The Devil You Don’t Know
In The Devil You Don’t Know, Lindsay, Cleveland, and their guests discuss personal growth and development by taking chances and getting out of your comfort zone. Topics range from whimsical to serious and everything in between but are always relevant to growth and development.
The Devil You Don’t Know
From the Ashes: Embracing Failure for Growth
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What if failure wasn't something to fear, but something to celebrate? Discover how embracing failure can be the key to unlocking success in both your personal and professional life. Join us as we share inspiring stories, including Lindsay’s triumphant journey to becoming a licensed psychotherapist and our adventurous escapade in the Catskills, complete with a quirky wood-fired hot tub and an unexpected encounter with a black bear.
Dive into the wisdom of Jack Kornfield, a revered meditation teacher and former Buddhist monk, who believes that failure is essential for personal growth. We reflect on our own failures and how they’ve helped shape who we are today. Through Kornfield's teachings, we learn to view failure not as a setback, but as a valuable lesson. From the workplace to parenting, embracing our mistakes leads to resilience and meaningful self-improvement.
Explore Buddhist concepts like impermanence and suffering, and how they can help us navigate life’s ups and downs with grace. We discuss the importance of setting intentions and living with purpose, emphasizing that every action should have meaning. By understanding and integrating these teachings, we can reduce suffering, cultivate resilience, and live more fulfilling lives. And don’t miss our next episode where we'll be recording from the beautiful British Virgin Islands! Thank you for tuning in to "Living with Intention and Purpose" with Cleveland and Lindsay.
Please email us at Gettoknowthedevil@gmail.com
This is Cleveland. This is Lindsay.
Speaker 2And this after a long break, is another episode of the Devil. You Don't Know, lindsay. What are we going to be talking about today?
Speaker 1Embracing failure.
Speaker 2Yeah, embracing failure the path to success. I'm going to go on a little bit of a rant today. Today is a rant day for Cleveland. I'm a little annoyed at life and a couple of things in general, but let's get into it. I'm in this particular situation today where I am tired of folks that try to fit the square peg into the round hole and part of failure and one of the reasons I'm going to talk about failure today it's necessary to fail.
Speaker 1I say that all the time. I tell people, especially with kids right, you can let them fall on their face now, or they can do it when they're 30 and it's going to be a lot worse.
Speaker 2And sometimes with failure. You got to know when to walk away right when to not put the square peg in the round hole.
Speaker 1Yeah, but that comes from having a sense of self-worth and believing that you can do something differently.
Speaker 2Yeah, If you are out there in your life right now and you're banging your head against the wall and you're banging your head against the wall, maybe you need to stop.
Speaker 1I was banging my head against the wall today because I went in the queen mom's room and she's working at sleep away camp for eight weeks and it's not. It's not good in there. It is not good in there. Pretty bad, pretty bad. It is really disgusting.
Speaker 2So so let's catch folks up on what's been going on with us for the last month or so that we've been incognito. We've just been incognito, we've just been busy as heck. Congratulations to you, lindsay, by the way. Thank you, and what am I congratulating you for?
Speaker 1For passing my licensure exam for psychotherapy You're a big girl now. Was very stressful. I think I'm still tired. I'm still recovering from all the you know, practice, exams and super early mornings and trying to manage working and seeing clients and studying for the exam all together. We did take a nice weekend up in the Catskills two weeks ago.
Speaker 2Yeah, we were supposed to bring the recording equipment with us, but we did not.
Speaker 1Well, someone forgot, yeah, someone forgot, that was you, but that's OK. Well, someone forgot, yeah, someone forgot that was you, but that's OK, because we're going to bring it when we go away this week.
Speaker 2Yes, we'll definitely pack it up. In fact, when I record after this, I'll make sure that we pack it up and put it away so that you can hear us record from the British Virgin Islands.
Speaker 1Yes, where there's hopefully not going to be too much residual weather from the hurricane down there.
Speaker 2There's hopefully not going to be too much residual weather from the hurricane down there or any black bears running across the road.
Speaker 1I like nature, but I don't really want to see the big animals.
Speaker 2Well, so here's the funny thing, guys. So we go to the Catskills, which was amazing. We went to this nice remote cabin up in a spot called Big Indian, had a wood fire hot tub, had a sauna, fire pit, fire pit. Wonderful, amazing, amazing spot.
Speaker 2We saw black beer the first night run right in front of our car run right in front of our car and then after that, lindsay was like do you hear it, do you see it, do you hear it? And you see it? And I'm like, nah, I'm good. You know, maybe it was the the. You know, maybe it was the the, maybe it was the. The libations that had me relaxed at the moment.
Speaker 1But I was good. Might have been, but I was just sitting there in the moment and I was very tuned in to all the nature, sounds, nature. Let's talk for a minute about wood fired hot tubs. Wow, those things are really fun though it was fun really crazy, but crazy because it was so hot.
Speaker 1After you initially lit, lit the fire. There's like a heat box that's down in the water right and it's like almost a separate chamber from the rest of the tub. Yep, and so cleve starts this fire and it the tub was cold, ice cold. It was ice cold and it was cool up there. So they said you've got to give it about two to three hours right to warm up, and so we thought you have to keep putting stuff on the fire, putting more logs on the fire, make sure the fire is lit. It had a chimney. You could see the smoke billowing out of it, all was fine. Finally get in the hot of it, all was fine. Finally get in the hot tub, and it was fine. For like five minutes the temperature kept going up and up and up.
Speaker 1It was so hot it was boiling at one point, with no more fire in the fire, and so we thought, ok, so we'll go out to dinner and then it'll have cooled off a little bit. No, no, no. And then Cleve said OK, you know what, probably like by 830, nine o'clock it'll be good. No, no. Then he was like, I know, by 10, it's going to be good, no. So we decided we had to call it a night, no hot tub.
