600 Podcasts and Counting...
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The End of All-or-Nothing, Emergency Self-Care
What message are you giving to yourself when you wait until you’re in crisis before you begin caring for yourself? I used to be deeply entrenched in this pattern. I’d care for myself just enough so that I could be productive again and then get back to work until my next care emergency. I’d crash from striving and producing without a thought to my needs and then stop just long enough to treat myself just kindly enough to nurse myself back to health so that I could resume my breakneck speed.
Those days were exhilarating because even in my burnout I felt so purposeful, high on how good I was at pushing my needs aside to tackle whatever needed tackling. Exceptionally good in a crisis, I felt born for running myself into the ground and then picking up the pieces just enough to get back to work. Even as this pattern started to break down for me, I could feel my ego attachment to it. I was good at getting things done. I was good at helping others. I was good at putting everyone else’s needs ahead of my own. I was good. I was good. I was good.
The tricky thing about this pattern is that needs will get met one way or another. They don’t just vanish or disappear when you ignore them. They become rowdier and rowdier, nipping at your heels as you try to outrun them. Your body is infinitely wise and makes more noise as your ache for care compounds itself. When you ignore your needs long enough, you will be forced to prioritize yourself by circumstance, illness, or burnout, bringing you abruptly to the crisis point of having to slow down.
But even in the face of that, attending to the need for sustenance can sometimes still feel impossible if you are exhausted from a lifetime of holding it all together. While the need for sustenance might seem to come before rest, [in my book Needy] I ordered these chapters deliberately [“Rest” coming before “Sustenance”] because having the energy to start asking big questions about what you need requires energy too. You’re crumbling beneath the weight of your conditioned expectations for yourself and others, and you judge yourself for not being about to do it all without a thought for the energetic capacity necessary to prioritize joy, pleasure, or satiety.
You might think, Well if it’s right, it should feel good or it should be easy. But tending to your needs can be almost boring, and having the capacity to investigate the larger picture of what you are hungry for requires energy. It requires stamina and self-awareness to develop a healthy relationship with yourself after being in a dysfunctional relationship—one that’s chaotic, intense, familiar, thrilling, and compelling even when you know there is no way it will all work out in the long run. After a dramatic relationship like that, a relationship in which you are respectful of each other, loyal, trustworthy, and committed to each other can feel boring—but that kind of steadfast love heals and rebuilds a steady foundation of trust. The same is true for your relationship with yourself.
Self-love so often isn’t a flash-in-the-pan,
Instagram-worthy, wait-until-the-moment
is-perfect-and-the-stars-align kind of love.
It’s about showing up for yourself each and every day and doing what needs to be done. Maybe that’s resting. Maybe that’s calling your lawyer. Maybe that’s dealing with the window that is leaking and the moldy floorboards. Taking care of yourself is showing up for your relationship with yourself each day, asking what needs to be done and doing that to the best of your abilities.
It can be mundane, but as you begin making these shifts for your own sustenance, you might find yourself softening into a rhythm and routine of caring for yourself this way.
There is a deliciousness in knowing you will be there when you need yourself. There is a sense of safety in the self-trust you build each time you choose not to abandon yourself. This work can be messy but also joyful, silly, sexy, creative, and playful. You might find yourself enjoying the celebration of infusing pleasure and sovereignty where there was none before.
And with time, you might realize that the purpose of your life is not to be good, productive, or approved by others. The purpose of your life is for YOU to live it. For you to take up space in your own thoughts and actions. For you to tend to your needs, devoting yourself to your own wholeness each and every day. For you to contribute to the world in the way that only you can. For you to love and be loved. For you to play. For your utter enjoyment and wholehearted pleasure. The purpose of your life is not to be nice and polite. It is for living—messily, humanly, in whatever way you feel is good and right for you.
Excerpted from Needy: How to Advocate for Your Needs and Claim Your Sovereignty by Mara Glatzel.
Mara Glatzel, MSW, (she/her) is an intuitive coach, writer, and podcast host. She is a needy human who helps other needy humans stop abandoning themselves and start reclaiming their humanity through embracing their needs and honoring their natural energy cycles. Her superpower is saying what you need to hear when you need to hear it, and she is here to help you believe in yourself as much as she believes in you. Find out more at maraglatzel.com.
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Emilia Elisabet Lahti: Sisu: Embodying Gentle Power
How do we find the strength to keep going when it feels like there’s nothing left inside of us? The Finnish philosophy of sisu shows us a new way to look at power and perseverance—not as force and domination but as the harmonious expression of human character in everyday actions. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Emilia Elisabet Lahti about her work leading the world’s first empirical research on sisu and her new book, Gentle Power: A Revolution in How We Think, Lead, and Succeed Using the Finnish Art of Sisu.
