.

11:46stay tuned for more mindful mama podcast right after this break grown-ups if there's a child in your life who is interested in curious about or fascinated by people and places from history then my podcast the past and the curious might just be a hit in your home from the invention of microscopes to world traveling dogs to fashions of the 1890s Gold Rush Ghost Towns, and audiences going wild for walking competitions, we've got a little bit of it all. Hosted by children's author and museum educator Mick Sullivan, that's me, the show is fun, funny, engaging, honest, and beloved by kids and parents alike.

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12:34yeah i think a a loving kindness practice was probably ideally kind of situated to that even more so than a traditional mindfulness meditation practice because you are consciously bringing to mind your community the people around you yeah i mean it's very much an internal sense because even like before the pandemic when i would read about an epidemic of loneliness and how social connection could play such a strong role in helping heal from different clinical conditions, all kinds of conditions. And I kept thinking, well, it can't just be a numbers game. I only have three friends. I need eight.

13:15Because I know, I think probably we all know people who are not like the life of the party, the kind of introverted, but they have a deep, deep sense of connection to others, to humankind or beyond humankind, you know, to living beings. And so given that, I kept thinking, well, it must be some internal sense of being part of a whole or a sense of belonging. We all belong to one another. And, you know, we can And we can honor that without flamboyant gestures or anything grandiose. But it's a deep knowing that our lives have something to do with one another, and that is the healing. Yeah, I think that could really come about through a loving-kindness practice.

14:08Sometimes I forget loving-kindness. I do my mindfulness meditation, and I go through stages where I forget it, and then I teach it to the teacher trainees. And I'm like, oh, yes, I remember. You know, I've been on a loving kindness retreat with Sharon Salzberg. And I remember that feeling of radiating it out to the whole world and that feeling of practicing it again day in and day out a little bit every day that it really created this sense of, oh, I'm an interconnected web. I am part of a whole. Yeah, very much so Yeah, it really does And I think the right way of seeing the loving kindness practice Is that it's a switch in how we pay attention People feel a little like, I don't know about that Kind of uncertain, you know Because it seems so sentimental and kind of gooey And like maybe you're going to force yourself to act like you feel something you don't really feel And it's not actually like that it's much more, and the example I tend to use is like if you're the kind of person who at the end of the day thinks back on your day as though to evaluate yourself, let's say you're the kind of person who pretty well only remembers the mistakes you made and the words you mispronounce publicly and the time that you didn't show up in the way you'd hoped, let's just say.

15:37The practice of loving kindness is like a stretch. It's almost like Anything else happen today? Like, what's the good in me? It's not pretending we're perfect or being conflict avoidant or any of that. But why be so fixated on what's wrong instead of having some sense also of what's right? So we kind of stretch. We stretch the way we pay attention to include not only what's difficult and challenging, because that's genuinely true, but also what's good and what's potential and, you know, things like that. And we do that by wishing ourselves well. I mean, would that be, I mean, something you talk about is like starting where you are.

16:23And I was wondering if that would be, you know, I'm thinking about parents who are overwhelmed, who are feeling guilty because they, you know, raised their voice and responded unskillfully to their kid and they're feeling maybe depleted, maybe resentful, maybe emotionally shut down. When you're in a dark place like that, how do you start to practice loving kindness if it feels really awkward? Well, mindfulness actually has a role to play there as well. It's, I think, knowing what we're feeling before it escalates. Being much more in touch with our bodies and our emotional world so that we can perceive what's going on.

17:10And then part of mindfulness is balance. It's like being aware and connected to what we're feeling without diving into it and getting consumed by it or hating it and being ashamed of it. So sometimes we call mindfulness the place in the middle. It's like, okay, this is happening. And with that amount of spaciousness, we have a choice. Do I want to act this way? Do I want to act that way? But the truth is, we're going to blow it sometimes. We are exhausted at different times or depleted or overwhelmed. And the art of any kind of meditation practice is the art of beginning again. Like just the other day, I was teaching somewhere online and somebody asked me a question that was something like, how do we maintain an open heart?