Speaker 2In the morning it was finally ready and then we put two more logs in and there you go, and there you go. Remember the couple we met? We went to this restaurant called the pines, which was a great, great little spot if you ever find yourself up in. Uh, what was that? That was not in, it was not in big indy and I think it was like more toward boyceville.
Speaker 2It might have been I, yeah I all those towns ran together for me yeah, but we met this couple there and we were talking about the wood fire hot tub.
Speaker 1And we were there for only a weekend.
Speaker 2Yeah, but remember, the lady said you could cook in that thing.
Speaker 1And her husband said it takes you about a weekend to figure it out, so by the time you get back home you'll know what to do next time.
Speaker 2Yeah. So I embraced failure on that and led to success. We got to use it. You know, I think we did a little bit of naked hot tubbing where you, you know, you've hid my clothes um, and you were like no, you're just getting in and telling everybody our business. Well, listen, I'm embracing it. I'm embracing it. We did a little bit.
Speaker 1We did use the sauna.
Speaker 2We did use the sauna, which was great. Also, no beers in the sauna.
Speaker 1We did use the fire pit too. Yeah, no beers, no beers in the fire pit, no but I feel more comfortable next time if I just had some bear spray yeah, bear spray and a shotgun, I think you'd be good.
Speaker 2No, no shotgun, it's a little bear spray.
Speaker 1It's a little bit but, no, it was lovely, it was really lovely. It was very remote. There was no cell service for miles and miles and miles, and each time we left we would have to put the gps on in the house before we lost the wi-fi 10 feet away at the car, because then the signal doesn't come in for the cell until about 40 minutes away from the house.
Speaker 2Yeah, but you know what? Here's the thing is, that was really important. So it was about four days, because we went up on a Thursday night and we left, we went with the purpose of just reconnecting.
Speaker 1We like to reconnect with each other without the kids once in a while, with each other without the kids once in a while, and we I think it was a test for us too, because we actually left the adult child home with the queen mom for the weekend and everything went well. And he drove and everything went well. But we went with the purpose of just strengthening our relationship, which we like to do from time to time. I thought it was fornicating.
Speaker 2Oh, it was the strength of the well, we did strengthen the relationship. Yeah, Through fornicating. Oh, it's the strength. Well, we did strengthen a relationship. Yeah, Through fornication. Oh my God.
Speaker 1So we like to spend time together. It's really important for us to nurture our relationship and to just constantly reconnect, because life is busy sometimes. I was going to make a joke about reconnecting. Go ahead.
Speaker 2But I have already made it.
Speaker 1Oh, OK. So with that going on, now we have the, the old one wanting to move in. The 20 year old has had enough of living with his father and he said he needs a reset. So now I thought in about a little over a year. I thought, oh, we're going to have an emptiness.
Speaker 2No, it doesn doesn't work like that.
Speaker 1No, it's not happening, because now we're having another adult child move back home, bigger kids we're also in the midst of a massive home renovation, so it's dusty and disgusting and very hot in the house, but everything's kind of moving in the right direction and we're going to figure out the kid when he comes back.
Speaker 2And then I have to clean the queen mom's room while she's away. So that's where we've been for the last month or so and hopefully you know we're going to get back on a regular cadence this week and we'll, for those of you, enjoy the show. We thank you for the support, thank you for your patience, but it's been a quite a summer so far and it's not over. And how about we're not going to talk about where this is not a political debate, not a political show? But how about that debate?
Speaker 1There's really just. I don't usually talk about politics, but it was very interesting.
Speaker 2It's very interesting I wanted to opine. There is a very famous essay called Frank Sinatra has a cold, and it's a very famous essay because it's about a reporter who went to Vegas to interview Frank Sinatra and then, once he got there, like have this wealth of knowledge about everything and anything, and I just don't know where you get it.
Speaker 1But carry on with the story, thank you.
Speaker 2I don't know if there's a compliment.
Speaker 1I like, I like recording next to you, my leg is touching yours. My leg is touching yours.
Speaker 2Oh, my leg is touching yours so.
Speaker 2So the purpose of that, but why I bring that up is because it's interesting, because the president's excuse will depend on which person you call the president was that he's hate?
Speaker 2The president has a cold, and I want to kind of write an essay called the President had a Cold, but the Frank Sinatra has a Cold essay is very famous because this I can't remember what newspaper it was might have been the New York Times or it might have been another famous journal from New York but the guy traveled to Vegas to interview Frank Sinatra and once he got there, frank wouldn't talk to him because he had a cold, and so the reporter actually had to like follow Frank Sinatra around on his routine and and all of that, and wrote like a very interesting article about Frank, and so it was really interesting to see the president like struggle during this debate and we all got to see that the emperor had no clothes and really, instead of you know just calling it, you know folks are just like, yeah, you know, we're going to just see what happens.
Speaker 2It's like I don't think you know our fate as folks who vote that that should be the case. But you know what main topic, and this is something that we that really is near and dear to my heart this week, because I am, like annoyed with folks, um, who are, you know, caught up in repetitive. It's also okay to fail, but it's not okay to constantly repeat failure. What do you think about that?
Speaker 1well, yes, I agree, but you can fail over and over again. But then you just have to stop playing the victim and you have to start cleaning up your mess so that you can figure out why you're repeating the same pattern over and over again.
Embracing Failure for Personal Growth
Speaker 2Yeah. So this week when we last left off, we we ended up. We stopped with Gabor Mate, and this week I wanted to talk about Jack Kornfield, and Jack Kornfield is a prominent meditation teacher and a former Buddhist monk who is renowned for his significant role in introducing mindfulness and Buddhist practices to Western audiences. Kornfield was born in 1945 and is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Bear, massachusetts, and the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California, which are two of the most influential meditation centers in the United States. One of the things that makes Kornfield interesting is Kornfield believes that failure is necessary and he believes that by failure you should learn.
Speaker 1I agree with that. I say that all the time. It is okay to try things and take a risk. That's really what this show is about for us and they're not always going to work.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, and a little more about Kornfield. So Kornfield beginner's journey as a Buddhist in the 1960s when he joined the Peace Corps and he was stationed in Thailand. It's the Peace Corps, the Peace Corps. Thank you. I like that. I didn't realize the P was silent.
