Are You Resisting What Is? The Definition Of Suffering

We talk about how suffering often comes from resisting reality, not from the hard facts themselves. We break down how judgment and rumination become habits, then share simple ways to observe what’s happening in your mind and choose a better next step. 
• recognizing what is beyond your control and stopping the mental fight 
• treating suffering as a mental habit rather than a life sentence 
• noticing how family, friends, and culture teach us default reactions 
• separating preference from judgment using the ice cream example 
• seeing how hate and blame isolate us and weigh on the body 
• using “name it to tame it” to shift from “I am” to “there is” 
• trying quick regulation tools like peripheral vision and long exhales 
• replacing endless rumination with a small, clear “what do I want now?” 
I know a really cool school they could join. The infinite mind.

Transcript

Summer Heat And A Word For It

SPEAKER_03 0:10

We are on the line.

SPEAKER_05 0:13

On the line. A hot, muggy summer day.

SPEAKER_03 0:19

Yeah, the mugginess is something I haven't felt in a long time. Probably since Florida or something.

SPEAKER_05 0:26

It's back.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

It's tick, as Newfoundlanders would say.

SPEAKER_05 0:31

Really? I'd have never heard that one.

SPEAKER_03 0:34

Thick. It's thick. It's tick.

SPEAKER_05 0:38

So like two levels of interpretation. First, there's the sound that means a word. Then the word, which has a meaning within the context of what the boy. It's cool though. It's pretty, yeah. It's pretty accurate. Yeah. Yeah. So we were talking about coping with the things that are beyond your control, being really the the the most important thing is realizing and observing that it's beyond your control.

SPEAKER_03 1:11

The weather?

SPEAKER_05 1:12

Well, the weather's a great example. Just checking. Were you here at the last podcast?

SPEAKER_03 1:18

Not really. I was only here to grill you. You were in the hot seat that day.

SPEAKER_05 1:28

Yeah, we were just talking about how do you mentally deal with the stuff you can't control and recognizing that you can't control it, recognizing

Pain Happens And Suffering Is Chosen

SPEAKER_05 1:37

that there's nothing for you to do, and then not suffering about it, which is I want to talk more about the suffering part today. Because I think that, yeah, was it that said, I think it was the Dalai Lama who said pain is part of life, suffering is optional. And I think that seeing suffering as a mental activity and a choice that we make, that we make a lot, and we're well practiced at it. So we're back to the fundamental premise. I think that we say almost every day, the mind is a habit. Goes on in our mind are habits. And that habit from time to time is not helpful. And to examine how that habit takes place, to sit in your home and worry about the war, for example. You know, there's nothing you're going to do about it.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:36

And then to bring it closer to home, to worry about, to sit at home and ruminate over dynamics at work that are beyond your control. Systems and policies and practices that you disagree with. I used to experience it all the time, you know, when a student would show up to my course and the first thing they would say is, How is this important? Why do I have to learn this? And it's really a resistance and I think a desire in many respects to have some impact over our lives, which is really healthy and really normal, until it reaches a point where we're fighting against reality, like fighting against the weather.

SPEAKER_03 3:22

Do you think the mind is like actually thinking that it's doing something, much like doing something about the situation, much like when people make lists and they ruminate about lists and and they the mind perceives that as like getting stuff done? Do you think it's like that?

SPEAKER_05 3:41

Well, we go back to the premise the mind is habit.

SPEAKER_03 3:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:45

And the habits we pick up are often given to us by the people who love us. And if we, you know, grew up in a household where, for example, your parents walked around complaining about inflation and complaining about government. Right. I don't know that we rationally think walking around our house complaining about those kinds of things is helpful.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 4:10

But it becomes a habit. We see it in others. We we admire our parents, we love our parents. They're the greatest authorities to us, even when we don't love them and admire them. They are still the greatest authorities that have the greatest impact on us. And we take on habits. We we go to school, we take on the habits of our friends, right? We find that our list of likes, the things we like, are very similar to our friends, mostly because we don't know what to like. And so we take on those that we we uh have an affinity to, we take on their ways. So I think more than do we think this is helpful, it's just simply the way we've always dealt with it.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 4:55