18:07And I said, as I often do, we're not going to maintain it. We're not going to keep it. We're not going to have it all the time, but we're going to learn how to return to it. We're going to remember what we really care about. We're going to be able to be more graceful and letting go and coming back to that more primary intention. And so I would think in a high-pressure situation, and parenting is really high pressure. There's quite a bit of that, and it becomes almost like a celebration of being able to come back and say, okay, just take a breath and then respond. I think that's so hard for people.

18:51like we feel like I think we're taught by our culture that the idea that we have to come back to this it's failure we're supposed to have done it and achieved it and it's gonna be done and it's fixed and etc and to have to like come back and begin a new again and again can feel like a sense of failure to people when when we're being kind of taught by our culture to like get her done and then move on, you know? Well, it does feel like a sense of failure, and that's something I think also to examine. I think part of the personal exploration is where does resilience actually come from? You know, what's it made of?

19:32And we know that from like an ordinary day, right? There's, you could say the stress dynamic, which is really a dynamic. There's the pressure, the incident, whatever it is, and then there's the resource with which it's met. And if we haven't slept all night, you know, and we're in some disagreeable or challenging circumstance, it's like so piercing. It's so overwhelming. Whereas maybe we had a beautiful night's sleep and we had a loving breakfast with all these friends or family. And then we go off to whatever situation and the same challenging thing happens. And we think, wow, that person's having a bad day.

20:14You know, it's like we don't paper it over like, fine. You know, it's not fine, perhaps, but we can meet it differently. And we look at the constituent parts of what's that sense of resource made of. Rest is one thing. Not feeling so isolated, you know, having some sense of connection is one thing. And developing some inner strengths is also a part of it, which doesn't mean we're going to be perfect. But if we understand resilience always means kind of blowing it in some way or feeling overwhelmed or getting exhausted and then starting over, that's what it's made of. Then we look at how does one start over?

21:00Is blaming yourself and being bitter or ashamed, it's not really a great path to resilience. And we learn that by paying attention. Hmm. Yeah. And by noticing, I think now that like I'm 47 now, I think I really did think maybe 15 years ago that, you know, I was like, I think I'm going to get to this place and I'm going to have, you know, I've been meditating for 10 years now and I'm going to get to this place where I have it figured out. and I'm going to have all this like wisdom to respond well to all these situations. And I have more wisdom, but, you know, you're right. Like you do have to constantly renew it, even if you've had a lot of practice.

21:52Like, you know, I think I've now realized coming around the other side to sort of my late 40s, I feel like, oh, like we never really, you know, we never really get to that place of like, we're just like, I don't know, I've not become enlightened yet, obviously. Just like where you continue to make mistakes and you continue to have, yeah, you continue to blow it in whatever, in different realms, and you continue to be human. And I think it's, I guess now, I think the wisdom I have is like, I'm not that surprised by that anymore, I guess. Well, there's something to kind of being truthful about one's vulnerabilities, you know, and also kind, you know, self-compassion is an enormous asset in trying to do anything and, you know, accomplish something, change a habit, learn something new.

22:53we think often self-compassion sort of the way we think of loving kindness. It's like stupid, you know, like self-compassion means you have no standards and, you know, you're not trying to be excellent or whatever you're doing and it's being lazy, but it's really not like that. It's actually a very effective way to make a change because the amount of time we spend just berating ourselves and calling ourselves a failure and thinking this will never change, This is who I am deeply, you know. It's exhausting. It's demoralizing. And it takes up a lot of time. You know, if we can have some kindness toward ourselves, we can actually start over much more gracefully and keep learning and growing and accomplishing what we want to accomplish.