Speaker 1I always, I always correct you.
Speaker 2That's okay. That's okay. During his time there, he trained as a Buddhist monk under the guidance of I'm probably going to butcher this Of some other monks, of some other monks oh, thank you for saving me from saying those names who were some other monks, who were esteemed figures in the Theravada Buddhist nation. And after years of vigorous training, a rigorous training and practice, he returned to the United States in the early 1970s with a mission to Eastern spiritual traditions with Western philosophy, thus making them accessible to a broader audience. I know you always talk about Jack Kornfield and his Tara.
Speaker 1Brock Right. Well, they're my teachers. I'm starting their training, so I think that they're very influential and I agree with a lot of what they have to say.
Speaker 2Yeah. So what is the nature of failure to you, Lindsay?
Speaker 1I think it's trying something out and it not working right. It doesn't have to be this devastating disaster. It's just a mistake right, or a choice that didn't work out the way that you had thought it might.
Speaker 2Yeah so, and that's interesting because Kornfield's view on failure is as a natural and necessary part of life. Kornfield emphasized life's challenges, and including that failure, are integral to the human experience. Right, I don't like to fail, but I've failed from time to time.
Speaker 1People who don't fail, don't take chances.
Speaker 2Right, right, and he describes failure as moments and opportunities for growth, rather than setbacks. And so, linz, I'd like you to talk a little bit about that in your practice, and like how have you found taking a failure and changing it into a win?
Speaker 1That's a great question. You should really tell me these questions ahead of time so I don't have to think so hard.
Speaker 2That's the point. That's the purpose. That's the purpose of a live show, that's the purpose of a live recording. Well, while you think on that, I could think about why failure is important to me. I play video games a lot and as a person who plays video games in fact I'm playing Final Fantasy VII, rebirth Good game, little on the long side, a couple of chapters longer than the first. But what I like is sometimes I'll do a boss battle, I will fail a couple of times, but then I will realize the pattern of what I was doing wrong and then I will persevere at it and then come back at it and be like wow, that worked Right. And when I think about it in life, I think about things that I have failed at at work, times, that I've gotten missed the mark a little bit at work, and then, instead of taking that as a setback, I think to myself how can I do this better the next time?
Speaker 1Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think to myself how can I do this better the next time? Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think for myself it's hard for me. The work example really doesn't apply to me because I do work for myself and I pretty much am able to do what I want to do.
Speaker 1But I think even in parenting, right, we make mistakes and this is something that's. I said it recently to the queen mom. I said to her you know that I feel that sometimes I'm not the best parent, right and that. But I recognize that. And I said to her I try to do better. But I felt really badly and I said you know, I feel really badly about the mistakes that I've made.
Speaker 1And she's so wise, I think, probably from listening to us. So at 16, she said you know what? That's okay, I don't like you all the time and you don't like me all the time, but I always love you. And I know at the end of the day we can apologize to each other, and we do, and I think that's right. We take the patterns that we learn in life. We bring them into adulthood, we have our own experiences. So now we have the patterns that we took from our childhood from our parents. So now we have the patterns that we took from our childhood from our parents and then we have our own experience, which create other patterns for us, and sometimes, even after all the work I've done on myself, I do say oh crap, I'm doing that thing again, I'm doing that thing again that I don't like doing. A big thing for me is that I don't yell anymore.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1I do not yell anymore. I used to be a hothead. I've really worked a lot on myself and looking at things that triggered me more than why other people were doing things to me. So I kind of internalize that process and I rarely, rarely raise my voice anymore. How is failure?
Speaker 2an opportunity for growth.
Speaker 1Well, when you fail, you have to look at what happened Right, and if you don't have an experience where something didn't work out for you, then how are you supposed to work towards getting it to work out the way that you wanted it to?
Speaker 2Yeah, I think in Chinese the symbol for crisis is danger and opportunity, right, interesting. The symbol for crisis is danger and opportunity, right, oh, interesting. And one of the things that Kornfield talks about is that failure is an opportunity. But how would you tell that? If I was a client that came to you and was like, oh, you know what, my marriage is going wrong and work is going wrong and everything I do is messed up, how would you help me?
Speaker 1Well, often I say to my clients, like we'll get a little bit more information and I'll say, well, how's that working out for you? Yeah, right, because I have a perfect example. I have a new client and I like her very much and she really hates her job and it has now impacted her so much that she kind of had a mental health breakdown where she had to take a leave of absence and now she's just parenting and she's struggling with that. She's got to go back to work in September. Her husband doesn't. You know, she doesn't feel that he's very supportive.
Speaker 1And I said to her you know, here's the thing you hate your job. Right, you still hate it. Yes, do you want to go back to it? No. So if you don't look at the things that aren't working for you in your life, you're never going to feel better. I said to her like why are you going to feel better If you go back to that job? How are you going to feel like you're? You know you're not going to like it again. You don't like it, it's not, it doesn't align with you. So if you don't like it and you go back to it, why would you expect to feel better in any other areas of your life for you Right. This is that moment of hitting rock bottom when you're like I have to do something differently.
Speaker 2Yeah, kornfeld would say that that's the living, the full human experience. Right, it's the full human spectrum of things, like you fail and you win and but you learn from the failure.
Speaker 1Right, I mean, listen, you and I got into it last week and you know we had an argument and it resulted in a very expensive you know a very expensive home repair.
Speaker 2I closed the door with two. We have this door, so we have this house that was built in 1941 and nothing until we did the renovation on. It has been updated since 1941. We're still doing the renovation and so we have these heavy doors that I guess in the past you know, like it was like form over function. So the door is like the doorknob is built into it's a beautiful door.