And and that is really normal, right? I say that over and over because it does not serve you to go, oh heck, what's wrong with me? It doesn't serve you to say, oh, I'm so dumb. I do this thing over and over. The purpose is not to sort of point out mistakes we make with our mind. The purpose is to discover that our mind is habitual and we can change those habits.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:24

And in changing those habits, we find ourselves with an opportunity to just simply have a better life. I don't know anybody that hasn't caught themselves complaining and realized that complaining is to essentially call some aspect of their life bad and then spend all their time thinking about it. And how does that help? It doesn't help. And even helping is not the goal. The goal is to just not suffer.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:57

You know, pain is part of life, suffering is optional, right? And the suffering part is the way we use our mind.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 6:04

So it's that discovery saying, okay, well, wait a second. If I am suffering, if I'm unhappy, it's because of how I'm using my mind. And it doesn't matter whether it's true or false. It doesn't matter if I'm ruminating over something that is absolutely true. Look at it, it's raining outside. It's raining outside. I hate that. It's the I hate that part that you can choose differently.

SPEAKER_03 6:32

That's the judgment.

SPEAKER_05 6:34

That's the judgment. That's the resistance.

SPEAKER_03 6:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 6:37

That's the suffering part. And that part can change. And the reason it should change is not because it's true or false or putting on rose-colored glasses or silliness. It's because it's just a better way to live, right? It's like saying, Well, my pants are too tight, and so I'm just going to tighten them.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 6:58

It's like saying, you know, I have a blister here, and then you keep touching it. Like, leave it alone. Touch something else. Right? It's it's in realizing that we're taking a bad situation. And the way we are interpreting it and ruminating over it is what's making it worse. It's what's actually causing our suffering. It's not because there's a war that I'm suffering. It's that I sit and I think about it and I worry about it and I imagine about it. Is it going to come to my house? Is it going to be in my world? How does this affect me? My gas prices are up. The whole thing is wrong. All these people in government, I can't trust them. And away I go. And all of that is suffering.

SPEAKER_04 7:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:46

It's not offering you any opportunity for improvement. And it's getting in the way of what you could be actually enjoying right now.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:57

Because you could think about something.

SPEAKER_03 8:00

Excuse me. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_05 8:02

You could think about something else.

SPEAKER_03 8:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 8:04

And it's in that recognition, that realization that the opportunity for a better life is.

SPEAKER_03 8:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 8:10

Right? Taking taking on that awareness and saying, this is my power. My power does not lie in changing the world's conditions. It doesn't change in finding somebody to blame. Right? My life doesn't improve when I spend my time digging up reasons to find somebody to hate. I can hate somebody about this, you know. I'm going to pick a politician, I'm going to hate them. It doesn't really matter which side I'm on. If I'm functioning in hate, that's what I got. Hate. That's going to be suffering. I don't know how feeling hate is anything other than suffering. So it's in breaking down these pieces the way our mind habitually works, being gentle with ourselves, right? No judgment on ourselves. We're just human beings who do that kind of thing and finding new ways to do it. And so last time we just talked about how you can look at what's bothering you and realize, come to the clear conclusion that there's nothing left for you to do. And we use selling our house as our example.

SPEAKER_03 9:21

Yeah. Not like we can go out on the street and like twist people's arms, like, come on, buy my house.

SPEAKER_05 9:31

Should we try it?

How Habits From Others Become Yours

SPEAKER_05 9:36

That's that's what gets people in trouble, is that they insist on controlling things they can't control.

