Kelly McGonigal: Cultivating Positive Change

<p><strong>Tami Simon:</strong> Welcome to <em>Insights at the Edge</em>, produced by Sounds True. My name’s Tami Simon, I’m the founder of Sounds True, and I’d love to take a moment to introduce you to the new Sounds True Foundation. The Sounds True Foundation is dedicated to creating a wiser and kinder world by making transformational education widely available. We want everyone to have access to transformational tools such as mindfulness, emotional awareness, and self-compassion, regardless of financial, social or physical challenges. </p>

<p>The Sounds True Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to providing these transformational tools to communities in need. Including at-risk youth, prisoners, veterans, and those in developing countries. If you’d like to learn more or feel inspired to become a supporter, please visit soundstruefoundation.org. </p>

<p>You’re listening to <em>Insights at the Edge</em>. Today my guest is Kelly McGonigal. Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist and award-winning lecturer at Stanford University. She’s a leading expert on the mind-body relationship, and her work integrates the latest findings of neuroscience, psychology, and medicine with contemplative practices of mindfulness and compassion from the traditions of Buddhism and yoga. </p>

<p>With Sounds True, Kelly McGonigal has created a new audio journey, 10 minutes a day for 40 days, and it’s called <em>40 Days to Positive Change: Daily Support to Create a New Habit</em>. I loved talking to Kelly McGonigal about what she knows—both from her research, her own personal experience, and her work teaching thousands of people—creates lasting habit change. Interestingly, she starts with having us straw for fuel on emotional states that she calls “bigger-than-self emotions”—things like gratitude, joy, compassion, appreciation—and when these emotions fuel the change process, we become unstoppable. Here’s my conversation with Kelly McGonigal: </p>

<p>Kelly, Sounds True approached you with this idea of creating a 40 day to positive change program, a progressive journey to help people create new positive habits. We approached you because this is the area that you’re an expert in. What I would love to know right at the beginning of our conversation is, when you went to create a 40-day progressive journey like this, what’s the framework that you used? Which were the ideas that you said, “I have to make sure that we design the program through this lens with these priorities”?</p>

 

<p><strong>Kelly McGonigal:</strong> Oh, thank you for starting there. The first thing I thought is that, if people are going to be spending time with me every day, going to spend 10 minutes with me every day, that that 10 minutes has to be really, truly in service of the positive change that people come to the program for. It can’t be listening to me talk for 10 minutes, and then you have to go out and do something else for 10 minutes. Like there was no value in the 10 minutes you spent. It’s now you have some other homework assignment you have to do. </p>

<p>One of the first ideas that we came up with is, that we would use the daily program as an opportunity to cultivate the emotions and the mindsets that we know really support, really facilitate positive change. Emotions like gratitude and mindsets like hope, that literally the time that you spend creating those states of mind and body in yourself will make it easier to take positive action in every way for the rest of the 24 hours of the day. </p>

<p>I wanted to make sure that this was a program where, if you show up and you listen and you participate, that that showing up, no matter what your desire is, whatever your aspiration for change is, I felt authentically and with confidence that that 10 minutes would help you on that journey, even if you don’t take any of my other advice that’s in there about how to make habits stick or how to reach out for help, that that 10 minutes in and of itself is transformative. </p>

<p>The other part of the framework was, I wanted to make the programs work at two levels. We know that one of the habits that so many people aspire to, is to have a daily practice: a daily contemplative practice or a daily meditation practice, A daily mind-body practice. And so I thought, “Well, let’s get sneaky about this and we’ll make the habit design program actually build the habit of a daily mind-body, meditation, contemplative practice.” So again, while you are strengthening whatever the change is that you have set as your goal for the program, you are also at the very same time, just by showing up each day, building the habit of doing the contemplative practice that has the potential to really improve your well-being. </p>

<p>So those were the two things that I was thinking about, and in both of them come from this idea that, that humans have a deep capacity for positive change, and that many of the ways that we approach it get in the way of that capacity—whether it’s through self-criticism or shame, or whether it’s through the idea of coming up with rules and then hacks that you have to follow instead of trusting intuition and inner wisdom. </p>

<p>I wanted to create a program that also honored what we know about the best ways to support change, which is often rooted in connecting to your values and connecting to your natural capacity for change and positive action, rather than coming in and trying to control yourself or force a change that feels disconnected from who you are when you are your best self. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> Let’s talk about the emotions and mindsets—that’s the language that you use—that support positive change. What are those emotions and mindsets? </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> Yes, one way to think about them is that they are bigger-than-self, positive emotions. For example, gratitude, or love, lovingkindness. That these are emotions that when we are connected to them, they are positive emotion that tend to have a lot of energy behind them. When you’re in a state of gratitude, whether you’re talking about what’s happening in your brain, in your nervous system, or just simply what you feel, your direct experience of that emotion. </p>