Speaker 2They probably don't even make doors like that anymore they don't make doors like that, and so I kind of closed the door a little too forcefully, I cracked the door frame and therefore broke the lock mechanism on the inside. I failed In that moment. I failed, I was upset with myself. I was upset with myself the other day, but what did I tell you about that? It about that failure. Like we were like, ah, I see you're a little down on yourself. And I was like, hey, I'm going to take this opportunity to not let my emotions get the best of me in the future. Right, or at least try to not get caught up on like oh, I can't believe I did that. Yes, I did that.
Speaker 1I acknowledge that you were caught up in it the other night though.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, I was Well, because it's upsetting to have to be how much I got to pay for this door, Like ah. But you know what? The lesson that I'm learning? I could still beat myself up over it for having a lapse, but I'm just going to take the loss and work on.
Speaker 1Unfortunately, I will not accept a gross looking home door, so now you're going to have to pay the price You're going to have to go back in time and go get a door from 1941.
Speaker 2I'll find one, but but. But that goes along with. What Kornfield says is that failure and challenges is a powerful teacher. In my example, you know I broke that door, Very annoyed with myself for breaking the door, more annoyed than whatever. I don't even remember what we've. I do remember now what we were fussing about at the moment, but it was something stupid. It was innocuous, it wasn't worth a $3,000 door. You know, a $4,000 repair wasn't worth it. But what Cornfield will tell me in that is this is now a powerful teacher, right? It means that next time that I feel that I'm going to fly off the handle or I'm going to get upset about something, I need to approach it with mindfulness.
Speaker 1Well, I always say, when you feel like that and you get activated, when you're triggered, you have to stop and see. What is it about this that's bothering me? Yes, why am I so triggered by this? What is it reminding me of? And when else in my life have I felt this way? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2And that agrees with what Kornfield said, exactly because the key to navigating a failure, the key to navigating a lapse, is changing the perspective, and he suggests that it's a valuable seeing. That change is a valuable part of the journey towards spiritual growth, and it goes along with everything that you're learning about in the compassionate inquiry, because it fosters a more compassionate and accepting attitude of yourself.
Speaker 1Absolutely. I think I always say this. That and you probably noticed this last week, which was why you were getting more and more annoyed was that you were really sometimes, when we, when you're in that mood or somebody triggers you, you like to have a fight and I don't fight anymore. So I just say OK, and then I just proceed with what I'm doing, and so I think that's a really good way, and that's actually something I learned from Jack Kornfield. There was a book that he wrote I can't remember which one, but it doesn't matter but he did say that when someone is really set in their way and has an opinion on something, if you don't have any skin in the game and it really doesn't matter, then you just say OK, it is really not your job to convince somebody that you are right.
Speaker 2Yeah, and one of the things I appreciate about you is I am risk adverse. You know that a hundred percent, and I've been risk adverse because I was scared of failure. But what I've come to learn through all the successes that I've had in the last couple of years is if I never took that chance, if I never gave myself an opportunity to fail, I wouldn't have even given myself an opportunity to succeed.
Speaker 1Right. I mean, we both have failed marriages the first time around, right? And what did you learn from that? For me, I just learned to do things differently, and I think even in our journey together, we've both really listened to each other and we have both worked really hard to change some of the things about ourselves and change the way that we communicate with one another Right, so that we can continue to have a strong connection with one another.
Speaker 2Yeah, Failed marriages, failed careers, in some instances. And it's so funny is that I was talking to the oldest boy, who had an opportunity to get a promotion and he wasn't almost going to take it because he was like, ah, what if I go and do this interview? Or what if I go take this test and I fail? And then he realized that he wasn't being open-minded, that he was being, that he was going to actually do what I call be a prisoner of comfort, because he was scared of failure. And he actually went. He passed. He was happy that he passed. And now he's going to be making, if you know, if all comes out how it should, he's going to be making a far more money than me right now, but making like a, a, a, a hefty sum, like more than I would have at 30 years old.
Speaker 1We have to be willing to take chances in life. Right, you're given one chance in this life. Yeah, one chance is all you get. You have to take, you have to do things that align with who you are. I always say that, right, and I think that was a big moment for you at work a few weeks ago, when something happened and you said you know, this just doesn't align with my values and who I am, and I think that's probably going to be the driving force that gets you to take a little bit more of a risk. But I am not one for doing things because other people think that I should do them and I didn't know that earlier in my life, but that's how I am now. But I do things because that is who I authentically am and I do things because they align with me.
Speaker 2And I want to make it clear because I had a discussion with somebody, um, a few days ago on making bad decisions, right? Um, I'm trying to keep the podcast uh PG, but I will. I can't give you oh man, it's going to ruin the quote. Ok, so I'm going to say it like this so Wesley Snipes in 1998, famously said some mother effers always try to ice skate uphill. So what Wesley meant about that was become an iconic statement is sometimes there is something that we literally cannot do. We literally cannot do, and you do need to understand that. There is a difference between something that you cannot do to something that you possibly could do if you tried. So there is a difference between trying an impossible thing and knowing when to give up, right, knowing when to fit the square peg through the round hole. But what Kornfield was really trying to teach is to embrace life challenges with courage and equanimity, which recognizes that each experience, whether it's perceived as positive or negative, contributes to the richness and the depth of the human experience.
Understanding Impermanence and Suffering
Speaker 2I want to talk about a little bit about the Buddhist teachings here and how we can, how Kornfield used some of these Buddhist concepts into this Right, and I know, do you have a little bit of a background on Buddhism. I've read a lot of the texts, okay, so. So one of the things that Kornfield talked about was these three concepts of these concepts of impermanence, suffering and self and selflessness. And Kornfield taught that recognizing these characteristics would help us understand failure and success as transient processes. That means, as Jim Rome likes to say, winter is always gonna come, so you will have a season of success and then you will have a season of failure. Right, and Kornfield integrated these key Buddhist concepts, concepts such as Anika, which is suffering. That's impermanence. Oh, I'm sorry, bad, my bad, so you can tell you. You read it, cause you're the person.