SPEAKER_04 9:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 9:42

So it leads me to the whole idea of of resistance, how to take that that idea and take it further and see see the thought pattern in there. It also leads me to, again, you know, we're I'm very repetitive, but it is it is the thing, observing our mind rather than being a victim of it.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 10:06

And that's what reminded me of that research done by Matthew Lieberman at uh UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles. He's a psychologist. And he's he's done a lot of work on the social, the social priority that human beings have. That we are very, very social beings, that we are predisposed to be social, we're predisposed to seek acceptance, we're predisposed to suffer when our social relationships are lacking or missing or not rewarding us the way we want. For me, I make a connection to research that he might not be making the connection to. Where in the brain, he's a neuroscientist, so he's using functional MRIs. Where in the brain, where's the activity when you socially exclude somebody? He did an experiment where they played an electronic game called you know pass the ball. And essentially, what they would do in the experiment is exclude some people. Yeah. Sounds awful cruel, doesn't it? Here, let's do a study, and we're gonna treat these 27 people cruelly. We're gonna be really mean to them so we can watch how they act and watch what goes on in their brain. But anyway, and they they found a few things. One of the first things they found is that there's overlap. There's overlap in the brain, in the centers that process both physical pain and emotional pain. And that's really interesting, right? It's not exactly the same. You know, you can whack your finger with a hammer, and your brain is going to light up, and you cannot pass somebody the ball, and they can feel excluded and hurt by that, maybe fearful. And there's going to be overlap in the regions of the brain that it activates. And that's where I take a liberal step and I say suffering is resistance to reality. I've got this scar on my shin, and I have no idea where it came from. I have no idea when I whacked my shin that hard that I have this great big sore that's taken a week to heal. Right? I have no idea. So that's obviously a time where I experienced pain, but I didn't suffer. I didn't ruminate over it. I didn't say how bad it was. I didn't say how much it hurt. I didn't say how unfair it is. I didn't look at life as being mean to me. Right. And I think that whether it's physical or it's mental, there's a resistance that we have to pain. It shouldn't be like this. I shouldn't have to feel this. This is unfair. This is bad. This is scary. This is upsetting. And and I'm gonna speculate that that's part of this overlap that he found in the brain, where it's not just pain that we're talking about, it's the way we're interpreting the pain. Yeah, it's the resistance to the brain, to to the pain in the brain.

SPEAKER_03 13:43

In the vein?

SPEAKER_05 13:45

In the in a kind of vein which seems kind of insane. In any event, it's inane.

SPEAKER_04 13:59

Oh god.

SPEAKER_05 14:00

Yeah. Resistance. Resistance is interpretation. So if go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 14:07

Interpretation with judgment. Can you interpret something without judgment?

SPEAKER_05 14:12

I bet you that's podcast all on all its own. Can you interpret without judgment? You should write that down.

SPEAKER_03 14:19

On my notebook.

SPEAKER_05 14:25

Don't give me stars.

SPEAKER_03 14:27

Um hang on. What did I say? Can you interpret without without judgment? I don't have making a joke. I don't have my notebook today. I'm working on sticky pads. I got made fun of earlier.

Judgment As The Unnecessary Next Step

SPEAKER_03 14:45

Got it.

SPEAKER_05 14:46

So one of the reframes that almost always comes up with my clients is judgment is an unnecessary next step. So the example I always use is, you know, I prefer ice cream that has caramel and chocolate. That's my preference. But some people like that raspberry stuff. Okay. It's not my preference. It's not my preference to want raspberries. My preference to have chocolate. And probably if it was, you know, a nice hot summer day like this, and somebody said, sorry, all we got is raspberry, I'd probably take it. Because it is ice cream. But it's not my preference. And I can take that further if I want. I can say, you know, no thanks. Raspberry, I don't like raspberry. But I can go further and say, raspberry, raspberry's crap.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

Who would eat that?

SPEAKER_05 15:44

Yeah, I can go even further. What idiot eats that stuff? Now I got a whole world that I've placed in judgment. I've taken that unnecessary next step. And it's unnecessary because it isn't real. How can ice cream be bad? How can raspberry ice cream be something to be judged? It's just not my preference. To hate a flavor of ice cream is it's silly mental effort. It's unnecessary mental stats. And then to go further and then say, oh, and the people involved with that, oh my God, they must be idiots. Right? Because they like a particular flavor of ice cream. And I know that that's a really simplistic version of it. But it's the same thing as hating people with different political views than you. What they prefer is not what I prefer.