<p>In a state of gratitude, you feel energy available to you. You feel a sense of often hope or optimism, about both yourself and about something bigger than yourself, whether it’s your relationships with others or your place in the world. So as we go through this journey, the emotions and mindsets that I am helping people cultivate and strengthen are really these bigger-than-self social emotions, including gratitude and celebration, and compassion and lovingkindness. These are emotions that, they aren’t only good feelings, but they are emotions that change what you believe is possible for yourself, and that we know give people the courage to look at their lives and take positive steps. </p>

<p>Also, they are emotions that again, give us a sense of being able to trust others or find the support that is available to us around us. Often one of the things that gets in the way of change, is when we feel like change is kind of a do-it-yourself project, or you feel like change, it comes from a place of being judged by others or wanting to please others. Another reason that these emotions like compassion and gratitude are so powerful is because they alter how we think about our relationship to other people in a way that will allow us to harness the positive social power for change, like getting social support or allowing ourselves to be celebrated by others. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> Now you describe these emotions as, you call them “social emotions.” What makes an emotion a social emotion, just an emotion? </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> Yes, so part of this is thinking about this as a nerdy psychologist. When you think about what emotions—</p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> That’s what we love about you, Kelly. </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> When we think about what emotions are for, most emotions have functions, just like most biological states have functions, like hunger is there to get you to eat. The emotions that I’m calling social emotions, when we think about why humans have them, why would every human have the capacity to feel this pretty similar state, it’s built into our human nature. Gratitude is an emotion whose primary function seems to deepen bonds and relationships. So humans have a capacity to feel gratitude because when you feel grateful to someone, it enhances your trust; it enhances reciprocity, so you’re more likely to help them in the future; it increases your sense of social safety and belonging, and it literally creates networks of support and relationships that then are able to support us and support our family and our friends and our community. It’s a social emotion in the sense that, the reason we have it is because human beings are social and we need one another to survive, and gratitude is an emotion that allows us to thrive together. </p>

<p>The same is true with compassion. As an emotion it’s there to give us the courage to take action when suffering is present. Often this is when we become aware of suffering in someone else or in a community we care about. So compassion is a social emotion because it allows us to act in ways that really strengthen our relationships and our communities, and create relationships where we ourselves will then become the recipient of that support and strength when we need it. </p>

<p>So that’s what I mean by social emotion—it’s not just that you only experience them in relationship to other people. I mean, we’re going to be cultivating these emotions through meditation by yourself. But that their function is to deepen the support network that is available to us, and there are many reasons to want to do that when it comes to creating positive change in your life. </p>

<p>There’s also many reasons to do that sort of as its own essential good. I really believe as a psychologist that, the way that we feel about our place in the world and our capacity to in some way feel connected to others, to feel that sense of belonging; I mean, if you were to ask me to define well-being, that is so close to the core of what well-being is for humans, that even if it weren’t in service of creating change in your life, to cultivate these emotions is its own essential good. I’m very confident that finding a way to connect deeply to them is its own habit that is worth strengthening. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> Now I want to stay on this foundational point for a moment, because I think it’s so huge, about creating positive change from these bigger-than-self emotions, gratitude, love. It’s really the core of your <em>40 Days to Positive Change</em> program, is cultivating these positive emotions. It makes sense to me—I think, “OK, I’m going to change something about myself.” I’m going to use a personal example through our conversation just to make it real. </p>

<p>So I would like to be—now, if I said this in a negative way, “I’d like to be a little less fat.” OK there you go, I said it. I put it out right here at the beginning of our conversation, Kelly, I just went for it. I could come from a place of shame, of self-criticism, “less fat,” all kinds of things. I could try as you mentioned all the hacks and the rules and the diets. But your <em>40 Days to Positive Change</em> program has me beginning with things like feeling grateful to my body for bringing me to this point, having compassion. It’s a completely different framework. </p>

<p>So why is it that focusing and starting with gratitude is going to be more effective than starting from the place where I think a lot of people start, which is feeling like there’s something wrong that they want to have be different? </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> Yes. I mean, for so many reasons, not least of which is, when you start from that place of self-criticism or something wrong, people often choose goals that no matter how well they pursue them, will keep them stuck in a pattern of suffering. The first week of the journey is actually a little bit of self-inquiry about what your goal will be. I wouldn’t even take it for granted if you start this journey in the language of, “I want to be less fat,” my guess is, by the end of the first week, that is not the language you’ll be using moving forward. Even if there’s a change that still feels connected to what you’re thinking about when you say that, that is not going to be the definition of the goal moving forward. Maybe it would be connected to do something about health, energy, vitality, community. </p>

<p>I don’t know what it would look like after a week, but one of the reasons why we start from a place of questions like, “Imagine yourself a year in the future, and you’ve made some important change in your life that you would feel grateful to yourself for, that really feels like a gift, you are so glad that you invested that. What was that behavior? What was that change?” </p>

<p>Or thinking about a place of love, like if you contemplate what it means to really love someone, to accept them, accept their strengths and their weaknesses, their gifts and their flaws. To want them to be happy, to want them to grow and learn and find a place in the world that feels meaningful, what would you want for yourself from that mindset? Often we come up with things that are different than, “I want to be less fat.” </p>

