Transcript- Professor Diane Dreher
Jess Leondiou (00:00.276)
I guess the reason that I wanted to speak to you today was we are in such a moment of uncertainty and confusion. And I was hoping that you could share with us some of the philosophy behind the Tao Te Ching and then also that your new work that you're doing in and around connection would be, yeah, it would be fantastic. But I guess I'd love for people to understand more about the Tao Te Ching because I feel like this could be a good philosophy for people to anchor into at this moment of upheaval and uncertainty. Yeah, if you could explain that to us, it would be fantastic.
Diane Dreher (00:35.278)
Oh my gosh, okay. Well, I've written about Tao Te Ching and use Tao philosophy in my daily life. One of the things I really love is that over 25 centuries ago, Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching during something called the Warring States Period in ancient China, which was a time of upheaval and uncertainty. And he and, okay, Lao Tzu,
Diane Dreher (01:04.16)
and Confucius were contemporaries. And they responded to the confusion in different ways. Confucius said, you need to follow the laws of culture and honor your elders and your leaders and, you know, live within these rules or Li, they were called. And that was how he found his sense of stability and security. Whereas Lao Tzu went wandering out into nature and found
inspiration and consolation in nature. He learned about the power of water, which is gentle and nurturing, yet with perseverance can cut through solid rock. And we, I think, can benefit from some of the Tao's different definitions of strength, like the power of water, which is gentle, nurturing, compassionate, and yet the strength of perseverance.
There's also the strength of bamboo, which bends with the wind so it doesn't break. Flexibility is a strength. Flexibility to be able to deal with challenges and not to get all rigid about them and demanding that life should be one way or not. But you say, OK, this is what's happening now and I am going to flow with it. So the Tao teaches very important concepts of strength and unfortunately in the western world a lot of the times we think of strength as just being tough and there's more yeah there's more to it than that there's being resilient like bamboo and also the Dao has these two polarities of yin and yang you know both and not either or. In the Western world, too often we seem to see someone who disagrees with us as, you know, as wrong or as the enemy or as a threat. And the Tao says, you know, no, there's yin and yang, and together they create harmony. So to listen to our differences and to learn from our differences and to somehow
Diane Dreher (03:26.368)
blend with the differences into a larger whole that creates harmony within and around us. So there are real important lessons in Tao, I think. There's also a quote from Tao Te Ching. Well, there are many quotes. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
We need to be patient. You can't just get what you want immediately. But there's also a quote from the Tao that the psychologist Carl Rogers used to carry in his wallet because Carl Rogers believed in listening and learning with and learning from his clients. And he brought people together in the Carl Rogers Peace Project, getting people who are, you know, who are at odds with each other to listen to each other. So his favorite quote from the Tao is,
When the work is done and the project completed, the people all say we did it ourselves. That is the best kind of leadership, according to Carl Rogers and the Dowdaging. We learn together, we learn from each other, and the best leaders bring people together to create new possibilities.
Jess Leondiou (04:44.916)
That is a really beautiful framing. I love that. Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, so these are all really beautiful philosophies. And in terms of how someone can actually start to implement them, I guess my own practice in terms of trying to change my mindset is to try and anchor into particular behaviors or choice points. So as you were speaking, I was thinking about, say, you if I had a judgment towards somebody. Trying to really step into that open mind and step into that mode of curiosity. What are the practices that you use in terms of living behind and living in alignment with those ideas and values? What does it look like inside of your head?
Diane Dreher (05:28.278)
Okay, well, that brings me to my most recent book, Pathways to Inner Peace, which is a way to get beyond chronic stress, which shuts down our ability to come up with creative solutions, which shuts down our ability to have peace of mind. And one, the first thing is mindful presence. Research shows that most people spend 50 % of the time doing one thing while thinking about something else. I mean, because our world is so full of distractions and people want to, you know, want to deal with it.
