Stewarding the Gift of Daily Aliveness

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shank Carveved Danta About a century ago, the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung was treating a young woman He sat with his back to a window, listening to his patient She told him about a dream she'd had She was given a piece of jewelry modeled after a beetle, long considered sacred in Egyptian culture The scarab beetle was associated in ancient Egypt with a divine force that moved the sun Intricately carved carab jewels were sometimes placed on the hearts of the dead. to assist them in the afterlife The young woman told the psychiatrist that in the dream She was given a golden scarab As young listen to the story He heard it tapping behind him. He turned to see a flying insect knocking against the windowpane It was a beetle in a monograph on what he calls synchronicity Kyl Jung wrote I open the window creature in the air as it flew in It was the nearest analogue to a golden scarrot that one finds in our latitudes a scarabeard beetle contrary to its usual habits, had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment Scientists have debated Jung's theory for decades Many have argued that what happened in that room was nothing more than an interesting coincidence But for Karl Jung, the beetle at the window was not merely evidence that in a complex world, Unusual things sometimes happen by chance Synchronicity was a tap on the shoulder a sign invitation into deeper realms of meaning and understanding. Last week on the show, we discussed the research of Columbia University psychologist Lisa Miller. Over several decades of brain imaging and other research, she's found that when we encourage our mental capacity for spiritual and transcendent thinking It can have measurable effects on our brains Quantifiable benefits for our health If you missed our earlier episode, you can find it in this podcast feed It's titled Waking Up Your sppiritual Brain Pot one This week on Hidden Brain Lisa Mella takes us on a journey of synchronicity in her own life and explains what it means to cultivate a mind that is open to the transcendent. Supp for Hidden Brain comes from TikTok On TikTok, people are breaking down physics, exploring geology, and explaining why the world works the way it does. You'll see impressive experiments, explanations that finally make sense, and connections you didn't expect It's like having a lab, a lecture hall, and a science museum in your pocket TikTalk is where wonder is shared, where curiosity turns into discovery, and where millions learn something new every day Support for hidden brain comes from progressive Insurance isn't one size fits all That's why drivers have trusted progressives name your price tool for years. Just tell prorogressive what you want to pay and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget Visit progressive. com to find a car insurance rate that works for you Progressive casualty insurance Company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law. Eight, seven, seven, three, nine, three, four, four, four, eight Aoon fiveibber so first so fine. Got another provider leaving behind let's get online thirty a month gonna blow your mind. Five aans don't hesitate. Luck it in now before two lay eight, seven, seven, three, nine three four, four, four eight tim applly S optimum. com for details Columbia University psychologist Lisa Miller argues that we have two capacities in our minds One is focused on goals and achievements. She calls this the achieving brain The other is focused on meaning Connection and transcendence She calls this the awakened brain Lisa argues that when we cultivate our spiritual side, we activate three networks in the brain These networks give us the feeling that we are loved that we are being guided and that we are not alone The achieving brain might dismiss Carl Jung's synchronicities using the language of probability and coincidence but to the awakened brain which is open to seeing connections These events can open the door to exploration and growth. Lisa told me of a time in her own life when she experienced powerful moments of synchronicity She said that seeing these moments as signs not just coincidences changed her life Shankar, this was a journey of many, many years. It was perhaps one of the most excruciating journeys of my life and certainly that of my husband as well. We were in our early thirties and we decided we wanted to become parents. so we were going to so called try with We took a vacation to Sedona, we took a vacation to the Caribbean and eagerly awaited the good news In fact, there was no baby No pregnancy No child. And as these failed attempts month after month started to add up. We got a very haunting sense that wait a minute, maybe there's something wrong, maybe we can't conceive. And as we moved into here onene and a half in year two, we saw a fertility doctor and I checked out and he checked out, my husband is being healthy. They said, Oh we can get you pregnant, not to worry. And we did some rounds of IUIs and after that, not working, strangely, wasn't sure why. We did some rounds of IVF, thinking, well now we're going to the next phase. sureurely, you know he's healthy, I'm healthy with an IBF, we'll quickly conceive And yet still no baby, no one came. The IVF process for us in our path was with every failed really non pregnancy It felt like a funeral. It felt like the death of our hopes and dreams. It felt like the death of that tiny little embryo that was the closest thing we had to a child. We were devastated This wore equally on both of us. you know the baby showers of our friends and the little pink onesies that we would find ourselves buying for other people. It just it was preingly very veryery depressing I understand that in some ways this felt like a spiritual crisis to you. canan you explain why, Lisa Sankar, as we went further down this road of trials of No child coming right as we really were in a season of tremendous pain I started to notice ers along the path and increasing synchronicities that were buoyant and guiding along the path. there started to be more and more light in this tunnel of pure occlusion For instance, I was on the bus once coming in late to work. I was very depressed. I'd had another failed in vitro. I couldn't even pull it out of bed. I ended up getting on the bus up to Columbia at eleven in the morning. The bus was entirely empty. I'm sitting way in the back And suddenly someone unusual gentleman gets on And I think no, you're kidding me. He's walking all the way through the empty bus to the very back road to sit one seat away from me plop down right next to me. And here I was quite depressed I wanted to be polite. and I hat up and he said, You know what, lady You look like just that type Ply nice lady that would go all around the world adopting kids In Shankar, he got off at the next stop Who rides a bus when stopped One stop My husband and I We're so determined pregnant that we upped the ante. We went know from one clinic to the next because the next clinic had slightly higher rates of conception. And after that, we went to one of the teams that had discovered in Vitro, working with cellular animals and we kept going up and up and up, you will, the ladder of more sophisticated, higher rates of consumception And yet there was always a sense in my heart that for us, in our journey, on our path, we were in the wrong office I'm wondering as you were experiencing this, Lisa, as you were going from office to office as you were experiencing you know, failed attempt after failed attempt. It must have been demoralizing, it must have been depressing, but but just talk a little bit about The effect this had on you and your husband, you must have asked yourself, why is this being denied to us, this thing that so many people have aroundround the world, you know, there are billions of human beings. whyy is this gift being denied to us Suckgar, this was truly depressing It didnidn't make sense. A plus B plus C. he was healthy. I was healthy You know, of course, I searched my life. Was there something physically or perhaps morally that I'd done wrong. And you know, but there was no ble hard stop, it started to become clear to us through the synchronicities that kept landing in our past. that maybe We were on a guided journey. Tough And it's painful and without light to see We started to feel that we were held, for instance after an in vitro which by the team of all teams who had invented in Vitra. We were at a very top hospital in solidarity, my husband, by my side on bed restst And because it was only one night wed splurged for a very nice hotel, my husband clicks the remote And only one channel, only one channel will show on this TV in our overpriced hotel He bangs the remote, he goes and fiddles with the TV One documentary upon an orphan A little boy who lives in a garbage duck in Central America through the transrlator The little boy says, I don't care that I live in the trash dump care. that I don't go to school But it hurts so much to not be