<p>I want to make sure that as people are giving their energy to the idea of change, that they’re not accidentally strengthening the habit of suffering. Because when we start to put our energy and attention towards something, that underlying motivation is being strengthened whether or not we realize what it is. So if you are dedicating yourself to 40 days of contemplation on why you want to be less fat, part of what you’re strengthening is whatever that mindset is, the feeling is, the attitude towards yourself is, that chose to put it that way. </p>

<p>I want to get people connected to a motivation so that even if they don’t succeed at what they thought the outcome was—like let’s say, you go 40 days and you make some positive changes, but life gets in the way and you’re dealing with illness and family crisis. At the end of 40 days, not everything in your life has radically transformed, but you’re still there. And by virtue of having participated in this program, you will have strengthened the underlying motivation of maybe gratitude to your body or gratitude for this life. Or a sense of love and yourself is deserving of love, and being a friend to yourself rather than a critic to yourself. </p>

<p>That’s part of why it’s so important to start with these other emotions or mindsets, because no matter what happens every single day in this program, you will be asked to strengthen that motivation. I really believe that a lot of positive change unfold in natural time, but you can’t put a day that you’re going to have achieved some objective goal. But as long as you are strengthening emotional processes and psychological processes that are consistent for the vision you have for yourself, I trust in that process. That’s what I want people to be really deepening. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> Kelly, is there research and data that shows that the approach to change that you’re proposing here works better than coming from a place of self-criticism and working with rules and hacks? </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> Yes, there’s a lot of research. There’s fun research that looks at little experiments, where you try to get people’s behavior to change by doing a little induction. There’s also the big longitudinal studies that look at people’s motivation for change and whether or not they succeeded that change overtime. To give an example of an experiment, there are studies that will do a little gratitude induction, to ask people to think about something that they’re grateful for in their lives or someone that they’re grateful to and then they give them a choice. That choice is consistent with their long-term goals, or not. Like, do you want to eat this thing that’s healthy, or eat this thing that is junk food that you said is inconsistent with your goals for health? Or would you rather get more money a couple weeks in the future guaranteed, or get less money and immediately you can walk out with it and go buy something, but you’ll get more money if you just wait a little bit? </p>

<p>What the study show is that, gratitude induction helps people make choices that are consistent with their own long-term values and goals. I think of that as a great proof of concept that, when you connect to these emotions, it literally changes which self you are so that when you are confronted with all these choice points—think about how many choice points we have every single day about what we are going to give our time and our energy and attention to. What we’re going to put in our bodies. The things that we say yes to and the things that we say no to. There are so many choice points and these experiments suggest that, when we’re connected to emotions like gratitude or self-compassion, that they fuel us in being the version of ourselves who will make the choices consistent with our own long-term values and goals. </p>

<p>There’s also these new great long-term studies where you ask people, “Why are you exercising? What’s the reason for this? You say you want to exercise, you’re starting this commitment to exercise, tell me why?” Then they look to see who’s still exercising a year or two later, and the “why” is a very big predictor. So people who start with goals that are related to self-criticism, in terms of exercise that are related to appearance, that are related to perceived stigma by others or perceived pressure from others to exercise, they are much less likely to still be doing it than people who had a reason that is somehow connected more to like, direct positive things you want to experience. Things like vitality and energy, things connected to identity. </p>

<p>Like I’ve noticed that when I exercise it makes me a better parent. I’m more patient with my kids, and so I’m exercising because I feel like it allows me to be a better version of myself in a role or a relationship that really matters to me. So those sorts of reasons, and so I think that when you have that evidence that in a moment you can make a better decision by connecting to these emotions, then you also look at how it can set you on a different trajectory over time. It gives me a real sense of confidence that this is a good way to approach important change. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> Now, you’ve talked about inductions, that we can induce these positive emotional states. I’m curious, do you feel that we’re tapping into something that’s latent, it’s there, it’s hidden under the surface? Or are we bringing in an emotion that is coming in from the outside and putting it on top of however we’re feeling in the moment? How do you see that? </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> Oh, that’s interesting. In so many contemplative traditions, this is a whole category of mind training, that you identify an emotion or a quality of the mind and heart, and you find ways to create it in the moment without an external circumstance changing.