Diane Dreher (06:11.424)
the distractions and the here and now and they're juggling lots of things, but to be totally present again, be at one with the Tao, be at one with the present moment. So I have to stop myself when I find myself trying to do too many things at once or to rush the Tao. Now, again, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. There's a sense of patience. So I take a deep breath, and just remind myself that I'm here now, you know? So mindful presence, it's a wonderful strategy actually, because we breathe anyway, we don't require any special equipment to do that. If we catch ourselves feeling stressed or, you know, we're rushing, we're trying to do too many things at once, we can bring ourselves back to the present moment, to the way, the path, the Tao, by simply taking three deep mindful breaths, which puts us right back in the here and now. And I learned this from a neurosurgeon, Jim Doty at Stanford University, who would take three deep mindful breaths in the middle of complex brain surgery so he could center down. So I figure it works for brain surgery. It should help with our daily challenges too.
Jess Leondiou (07:35.38)
actually a really good story. like that a lot. It is often that sense that there's too much of a rush. There's too much to do. I'm too busy to meditate. I think there's some other quote around meditation in a similar frame. And the moments when you don't have time to meditate, those are the moments when you most need it.
Diane Dreher (07:52.609)
Yeah, and we don't need to sit for a half an hour if we're really busy. We can just take some mindful breaths and center down and be present, bring ourselves back to the present moment. But to have regular meditation practice is really important. Years ago, John Kabat-Zinn, who does mindfulness-based stress reduction and meditates every morning and does a little yoga, came to speak at my university. And after he finished, he took questions. And one woman in the audience stood up and said, with all the problems that are happening in the world today, don't you think it's a little self-indulgent for you to spend so much time every morning meditating and you know yoga and John took a deep breath smiled and said you know when I go to the Boston Symphony I notice that the the musicians always take time to tune their instruments before they begin performing meaning that our meditation is a way that we can tune our instruments so that we can be more present during the day. So inspired by John Cabot's end, I meditate every morning too.
Jess Leondiou (09:13.206)
That's a fantastic analogy. Yeah, that's gorgeous. I love that. And can you speak to why you think that this particular philosophy, like why do you think the Tao has persisted over so many years? Why do you think, yeah, that this text has endured in so much time? Withstood, I should say.
Diane Dreher (09:34.455)
I think it's because of a number of things, because there's a lot of deep wisdom there about being centered. And creative people throughout history have actually benefited from the Tao Te Ching, which has been translated more than any other book in the world, with the exception of the Bible, because it touches so many people's hearts. But I think there's also a lot of wisdom of nature in the Tao, and that research has shown that renewing our connection with nature relieves our stress, activates our immune system, and helps us think more creatively. Because we are part of nature. And to forget that connection with nature is ridiculous. We breathe in what the trees breathe out. We're part of the yin and yang exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen, now, with every breath we take.
Jess Leondiou (10:37.533)
makes sense. And if someone's listening to this and they want to start to practice this kind of philosophy, there's the mindful component and then there's the reading of the book. Do you suggest that someone should read the book and then are there further things that they should do to try and ingrain the thinking or how else do you kind of try and turn action towards this philosophy?
Diane Dreher (10:59.24)
my. Well, one way of connecting with the Tao is movement. And there are Eastern Tai Chi, Qigong, you know, exercises, but then, you know, simply walking, taking a walk in nature, moving our bodies, because we're more than just individuals that are you know, working on computers, we are complete beings and it's important for us to recognize that fact.
Jess Leondiou (11:32.808)
That makes sense as well. Do you feel like I've been asking myself the question, I feel like there's a lot of conversation around religion at the moment. And I feel like for a lot of people, there's a gap between having no belief or having a religious belief. Do you feel like this kind of philosophy can perhaps sit somewhere in the center, where it's almost like a guideline or a frame to live by, but it doesn't have so much of the dogmatism that perhaps sits behind it?
How do you see the need for a belief or a philosophy as something that underpins a person's existence?