Give a listen to this inspiring discussion of the embodiment of internal fortitude and wisdom known as sisu; how adversity provides an opportunity for resiliency; post-traumatic growth and positive psychology; the difference between sisu and grit; the visceral, somatic nature of sisu; taking risks instead of giving in to fear of failure; experiencing an initiation into your own strength; life—an ultramarathon we’re all running; flexibility, reason, and the choice to be gentler on yourself; finding harmony between the hard and the soft; journaling your own stories of sisu; self-forgiveness; looking to the future with an action mindset; transforming challenges into the fuel to keep you going; tapping into the intelligence of your body; sisu, leadership, and being kind versus being nice; and why developing sisu is so important for humanity at this time.
Sarah Blondin: Heart Minded
Is your heart asking you for a more meaningful conversation? Are you longing to engage a different kind of awareness than the thinking mind? Sarah Blondin is beloved by millions for her online guided meditations that invite us to come back home to our hearts and to embrace the fullness of our experience. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Sarah about her new book, Heart Minded, and how we can each take up residence in the intelligence and strength of our hearts.
Tune in as Tami and Sarah discuss the practice of softening and releasing inner rigidity, overcoming defensiveness and resistance, witnessing the rivalry between the emotional heart and the spiritual heart, discovering the voice of your own heart, the practice of flow writing, self-intimacy as the source of true safety, finding your authentic “yes to life,” trust in the face of initiatory experiences, normalizing the challenging nature of the spiritual journey, the mysterious force of grace, the interplay between our sensitivity and our strength, a meditation for welcoming joy, and more.
Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
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Masculine Depth and Power—from the Core
John Wineland is an LA-based men’s group facilitator, speaker, and teacher who has been guiding both men and women in the realms of life purpose, relational communication, sexual intimacy, and embodiment.
In this podcast, John Wineland joins Sounds True’s founder, Tami Simon, to speak about his new book, From the Core: A New Masculine Paradigm for Leading with Love, Living Your Truth, and Healing the World. Tune in for an empowering discussion of the universal polarities we can access to expand our human experience and strengthen interpersonal connection; the work of integration and coming into greater wholeness; living from the core—physically, emotionally, and spiritually; the connection between living from the core and true masculine power; the magnetism of depth; how we benefit by working with our nervous system; answering the classic question, “What do men and women really want?”; the currencies of presence and play; shifting from closure to openness; breaking our “karmic vines” in relationship as a moment-to-moment practice of presence, awareness, and sensitivity; conscious warriorship and the proper use of our fierceness; and more.
Tools for Opening Ourselves to Our Deeper Nature
A few months ago, I found when getting up from the table that I could no longer walk. A meniscus had ruptured and wedged itself against my knee joint. It was very painful, but luckily, thanks to my friends, I was able to get an MRI that same day and be operated on the following day. For the operation, whether I liked it or not, I had to submit to a general anesthesia, and I remained unconscious a little less than two hours.
Unexpectedly, when I woke up, I had a very enriching experience. I had the impression of not being completely there. I was in a light and luminous state of mind. My first thoughts went toward my spiri- tual teachers. For a good hour, their presence illuminated my mental landscape. I experienced a state of bliss, of devotion, and unalloyed trust. I was alone in my room, and I began softly to chant verses that reminded me of my teacher. My thoughts also went to other people who are dear to me.
I said to myself that if things go this well at the time of death, it won’t be too bad! Could anesthesia be a kind of dress rehearsal for dying? Could such a moment show us what is present in the profoundest depths of our mind when the thought processes that clutter the field of consciousness have been silenced? All in all, I was very glad to have gone through this anesthesia experience.
Later, I wondered if such experiences could be revealing about our basic nature. This feeling of lightness and bliss could perhaps result from not immediately reifying the world around us when waking up from the anesthesia. At that moment the mind is not yet distorted by myriad conceptual constructs. This is the antithesis of dwelling on thoughts; it is perfect simplicity. I felt like a young child discovering the beauty of life with a fresh and transparent mind.
— Matthieu Ricard
Toolbox for Opening Ourselves to Our Deeper Nature
MATTHIEU RICARD:
Keep your mind open. Experience the key moments in life with an open mind, welcoming the range of constructive possibilities for oneself and others.
Discriminate. Let what really counts come to the surface from the profoundest depths of consciousness.
Be confident. No matter what happens, you will find a way to utilize adverse circumstances as catalysts for making progress on the spiritual path and for manifesting greater compassion toward those around you.
Inhabit the space of interdependence. Resituate the events that affect you in the much larger context of the interdependence of all beings and all things, who like you, experience countless joys and sorrows.