I guess I think that, whether we’re talking about compassion or joy or gratitude or lovingkindness, that these are natural human capacities. The capacity is in you, and we know that often we go about it in life waiting for the environment to trigger it in us. Also, that’s a very natural part of humans that, something goes wrong and you feel afraid. Or someone does something to threaten you and you get angry. Or someone says something loving to you and you feel connected. We’re used to thinking about it in that way, and all we’re doing with these practices is, we are realizing that what we put our own attention on can allow us to authentically experience those same emotions, that can authentically change our physiology and our brain chemistry. It’s just as real as when we expect the world to trigger it in us. </p>

<p>I guess the capacity is in you and the experience is in you. I think the real insight that all of these contemplative traditions have given us is that, when you choose to make yourself the source point of it, you essentially are giving yourself the opportunity to choose almost like your default state. That you don’t have to wait for the world to be perfect to pull these things out of you. That you can say, “This the way I want to engage, this is the state I want to engage with life through.” And that that often changes so much of how we then perceive the outer world and how we interact with the world in ways that can be incredibly transformative. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> Now I’m sure this is something you’ve thought a lot about and answered a lot of questions about. One of the things that’s important to me—you use this word, “authentic,” is being authentic at Sounds True, after all. And it always makes me a little nervous when I think of “positive states,” and how I’m going to relate to the “negative states” I’m in. </p>

<p>First of all, I completely get your point about how gratitude and love, these are such powerful fuels when we feel them. But how do we make sure we’re not cultivating or inducing or bringing these states forward and in some way short cutting or the word that people use, bypassing some other material that’s happening inside of us that we don’t want to feel—whether that’s shame or frustration or whatever? </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> Yes, that’s such a good question. Let me answer that in two ways. The first I want to say is, when I use the word authentic, I think what I’m trying to point to is actually this tension that you’re describing. That I think sometimes we are looking for a mask to put on, to either cover what we’re really feeling, or they’re also in a sense sometimes that it’s not real if you chose to do it with your mind, as opposed to getting what you want in life. Like sure, gratitude is real when life stops being so horrible to me. Or that any gratitude I might come up with on my own in my mind is somehow not real or valid. </p>

<p>I use the word authentic because I believe that our ability to make these choices about where to turn our energy and attention, that that is real and it’s valuable. I use the word authentic to point to the fact that this is not fake, it will change your immune system. It will change your outlook. It will change your brain. It will change your relationships with other people. It’s not a phony thing to sit down and try to feel love. That this is a legitimate pathway to actually experiencing more love in the world. That’s sort of what I meant by authentic. </p>

<p>But this idea that sometimes people can look for positive emotions to try to bypass or get rid of negative emotions. I mentioned, when I call them social emotions, I also call them bigger-than-self emotions, and this is a really key insight. An emotion like compassion or gratitude, they have a quality to them that is spacious enough to include our suffering. By definition, compassion is spacious enough to hold all of the suffering and at the same time hold hope or love or courage. The wonderful things about these emotions when you cultivate them, is that they don’t ask you to push away other states of mind that create suffering. </p>

<p>It’s almost like—an analogy I sometimes use is, if you’re stuck in a really small closet with something that smells bad. Then you open the door or you knock down the walls, and suddenly there’s so much more room to breathe, that’s what these emotions are for us. That, you don’t necessarily get rid of the anger, you certainly aren’t necessarily going to get rid of, if it’s grief, the loss. Yet with these emotions there’s suddenly room for something else that brings hope, that gives us energy to engage with life as it is. It’s that bigger-than-self, expansive quality of these emotions that makes them so powerful. </p>

<p>That doesn’t mean you can’t still get into trouble with the aspiration to push away the bad by trying to come up with something that feels good. What I’m hoping is that, how people experience the contemplations that are part of this program, is that they will be led in the direction of cultivating a gratitude that has room for whatever is true and present, and also brings in the idea, the imagery, or the emotion that allows you to move forward in ways that you value. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> That’s very, very clarifying, thank you, it’s very helpful. Now in any change process, things are going well and then there’s however many steps forward, there will be however many steps or step back that will happen. You refer to it as a setback. What do you recommend? How do people respond to themselves when there’s a setback? </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> Double down, recommit to your values. When you look at people’s trajectory towards change, the presence of setbacks means nothing. That’s not predictive. Everyone who’s ever succeeded has experienced setbacks. It’s almost like you said, it happens. </p>

<p>If you’re trying to figure out what is the difference between somebody who’s able to persevere versus somebody who gives up, it’s often the relationship they have to those setbacks, where in that moment they’re facing what I sometimes call the “tragic gap.” That is, you have an ideal for yourself, it’s a really meaningful process of change. Then you look at your own behavior and there is a big gap between the ideal and the real. That is a moment that is very uncomfortable for a lot of us, and that’s when the shame starts to come in or the guilt or the self-criticism or a sense of despair. There often is a strong desire to escape that tragic gap, not by choosing a positive action, but by giving up on your goal. Sometimes doubling down and saying, “I might as well just completely give in and indulge myself in every self-destructive way imaginable because I’m already in the tragic gap. I’ve already demonstrated that I am not my ideal, so I might as well do anything I want to or can in this moment that just reinforces that sense of failure and get whatever relief I can from it.” </p>

<p>In a setback, when you’re in that tragic gap and you notice that difference between the ideal and the real, it is so important to use some of these emotions and mindsets that we’re cultivating in the program like self-compassion or like gratitude or even celebration, which is the ability to see the good. </p>