Speaker 1Well, I was actually going to talk about the impermanence for a moment. Well, let's talk about impermanence, which is Anika Right? So let's explain.
Speaker 2I'll let you define. Tell folks what impermanence is, because I didn't know it until we started.
Speaker 1It's an understanding that things are in a constant state of flux and that everything is changing all the time. Right, our lives are changing, jobs are changing, our experiences, our emotions, situations, and so when we learn that, then we can reduce our suffering, right, right. And I think I for me, that what comes to mind is attachment, which is a big thing in yoga as well about just having non-attachment right, not being so codependent or dependent on somebody that you don't have any of your own identity or that you don't have any of that self-worth for yourself. Things are going to change, right, right, and and. And this is why people become so upset when they lose their attachments to things.
Speaker 2Yeah, I sat down with a young client not too long ago and we talked about that, right, we talked about the struggle, like this person was like well, I'm failing at everything that I'm doing. And I was like are you failing at everything you're doing or are you trying to hold on to things that no longer suit you? And that's what impermanence is right?
Speaker 1it's like the situation sometimes you got to let it go sometimes you got to let it go absolutely so, I, and I agree with that. I talk about that a lot because, you know, people also often have attachments to physical things, right, right, I mean a good example. Right are people that you know can't throw anything away, hoarding Right, and I didn't want to bring up anyone in particular.
Speaker 2I can think of every old person in my life besides my parents. Yeah, well, not your parents. Well, your parents are like me. Listen, if it was, you know me, if it wasn't and that's partially laziness too I would have like the barest apartment ever. I would have like a very utilitarian, like very simple apartment. But yes, it's that. It's that lack of attachment. What's funny is, I went to church last week. I go to church every other Sunday, otherwise the church had burned down because I have too much evil in my heart. No, I'm just playing, but the, the, the, the. The minister that gave the talk. He was talking about this idea of letting go of attachments and he was saying what one of the things that destroys people in their lives, or one of the reasons why people don't succeed in the face of failure, is because they become attached to a person, they become attached to an idea, they become attached to a thing.
Speaker 1Right, I mean, that's why so many people are in miserable relationships. Well, you and I talk about that all the time, right, especially with when we talk about clients, when we're in supervision. It's that people. They're like oh well, you know, what if I never find anybody else? What if I never find anybody else? And it's like so what if you don't? Yeah, what if you don't? But what if you do? Yeah, right, like you shouldn't live your life because of the what ifs and the should haves and that's. You know, people become attached to one person and they're not even happy in the relationship and then they completely lose sight of who they are.
Speaker 2Yeah, when you get caught up on failure or this, or get caught up in trying to fix something that is not working for you. It is like I sat with somebody the other day and I said hey, you're like the dude walking in the rainstorm, against the wind, when there's a sunny path on the left of you and there's rainbows, and there's rainbows, rabbits and flowers on the right, but you're choosing. You're literally choosing to stay attached to these things that do not serve you anymore and you're failing and you're not learning from the failure.
Speaker 1Right, well, we that's. We've talked about that in the victim mode too. When you have that victim mindset, right? Nothing ever works, nothing ever works, nothing ever works. But you're doing the same things over and over and over again.
Speaker 2Which leads me to the next concept that Cornfield talks about, which is dukkah. Which is suffering, and tell us a little bit more.
Speaker 1Suffering is an essential part of the human process and it comes from attachments to desires or the resistance to change. So once you understand that right, it kind of really goes hand in hand with the impermanence, yeah, and one of the things Cornfield talks about is acknowledging hey, this hurts me.
Speaker 2You know, one of the things you talk to me about all the time and I, as a man and I've talked to a lot of other men a lot of us don't like to acknowledge that we're hurt. A lot of us don't like to acknowledge that we're suffering. Right, I don't want to talk about this. There's a lot of times where you'd be like, well, tell me about Phil Tolley. It's not like you sound like that, that's how it sounds, and I don't want to talk about it. But is that the right?
Speaker 1thing to do. Well, I mean, if you continue to want to have the same patterns that you have, then sure, but at some point you're going to have to change, or you're going to see that you're going to be stuck.
Cultivating Resilience Through Mindfulness
Speaker 2Yes, but I'm saying so it's not the right thing to do, right, I need to address, I need to understand my suffering it's, it's it's critical for personal growth, right, so Right. So should I deny, like when I think about the things that I failed at and you've talked to me about this, and should I deny them, or should I? Just what would be your advice to me?
Speaker 1For things that you failed at.
Speaker 2Yeah or suffering.
Speaker 1You accept them and you look at them and say, why did it bother me? Why am I suffering in this moment? Because most of it comes from childhood trauma.
Speaker 2Yeah, and it goes back to treating ourselves with mindfulness and compassion.
Speaker 1I always tell my clients be kind to yourself and be compassionate for yourself.
Speaker 2It goes back to what Gabor Mate says, that if you suffered you should be wiser for the suffering. What do you think?
Speaker 1I 100% agree Because it helps you to you know, to develop into who you are.
Speaker 2Yeah, and the last concept is anada, which is self selflessness, and Linz, tell us about that.
Speaker 1So the concept of selflessness we both can't say it or non-self challenges the idea of a fixed, unchanging self. So in Buddhism, the self is a collection of constantly changing processes rather than a permanent entity. And we have this rigid sense of self, jack Kornfield says. And then what happens is it leads to suffering.
Speaker 2Yeah, and why? And why is that? Why is it important not to have? I mean, it's great to be who you are Right and to know who you are Right. I actually talked to my professor about it the other day. We're at work, my boss says I have cleavisms, and my professor laughed and he was like, yes, you sure do, and you know what a cleavism is. It's like my little weird idiosyncrasies or my little weird where I go on tangents. But my professor was like you got to know when to be flexible and and and also when that works for you and when it doesn't serve you Right. And part of having a personality disorder is when you do not, when you're inflexible in your in your way Right. Can you talk to that a little bit since you got your license now?