23:40So it plays a big role. for people who are feel a little stuck on the self-compassion piece you know sometimes i say like talk to yourself as if you would talk to your best friend who is like struggling like this do you have any words that you offer people when they're just like i am stuck for the words like what do i say in my head well i mean we have that experience in life right we do have perhaps a family member or friend, and we watch them struggle because they've said the wrong thing or didn't accomplish what they'd hoped to accomplish. Or maybe you're at work and you're supervising somebody.

24:25You realize very quickly it's not that useful to say you're an idiot, you know, because for one thing, it's not giving them the information they need should they want to change. And I'm sure parenting is the same thing, you know? And so we take the time to find the words that both gives the little being or, you know, colleague the information they would need and frame it in such a way that we're not like throwing them in a irredeemable box and throwing away the key, you know? Like you are forevermore an idiot. It's not like a wholesale condemnation of somebody, it's pointing out, wow, you know, if you had to do that over again, what would you say?

25:11Or, you know, how would you do it? Yeah, yeah, I think that sometimes I've been really interested in the idea of, like, IFS, internal family systems, and the idea of parts therapy, and just the whole idea, like, that makes so much sense to me, that we, there's, like, one part of us that made this, was frustrated and acted out and made this mistake that blew it, right? And this other part of us can talk to that part that's struggling in this kind way of like, hey, what could we do better next time? You know, you were having a hard time, right? Something like that. Yeah, I mean, the meditative equivalent to that perhaps is when we say if you have a really kind of brutal internal critic, internal critic.

26:06Give it a name, give it a wardrobe, because what you'll see is the evolution of a relationship to it. So as I say, I named my own inner critic Lucy, based on the character in the Peanuts comic strip. I was gonna guess that. you know, because I went, a friend had rented a house for several of us to retreat in. And when I went into the bedroom that had been set aside for me, I saw someone had left a cartoon on the desk from the Peanuts comic strip. And Lucy in the first frame is saying to Charlie Brown, you know, Charlie Brown, what your problem is. The problem with you is that you're you. And then poor Charlie Brown says, well, what in the world can I do about that?

26:52And then Lucy says, I don't pretend to be able to give advice. I merely point out the problem. And somehow, whenever I was walking by that desk, my eye would fall right on that line, which said, the problem with you is that you're you. Because the Lucy-dominant voice had been very strong in my earlier life. And by then, I'd been practicing meditation, I don't know, a lot of years. and I saw the result of it, which was right after I saw the cartoon, very soon after, a really great thing happened for me, and my first thought was, it's never going to happen again. And I could greet that thought with, hi, Lucy.

27:35And then that followed with, chill out, Lucy, just chill, which is different than, you're right, Lucy, you're always right. And it's also different than I can't believe Lucy's still here. I'm like, the worst meditator that ever lived, you know. It's like, hi, Lucy, I see you. I recognize you. I don't have to buy into you, but I don't have to freak out. Yeah. Because you're here. And that is really the nature of mindfulness. I love that. So name your Harsha Nerkertik, dear listener. So for parents who are raising kids in this climate of constant stimulation, and they feel a lot of pressure because we know some of the effects of unskillful parenting in the past, so we're feeling all this pressure.

28:27What does it look like to model that self-compassion, to model loving kindness, but without adding another thing to do on their list? well I don't know if this is adding something to do but I think one thing is really expressing appreciation for others you know and it can be very simple like that person serving you in the grocery store you know making it a point of of really consciously and overtly appreciating people and I would also say practicing gratitude you know when I was talking to a college professor once years ago, and he was very concerned about his students because, as he put it, no one posts a picture of their mediocre lunch on social media, you know, so it's all competitive and comparative, and, you know, I've got this miserable-looking lunch, and look what they're eating, which is all curated, which we don't often stop and think about.

29:37and you know the the antidote to that is a sense of gratitude it's really oh look at this i've got food you know that's pretty great yeah yeah doesn't have foam on it or whatever you know it's not that fluffy looking but look at that and it doesn't have to be like weird you know and and uh punitive but i think if one is personally in that space and and overt about it you know vocal about it and is a great model.

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