loved. that I sniff glue to make the pain go away And I looked at my husband and he looked at me and he said at first there's a child out there for us There was an undeniable synchronicity What life are you showing me now We sensed very deeply In fact, in that moment, we knew that we were on a guided journey. And synchronicity is once we acknowledged being on this journey just deepened and became more vivid and more abundant guiding us My mother called and said, Listen, I just want you to know my neighbor, Margaret. She just adopted the most beautiful little boy from Russia. His name is John Joseph. Well I just wanted you to know honey bye I in some ways, Lisa The model that you had in your head was that parenting is conception and really These signals were tellelling you is that no, parenting is not about conception, parenting is about love loveove and commitment Forever commitment and forever love is parenting I had thought, okay If we can see of a child then perhaps they'll have my husband's humor and they'll have this quality that I' so valued for my side of the family. And I sort of piece together in my mind the notion that parenting really was conception But what are road of trials revealed through the Right supportive moments of synchronicity was the parenting is love and commitment. And even more what the journey showed us was Be someone ready to inherit parenthood I needed to let go. of a certain level of ego and control. I'll share with you that one night I was deep in sleep. when suddenly just I sat up wide and alert, sat up straight up in bed, I felt I mean a very profound Ver sacred Pence. moving towards me. space opened up but there was a newinous opening and a very clear question was asked, if you were pregnant now wouldould you adopt? in front of a presence so holy and so profound notot somber, but very serious One would only comeome clean. with a full heart, I said Now. No, if I were pregnant now, I would not. And the presence was not judgmental. it just started to withdraw time and space closed in It was an extraordinary experience I looked over. And my husband was still out cold, totally asleep San heard this Pence. let me know that there was something in our journey towards parenthood that had to do Ioming the type of person who was really a spiritual parent We continued further down our path, more guidance, more synchronous cities, guiding us towards adoption confirming that the doctor's office was not for us the place to become parents when after several more months, the presence came back if you were pregnant now. Would you adopt And I said, you know I'm Closer to the person who would say yes it now Around that time, we started to take measures to find the child that we knew was out there for us. We had visited an adoption agency in Pittsburgh where a clergyman's daughter, rabbi's daughter had found Hundreds of babies their families. She'd helped bring families together Her walls were lined with beautiful photos. childildren who were eight years old holding their violin, little babies with their new parents. The walls were full of joyful families and I wanted to be like them And so she sat us down the clergyman's daughter, and she said Be honest here. care about in a child, what do you want And I said, Well, I said, I don't care if this is a boy or a girl. I certainly don't care what race the child is, but please a child can love This is our first child and please a child who can love. and leans forward sort of covers my shoulder a bit with his shoulder and says, yes, all that kind of a girl And then I lean over his shoulder, right? bothoth of us was he in our point of view? and I said, yes, but really foremost, a child who can love We left Her office, with a sense of joy and hope, we see these beautiful children from all over the world who joined their parents who'd all of the families who'd been formed through the clergman's daught around that time I was working in my office at Columbia A couple of weeks passed And I got a call from older cousin My name is Lisa Jane Miller and Big Jane, my older cousin of about a decade, called to say, you know what, little cz? I know you're sitting there in your office running your numbers, studying spirituality, but if you really want to know spirituality. I think you need to get out of your office, get on a plane and come out here to South Dakota. to attend the healing ceremony my colleague, the chief of the Lakota has said, I can bring you And I know you've been looking for your child. I think this is another approach. I think you should come out here I canceled all my appointments Columbia, I got on a plane. I went out to South Dakota And there in the healing ceremony, the men moved into one anipi, the women into another And in the women's in the women's in NPP the Leader, who identified herself as the medicine man's wife led us through a series of prayers. point She asked us to go around the circle inside the NEP eachach of us in turn to say why we had come to the healing ceremony The first woman spoke. She said, I am here because my son is fourteen. he's starting to smoke and use drugs and I really worry about him The next woman spoke. My son is forty He's not coming home. I worry for the family Around the circle, each woman had come that day to pray for her son Until we got to my immediate left Big Jane, my cousin who spoke for me which as a full time talker as a professor was actually most welcome This is my cousin, L Jane. She has come looking for her child wondering if we could help her find her child All of the women looked me in the eye For the first time I knew I was in the right place. We then were led in a pray that was to hold all prayers of the women and was sent up through the top the NEP edit T car, we received a call that night Night. Prayer had been sent up through the Ane. That night, we received a call to my phone machine in New York from the other side of the world We have found the miller's child. We know Mr. Miller had wanted a girl and there's many wonderful girls. We can get you a girl, but this is the Miller's child This is the miller's child and it is a son Five years. of struggle and sorrow and weepain and infertility Wait to see his I couldn't wait to see his video. I was home in a couple days, the video came opened my eyes to see The most joyful Da dah da little boy with his arm around the nurse Gowing with joy, glowing with energy, d d da. I fell in love chunker in that moment, I became a parent. Profound love, a soaring love like I'd never felt before, a tidal wave of soaring love and I was sure deeply committed in my heart that this is my spiritual child Very night that I saw the video and made the commitment in my heart. and loved like I'd never loved before presence came back a third time. If you were pregnant now would you adopt Absolutely Absolutely, this is my spiritual child H min the space is closed in And I looked over once again, my husband was out cold. But I poked him. I woke him up very night shunker after five years of the best clinics in the United States the very night that we had committed to adopt our boy from the other side of the world. A girl came to us. through natural conception. sppiritual twins That's extraordinary, Lisa To this day, I profoundly grateful every bit foremost, of course, for Isaiah and Leah, the spiritual twins. And one more came down the road, Lilah I also feel grateful for the road of trials, the waroreway, the illusions of ego and outcome and radical control and opened gateway to awakened awareness that opened a dialogue that is how I know of my life and I have realized Through three decades now of science, we all are equipped to live in dialogue I simply said, My what a coincidence the orphan in the garbage dump. My, what a striking synchronicity, but we'll leave it at that The fellow on the bus Wow, I wonder if this mystical experience is real. Interesting it in the back drawer of my mind had I only treated awakened awareness as a spectator sport I might have missed the opportunity of our lifetimes. Had I only treated the synchronicities, the mystical experiences as interesting or Well how Wonderful, but them aside, tuck them into a back drawer in my mind It would not have been enough. Isaiah would have still been in an orphanage in time, he would have been adopted into the military, and we would not be a family our family The most important center of my life, our family was born out of a dialogue the deeper force of all life Lisa says that people with well developed spiritual lives are healthier, happier, and more connected to others But how do we go about exploring this dimension of existence When we come back cultivate an awaken brain You're listening to Hidden Bra I'mhanankarve Dante Support for Hidden brand comes from LinkedIn Running a small business means every hire matters A bad hire can cost you time, money, and momentum. A good hire, they can help grow your business. LinkedIn's new hiring pro screens candidates for you. So instead of sorting through applicants You spend time talking to only the right ones Get started by posting your job for free at linkedIn d. com slash HB Terms and conditions apply Support for Hidden Brain comes from Quintince. 