<p>I’m using the word celebration to describe what sometimes referred to in contemplative traditions as empathic joy or sympathetic joy. It is the capacity to see the good in yourself and in others; to celebrate it, even when there’s other stuff going on as well; and to use the celebration of the good and the trust in your own good or the trust in other people’s good, to use that as a way to continue to take positive action or strengthen relationships and find joy and find hope. These are emotions that even in the middle of a setback that we can have access to, that allow us to remember what we care about, why we’ve committed to the change, and look for the very next action we can take that is consistent with the goal. </p>

<p>That’s how people get through setbacks, is at some point they take an action that is consistent with their goals. Doesn’t have to be in the next minute—maybe it’s tomorrow, maybe it’s next week. But I mention this idea of natural time, and I feel like as long as you say to yourself in that moment of setback, “OK, I’m feeling bad about myself. I didn’t do what I thought I would do. I don’t see an opportunity to correct it in the next 10 minutes, but I’m going to remind myself why this matters to me. And I’m going to set the intention right now, that I know the universe is going to give me an opportunity to say yes to this dream for myself or this value. The next time that I can take it, I’m going to because this is who I am, and this is the path that I’m on.” That’s how people get back on track. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> Now you mentioned, Kelly, when you were introducing this 40-day progressive journey, that one of your goals when you created it was that, each 10 minutes that someone spends a day with the program, that they actually have a transformation while listening. They tune in and feel one of these positive mindsets that then gives them the fuel for change. </p>

<p>One of the interesting things I noticed is that you had people in each of the daily practices, connect to breathing in and out of their heart and focusing on the heart center. I wonder if you can talk some about that and the power of breathing in and out of our heart. </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> Yes, this is my favorite breathing practice. People who are familiar with some of my other work on behavior change might have heard me talk about the physiology as to the physical state that gives us the capacity to choose things that are consistent with our goals and values. It’s one of the most fascinating findings I think from psychology in the last couple of decades that, there actually is a state in your nervous system, a state of your body and your brain, that when you are in that state, you are more likely to remember what your values are. You’re more likely to make good decisions for yourself. You’re better able to find energy, even if you’re tired, to take that positive action. </p>

<p>We could describe that state in a lot of different ways, but it’s basically a balanced nervous system with the kind of reserve of energy available to you. Breathing is one of the best ways to put yourself in that state. There’s fascinating research that when you train people on breathing techniques, we actually are building that physiological reserve. And actually it’s often measured by something called heart rate variability, because the heart plays such an important role in putting you in this physiological state. </p>

<p>So I’ve taken what I found in the scientific research about the breathing practices, that both put you in this state immediately—so by the time you’ve done this, this breathing exercise for a couple of minutes, you actually are in the state of mind and body and nervous system that helps you make good decisions, that gives you the energy to take action. And at the same time, just like with any other practice we do, it moves you in the direction of making that available to you all of the time. It’s more youe default in the same way that any meditation trains your brain to be able to do the state of mind that you’re meditating on or any physical exercise teaches your body how to do that activity. </p>

<p>We know that these breathing exercises, the state that they put your body in, it’s more likely to be available to you even when you’re not doing it on purpose. The breathing exercise itself, is to bring awareness to your breath, and not to necessarily try to control your breath, but to allow your breath to settle into a rhythm that feels relaxed, open, expansive. Then to imagine that you are breathing in and out of our physical heart. </p>

<p>Here we leap from what science can tell us to what you have to feel in your direct experience. I’m not sure there’s any scientific reason we know of why imagining breathing in and out of your heart is so powerful. Yet when you do it, it’s more effective at producing this particular state of mind and body, and giving you access to emotions like compassion and gratitude than simply slowing down your breath, or you know, simply paying attention to your breath. There’s something about connecting to you heart in the way that when you imagine breathing in and out of your heart, it somehow brings in a quality of attention that has this bigger-than-self quality to it. </p>

<p>Sometimes when I’m teaching it in workshops or meditation sessions, I ask people to think about their usual sense of self and where it’s located—like if you were to point on your body, when you go about everyday life, not when you’re necessarily centered or meditating, but if you had to point to one spot on your body that feels like it’s where the rest of you is emanating from, people will often point to their forehead or their eyes. There’s like an ego sense that is up there, and if you just pay attention to how you experience the world, many people experience the world as if it’s literally evolving around their eyes or their forehead. I don’t know if this makes sense. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> You’re making a lot of sense and I think you’re onto something really, really important here. Please keep going and I want to talk to you more about it, but keep going. </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> So there’s something about that sense of self that is I think not helpful, particularly when it comes to doing things that require bravery or courage or self-compassion. And there’s something about heart breathing where you imagine dropping your breath to you heart, where people connect to a sense of self that is less of that tight ego that is often highly so critical as well, and fearful. You connect to a sense of self that somehow is both grounded and also kind of transcendent and expansive. </p>