Diane Dreher (12:07.86)
Okay, well, I believe that everyone needs a sense of purpose, you know, to explain why we're here, what we're doing, and to give us a sense of guidance. But some religions emphasize sin and guilt, or, you know, if you don't abide by their particular philosophies, they, you don't, you're not going to go to heaven. And there's fear involved and kind of, you know, conforming to the rules and what the Tao does, what you know is just affirm that we're all spiritual beings and that we need to listen to our hearts, we need to listen to nature, we need to look for harmony and try to create harmony within and around us so that it's and also a person can practice know, Taoism and belong to any number of religions. I've known people who are Jewish, who are, you know, inspired by the Tao Te Ching, who are Protestant Christians, who are inspired by the Tao Te Ching. And I'm a Catholic, actually, and I'm inspired by Tao Te Ching. I don't see that there's a conflict because the Tao doesn't have any dogma.
Jess Leondiou (13:30.546)
Yeah, I like that. That makes a lot of sense. Do you think that someone could perhaps pick it up and try and hold it like someone might a religion? If someone's been brought up atheist, do you think that it is something that someone can use as almost like a compass for navigating particular situations?
Diane Dreher (13:46.127)
Sure. It does have, you know, important lessons. Honesty, flexibility, harmony, presence,reverence for nature on many levels, and also respect for other people. That quote about leadership involves everybody. The people all said we did it ourselves. So that there are values that are affirmed in the Dao De Jing that are, I think, universal human values, actually, that promote peace.
Jess Leondiou (14:21.47)
Yeah, that's really nice. Because another question, not to stay on religion for too long, but it's been a real interest of mine recently. I'm asking myself the question, how can we come up with structures that also ask people to come together? I spoke to a woman of Islamic faith the other day and we had a really interesting conversation because I created a habit journal and the habit journal is based on gratitude and rhythms and rituals and building things out over a week, and we were speaking about her faith and we were speaking about this habit journal and we were finding all this commonality. And she was like, all of the things that I love about my religion are the things that are built into our habit journal. And I've been asking myself, religion seemed to serve the function of people coming together and doing things like gratitude, you know, singing songs, just actually connecting, you know, holistically, on a particular day of the week. And those things are so gorgeous. I'm just wondering how we can savor those aspects of religion and bring them into our communities without, yeah, I guess it is the dogma, without the, not the threat, but do you know what I mean? Like, how can we push people toward those habits and those rhythms and rituals and motivate them to come together in the same way that religion did without perhaps having religion? Like, what's the new version?
Diane Dreher (15:44.429)
Well, okay, that's a good question. Most religions seem to have a sense of community. People come together to worship, whether they're Islamic or Jewish or Christian or any number of Buddhist, actually. There's a Buddhist temple in my town. So people come together to meditate. I think community is absolutely essential. Whatever brings people together.
Diane Dreher (16:13.294)
to in a community of heart is part of most religions that I'm aware of. You don't need dogma, but we do need community. We need to have a sense of belonging, a sense of trust in our world, and also a sense of reverence. What some positive psychology is, practitioners call awe, the sense of, you know, being just totally overwhelmed by a beautiful sunset or by beautiful music or something, to lose our separate ego and to be part of something larger than ourselves. And that's a religious experience that doesn't necessarily need to live inside a religion. In addition, gratitude, my goodness, you know, that's the most powerful intervention in positive psychologist Robert Emmons, who's in California, a little north of where I live, does research on gratitude. And of course, people will pause before they share a meal together and very often say grace. But to have a gratitude journal and to write down what we're grateful for at the end of each day. It cuts through the sense of isolation and anxiety that so many people are feeling these days. Every morning I actually pull the shades, look out the window and give thanks for another beautiful day. Whether it's raining or whatever the weather is like, to just be grateful for the small blessings that we have, I think, makes us aware that, again, that the world is not necessarily, an alien place and that we're connected to something larger than ourselves.