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I'm Shank Karveved Dante Have you had experiences in your life when you felt helped or hindered by your own spirituality If you have a personal story that you would be willing to share with the hidden brain audience, question or comment about this episode Please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on your phone Two or three minutes is plenty. Email the file to us at feedback at hiddenbrain. org using the subject line sppiritual Again, that's feedback at hiddenbrain. org Lisa Miller is a psychologist at Teacher' College, Columbia University. She's the author of the Awakened Brain the new science of spirituality and our quest for an inspired life. Lisa, you say that one way we can strengthen our awakened awareness is by engaging regularly in spiritual disciplines. What are some of these disciplines and how did they affect us Prayer, meditation. right action. Our spiritual practices can be held within the embrace. of our faith tradition or held by multiple faith traditions or our spiritual life can be outside of religion. whether or not we are religious spiritual practice literally builds the muscle, if you will, strengthens the cortex of the awakened brain You argue that in order to do this, you actually have to build a regular practice. So this is a little bit like going to the gym. You can' just do it a day or two and say, okay, I've checked the box now When we looked at people who said, yes, yes, I'm spiritual, but only said it on one day, we happened to have only asked them one day. We did not see neeuroorrelates We did not see a stronger cortex and people who on any given day raise their hand and say, yes, yes, spirituality is important to me. It's when Day after day over In our study, eight years. said, yes, spirituality is important to me day in and day out that we saw a thicker cortex processing power across the regions of the awakened brain In other words, it is sustained spiritual life that seems to go hand in hand with a deepening of our awakened awareness. It becomes a new normal Prayer through meditation We access the deeper nature of life and art. capacity to perceive into the sacred reality becomes a new normal, becomes a new set point. In fact Sunker together with my colleagues In the medical school Myrta Weissman and her team, we looked people who struggled with severe depression And those who did not And all of their children and grandchildren over forty years. Myrta Weiseman generously shared her forty year longitudinal three generation data set. through which we could follow people over the course of their life, those who were at high risk for depression and those who were it low risk for depression foundound was that in the course of life Many of us face periods of despair suffering major depression in these moments of great despair, we start to ask Existential questions. What is the meaning of my life. What will be my spiritual footprint What is the nature of reality? So not just what is meaning and purpose, but ultimate meaning, sacred purpose Who am I What is the world in the relationship to the source? itself of life even be the case that Dression potentiates spiritual growth. The brain is built so that in moments of despair we are potentiated to widen the aperture and let in more light I'd start to awaken spiritually In my collaboration with Myrna Weisman and her team, we found that those people who have a very strong spirituality today two and a half times more likely to have gotten there through the road of trials through a major depression In other words, people who say, yes, I turn to God for guidance. I have a very strong relationship, a lived, felt relationship with my higher power, the universe two hundred and fifty percent more likely past ten years to have come through a major depression. a spiritual response to suffering onnce formed becomes The new way to lean into life, it becomes the go to way to look into the deeper nature of life Fil, disappointment, loss. L are you showing me now How can I love more deeply A spiritual response to suffering, The red door I wanted so much is stuck. It's slammed shut and I can't go I've always wanted to go or I wanted my child to go Hi. Look over there, there is a wide open. I didn't even know if they existed yellow door. A yellow door that has a new career, a new community a new partner beyond what I even knew existed This isn' a Dialogue, a lived dialogue with life that takes us out of the finite achieving mind and into the awakened mind You talk about helping a patient named Bev in your therapy practice Develop what you call heart knowing, going beyond the rational, the intellectual knowing heart knowing. Paint me a picture of Bev's story Bev came in tormented by a decision she had to make so much so that it weighed on her heart. It was making her anxious. Be Beve had raised three of her four children Her youngest childood daughter was still at home And right at the time where she had wanted to try to connect with her daughter, she'd felt a certain Distance between her and her fourth child that she'd not felt towards the otherth. She described a blended feeling that she felt with the oldest three the Fourth seemed more distant, disconnected Bevitt hoped that now that her fourth child was in high school she could clear time to really just focus on her. and that a bond might form that they could be in this intimate way, just the two of them for this passage But right at that time, she was given a very unexpected offer of promotion promotion that would have required fifteen more hours of work a week, a promotion that she felt honored her abilities. She was proud to receive the promotion but tremendously concerned that it was going cut into this chapter that she had so anticipated bonding with her daughter And u so You know, it was very common at that time to Use therapy as a way of ferretting out the pros, the cons mayaybe the automatic thoughts behind the pros and cons distill the relationships I saw it in bev that she was looking into life itself, looking for guidance in the universe, looking for some sort of connection and her relationship to who she called God to guide her And so in the case above It occurred to me that awakened awareness be very helpful supporting her natural capacity for awakened awareness allowing her to authorize her own whisper of a hunch authorize her own inner knowing. Bv within a matter of weeks to the notion. that she could trust her inner wisdom, that there was an inner spiritual compass I didn't tell her which way the compass pointed and I didn't offer her the proof. See. started listening to her own inner wisdom. She started following her own spiritual compass. finding answers and solutions. synchronousities Aquaining her on the path where in her life she could make her own choice This was a guided, spiritually grounded decision. You say that in addition to personal practices, we can also engage in shared rituals and community practices, why would engaging in these disciplines W other people make a difference, do you think Lisa? Jan Car, there's marvelous research that shows that when we pray or meditate. in a community We effectively as an antenna presence for one another. So certainly we can pray or meditate alone and have a deep transcendent connection And yet still when we meditate together, We hold presence for one another. We augment the intensity. and the fluidity through which we conn act to the transcendent. might vary Wonderful colleague, Dr. Andy Newberg showed that if Nine people or in the state of prayer in the tenth person walks in the door and sits down. They more rapidly move into a state of transcendence is measured by the rapidity with which their mirror neurons come up online, which means We literally hold presence for one another We are not creating presence, we are not creating God We are not creating consciousness. We are holding an intensified Pence of the sacred. into which others can move more quickly which is very optimistic for society So most of us turn to the language of pathology to describe the effects of crises and setbacks in our lives. We talk about trauma and depression or anxiety or dysregulation You think it's possible for us to change this framing, to think of crises and struggles as Portals for growth When we look at the data, whether it's long term clinical course studies, epidemiological, high risk studies, MRI studies, through multiple lenses Sanker, we see the same laser beams. of truth. which is depression Pen shades spiritual growth We still have to do the work and engage the journey att least two thirds of the time ression is not only a medical illness. is in fact more of a developmental process we might call a developmental depression beckons us into a deepening and opening a growth When we look at longitudinal twin studies, we see that there is an increasing amount of heritable inborn contribution. to spiritual awareness, starting