SPEAKER_04 16:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:42

But I don't have to hate what they prefer. That doesn't serve me. It serves me to consider it. Because maybe on a hot enough summer day, I'm going to eat raspberry ice cream. Maybe under certain conditions, I might actually agree with some of the things they think. And then to go further and hate them. Right. Now, all this hating takes place only in my mind.

unknown 17:12

Right?

SPEAKER_05 17:13

It doesn't have to take place there. I'm the I'm I'm the thinker, not my thoughts. Right? I don't have to think this stuff. What a waste of my time and energy to be thinking this stuff. It's an unnecessary next step that leads me to suffering.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:30

And the only place this suffering is taking place is in my mind.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:36

I'm projecting it out there. I'm projecting it into my body. I'm carrying it around with an attitude and a demeanor that causes people to turn and run. People don't want to have anything to do with somebody who's walking around angry and judging.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:52

And it put it generally makes us pretty alone.

SPEAKER_03 17:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:57

So to embrace the idea first that all this suffering, all this resistance to what is exists only in my mind. And it's only the result of my mental processes of resistance that cause me to suffer. And then I embrace that suffering by judging and attacking and hating. And all of that wraps my mind and my general whole of my body, really, my whole energy field, drags it down. And there is nothing good going to come from it. It's not going to lead you anywhere. Oh, look, it's fixed. Right? It's not going to get you to a place of solution. It's not going to get you to a place of peace.

SPEAKER_03 18:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 18:51

It's going to hang on to you as long as you want to hang on to it.

SPEAKER_03 18:55

And it compounds, you know, when I'm working with clients, it makes me think about how the body, when we're releasing things, often for some reason, I don't know why, but the hips and the lower abdomen store hate and anger. And, you know, that just seems to be the place that always comes up when we're we're releasing hatred and anger. But it's not just affecting your mind, it's it's compounding, like laying bricks in the body energetically.

SPEAKER_05 19:31

The mind is habit. Yeah. And it's hard to get out of these cycles. And every time you go through the cycle again, I love your analogy, but it's like putting another brick on a wall. That wall is the representation of your resistance.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 19:49

Now, some people might say, oh, but that's my reality and I have to deal with it. Well, ruminating over it isn't isn't dealing with it.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 19:58

Hating is not dealing with it.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 20:00

It's about going back to what we talked about last time and saying, is there anything I can do? What can I do? Because we're doers. That's what we want to be. That's how we're again how we've been trained. That's a program in us. That's a habit. We want to do something, right? We want to act and fix our problems and fix other people's problems. And we got to ask ourselves, is there anything I can do? But when the answer to that is no, it's time to realize that any further step is resistance to reality. It's resistance to that which you cannot change. And that's the definition of suffering. And you can take that as far as you want, and you can cling to that as long as you want. And the only one in pain is you.

SPEAKER_03 20:53

I know this is random, but it brings me back to something my mom taught me when I was like a teenager. I was a teenager. And it's so funny because it really is the very beginning of this, what we what I do now. And I guess I was with somebody that I was not happy with. But as a teenager, you just keep going because you want to be accepted, right? You don't want to do things. And my mom said something along the lines of just relax and ask yourself, do I want to be with this person or something like that? And whatever the answer is, just go with that, even if it hurts, right? Anyway, it didn't work out so well for the other person. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:47

Yeah. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 21:50

But yeah, it's it it really is your subconscious coming up stating what you you need, maybe what you don't want. Right, because we do, we want acceptance, like you said in the beginning. It doesn't surprise me that the spiritual journey involves some elements of antisocial beingness, because much of the spiritual journey is releasing the need for acceptance and the releasing judging others and releasing judging ourselves. And so we do go through this period of being alone in ways or feeling alone at least.