<p>That’s why I love this breathing exercise so much. I do it all the time, not only as like I’m going to sit down and practice it now, but I do it all the time when I have a free moment or when I’m having a conversation that’s difficult. Or I’m in a situation where I feel anxious, I connect to heart breathing, because I trust it and I know that it transforms the state that I’m in, so that I have more access to these amazing human capacities for things like courage and change and compassion. So we do. We start every single day with it. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> Kelly, I want to know what it feels like to you right in this moment when you do the heart breathing. Really, very specifically are you breathing in through the front, the sides, the back? What does it feel like in your body? Yes, get very specific with me. </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> Of course, people listening could choose to do this and sense it for themselves. So I want to encourage anyone who’s listening, if you want to try it, you could just pause this in a moment and do the exercise yourself and see if what I describe is similar to what you feel. When I do it, because we begin by just paying attention to your breath, often one of the first things that happens is there’s a sense of connecting to the present moment that feels for me like a softening and a settling. </p>

<p>If I’m sitting when it’s happening, I have more sense of my weight relaxing into the support that is available to me. Maybe I feel a little bit more grounded or heavier in my chair. I also sense the support that’s available in me, so it feels a little easier to sit upright and still relax muscles that are needed. That often happens just from turning my attention to the breath. </p>

<p>Then there is a quality of expansion that is very physical when you breathe. The only way that you breathe is your lungs get bigger, so something in your body has to expand. There are lots of parts of your body that can expand to make room for your lungs to expand—your ribs, your chest, your back, often the belly. </p>

<p>When I do heart breathing, often there’s a subtle shift. If you aren’t thinking about breathing through the heart, most of that expansion tends to happen if you’re relaxed, it happens in the belly. When you bring your awareness to your heart, the muscles that allow your rib cage to expand side to side, that suddenly lift your collarbones to allow the front lungs to expand, they become more engaged in it. Not in an effortful way, but in a way that’s often done intentionally in yoga with the idea that it is a way to breathe that expands the qualities of your heart. You can actually sense it. Sometimes I’ll put my hands on the chest and you can sense movement underneath the collarbones at the front of the lungs. It doesn’t feel like you’re gasping, like, [<em>makes gasping noise</em>] if you were to pant and your chest would heave, it’s not like that. It’s the most beautiful, subtle, soft version of that and it’s a 360 sense of expansion, the front and the sides and the back of the lungs, almost as if your heart is being massaged by the breath, so I feel that. </p>

<p>Then as I start to imagine breathing in and out, I often will tell people if this does not freak them out, to imagine that their nostrils are on their chest. Which is a way to drop out of that tight ego, I-live-in-my-eyeballs kind of feeling. If you imagine your nostrils are on your chest, there is a physical sensation, I don’t know quite how to describe it. What it makes me think of is the idea of the Bodhisattva, who has a thousand arms and eyes on every hand on every arm that allows the Bodhisattva, this goddess or god of compassion, to see the world from a 360-degree view. There’s a wisdom quality to it. </p>

<p>I really feel that there is a physical sensation to heart breathing that is like that. That you have a sense of, it’s almost like your skin starts to become like a sense organ. There is an awareness that becomes more expansive and it’s part of what I think these emotions also point us towards. There’s a sense of being in relationship to the world around us in this open, expansive, wise way. Those are what I say are the primary physical sensations. </p>

<p>You could tell, I could probably go on for another 30 minutes, because I love this breathing exercise so much. I apologize if that was a little bit too self-indulgent. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> No, absolutely not. I actually really appreciate it and I think what you’re pointing to, just to make it explicit, is that these bigger-than-self emotional states are actually tied also to a physiological way of being, to a condition of our nervous system. </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> Yes, and although I don’t sense it—I mean if you were to track it, one of the things you would see is that your heart rate would become more synchronized with your breathing. I don’t know that you can necessarily sense that unless you have really good internal reception, like you can sense your heart beating. You could probably pay attention to it, but we know that there are other changes like that. </p>

<p>That sometimes if you’re in a really stressed out, frantic state, you’ll get a shot from your vagus nerve—actually that doesn’t sound right. You’ll get an influx of activation of your vagus nerve in a way that regulates what’s happening in your heart. Not just to slow it down, but to change the rhythm of the heart in a way that is more synchronized with your breath, in a way that produces what sometimes referred to as a state of readiness to engage. Engage with other people, engage with the world, rise to a challenge. </p>

<p>You can’t necessarily feel it at that micro level, but there is something about how heart breathing creates a readiness to engage with life, that I think you can sense energetically in your body. Even if a physiologist would be tracking instead the synchronization of your heart beats and your total volume of your breath. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> Now I want to pick up on one thread, you mentioned it relatively briefly, which is, as part of this 40-day change process, one of the sources of inspiration and even fuel for the journey through the 40 days is to connect with our future self. That what we’re doing now is in a sense a gift to our future self, who’s going to be the recipient of our efforts. Help me understand, how do I connect to my future self to help me change now? </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> Yes, so partly through imagination. If I were to get nonspiritual about this and just look at how psychologists do this, there are a lot of interesting studies that you can encourage people to make choices that really support their future selves simply by imagining themselves like literally a week in the future. Like I’d like you to imagine your grocery shopping next week. Imagine it, what it’s going to be like. What do you think the weather is going to be like next week? What do you think you’re going to buy? I mean really like, nonspiritual contemplations here, to literally just project yourself into the future with kind of a clarity. </p>