ALEXANDRE JOLLIEN:
Contemplate the little persona that you play all day long. Look at the labels, the functions you use to define yourself. Examine the outfit that you dress up in from morning till night so that you can go naked to meet your deeper nature.
Be aware of the heavy weight of education, of the mass of prejudices, of the heap of illusions that have ended up as an overlay on reality. Just identify this factitious layer so that you can take in daily life as it is without the intervention of ego, of concepts, and of the thousand expectations that shape your world.
Discover the deep personal aspirations that inhabit you. What do you expect out of life? What is it that you are running after so avidly?
Accept losing your grip. Ego defends its territory tooth and nail. It sets up boundaries, busies itself delimiting its world. In its folly, it isolates us, confines us to solitude, to distance. Opening your heart, going beyond the bounds of narrow individuality, means facing the experience of leaping into the void, of swimming in the open sea of freedom.
CHRISTOPHE ANDRÉ:
Discover your inner resources. The deeper nature we have been talking about is not just a theoretical matter, but a very practical one. We should do our best never to forget all the strengths and resources we have within us. They are not an illusion. Our mindset is such that we quite often underestimate our personal capacity to deal with adversity. And then there are the strengths and resources all around us, the help and inspiration that others can supply us. We are better equipped than we think. To access these resources within us and outside us, the best thing is not to shrink back into ourselves and dwell on our fears and bitterness or on our certainties, positive or negative.
What if nothing happens? What if no tangible sign of the existence or emergence of our deeper nature comes along? Well, it’s not that serious! In any case, it’s there. Let’s just not forget to live, act, love, work, and enjoy ourselves; to help others the best we can; and to continue to be open to this profound and universal aspect of ourselves that we all have within us.
This is excerpted from the newest book from Matthieu Ricard, Christophe André, and Alexandre Jollien, Freedom For All Of Us: A Monk, A Philosopher, and a Psychiatrist on Finding Inner Freedom.
Matthieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk, a photographer, and a molecular geneticist who has served as an interpreter for the Dalai Lama.
Christophe André is a psychiatrist and one of the primary French specialists in the psychology of emotions and feelings.
Alexandre Jollien is a philosopher and a writer whose work has been attracting an ever-growing readership. Together, they are the authors of In Search of Wisdom and Freedom For All of Us.
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Personal, Interpersonal, Transpersonal
I was recently sitting in the audience of a talk by a spiritual teacher who was pointing out, again and again, the timeless nature of being. Although I could feel the depth and profundity of the eternal moment, at a certain point, I noticed myself feeling contracted and frustrated. I thought to myself, “What about focusing on interpersonal relationships and helping us develop skills for being intimate with other people and communicating well at work, that type of thing? I am sick of timeless being!”
And then I remembered that some people are what could be called “subject matter experts” and everyone can’t be good at everything. And that the way I could benefit the most from this talk was to relax into timelessness and learn from this teacher what he is gifted at transmitting and communicating. Fortunately, that approach worked, and my critical mind relaxed.
However, I also started reflecting on something I read in a book by Robert Augustus Masters. Robert is a new author with Sounds True and has written a new book on Emotional Intimacy, and created a new audio series called Knowing Your Shadow. Robert talks about the “personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal” dimensions of experience. And when I read his description of these three different aspects or dimensions, I just loved it! I notice that whenever people just talk about the “transpersonal”, about what is formless, I begin to long for the personal and interpersonal. And when people just talk about the “personal”, about their challenges and woes, I begin to long for a bigger view that doesn’t place any limits anywhere. Maybe I am just a chronic complainer?
But actually, I think it is more than that. My sense is that the personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal are always all three happening simultaneously. And if we leave any dimension out (in a chronic type of way), we are missing something. And when we include all three — how we are feeling individually, how we are experiencing inter-relating with others, and what it is like to transcend any sense of self and other and experience pure being – then we are experiencing a type of wholeness that leaves nothing out.
So I guess we could say I am happy in wholeness and cranky when transcendence is favored instead of recognized as one dimension of multi-dimensional being. And I feel cranky because I have seen people walk out of these transcendence-focused talks without any clue about how to work with difficult emotional states when they arise (and as we all know, they arise). Teachings that are wholly focused on the transpersonal dimension can be a breeding ground for what Robert Augustus Masters calls “spiritual bypassing” – using our spirituality to avoid facing aspects of our experience, particularly difficult emotional experiences. Robert’s focus is on “emotional literacy”, that we can learn to be fluent with all of our emotions, appreciating their nuances and what is being called forth in us in any given situation. To learn more about Robert’s work, you can check out this two-part podcast I did with him recently on Emotional Intimacy, here and here. Listening to Robert, I felt the opposite of “cranky”; I felt whole.