with puberty, biological puberty from middle to late adolescents into emerging adulthood is a surge, a biological clock from the inside out Bing what is my purpose? I mean ultimate purpose. What is the meaning of life? I mean sacred purpose In fact, the most important work we do in late adolescence emerging adulthood is to engage the ultimate questions And the hunger of the heart for spiritual connection Developmental depression beckons us it is a knock at the door to spiritual awakening. Developmental depression comes back. It is not only once that we are hardwired to suffer and then grow at midlife We of course have Cultural nam sophomore slump, Midlife crrisis at Midlife We again an expansion in our spiritual capacity. And in fact, long term clinical course studies showed us that those people who were the most spiritually engaged at midlife actually Hunger and struggle the most. because As our spiritual capacity once again grows at midlife the more spiritually engaged we are, the more we feel the existential longing Perhaps no longer, what is my meaning and purpose, but now am I living Am I walking the walk of my meaning and purpose The third developmental bridge is that of the ascension to elderhood, deevelopmental depression, once again that can open into an expanded spiritual awareness. Emerging adulthood, midlife and the ascension to elderhood are three hardwired bridges spiritual growth which usually kick off existential struggle, developmental depression This means that I'm not against medication, but medication alone is insufficient. to do the profound foundational work of spiritual growth that is a setup for a much more inspired life of dialogue I'm wondering whether fellow clinicians and researchers worry that A focus on spirituality can people away from biomedical interventions, cures and treatments that in some ways someomeone comes in with depression and you say, Well, the way out of your depression is to start a spiritual practice. and the person says I'm just overwhelmed Dealing with what I have right now, I can't change something that important in my life Hm You know, Shank Kar, very often people are relieved when you ask them about their spiritual life. We asked hundreds high school students to tell us about a spiritual experience and nearly half of our high school students said Wow I always thought something was going on, but no one ever talked about it H a clinical setting. peopleople are often tremendously hopeful and relieved and curious that you would open the door, give name and authorize, yes, we talk about that here. H in treatment, here at this hospital, at this clinic, in my practice, we talk about spirituality here Now, of course, as clinicians Our goal is to keep a client centered, patient centered journey. of spiritual exploration. So it doesn't matter what faith tradition I may be or not be. it is a cl and patient centered process that can be open through three simple questions. Is spirituality or religion important to you Do you sense it has something to do with what's going on right now And would you like to explore or have support around your spiritual exploration, your spiritual life Those are questions and the patient and a love it Alliance good boundaries is free to say, No, you know, I don't that's not important to me or I don't want to talk about that or Maybe they'll come back and want talk about another time But the vast majority of the time, well over seventy percent of the time Patients say yes Yes and yes to all three. When we come back, I ask Lisa about the role of spirituality in schools You're listening to hidden Bra I'm Sank Carve Danton upport for Hidden Brain comes from Lowe's. Get your home ready inside and out with Lowe's july fourth deeals event. 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Therapy can help you sort through what's ticking up space and attention With betteretter Help, you can connect with a licensed therapist online on your schedule You'll be matched based on your needs and you can switch therapists anytime In fact, sixty nine percent of betteretterHelp users showed meaningful improvement in anxiety and depression Maybe it's time to close a few tabs Visit betterterhelp d. com slash hidden That's better HELP dot com slash hidden This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shan Carvee Danta At Columbia University, Lisa Miller studies the science of spirituality. She argues that we are paying short shrift to one of the most important interventions in our psychological and physical lives Lisa, you've written and spoken about the importance of bringing spirituality into public life and our institutions Does that include our schools? Oh yes. So Right now there is a conversation. that we are trying to help support between universities and K twelve schools Kidill schoolchs work very hard to prepare a student to enter the university, to pitch them through college admissions and have them find the right home in a college And colleges are receiving students thinking, oh my How strong out, how withithout a core, ref're findining the culture to have the students. So trying to bring what is effectively a spiritual crisis in the university it all the way back down into kindergarten and support the whole child development startarting in kindergarten by strengthening the spiritual core of the whole child There's an abundant science that shows that children with a strong personersal spirituality are less addicted. less depressed prrotected against suicide children with a strong spiritual life greater grit, optimism, greater character, more able to endure difficult times for relationships of commitment. There is nothing in the clinical or social sciences is profoundly important to child formation. has a strong spiritual core So then we might ask the question, can our schools, can our K through twelve schools which have come such a long way in whole child education. Now go the next step to support based on science, the spiritual core of the whole child And the answer is yes We conducted a three year grant funded study during which time we went to very diverse schools that did support the spiritual core of the whole child. We went to Sufi schools, Yeshiva', Catholic schools, we went to Waldrf schools. We went to public schools in Oakland and Virginia, we went to independent schoolzone Magnet schools, we went everywhere. It doesn't matter geographical location cultural niche or religion be. present or not present in the school No matter where we visited for three years There is an intentional pedagogrical culture spiritually supportive schools. There was nothing that landed on the desk, no curriculum, no special workbook, no practice in the classroom that was found amongst all spiritually supportive schools. What was common to all spiritually supportive schools was a deliberately desesigned deeply intentional relational culture that supported the spiritual core of the child. and we were able to systematically distill the common DNA of a spiritually supportive pedagogical culture which would apply to any school that in a teachable form and we now offer that as awakened schools, Awakened schoolchool Institute for free Lisa, you told me about a time when you and your husband felt that the conversation at your social gatherings were unbearably superficial You had dinner recently with a couple you were meeting for the first time, and the inevitable question came up What do you do picture of the scene for me and tell me what happenens Sean Carr was at a dinner party with some very, very interesting people who I knew had lived very Adventurous inspired lives. Once again, the weighty culture of achieving awareness beset our dinner party. What do you do? Where do you live? What does your partner do? know The sort of multiv variable equation through which we predict someone's outcome, they're achieving awareness and it seemed to me like a real missed opportunity So this time, I've sat up And I shk the bull by the horns and I said to some pretty prominent people, Can you tell me the most Gorious day of your life. Two of them were intrigued and one was a little taken aback, but everybody played One man said, you know, I felt V veryy distanced. from my childhood faith tradition. This gentleman was gay. He said I'd felt sort of cast out But I was on a trip. in Italy and there in the piazza, I heard beautiful music from the choir pour through the piazza. and I went into the cathedral and I felt God's presence. in the most abundant way I've ever felt The next person spoke and she said, you know, I yess I'd have to say I was out sailing And I felt the wind in my hair and the sun in my face We have the opportunity of our lifetime to really know each other It takes. Only Our choice to say, do I want to have an achieving conversation or do I really want to have an awakened conversation Do I want this relationship to open up so that I'm not You know keeping up with the Jones, but I'm walking with the Jones. I want to know you. I want to know greatest challenges, I want to know the most beautiful moments. I want to know