Speaker 1Well, you it goes back to what I was saying before. It's like if you don't have any skin in the game, then why do you need to get so triggered by something, right? Why do you have this like attachment to this suffering? You know it's. Things are constantly going to change, and so the only way that you're going to be able to have that like rigid state is if nothing around you ever changes and that's not possible, right, because you can go through your day and do the exact same thing every single day but if the people around you aren't doing the same thing, right, then that's going to lead to that suffering or contribute to that.
Speaker 2Yeah, when I think about co-workers that I have and I can think about one person in particular, but when I think about co-workers that struggle at work, or folks in my life that struggle at work, I can think about the black Republican in who I just had a whole conversation with. Is this rigidness in thought? Well, that's never going to work. Well, you're always negative. Well, that's not. Well, I don't know what you're talking about, because I know me and that's not going to work. It's like, dude, have you tried something else?
Speaker 1No, Cause he's repeating the same patterns over and over again. I told you that before we got on here and then, and then he's still upset every single time that it doesn't work Right. And I think what triggers you if we can like yeah, you can talk about it, divert for a minute I think what triggers you. And I asked you and you didn't want to talk about it, you just wanted to move on. But I think the trigger for you is like I taught you differently, I worked so hard to give you a different set of circumstances than I had, and then you're still making the same mistake and I think that's what triggers you. But you can speak to that?
Speaker 2No, it definitely, definitely does. I, you know, I'm looking at our presidential candidates and I'm looking at both Trump and Biden, right, and this idea of selflessness, of selflessness. Cornfield teaches that by clinging to a rigid sense of self that we become overly concerned with our ego, with our accomplishments and our failures, sometimes you got to step aside.
Speaker 1Sometimes you have to get out of your own way.
Speaker 2Sometimes, if you're a convicted felon or if you're an old man, you got to step aside because you got to let your ego go right. You got to let your ego go. You can't be in your own way. And there's sometimes with myself and I've come, and I'm really passionate about this because I talked to a young man today who you know, I've really see this guy is is blocking his, his self himself because he's his ego is not letting him fail His. The fact that he's going to be embarrassed that he didn't make this accomplishment is forcing him to keep this rigid sense of self that is hurting himself. Sometimes you just got to understand I got to let my ego go. I can't win this one. And as the young man who the youngest son that just bought the car so says sometimes you win by taking the L, sometimes you win by losing.
Speaker 1Absolutely, I agree. I mean, you've said that before, you said it perfectly.
Speaker 2Cornfield teaches. Teachings help us, to encourage us to see failure and success as transient processes and shaped by and by the impermanence of life. And I think by accepting the inevitability of change is what will help us succeed.
Speaker 1Absolutely, because things are always changing around us.
Speaker 2Yeah, and by understanding the nature and I just would think on this for a little bit of suffering and selfishness, it really helps to make us more compassionate which is something that you've been working on and greater resilience.
Speaker 1It is and I often look at it when I work right, because sometimes I work in these really horrible conditions and I have to remind myself that when I see very young parents with many, many children. You know, I think a couple of years ago I had a 20 year old mom who was pregnant for the fourth time, at 20. She was having her fourth kid and all of the children were in foster care. And one of my colleagues made a kind of like really inappropriate and uncompassionate response to that and I remember saying, oh, I bet she has attachment issues. I was like I bet she has attachment issues and I looked at it from that perspective.
Speaker 1I said because at 20 years old, if you're having four babies right, if that's your fourth child, like you are looking for some love or something that was lacking in your life because you know, and then and and most I don't believe any of them were with the same man, right, which means like you're looking for a partner and you're looking for someone to love and support and you're looking to make a household like you never had. And when we were in the foster home, I asked the, I asked the foster parent about the biological mom and she said that the biological mom was in foster care. Her mother was in jail, so she was born while her mother was incarcerated, and then she never knew her mom and went into the system, and then her mom died before she was released from jail. So this was I was 100 percent on point. This woman had attachment issues, and so she was trying to create a situation for herself that was the opposite of what she had, but she really didn't know how to do it.
Speaker 2So we talked a lot about the problem and I want to give you an opportunity, Lindsay this, the platform is yours. Cleve is going to zip his lips for a little bit, because this is something that you've talked to me about all the time is what is a solution? How does meditation and mindfulness fit into helping folks? Uh, overcome failure.
Speaker 1Well, when you sit and you are quiet with yourself, this is why it's so hard for you. But when you sit in your quiet with yourself and everyone, I know, right, all my clients that are like the tough guys, they don't want to meditate Because they're like, oh, I can't do it. I can't do it, I start thinking about things. I can't shut my brain off. You're not supposed to shut your brain off. You're supposed to see what comes up for you so that you can work on it. Right, we don't ever shut our brain off. There's always something going on up there. Right, we live so cerebrally, but it allows you to be quiet with yourself. You could see what's coming up right.
Speaker 1Another one for me, you know, added in with the meditation and the mindfulness, is just the breath work.
Speaker 1Right, for me, the breath work is.
Speaker 1During my whole exam, I kept taking breath work and meditation breaks where I would just sit back for five minutes, close my eyes and breathe, because it lowers the activation of the nervous system. If you think of your nervous system as like a fully charged battery, like when you plug your iPhone in and you charge it up to 100%, it's working well, right, and then it's down and it drains, and it drains, and it drains. We have that battery which is like our nervous system, and if we don't do things to calm our nervous system, we're constantly living in this heightened sense of awareness. I always say this because when I meditate and I breathe and I practice mindfulness, I attribute a lot of that to why I'm so much calmer now than I used to be. It allows you to drain that battery, so when things happen, you're already in a less activated state, so you don't get to that place of breaking the front door, right, because right, I'm saying it, you know, it's, it's, you know, jokingly, like we didn't even really have a big fight.
Speaker 2No, it was a stupid fight it was.
Speaker 1it wasn't, and I never raised my voice or anything.
Speaker 2I was just like OK yeah.