<p>Then you give them a choice about what to do, and at the end they will make decisions that are more consistent with their long-term goals and values that would be a gift to their future self. Part of that is that, I think a lot of people have the sense that the future is, they don’t feel the realness of it that we feel in the present moment. </p>

<p>Future thinking isn’t about saying like, “I’ll only be happy in the future,” or “The present moment doesn’t matter.” I’m not saying that you should ignore present-moment happiness or reality to imagine the future in some way or invest in the future in some way. There’s something about understanding at a very deep level the idea of impermanence, that life is always moving forward, things are always changing, and very soon there’s going to be a present moment that used to be the future. </p>

<p>You just need to find a way to just sense that utter truth of it in your mind and in your body. When you know that very soon you are going to be living in the reality that you helped to create by your choices today, it gets harder to do things that are harmful to your future self. Some of the things that we do in the program are not imagining grocery shopping, but imagining taking positive action and imagining the sense of pride and gratitude that you’ll feel in the moment that you can celebrate that you did this thing that you said you wanted to do, that’s consistent with the goal that you set in the program. </p>

<p>Or we might imagine a future you looking back on present you, and how would that future you see the struggles that you’re going through now? How would that future you feel about your willingness to make this change now and to cultivate gratitude from that backward-looking perspective? That’s part of how we do it. </p>

<p>I think the other way to connect to your future self—I do this as an exercise all the time, is I pay attention to moments when I am the recipient of my past-self choices. Now sometimes people only focus on the negative. Like, “Oh I can’t believe I procrastinated and now I’m suffering because I procrastinated.” I prefer to do the celebration version, where it can be really simple stuff like doing your taxes. Throughout the year you put certain information in a drawer so it will be available to you, so that when it’s time to do your taxes, you didn’t lose your mind. That moment of pulling the file out of the drawer, I’m thinking back to the version of you that took the time to do that, instead of being overwhelmed and putting it off. </p>

<p>Like, “Oh my gosh Kelly, thank you so much. I really sense right now you did this for me and I’m so glad you did that.” I try to do that at least once a day, and I feel like it creates that sense of self-continuity where again it becomes impossible to ignore the fact that the things we do today are either a burden to our future self or a gift to our future self. It allows you to take more joy in doing things that you know will benefit your future self, because you trust that you are going to celebrate it when you get there. It’s like at that part of the cycle is really important. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> Can you give me an example of a way that you celebrated something your past self did for your current self recently? </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> Yes, the taxes situation, that was a real example, I’m working on my taxes now. Well gosh, it’s so early in the day I haven’t done it yet today. For example, yesterday, I was teaching a dance class, and it’s a format that I recently became certified in. It was actually a format that I was afraid to get certified in, because I had voices in my head about, “Maybe I’m too old to teach this, and there’s this whole audition process, and I’m not going to be selected,” and there was real fear around it. </p>

<p>It’s so funny that I actually had a nightmare—I’ve not told this story before, but I had a nightmare when I was thinking about wanting to apply for the audition process in which they told me that I was rejected because I wasn’t good enough. And I don’t have that voice in my head very often. At this point in my life, that is not like the dominant voice in my head, “You’re not good enough, you’re not good enough.” It was so striking to me that I woke up from that dream and I remember saying to my husband, “Well now I have to do this, because this is how my brain tells me something—I really care about it, if it’s trying to talk me out of it now. That fear showing up is a sign that I actually care, and this is why I need to do it.” </p>

<p>So yesterday when I was teaching that class—this often happens when I’m teaching that class and I love it so much. It’s so much fun, it brings out the community in a different way, I thanked myself for choosing to go through the fear. It’s so easy when my life is not dominated usually by the voice of self-criticism and self-doubt—I’ve just managed to orient my life so that that’s not the monologue 24 hours a day—to actually choose the thing that brought that pain back, because I thought the outcome was worth it. I’m feeling very grateful to myself for that, so that’s an example of how I would celebrate. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> That’s a great example, thank you. All right Kelly, I just have two final questions for you. This one’s a—</p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> Can one of them involve cats? </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> Yes, they can. OK, it can. This one, though, is I think a tough question, which is, I think a lot of people right now in our current cultural climate in history, are very concerned not just with personal change, but collective change. How are we going to create positive change not just in our individual lives, with our habits and our diets and our exercise, but how are we going to create real change in the world? What do you think, if anything, is translatable from the process and the study that you’ve done on personal change that relates and connects to collective change? </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> I think it’s not different at all, because the way that we create collective change is, individuals have to make choices about how they spend their time and energy and attention towards goals that matter to them. That collective change is individual, and this program will be 100 percent applicable to somebody who’s—the change that they desire is to support their community or to get involved in politics in a meaningful way. </p>