SPEAKER_05 22:32

Well, um pausing in the moment and allowing yourself to be alone in the moment. I love that idea because it leads you in the moment to observing. So what happens? What what what do we do? Here I am, I'm all worked up. I'm just all worked up. What do I do? Well, there's a few simple techniques. The first technique is to shift what you're focused on. And an easy way is to use your eyes and expand your peripheral vision. Allow yourself to be aware. And this, these are our tools, right? Awareness and attention. Where do we put our attention? And what are we aware of? These are our tools. This is the way we live. So allow yourself to be aware of a broad vision. And if you can't, just close your eyes. Now, take in a deep breath, but let go a longer breath. By exhaling longer than we inhale, we're shifting that sympathetic nervous system into the parasympathetic nervous system. These are simple, simple techniques. If I expand my peripheral vision and take a long exhale and then a long inhale, and then an even longer exhale, I'm taking the power, the energy that's built up in my body, and I'm dissipating it and giving myself the chance to now shift my attention to an awareness of what's going on in my mind. Now, let's go back to Matthew Lieberman. He happened to basically trip on this idea, right? Now he would say, you know, what came out of the study was name it to tame it. So if you were suffering in any way, physically or emotionally, you were having pain. And then by observing, he doesn't use that part. He just says, name it to tame it.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 24:38

But you can't name something you don't observe.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 24:42

And you can't observe something that you are. Does that make sense? I can't observe a paper bag that I'm in.

Ask What You Can Actually Do

SPEAKER_05 24:53

We're sitting in our house and we can't observe the outside of the house. Well, maybe I can because we're in it. Well, maybe you can. Maybe you can. I'm just saying. I think you have. But the point that I'm trying to make is you had to shift in your mind to do it.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:09

Right? The idea is to move from the the experience of the pain to observing the pain.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:20

And you can't name it without observing it. And that's the old Buddhist technique. Observe your emotions. And what they found in this study was the amygdala, which is really your emotional pain reactive center that really triggers when you need to do something because you're afraid or you're in pain or whatever. The amygdala, which is really lit up in the MRI, when you start naming the emotion you're feeling, the amygdala lights up less. And the frontal cortex, the thought process area, starts to light up, right? So the intensity of what's going on in your mind, in your brain, shifts from this pain center and emotional center to a more thoughtful center. Right. And the thoughtful center is the observation. So just the fact that the amygdala decreases in intensity is just the neuroscience sign that your suffering with the pain is lessened. So we talk about simple, simple ideas. And what Leverman and his team did was they got scientific data from an MRI that says when you do that, right? When you go from I am angry to there is anger, when you go from I am afraid to there is fear, they observe how that changes the activity of the brain. What we do as hypnists is try to lessen the suffering. We're suffering because we're embracing the problem. We're staying focused on the problem. We're saying, I am, and claiming it to ourselves. We're intensifying what's going on in the amygdala, right? And we are now wrapping our arms around this thing that we hate so much, and holding it close to us and telling everybody, that's why I'm in a bad mood.

SPEAKER_04 27:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 27:59

You need to understand that that's why I'm in a bad mood. And the real point, the response is, well, why do you want to be in a bad mood? How's that making your life better? Right. And that leads me to the thing I say to clients every once in a while, and it certainly creates a shift. How's that working out?

SPEAKER_02 28:20

I'm always scared to say that.

SPEAKER_05 28:22

I think you can say it with love. I think you can say it with concern. Right. And and I only say it when a client is insisting.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:31

Right. Because sometimes we need to see that as much as we want to be right, as much as we're trying to be logical and can claim I am right here, I am correct here. Right. Clinging to that rightness is not serving you. It's not, it's not leading to anything positive. It's mostly leading to isolation.

Simple Tools To Shift Your State

SPEAKER_03 28:58

So what we're really doing, I suppose, in hypnosis, when we change the meaning, is we are helping the client move it from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex.

SPEAKER_05 29:10

Nicely said. Well, we're certainly causing the brain to shift. Yeah. Now, everybody's got their own opinion. Does the mind cause the brain? Does the brain cause the mind? Where's the point of reality? Where's the quantum physics of it all? What is the what is the cause and what is the effect? And that's not the purpose of today. The purpose of today is to see practically what you can do with your mind to improve your situation. And to see practically what you're doing with your mind that's making it worse.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 29:46

That's making it hard to live in a world where you're pretty much out of control most of the time, that you are being quote unquote governed by people who are not the slightest bit interested in us, are busy doing things for somebody else's purposes, that we are not thriving in a way that we would have thought possible, even so much so that we might even put a should attach to that. That we can spend a lot of time thinking about that, but it doesn't serve us. And that the positive, the light at the end of the tunnel at the end of the tunnel, the rainbow after the rain, is when we recognize that and say, I'm not going to think about this anymore. I'm not going to resist something I can't change anymore. I'm going to accept it. I'm going to find my way around it. I'm going to find my way to what I want rather than fight against what I think is.