Diane Dreher (18:16.298)
Yeah, well, there's some kind of interesting research that is in my new book, Pathways to Inner Peace. I have these nine pathways because I was feeling disconnected and distressed because of a lot of things that have been going on. So I thought, well, what can we do about it? So these simple practices have been practiced in centuries of religious tradition described by poets and philosophers, and all of them have been validated by research in psychology and neuroscience. And one of the funny ones that deals with community, there are many practices in the pathways, the pathway of community, there's a woman named Barbara Fredrickson who's a psychologist who studies positive emotions. Can you imagine? This is what she does all day. And she's found that there's something she calls micro moments of connectivity, which is just, you know, saying hello to a neighbor, waving at a neighbor driving by, exchanging a kind word with a clerk at the grocery store. That quick connection takes maybe less than a minute, relieves stress, reduces inflammation, activates the immune system, and increases a sense of positivity in both people. And she's found that there's a positive ripple effect that can happen throughout entire communities when people do this. So I thought, isn't that fun? So it's a game I now play. If I see somebody, I'll say hi, or I see a neighbor driving by, I'll wave at that person saying, this is good for both of us.
Well, it is. It's we to ourselves, but we give to the other person at the same time. It's both and. It's a yin and yang. And it costs nothing. It takes very little time. And since so many people got disconnected during COVID, and a lot of the places where we used to meet went away during COVID. I used to have lunch with my friend Tina at this little
Diane Dreher (20:33.24)
cafe and of course it closed during COVID because people didn't go out to eat. A lot of people and some of the people went away. They moved away or they passed away. So that a lot of our connections were broken during COVID and we need to make them, you know, we need to repair these circles of connection in our lives. And we can do that in very simple ways.
Jess Leondiou (20:58.418)
Yeah, that's beautiful. And that is what I love about your book. Your book is extremely practical. It's practical, it's well researched. And yeah, to use the title, it does offer you a really nice pathway into stepping into presence and these kinds of practices. Yeah, it is a really beautiful guide. Maybe you can tell me the story of what brought you to this book and what brought you to this work in the first place.
Diane Dreher (21:23.116)
Well, I started thinking about feeling very disconnected because a lot of my friends passed away during COVID. My husband passed away and I retired from teaching at the university after teaching remotely for a couple of years. So a lot of my connections were broken. And I thought, okay, I'm feeling disconnected and distressed. So I started looking at the research and realized, well, there's this British psychologist named Steve Taylor who said that we are all feeling disconnected and this is very bad for our emotional and physical health. And I thought, okay, somebody's noticed this. And in my country, Vivek Murthy, our surgeon general for a couple of years ago said that we were suffering from an epidemic of loneliness and isolation.
So what's the opposite of disconnection are ways that we can connect. We can connect with living in the present moment. We can connect with nature, which has inspired poets and philosophers for absolutely centuries. Throughout, well, many centuries Lao Tzu was inspired by nature 25 centuries ago in ancient China. have some poets in Britain, in the United States, in most countries who are inspired by the beauty of nature. Because nature brings us the sense of connection, the sense of beauty, the sense of meaning somehow. Community, meditation, kindness, purpose, and intuition. A lot of us have made decisions or had a discovery that comes to us by intuition. We couldn't have thought of it ourselves, but somehow an intuitive experience makes us aware that we're part of something larger than ourselves. And I reflected back on years ago when my parents told me they couldn't afford to send me to college. So I got a job. I got a lot of little part-time jobs and temporary jobs in the summertime.
Diane Dreher (23:36.911)
was driving home after a week of a part-time temp job, past the Riverside Press Enterprise newspaper office. And something within me said, Diane, if you want to be a writer, you should work there. So I turned the car around, parked it in the lot, and as a shy teenager, walked into the newsroom and said to a reporter, hi, I'm Diane Dreher. I'm a writer. I'd like to apply for a job.