<p>The thing is, is you still have to cultivate a habit. You have to show up somewhere. You have to transform the conversations that you’re having with people. You have to make maybe decisions about how you’re spending your money. I believe—you know, one of the things that we know about behavior change is that there is this kind of contagion effect in an upward spiral. When we make choices that are in pursuit of these bigger-than-self goals, we bring people along with us. We inspire other people to make change. We find communities who share our goals so that we can team up and cause change to happen. Whether we’re talking about laws or we’re talking about policies or community change, you still need individuals to show up and then come together. </p>

<p>I think the process is actually very similar and actually even in this program, even if people, they think that they’ve chosen an individual goal, by the time they’re done with the program, they are going to be invited to connect to a collective goal. To think about what the link might be. Because this is a personal value, but I also think that, when you’re pursuing personal change, that change should be consistent with your ability to be of use in the world in a positive way. My orientation to the world is, I’m not only interested in making you happy. I want you to be happy so that you can be of use in whatever way that means to you—to your family, in your community, to the world. That’s built into this program, is eventually we are going to get there. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> Let’s talk about cats. </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> OK, yes. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> You’re a contributor to a Sounds True anthology, it’s called <em>The Karma of Cats</em>. </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> I love this book! </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> It’s how we can learn from our cats as teachers. Tell me a little bit about your cat or cats and how they’re your teachers. </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> All my cats have been teachers in different ways. The essay that I wrote about in the book was a cat who was a feral cat that I took care of, I guess it was 15 or 16 years ago now, when I lived in this cottage in the hills in San Francisco. When I moved into this cottage, they didn’t tell me this, but it was like the epicenter of a feral cat community. I had my own indoor rescue cat, but suddenly I was taking care of a dozen outdoor cats. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> Oh my. </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> There was one that I fell in love with, who would knock on the window multiple times a day to be fed. Who loved to be pet—I’d like, sit outdoors in the garden with this cat Itsy Bitsy and play with him and pet him. He would come when I called him. And I was living up in the hills, this is like wilderness areas and I would just call Itsy Bitsy and he would come running no matter what. It was like he was like a pet. </p>

<p>Anyway, what I write about in the essay, I won’t go into the full long story of it, but what I write about in the essay is that I felt like when I was living that, that Itsy Bitsy was someone who needed to be taken care of, and that the relationship was me protecting Itsy Bitsy. It was a time in my life when I was living alone and trying to figure out a place in the world, and I came to reconsider this relationship as Itsy Bitsy caregiving for me, and how it allowed me to think about how hard it’s been for me to receive kindness from others in life. It’s much easier for me to see myself as someone who can help others, and it’s really hard and uncomfortable when other people are kind to me. It’s hard for me to accept expressions of love or compassion. </p>

<p>I write in the essay about how my relationship with Itsy Bitsy both shines a light on that aspect of myself and taught me something about how to open to being the recipient of love, not just to be the one who is out there trying to help others. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> Now you mentioned how heart breathing can lead to a balanced nervous system. Do you think that Itsy Bitsy also helped balance your nervous system? </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> I think all my cats have done that. Heart breathing with a cat on your lap, that’s the best way to do it. Or whatever your animal is of choice. I actually think the studies are really strong for the benefit of dogs, but since I just happen to be a cat person, I’m going to stick with cats for now. But yes, we know that when you’re in the presence of an animal that you care about, that you’re connected to, it has such amazing effects on your physiology. From increasing oxytocin, which gives you courage and hope, regulating your nervous system, improving your immune function. </p>

<p>People sometimes ask me like, “If you could give advice to the universe—” a lot of these interviews that I’ve been doing lately they end with this question. “You can suddenly leave a voicemail for everyone in the planet, what do you want to say?” I don’t know why this became a trend, and so what I’ve been saying lately is, “I would like to leave a message that says, ‘Go to an animal shelter and rescue an animal.'” I feel like people have already heard me say, “You should meditate and exercise and help others.” Those are really good things to do. If you don’t have a pet yet, you should get one. Mic drop. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> I love it. I’ve been speaking with Kelly McGonigal. With Sounds True she’s created several audio serie,s including a series called <em>The Neuroscience of Change</em> and <em>The Science of Compassion</em>. Now she’s created a 40-day progressive journey. It’s called <em>40 Days to Positive Change: Daily Support to Create a New Habit</em>. Kelly, I’ve really enjoyed talking to you, and that heart breathing thing, I’m just going to keep doing it and I hope our listeners too, it’s beautiful. </p>

 

<p><strong>KM:</strong> Thank you. </p>

 

<p><strong>TS:</strong> Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to <em>Insights at the Edge</em>. You can read a full transcript of today’s interview at SoundsTrue.com/podcast. If you’re interested, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app. Also, if you feel inspired, head to iTunes and leave <em>Insights at the Edge</em> a review. I love getting your feedback, being in connection with you and learning how we can continue to evolve and improve our program. Working together, I believe we can create a kinder and wiser world. SoundsTrue.com: waking up the world.</p>

 

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