about the crossing of your ancestors and the birth of your children and grandchildren, I want to know M Pixel glorious part of your life Chonker, I think we have a choice to engage one another to have relationships. which are narrowly Two dimensional achieving transactional relationships. or we can open the aperture and know each other and know life itself. Pure an awakened heart What Lisa is challenging us to do is not easy. widening the aperture, getting beyond traditional benchmarks of achievement deeply connecting with others All of this can feel a bit daunting especially if you've been singularly focused on achieving an important goal in your career or personal life We recently heard from a listener named Jean Char We've been grappling with a challenge like this Jean Char says that growing up He always wanted to be an entrepreneur was attracted to was, you know, the freedom of being my own boss, the learning curve of being into this environment, I believe that I could actually build something that mattered Entrepreneurship became my north star for many years and And I spend years of searching after university for the right idea, the right project Um And in the meantime, I was stuck in jobs that felt meaningless. But then when he was thirty Things finally fell into place I met a business partner with whom we got along very well And we built a FintTech company together And for seven years That was my entire world It was brutal, but it was a beautiful roller coaster. I felt completely alive. In twenty twenty, Jean Chal and his partner sold our business. On paper, the sale seemed like the culmination of everything he'd ever wanted financial freedom it would provide me with was The dream But the moment I let go of the business, I also let go of the thing that made me feel like me And all of a sudden I had lost my purpose and I had Zero plan B I'm forty two years old now. so we sold the company five point a fiveal years ago And what I struggle to describe, what I find really hard to put into words is what it actually feels like to be lost in this way It's not sadness that I feel on a daily basis. It's more like Watching my own life from behind a glass I feel like time is passing. that things are happening around me and I'm not quite in it. I feel like I'm wasting my life really I just have this unsettling question that follows me every day. It's what is the point of all this What is the point of all this It's a question people have been grappling with for thousands of years Various schools of thought have shaped how we answer it An nihilist might say There is no point Nothing matters A biologist would argue that our point is to survive and reproduce. An existentialist might say, the point is whatever we make of it But at Stanford University, Dave Evans argues that the question Thisiss is the point When we come back, Dave grapples with life's big questions Youre listening to Hidden Bra I'm Shanarved Danta Support for Hidden Brain comes from Lowe's. Get your home ready inside and out with Lowe's july fourth deals event. Save up to forty five percent off select major appliances plus up to an additional twenty five percent off when bundling select major appliances and save eighty dollars on a select Char Roy pererformance series gas grill Now two hundred and ninety nine dollars Shop Low's july fourth deals event. Valid through july eighth while supplies last Selection varies by location. S lows. com for more details The ultimate cookout starts with the ultimate ingredients. At Whole Foods Met, no antibiotics ever burgers and kebabs are prepped and ready to throw on the grill. Fire up a juicy ribeye, grab creamy potato salad and savory flatbreads from the prepared foods department, and round it all out with three hundred and sixty five brand condiments, chips and dips at everyday low prices. Whole Foods Market. Make Y summer sizzle This is Hidden Brain, I'm Sankarved Dantem When we feel stuck in life, it's often hard to see a way forward We tell ourselves that if we just try a little bit harder, we'll figure out how to break free At Stanford University, Dave Evans studies some of the most common traps that can lead to these feelings of stuckness He recently joined us for two episodes of Hidd Brain They were called Designing a life that matters and radical acceptance. We received so many questions and comments in response to these two episodes that we're going to dedicate two installments of our popular segment, yourour questestions Answered to addressing them. Dave Evans, welcome back to Hidden Brain. Shakar, it's good to be here again Dave, before the break we heard from a listener named Jean Charles. somethingomething he said really struck me. He said, he feels like he's watching his own life from behind a glass Paper, he's achieved his dream. he built a successful company and then he sold it But now he feels like he has no purpose What did you hear in history Well, he's found himself disengaged from what it felt like it means to be a human person You know, he didn't realize what the relationship was between hisis project and his personhood And when the project was done It relocated him in this desirable, but much more disruptive than he anticipated place called financial indndependence H. So he removed from his life That which almost every human being has had forever, which is the need to make a living And so that human project and my participation in the human project is what locates me in my life he loved the creativity and he loveved working with his partner and he loveved making a difference to his customers. and he thought that was what the whole thing was about. But all of that was located on the ground of The project of my personhood, which is making my life work and making the world work and he took himself partly out of that and he's not been able to refine himself You see that many of us hold certain notions that can get in the way of the lives we want to live. One of them is to feel fulfilled. So we feel like we're achieving the full potential of our lives. We heard from listener Suma, who's from France, she's raising two daughters and aspires to write novels quickly gets overwhelmed when she tries to make progress on that goal I'm supposed to work from home and the reality is that I don't have time to work on my stories I keep telling myself that I'm not making any money. My husband is the only one working and I'm not contributing financially for my family Then I start looking for a job and then I stop and think of all the consequences if I go back to work, how our life would be and I just feel stuck. I think that if I publish only one novel, I would be happy but then I think there is no way I'm going to help financially my family with only one novel and then I'm stuck again I feel like I have everything. I have a wonderful husband I love him very much. I have two wonderful, beautiful daughters. I love them more than my life We are healthy We are doing great. We live in a great apartment. We live in a great city in France I feel like I have everything I need but I Can't find U meaning to my life. I know what to do with my life. And it's very hard sometimes So Dave, I feel like Sumea is trying to take on multiple challenges at once. She wants to write a novel, which is a big goal in itself But then she layers on the question of whether a single novel will be enough to move the needle financially for her family. That adds more pressure And then she adds on another layer, which is the layer of finding meaning, which makes the challenge feel even more daunting How do you think Samya can make her goals more manageable? Well, she's got a couple of things going on at the same time and a very sympathetic. She's in a situation we actually call having what we call an anchor problem. She's anchored to a problem she can't seem to get loose from So if that's the case, her anchor problem is, I want to have an experience of meaning making, which I' attached to writing a novel And I want to make enough money to feel like I'm contributing at a level that satisfies my preferences or frankly my ego Those are not good or bad things. They're just true What's really true about Sumiia's life, which's really true about their finances. And those constraints will define what the problem space really is If she needs money, I would agree with her. One novel iss probably not the way to get that. So let's go get a job and then maybe you can write short stories on the side but you've got to do some radical acceptance about that. If your husband's fine with supporting you, are you willing to do the hard thing called accepting a gift So it's all about acceptance and living in reality So both Sumaya and Jean Charles, both of them get at the big thorny question that many of us grapple with, which is what is the meaning of life You argue that asking big existential questions like this is not always helpful Why not, Dave? Well, particularly in the form of what is the meaning of my life, which sounds like there's an answer You know, and Bill, my partner and I, our shortest definition of the human