Speaker 1OK, but the thing is that, like when you practice those things and you look at your own pain and suffering, you can then work on your own nervous system and then you become aware of more aware of yourself and your own process, and then the things that are going on around you don't act like the bigger triggers that they once were.
Speaker 2Yeah, I want to. The names of the innocent shall always be confidential. Our children, no, I'm going to. I'm going to talk about one night stand for love. But our friend, one night stand, actually went to go see Trish, your meditation teacher, and he was somebody who was always I've known this gentleman for years good friend of mine. For like the last eight years, I would say, was until he went and took that breath and meditation work was always consumed by the things that he felt were failures in his life Well, and he kept repeating the pattern.
Speaker 1And I remember when he repeated the pattern again in a relationship, I actually said to him oh, I know you have some inner child wounds that are unhealed and I know just the person to help with that. And I, I put him in touch with Trish and he did the work. He did the work because she will find the skunk in your closet. You don't have to tell her about it, but it's easier if you do, because she's going to find it anyway.
Speaker 2And that was through mindfulness and meditation, right, and, and, and, just to show you and breath work and just it's really all of that is self-awareness work, right, that's what we should say.
Speaker 1Right, med, meditation, mindfulness it's all self-awareness work.
Speaker 1That's why, when you go on retreat if it's a silent retreat, a regular retreat, when you're doing these practices all day, every day right, when I went on retreat, we do meditation at seven in the morning, and then after that is breakfast, a little break for outdoor time.
Speaker 1They have those walking labyrinths, they have a meditation chapel with silent meditation rooms and a group meditation room, and then you come back from that and you do yoga and then you go to lunch and then you have a break again and then you do a sound journey and then every evening you do some type of workshop, whether it be the breath work or energy healing, special meditation programs. When you do that, you're in this environment that's really contained. It's like a sanitized environment. You're with people who are on the same path as you and there's no cell service and there is no Wi-Fi, and so there's really nothing to do but sit in your discomfort and to really connect with people in the Sangha, people who are like minded. Yeah, you know, when you do that, there's a lot of pain and suffering that we have to look at when we're quiet, and that's why people don't want to do it.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. That's one of the reasons I don't want to do it, but I know I have to. I definitely want to, but I would say I appreciate this about about one night stand, is that?
Speaker 1Oh, he's like a different person now. He's a different person. He completely has stopped dating women who aren't good enough for him.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1And who are causing him a headache. He's just like. I'm better than that. I'm too old for that. I don't want that anymore.
Speaker 2Right, and that's what I was going to say. It's like it's so funny. He had a relationship recently that it was one that he would have been opined over and he would have been like why did I mess it up? Or why?
Speaker 1why not working?
Speaker 2This is literally not what I want you can go, and that was that I don't make those choices anymore. Yes, and that was one of the things. And just to co-sign on what you were saying, meditation helps us and I'm probably like a lot of my clients that I've talked to that avoid that, have avoided coming to therapy or avoided talking to me because they know I'm going to uncover some stuff that they don't want to talk about. But meditation does help us identify our failures.
Speaker 1That's one of the struggles as a therapist. Right Is that you have to be very careful not to place your judgment or to give opinions or to criticize, but sometimes you do have to pull the skunk out of your client's closet and you have to be like, listen, I'm fucking holding it up, oh, excuse my language in front, in front of your face and like here it is. So do you want to say more? Yeah, right, cause I I'm known to say to clients well, if that's not working for you, then you're changing it. And then I have a client where I said, well, is this going to work with you? And he's like no, not really. I said, okay, well, we've been talking about it for two years now. So I think we should just table it because clearly it is working for you, or you would have changed it by now.
Exploring Somatic Experiences and Self-Compassion
Speaker 2Yeah, and that goes about seeing failure as a teacher. Right, and Kornfield often highlights that meditation is what helps us see failure as a teacher. By observing our reactions to failure in a meditative state, we can gain insights into why I'm doing these things. Why am I doing these habits over and over again and we begin to notice how we respond to setbacks and like. One of the things you like to talk about is like what were you feeling in that moment?
Speaker 1Like what was your body saying yes, because there's a big disconnect between the brain and the body. The brain likes to tell a story over and over and over again, but then we really need to look at the somatic experience, because I really believe that the experience is actual, physical. It's actually a somatic experience before your head starts to do the talking right. Think about it. I think about this when I work and I'm super stressed out and I've sat in traffic and I'm going in and out of these really unsanitary homes and people are having an attitude with me. I feel a tension in my body. If I don't look at that tension and say, ok, my day is creating this tension for me, I need to take five or 10 minutes and sit and breathe. Then you're going to come home and I'm probably going to have a fight with you. Yeah, because all of those things got me activated. But I am very, very aware of my own somatic experiences. I can always feel the tension. I can feel it creeping up. I know where I hold on to the physical pain. So I'm good at looking at that now and saying, okay, I need to take a break, I need 10 minutes, I need to just go preserve my energy, I need to see what's coming up for me and it helps me to identify that. But the body it's often right you think about when you hear a really loud noise, like if you're at home. And you hear a really loud noise, your body tells you first, before you're like, your heart starts to race, your palms are sweating, you jump before your head's, like, oh, maybe somebody's intruding. Right, like first is the somatic experience, and people are so disconnected from their bodies, and so that's a lot of work I do with my clients is where are you feeling it? And then I question that. I always ask them like when? Like when have you felt that before? Because it's never to do with something that just happened, right, and often it comes up as a negative core belief that has been with the person for their whole life. Right Of not being good enough, not being worthy of their parents' attention, not being loved, right.