SPEAKER_02 30:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 30:45

So it starts with that acknowledgement, mind is habit, that judgment is the unnecessary next step, that suffering is resistance to what is. I'm going to use all of this understanding to stop resisting what's going on in my mind, to stay away from judgment that never serves me.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 31:08

To take my mind away from this topic because I have come to the clear logical conclusion that there's nothing I can do. And move my mind now to what do I want? What do I maybe I just want to go have ice cream? Raspberry or chocolate. I don't care sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 31:28

Yeah. And I want to say it again. I I mentioned it maybe once in another podcast recently, but this what do I want? At first, when we sort of started delving into this, I was imagining, well, what do I want for like, you know, the five-year plan, this big plan of what do I want? And that's just too much. You know, let's let's bring it back to what do I want in this moment? What do I want for today? Where do I want to go next? What do I want in, you know, yeah, in this moment. And I think that helps build little moments, little steps. And I think it's a good way to also tap into your intuition and tap into where you're meant to be in the next moment. Because when we when we start thinking about these five-year, ten-year plans, it's so overwhelming. My God, like, how do we know where we're gonna be? We had no idea last year we would be here. You know, we we had no idea six years ago we would be here. So I think letting go of that that idea that we need to have a five-year plan or a 10-year plan and just come back to this moment and feel what you want to what do I want to do next? Do I want to go sit in the yard? Do I want to go have ice cream? Do I want to have breakfast? What do I want for breakfast? You know.

SPEAKER_05 32:59

Well, it comes brings me back to the incredible power of observation.

SPEAKER_04 33:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 33:05

Right. Observing your mind rather than being wrapped up in it.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 33:13

Right. Lieberman says, name it to tame it. You know, observe it and then release it.

SPEAKER_03 33:21

Don't claim it.

SPEAKER_05 33:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:23

Don't say I am.

SPEAKER_05 33:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:25

There's I ams are are good for other things. Not so much emotions.

SPEAKER_05 33:33

But as I'm saying that, is it is there time for I am happy, I am peaceful, I am well there there's where you know what you just said, I think that's valuable, you know. Observe it, release it, and refocus on something that you want. Not, you know, changing the world or changing your life, but something that you want right now.

SPEAKER_01 33:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 33:55

Something that will be self-loving in this moment. I was trying to come up with a rhyme. Name it to tame it. I'm going to say observe it to reverse it. How's that? I'm not a great poet. Observe it to reverse it. The instant you observe it, you're detaching from it. You're able to examine whether or not it serves you and how it serves you. And it can put you towards the mental activity that will improve your life rather than drag it down into this dark hole.

SPEAKER_03 34:33

Yeah. Why do we like being in that dark hole? I don't even know if we like it, but if that's a good word for it. But why do we grasp it so tightly when it feels like such crap?

SPEAKER_05 34:47

That was the very beginning of this podcast. It's habit.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:51

We've watched others do it.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:54

It's so so think about it as we are doers. And if there's nothing we can do to change this, then at least we can complain about it. Yeah. Right? And we can find a whole raft of people that are going to agree with us that this is crap and that we shouldn't have to be this way. Yeah. And we can all to get together in a circle and we can all judge it. And we can all blame it. And we can all hate it together. And that little bit of social connection might

Why We Cling To Complaining

SPEAKER_05 35:22

be the only positive thing that we experience around it. So, you know, you get your haters grouped together and they all start to hate. And so I think that it's a habit. It's a habit we've observed. Yeah. And we need to observe it now and ask ourselves, does it serve me?