person anthropologically is that a person is a becoming We are all an unfolding embodied spiritual intelligence, a very complicated being called a human person and we're always growing into our future selves So if the future me isn't here yet How could my present me ever come up with one answer that is reliable for the rest of my life So we're saying How can I design more meaning in the life that I'm in now So don't get stuck on trying to come up with the ultimate answer. And in both cases here, by the way Both John Charl and Suma have a point of view about what meaning has to be In Jehn Charles's case, there's an unspoken assumption about his relationship with the work world that he didn't realize And for Sama, it's about money and meaning making And so they've got little rules buried in their questions that are forcing them into a stuck place because they they want it on their terms, frankly, and those terms aren't working. And so if we can reset to reality, Here's the situation you're actually in That gives you some freedom to go forward to the place you can go whichich may not be the place you want to go, but it is the place you can go Another belief that you say can get in the way of change is the need to have Now that could be impact on the people around us, impact via our work, even an impact on the world as a whole. Now many of us strive to have that impact, but feel that our efforts are largely unsuccessful. Here's a note from listener Amy When I was twelve years old, I declared, on paper that I was going to spend the rest of my life saving animals And that's what I did. att sixteen, I became a volunteer in an animal shelter. workored my way up through the years to you know animal careare tech, to shelter manager and then program coordinator. to A couple different animal shelters and then one day it just hit me that Nothing I did really mattered Um, nobody really cared. felt like a waste of space there, a waste of money for the organization, honestly. And so I left And now I Avoid taking care of animals at all costs, it's insane I don't know who I am anymore. So I can certainly feel Amy's pain here, Dave. yeah. Talk about how our craving for impact shapes our choices and our perceptions of failure and success So impact is a very worthwhile thing to pursue. We need a bunch of positive impacts. So you know, The problem is when you put all of your meaning making eggs and in Amy's case, all your Iidentity eggs In the impact basket, you're at terrific risk twow ways. Number one, Most of the time, Even if you do everything right, your attempted impact doesnn't work mean it literally doesn't work. You try to save the animal and it dies anyway O even if it does work It doesn't last very long in the world Or You succeed And then frankly, the feeling of it doesn't last very long, the half life on an impact, which is a An objective fact is a transaction. It's not it's not a living thing. doesnesn't go on and on and on We worked with inter the US. Olympic Committee becausecause there's nothing as exciting as ascending. The Olympic platform or as terrifying as descending it On the other side of being the best in the world is like, no what? So this is a fundamental human problem and Amy's got it in spades So the issue here is Recognizing number one. that I need more than just impact making, more than just changing the world as a source of what makes my life worthwhile. If that's the only thing I've got going, I'm really at risk. And number two on that aspect of my life that's pointed toward impact making recognizing, you have no power whatsoever over the outcome creating the result you want. All you can control is your participation She was a very successful Animal defefender. But she wrote a rule for herself that unless I save this many animals or you know the world changes its mind or the people around me get it the way I get it None of which he has any power over at all th Unless those things become true, all my efforts were a waste of time And that's That's a powerful rule that she has written And frankly, it's untrue and she can rewrite it When we come back inflection points How moments when the ground collapses beneath us can help us to grow in remarkable ways 're listening to Hiden Bra Im Shan Kar Vved Dant. Support for Hidden Brin comes from Lowe's. Get your home ready inside and out with Lowe's july fourth deals event Save up to forty five percent off select major appliances, plus up to an additional twenty five percent off when bundling select major appliances, and save eighty dollars on a seelect Charoy Performance sereries gas Grill now two hundred ninety nine doll Shop Low's july fourth deeals event Valid through july eighth, while supplies last Selection varies by location. S lows. com for more details The ultimate cookout starts with the ultimate ingredients. At Whole Foods Market, no antibiotics ever burgers and kebabs are prepped and ready to throw on the grill. Fire up a juicy ribeye, grab creamy potato salad and savory flatbreads from the prepared foods department, and round it all out with three hundred sixty five brand condiments, chips and dips at everyday low prices. Whole Foods Market. Make Y summer sizzle This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shan Harvee Dantem Many of us dream of making an impact on the world. But this aspiration doesn't always bring happiness And when we see we're not making an impact, we can start to feel trapped in a job or a relationship At Stanford University, Dave Evans studies how we can design our lives in ways that can be more satisfying and enduringly successful So let me turn again to listener questions and stories. We heard from a listener named Brian He was the city manager of a community north of Detroit he had achieved a lot of success. He had leadership, influence, stability, but inside He says he feelt trapped Every morning on my drive to City Hall I passed under the I seventy five overpass and told myself the same thing to get out of this job I must change my life But I was successful And board Rless, toxic profoundly stuck. Then my life spiraled even further down Divorce drinking, sleeping alone on the floor with nothing. all while showing up at the office, poised, professional and well spoken but not very sharp Just when I thought I hit bottom The trap door opened and further I went The FBI had wired a road construction contractor who had befriended me. We got drunk during the Christmas season And he took me out to his truck to discuss business. He handed me a thousand dollars money money I accepted and asked me if I was going to give him the new road contract Shortly thereafter I plleed guilty to bribery I was sentenced to thirty months in federal prison Hello hell. What should have been the worst chapter of my life became an unexpected reset prison stripped away my title, ego, and identity. But it also forced me to rebuild from the ground up One step at a time The irony is that the very thing I feared most became the catalyst for rebirth prrison gave me the disruption. I never chosen for myself. desperately needed. It forced me to confront how deeply stuck I had been long before my conviction. So as Brian experienced sometimes life forces us to change, we also heard from a listener named Audrey who enjoyed a successful career in IT until she was laid off in twenty twenty four And it gave me the opportunity to reassess I took a step back and was reminded by one of my daughters that A while back, I considered being a birth doula. seem like such a radical departure from a director of IT, I couldn't even imagined how that might happen. but I began looking into it and have sense over the past year built a wonderful new career as a birth doula, childbirth educator and lactation consultant supporting new moms who are having babies And I feel like with the birth of the first few babies that I've helped I've done more good for the world than I did in twenty five years in IT So that's another amazing story, Dave. And I'm so struck by something that both Brian and Audrey said that they would never have made the choices they made if they had to make them on their own. It's only because one door closed that they could start to think about a new one As someone who studied how we can intentionally design our lives, I'm wondering How these stories learn for you Well, you know, u The work that Bill and I do has put us in the place of hearing lots of people's stories, lots of people like Brian and Audrey. And what it turns out is most people's lives, if you look back from sixty or seventy or eighty They'll tell you There's a handful of inflection points where everything changed And those inflection points are the most meaningful transitions in their lives Very often they know the exact minute of those inflection points occurred. And most of them are outside in, not inside out. It's not when Audrey, you know, decided, I think I've done as much for IT as I can and now I'm going to start living into my doula self That would be inside out. That would be and I got laid off And holy cow now what do I do And so it turns