Speaker 1I have a client once who said that her parents never in her life told her she was like that they love her, never, never. And then she in turn came to therapy because she was terrified of dating and so she thought that all relationships were like that, right, where there was no love. And she said her parents still don't like each other. She's like my mother complains to us all the time. So that's probably another reason why I didn't want to be in a relationship, because here it's like all I've seen is my mother complaining about my father all the time, and it's annoying. And now I have a certain view of my father from my mother's you know dialogue about him, and now I don't want to date anyone because I think it's going to be like that.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I want to go back, and that's a very, very good point. I want to go back to something that you talked on earlier, which is like pointing out, pointing out failure at us as counselors, like pulling out that skunk Right, um, my, my professor at the university the other day. We were in, uh, we were in class and we were talking about.
Speaker 2You know, as counselors, we're not really supposed to give advice, right, but he did say when there's a certain situation that a client is failing at it over and over again, he's like hey, I'm not going to give you advice, but let me give you some advice.
Speaker 2Right, and it's nothing wrong with if you have a counselor who is not pushing you to let you realize hey, that's a dumb thing that you're doing or that's a foolish thing you're doing, and that's what he said. He's like hey, I'll go tell a person I had to think that's the dumbest thing that you're doing and this is what you probably should do, and then he'll let the person come back and succeed or fail on that, right, and he doesn't have any ego. If the advice he gave didn't work out with that client, then he's like hey, it didn't work out, but he was like he would rather tell a client stop the nonsense, stop what you're doing. You know, look at what you're doing and why is this not working for you? Then to have this client go through the series of failure over and over again that they're not learning from.
Speaker 1Right, absolutely. And I, you know it's so interesting because I worked with that client and I I, you know I was very sad to see her go and, to you know, to go through the termination process because she was moving. But this is somebody who started dating and she took a risk and she quit her job and took a job across the country and she's off. And I said to her, like this is amazing, like, and that's the client I don't want to see go, because I love the clients who do the work Right and sometimes you have to show these people it's time to do the work.
Speaker 1I had a client this week where I said you know, the real issue here is that you don't communicate appropriately with people because you're, like, willing to lie to your mother every single day this summer and pretend you're working summer school so that you don't have to watch your nieces. I said, so, now that means you have to go out of your house every single day of the week all summer. I said that's ridiculous. I said open your mouth and help her find a daycare or a summer camp for the nieces. End of story. Like you know, it's so funny. And then it's like and then you're upset, when she's upset with you, but it's like you're lying. You're an adult and you're lying and it's you know if you want to have certain kinds of interactions, right. So it's like I mean, imagine like lying every day.
Speaker 2That's crazy. It's more work. It's what I call a George Costanza. If you ever watched Seinfeld, george would often have all these crazy schemes and things that cost him like more at the end of the day, if he would have just simply, you know, did the work. We're approaching an hour, so I'm going to let you wrap this up with some practical applications. But, lindsay, since you are now the licensed congratulations, the licensed therapist what are some practical applications that clients that you would have clients walk away with after they get out of your, off your couch God that therapist, we really don't use couches, but what would be after they leave your office? What, what are some practical?
Speaker 1applications, virtually, anyway. I often tell my clients to accept themselves the way they are. We have compassion for yourself. Can you find compassion for yourself and say that it is okay to not be okay? And I tell you that all the time. Right, it is okay to not be okay. So that's one thing.
Speaker 1Accepting your failures and your vulnerabilities right, I am going to make mistakes all the work I do on myself, and I still sometimes go back to the old habits and say, oh, I'm doing that thing again, but that's okay, because I look at it compassionately. And then I say, okay, let me check it out further. But you know, the biggest things for me is you have to do these practices mindfulness work, meditation, work, breath work, yoga, go exercise, whatever you have to do to drain your battery so that your nervous system starts every day from more of a deactivated space. Right, because then when these things come up, you can look at them and you can say, oh, that's really not a big deal. Ok, I can work with that. This is what it's bringing up for me. And when you can identify what comes up for you, then you can do something differently the next time.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. One of the things that's important to me, that has been important to me that you've helped me with, is sometimes transforming your outlook right. A lot of times when I fail at something, I get caught up in that. In that moment I get caught up in just that particular thing and I think it's important to practice self-compassion for yourself and it's important to transform your outlook on life. It's important to see things differently and not get that tunnel vision and be like, oh, I failed, or oh, there's too many obstacles. Or, as the oldest boy said when he was thinking about not taking that promotion or not taking that chance, it's not an obstacle, it's an opportunity, right.
Speaker 1It's what Gabor right. It's. It's what Gabor Mate says. Sometimes you have to let the super ego go. The super ego right, he says, as your stupid friend, it doesn't learn, it keeps you. The function of your super ego in your childhood is that you conform to the rules of the household so that you are accepted. But what happens as you get older? You have to let that go so that you can start to live your life authentically. And if you're constantly in this space of tunnel vision and doing what everyone else told you that you should do and that you need to do, then you're never going to do what you actually want to do and what feeds your soul.
Speaker 2So that sounds like to me that you're talking about setting intentionality.
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely, and also just letting go. And you know, I always say you're not responsible for how other people feel. So if your parents don't like what you're doing, or my parents didn't like a choice that I made, that's not my problem is the role of intention.
Living With Intention and Purpose
Speaker 2So one of the things about setting intentions is and as we wrap it up is talking about SMART goals which are specific, measurable, actionable, relatable and time bound. And, as we wrap it up, I'll let you get like the final word on intentions and intentionality. Why is that important? Why is setting intentions important?
Speaker 1Well, because it allows you to do the things that you want to do and to be the person that you want to be, and so you should do things intentionally. Nothing should be done as a waste of your time. You shouldn't be doing things that you don't want to do. There should be a purpose Right In your life, right, everybody has a purpose. Unfortunately, some people never find it in this lifetime, I hope they do.
Speaker 2Well, that's it, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for patiently waiting for this latest episode. We will be back regular and you'll bleep out my curse, maybe I might. It was good, I liked it. It was good we put us back to explicit with the adult audience, but thank you, we will be back. This has been Cleveland and Lindsay audience, but thank you, we will be back. This has been, this has been cleveland and lindsey living with intention and purpose, the same love. It's just us two, but I don't mind. You could never wear me out.