Diane Dreher (24:04.022)
He said, okay, we need to go upstairs to the personnel office. So I did and filled out some papers and they said, our college intern just gave notice this morning. Can you start work on Monday? That would be a 20 hour a week job. It was enough money to pay for my tuition books and room and board. How did I know that? You know, and they said, we haven't even advertised the job yet, you know, because she just gave notice.
That was my intuition. I think we're all connected to some kind of inner guidance. But when we're worried and anxious and stressed, we can't hear that still small voice within.
Jess Leondiou (24:43.47)
Mm-hmm. I completely agree. Yeah, that's a really beautiful sentiment. So I love that too. So the processes and the practices that are outlined in your books, they can actually bring you closer to that part of yourself, that intuitive knowing. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.
Diane Dreher (25:00.961)
There are things that we can do to quiet our mind, you know, when we're feeling anxious about something. And again, there's research on this. When we have a decision to make, we can do it cognitively, intellectually, listing the pros and cons of a decision. But if it's a complicated decision, we do better when we look at all the information and then we just go away, take a nap, take a walk, take a break. And then if we go to sleep, we may wake up the next morning with the solution in our minds, which is something that a couple of Dutch psychologists have found out helps people make better decisions because they are letting their intuitive guidance, their unconscious, whatever it is, do the work while they're not thinking about it. And then… the answer comes. Yes?
Jess Leondiou (26:07.572)
very interesting as well. Yeah, that's actually very interesting. Do you know how it is that they're going about measuring that? That strikes me as really interesting because I know for myself, when I peel back all of the layers of my life, the decisions I most regret are definitely the ones where I did not follow my intuition. So it's those moments where I had a very clear signal and then something that was logical overtook that signal. And then I've just gone...
Jess Leondiou (26:35.496)
But why? Like I knew and I had the knowing, but I couldn't articulate enough logic to justify the intuition. And so perhaps I let somebody else's guidance sway me. And that's a thread between the things that I regret. Yeah, that's so interesting. I'm curious about, do you know anything about how they measured the response people had to these decisions? It seems like a tricky thing.
Diane Dreher (27:00.6)
Well, they've done, one of the persons is called Appdeuchsterhuis. He's published research on this. I, you know, he mainly talked about the results, you know, that the people felt that they had made the better decision, you know, looking back. But there are other examples. I mean, for example, when Albert Einstein would be working in his lab on something, and he'd get to a point where he was stuck. What did he do? He went sailing. He left his work, right? He got away from it and he got out into nature, which again, being close to nature is supposed to help us be more creative. So he ended up having to keep a little notebook in his pocket because he'd be out sailing and all of a sudden the solution would come to him and he'd write it and go back to his lab and finish his work.
Jess Leondiou (28:07.474)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense too. And it's interesting because I hate to try and look for a carrot and a stick to help people motivate themselves towards this kind of a practice, but that is a beautiful motivation. Like more innovation, more intuition, more knowing. That is a beautiful reason to step into these practices because I think that they often do have that sense that you kind of referred to before with the woman who was asking with so much going on, how can you make time to meditate?
Jess Leondiou (28:36.296)
But when you frame it like that, it's like, well, you might get more innovation. You might get more intuition, better decisions. That does give people something that's more concrete to anchor onto, which it's unfortunate that we kind of need that. But I feel like for a lot of us, it is easier to motivate ourselves with that kind of carrot, I guess. So it's, yeah, it's beautiful to hear you frame it like this.
Diane Dreher (28:59.458)
Yeah, and unfortunately intuition, it's not something tangible. Whereas, you know, we can use a calculator or something or ask somebody or go online or perish the thought, ask AI, you know. But, you know, it takes faith in the unknown and the unseen to believe, to follow our intuition. And yet whenever I followed it,
Jess Leondiou (29:34.388)
So true. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's really beautiful because I guess all of that kind of speaks to this idea of like letting go, letting go of control and being willing to step into the uncertainty.