out for most people Not every by any means, but many important changes occur outside in. And so in both Brian and Audrey's cases, in one case prison, in one case the layoff, outside in showed up with such strength that it gave them permission too finally think differently about themselves, maybe I could do this differently So what you know, what Audrey is doing is a perfect example of what we say all the time. All of us contain far more aliveness. More personhood than one lifetime permits you to live out. There's more than one of you in there She had fallen for her director of IT seuff. In fact, I think she actually used the phrase I couldn't imagine away to live into that being a rthullah. You know, our colleague at Harvard, Dan Gilbert talks about that question. When somebody tells you, I just can't imagine Most of the time what that tells you is not how unlikely that thing is, it tells you that that person's imagination is not reaching far enough So what we do A lot of our work is trying to reframe a person's perception of themselves You are bigger than one lifetime worth of a person. You don't have to be just one of you. You could actually decide to live into another version of you I can't promise you you can make as much money as a birth duel as you could as a director of IT. I can't change the market forces for you but you can actually be in charge of your life You know, I'm struck that some of the stories we've heard are people who feel like they're stuck in dead end jobs, things are not going well, and they're trying to get themselves onstuck. But we're also hearing stories from people who say, you know, I'm super successful, but I'm not doing what I really should be doing and I also feel stuck. And in some ways it's a more subtle form of stuckness, which is it's success that is causing you to feel stuck as opposed to failure There's a big difference between Proving to yourself that you can achieve a certain outcome And wanting to live there and do that When I was eighteen And I was a senior in high school I had always thought since sixth grade that I should be the president of the student body. For some reason, I had decided That's who I am And so when I was a senior I ran for president. becausecause I wanted to win president. Now my dear friend Kent who really wanted to be president of the school. He spent his whole summer interviewing every high school president in all of southern California. He talked to all the principals, who was looking, where is education going? What reforms could we bring to our high school? He had this huge platform of work and policies that he was going to lead to actually make the school a better school I just wanted to be elected. I just wanted to have the experience of all my peers going Dave is our favorite guy. you know? And so I ran and thankfully Kent beat me with a stick I lost miserably And I walked away from that going Shoot Thank God, you know because I don't want to do this work And there's a huge difference between I really want to be elected. I want to become CEO. I want to make a million dollars. I want to have a best selling book. I want to I want to achieve something. I want to achieve, you know a ribbon or a prize of some kind. Yeah. And then oh Now I am the CEO and I have this huge job and it's a ton of work and everybody's on me all day long like Oh wow. We talk about designing your life, not designing your goals Life isn't a goal, life is a lived experience So many of these questions often come to the fore in midlife. People are often taking stock of where they are, where they want to go Here's a story from Listener Ulga I am a woman in my forties and in my twenties, I had this drive and plan. I was going to be an attorney. I had a whole career path planned out for myself And when I came out of law school and I wasn unable to secure position, I ended up just letting that dream die and it stopped me from making any plans and I find myself kind of drifting along with my husband's plans or my parents' plans or whoever else has An idea for where their life is going to go. I have a job and I'm working but I don't feel like my life is designed. I'm wondering, do you have any advice for somebody who is facing kind of a midlife without a design and plan, without an idea of how to design your life moving forward on best steps to take So Dave, you and I talked a bit in our Hidden Brain plus conversation about using design thinking in different stages of life. That conversation was called seeasons of meananing for anyone who'd like to go back and hear it T talkk if you were Dave about the particular design challenges we face when we're at the midpoint of life. How you would advise Olga at the stage that she's in right now So Oga has a real problem and I've encountered it many times. It's not that uncommon. So she had something very specific in mind And it failed, didn't work out She actually did everything right. She went to a law school. She was on the plan that she had conceived in her twenties and had energy for. and it didn't work out. And when it didn't work out, she had no plan B in mind She probably didn't have an idea of what the not a successful lawyer Olga even could be. and what would design thinking recommend that Olga do. Ogan needs something that she hasn't had in a long time An interest in something she cares about. And so if I were sitting down at the Olga in office hours, I'd say olga look you've been doing other people's things for a long, long, long time. It has worked out okay. It's not horrible, but it's not very life giving. and now finally Y psyche is saying, hey, we think it's our turn But we have no idea what to do with it So great, that's a great project. Let's go curate your curiosity Tell me what you're interested in. tellell me what books she read, I would work with her. to find anything at all that she cares about. and let's grab one or two of those things and start reading vertically down into those things. Let's write those authors and find their contact on LinkedIn. let's get into the conversation. Let's see who else in your town cares about that and go buy them a cup of coffee. We'll start working on Aga. caring about something she cares about It's totally doable. But she's got a long sleep to awaken from When we come back, listeners share their stories of how they've gotten unstuck You're listening to hidden bra I'm Shankar Vedant The ultimate cookout starts with the ultimate ingredients. At Whole Foods market, no antibiotics ever burgers and kebabs are prepped and ready to throw on the grill. Fire up a juicy ribeye. Grab creamy potato salad and savory flatbreads from the prepared foods department, and round it all out with three hundred sixty five brand condiments, chips and dips at everyday low prices Whole Foods Market, Make your summer sizzle This is hidden brain. I'm Sankar Ved Danta At Stanford University, Dave Evans studies design thinking He says that this approach can help us lead more meaningful lives Along with Bill Burnnett, he's the author of How to Live a meaneingful Life, using design thinking to unlock purpose, joy, and flow every day Today, he's answering listener questions and comments about his work Dave, one of the suggestions you make is to remain fully engaged but calmly detached with any project L this idea for me, what does it mean to be fully engaged but calmly detached So fully engaged means you're showing up, you're fully participating in what you're doing at the time It really means you're entering the flow state, which we could talk more about, but what that means is my attention, my energy, my experience of myself and my surroundings is all focused on what's actually happening right now. talking to Shankar and thinking about what I'm going to cook for dinner or our friend Catherine who's visiting. I hope she's having a good time That's not being engaged, That's being distracted. So engagement means my full attention in the present moment Detachment means and that thing I'm doing I'm doing for its own sake freely, not worrying about the outcome and its results. So gosh, I really hope this Q and A session goes, well, it's great this Sankar called back and asked me, Okaykay, that's all worrying about the outcome So I want to be fully engaged, so I'm really thinking about your listener questions I want to be detached And those two things together Allow me to be more fully alive in the moment and that full aliveness allows me to feel more like a person and feeling more like a person is pretty meaningful So staying in the moment and remaining engaged is a worthy goal, but it can be tricky to maintain that over time A listener namedaoscha says his life seems great on paper. Here he is I'm someone who is from You know, the hills of Sri Lanka, I got a scholarship to go to one of the best schools in the world They moved to London. marry the of my life. I have a gorgeous little baby who's thirteen months old. And I do incredible work as a consultant in financial services. I have a phenomenal team. I have mentors, I have opportunity So it's all there, but I feel stuck what