SPEAKER_01 35:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 35:40

Is it getting me anywhere other than more pain? Right. And most people will say, most people will say, no, it's time I want out of this suffering.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 35:52

And there are some people who have become really comfortable with suffering. They really like it. It makes them feel alive. And that's the best they can do right now. And all we can do from time to time is try to offer them something to distract them. Yeah. And that's why people spend hours and hours and hours on the phone. They spend hours and hours and hours playing video games. They spend hours and hours and hours eating and drinking and consuming any kind of intoxicant and get their hands on. It's just a distraction from this mental habit of suffering.

SPEAKER_03 36:28

Yeah. Yeah. In the chat, it makes us feel comfortable. It's what soothes us because it's familiar.

SPEAKER_05 36:35

Yeah. Familiarity.

SPEAKER_03 36:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:38

And there is that social connection to it. I'm one of the people that hate this. I'm one of the people who love this. And that's part of the, well, that's no, that's the heart of Lieberman's research, is just how what we do drives us to be social, that our greatest rewards are social, that our highest goal is social. And so we take this pain and we flip it into some kind of strange pleasure because it creates social connection, folks.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 37:13

Yeah, I think that there's some neat stuff going on at UCLA.

SPEAKER_03 37:18

Mm-hmm. How long ago was that? Do you know?

SPEAKER_05 37:21

Oh, it's been over the last 10 years. I think you wrote a book. In the last 10 years, maybe sooner. I'd have to look. But it takes a long time for science to make its way into media. Yeah, it does.

SPEAKER_03 37:33

Yeah, there's some in the chat here. Sadly, I found it as difficult to find a circle of people who choose to focus on the positive and the light. Yeah, I think I think that's very true. I think I think there's a I don't know if the right word is stigma, but just this idea that, oh, if you're focused on the light, then you're in a bubble or you're you're not with the world. You're not, you're not, you're not staying in touch with what you need to stay in touch with. Who was it the other day? I I heard somebody say, you know, like I think I've said this exact thing in the past, even though it struggles to to still do it. But just pulling away from the news and saying, you know, if if I'm meant to know something, like if I if there's an asteroid coming, somebody's gonna talk about it and I'm gonna hear it. You know, like I don't need to have my eyes glued to the news all the time. But yeah, it is hard to find groups that that choose to focus on the positive.

SPEAKER_05 38:39

Well, I wouldn't even go so far as to to focus on the positive, it's just to um use my mind to be helpful rather than drag me down.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 38:51

How can I use my mind? And there'll be those who cling to the old habits, and there'll be those who are tired of those old habits because they've come to realize they're not serving them.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 39:02

Um, I know a really cool school they could join.

SPEAKER_03 39:05

Yeah. The infinite mind. Yeah, I think that's true. What you just said, like to have groups of people, yeah, a group that are focused on what's helpful. Because I do see groups that are all about, oh, just focus on the positive, but it actually gets kind of toxic, you know, and toxic in a way where if you're having a bad day, you feel like you can't talk about it, right? And I think that is just too far to this one side, you know.

SPEAKER_05 39:48

Well, to me, that that exposes another mental habit, another trilogy of podcasts, is we are trained, we are mentally trained to resist. We are mentally trained to, if I make an assertion, like I'm saying that we're mentally trained to be contradictory. Yeah, there's people out there right now saying, Well, I don't think so. We are we are, I think, programmed to question everything that gets presented to us. And when people present with emphasis, with excitement, with with you know over-the-top joyous love, right? It is natural for us to go, oh come on.

unknown 40:42

Right?

SPEAKER_05 40:42

Yeah, it's it's out of our our realm, and we we do that again. It's another mental habit that maybe doesn't serve us. And maybe someday we'll talk about that one.

SPEAKER_02 40:54

Yeah,

Observation Practice And Closing

SPEAKER_02 40:55

yeah, interesting stuff. Right.

SPEAKER_05 40:58

Observe.

SPEAKER_02 40:59

Observe.

SPEAKER_05 41:00

There's my mind. Look at it go.

SPEAKER_02 41:02

Where's it going?

unknown 41:04

Come back.

SPEAKER_02 41:08

Yeah. Uh, all right, thanks for joining us today, everyone. Have a beautiful day there. You two, we will see you later.