landed for me was the distinction between Be me in the moment better at what you're doing and being in the moment just because I was raised Buddhist, so mindfulness presence, that's all been taught my whole life whereere I struggle with is How do you actually keep staying in the moment? How do you keep making the best of the moment. Is it a habit? Is it something else? I'd love some thoughts on that So David, sounds like Kaul is doing many of the things that you and others would recommend. The question is how to maintain these practices, not just when you're making time for meditation, but as you're going about your daily life Any thoughts on that particular challenge Yes, and I'm smiling because I'm very impressed. Kowshll has really thoughtfully observed himself and asked an interesting question. He's catching himself realizing, oh my goodness Moment by moment, I notice Am I in this moment And I'm loving it because I'm doing it well or Am I enjoying it? Am I loving it because it's intrinsically valuable to me and I love this thing So what he has pointed out is we recently had this conversation with Bob Waldinger at Harvard, the last project leader of the longest running behavioral study of mankind, the Harvard adult stududy reminded us that if you live All through extrinsic motivations outside in, you know, curing cancer, making the money, making partner, whether it's a selfish or a self less goal, it's still outside in. And you lose track of the intrinsic motivators of love, compassion, joy, things for their own intrinsic sake And you do too much extrinsic and too a little intrinsic, you start losing over time the capacity to even notice and catch the signals of the experience of the intrinsic experience Hm. So what Kausal is catching himself in is, oh my goodness I'm mostly extrinsically motivated So the first thing is be forgiving. If I'm a becoming You know, I'm going to get better tomorrow, which means by tomorrow, I will look back and say, I was worse today That's okay You don't have to boil the ocean in one step. One step at a time, you're becoming, we're going to get there. It starts with the realization He's actually in a very good place. Dave, we heard from some listeners who said that their ability to redesign their lives is limited. Three years ago, listener Miguel moved with his family to Singapore His wife landed an exciting new job and they jumped at the chance for their two young kids to live abroad But Miguel says it hasn't been easy I've had to also make a really big adjustment as far as how I spend my time how I view career And I've also had to navigate some loss. My mom had died a few months ago due to complications from cancer which really sparked a lot of questions about purposefulness in life and meaning and These are questions that I myself had asked When I also got sick during the pandemic Also with cancer which I have since survived And I really appreciate the designing of our own lives, the concept of that and I'm just wanting to figure out what's a way I can honor that process without having it be so self centered, having two really young kids and a partner who depends on me I would like to make sure that even as I interrogate my own life and think about how to make responsible choices and restart career that I don't do so without compromising my responsibility to my partner and to my kids So if there's any question there, I suppose it's what can I do to balance designing my life and taking this fresh opportunity for any start. while not neglecting our responsibilities as a partner and as a parent McGill has been through a lot over the past few years, Dave, and as he said, he also has responsibilities to his partner and to his family And that means his ability to maneuver for himself might be somewhat constrained How can people like Miguel still think about designing their paths forward when they have all these responsibilities and constraints Well, of course they are We're all constrained Design thinking is not a magic wand. Design thinking is not the perpetual motion machine. that is suddenly going to, o if I design my life. Now that's the key and I can get everything I want No, you can't. That's totally okay, Wlcome to humanity Now what we're saying back to accceptance is I begin with reality, including the acceptance that I am a finite person in our In a recent book, we talk a lot about The three big reframes are around impact fulfillment and the scandal of particularity What the heck is the scandal of particularity? It's the recognition like, oh my gosh, it turns out no ultimate is ever fully experienced, love, beauty, justice, compassion, you name it, We willll never, ever actually see that whole thing. In reality, we see temporary, flawed, constrained, circumstantial, reflections of those things called a particularity and they come and they go And then when you realize that, then suddenly you go, oh my gosh. And one of the biggest particularities is I am a small expression of the fullness of the thing called me. We will never know the fullness of Miguel We will simply know the revealed Miguel that he chooses to bring to the world in the constrained little thing called seeven by twenty four hours And the constrained little thing called what Singapore is doing and what his family has He has boxed himself in And that's the good news. because now the design task isn't to transcend that box or to beat gravity, you can't do that. What you can do is I can make the most of what is So design, we talk about get more out of your life, not cram more into it. There's nothing missing in his life, other than deeply accepting the priorities of what he's going to do and what he's not going to do And once those decisions are made, own them and then get the most aliveness out of them you possibly can So constraint is actually your friend because it narrows the field of what you have to worry about I just turned seventy three And you know, past fifty, you start losing muscle mass I'm a motorcyclist and I like to go on motorcycle tours with my soon to be wife And I have a rule. You're not allowed to ride a motorcycle you can'tick up. I've got this great big six hundred pound motorcycle I can pic it up And the time is coming when I can't do that anymore Is that a problem? No, it's just true So I'm gonna live into it while I can, enjoy the heck out of it while I can, and then I'll do something else. Constraint is not an enemy. it's just true. We talked earlier about the perils of putting too much of our self worth into the idea that we need to make an impact We heard from a listener named Brittneany who teaches High schoolchool orchestra. She often senses that students take orchestra because it looks good on college applications. and she wonders whether her teaching is actually helping students fall in love with music. Here she is And I had one particular student who was a very fine musician, an all state violinist. U you know pleasant to work with in class, but I really thought that I anjoyed her. and I really thought that I was that she was just barely tolerating my existence and my enthusiasm for all things orrchestra related And she gave me a letter at graduation compleompletely floored me and got me hundred percent unstuck Because in her letter, she outlined how much she respected everything that she had witnessed me do in the past several years and how the Orchestra program had grown in the few short years that I had been there how she found it so inspiring to have this experience with a woman conductor. She went on in the letter to write about how she had written about me for her college application essay, which got her into her dream school of Georgetown and how inspired she had been every day that she sat in my classroom. I mean, cue the water works. I was just completely shocked that I had had this profound impact on the student and I had genuinely no idea So I've kept that letter all these years and I pull it out once or twice a year to remind myself that evenven when it feels that I'm not making the headway that I want. either musically or personally with these students The chances are I probably am because I had no idea the impact I was having on this student So I want to talk for a moment, Dave about how when we think about impact, we're actually focused on the impact that we can see. We're often not paying attention to the impact that we cannot see And very often the things that we do can have impact far beyond what we are actually aware of. In this case, of course, Brittney heard from her students, so she found out what was happening in her students's life. But for many of us, the things that we do, many of the things in our day to day life are going to have impacts on people that we cannot possibly ever learn about. And in some ways, we discount them and we imagine that we're having no impact Well, Brittneany had a very good day when she got that letter. That's a lovely experience. and that kind of thing does happen all the time to that fully engaged, calmly detached idea You have to remember you don't know what somebody else is thinking