Diane Dreher (29:48.111)
Oh yeah, letting go of control. I gave a talk on campus yesterday actually about the three things that keep us from being present. And one of them is feeling like we've got to control everything, we've got to plan everything, which fills our minds with planning while we're sitting and doing something else. And why is that? I think underneath that obsession with controlling and planning is fear. Somehow we feel, we feel somehow that, you know, we feel anxious and we've got to do this thing in order to feel safe. But there's, if we are living a spiritual life as well as a physical life, we're connected to our intuition, we're connected to nature, we're connected to something much larger than ourselves. But that takes faith in something that
Jess Leondiou (30:49.618)
Yeah, that makes sense as well. I'd love to hear the other points. So there's the point that stops us from stepping into presence. I'd love to hear all three if you're open to it.
Diane Dreher (30:57.046)
Okay. Well, all right. One of them is obviously trying to do too many things at once. Not being, you know, not being present. At one point, okay. And the other one is rushing. Being in a hurry. We are not then connected. We're not aware of what's going on within us or around us. There was a study done years ago at the Princeton Theological Seminary in the United States. During a cold day in December, a researcher asked these young people who were going to become ministers, if they were spiritual people, wanted to make a positive difference and help people. He said, okay, you need to go next door and give an impromptu speech. And he told some of them they needed to give a speech on their future careers, and others were told they needed to give a speech on the parable of the good samaritan. And so one by one they met with the researcher and he he told them this is where you go to the building next door you know walk through the alley go to this building and do your talk and some of them he looked at his watch and said oh dear you're running late you're going to have to hurry to get there and they had somebody.
Another young man who was slumped in a doorway. This was, you know, part of the experiment. He really wasn't sick coughing and groaning and Right along the path where these people were going to give their talk and to get to the next building So some of them it was again. It was a cold day in December and you know in my part of the planet December is really cold. Okay, it's winter
So some of them stopped and said, dear, are you okay? Do you need help? Would you like to go inside? It's really cold out here. And they were kind to this person, which again, as ministerial students, you'd expect them to be kind and caring people. Whereas others just rushed on by. And what made the difference, those who stopped to help and those who ignored the supposedly suffering person?
Diane Dreher (33:20.492)
was not whether they're going to talk about their future careers or the parable of the Good Samaritan, but was if they were in a hurry. And some of the people actually who are going to give a talk on the Good Samaritan just about stepped over the suffering young man, ignored him and went rushing on their way. So what does that say when we're in a hurry, we're in a stress reaction.
And it shuts down our higher brain centers, our ability to think clearly and creatively. It makes us feel like, you know, fight, flight or freeze. It really limits our ability. So rushing is very bad for mindful presence.
Jess Leondiou (34:04.164)
Yes, that makes sense. There's so many tricky kinds of paradoxes with these things. It's like you have to slow down to speed up all of these kinds of ideas. But yeah, it makes perfect sense. it's just, I suppose it's so tricky for everybody to kind of embody these sorts of, this sort of wisdom. It's hard for people.
Diane Dreher (34:27.542)
Yeah, I have, well, some of, there are things that we can do that put us back into the present. One is again, to take, you know, some mindful breaths. Another is to say a mantra or a spiritual word or phrase. And that, that again, grounds us, centers us. There's a woman who was a nurse practitioner at the San Diego Veterans Hospital.
And she had a spiritual phrase from her religious tradition that she would say when she felt anxious or stressed to bring her back to being present. And she thought, well, maybe I'll do an experiment and ask people to choose a spiritual word or phrase. her fellow workers, know, working in a hospital, health care workers, you know, this is a stressful situation. So they chose this mantram and then they started using it and got, you know, got used to using it just when they were walking around or doing dishes or whatever so that it would be something that they could grab onto in their minds when they really did need to use it for stress. Yes, of course, their stress significantly declined. So she thought, wow, isn't that amazing? Just saying a word to yourself. You don't even need to say it out loud, a word that centers and grounds you. But then she thought,
Okay, well maybe I'll share it with some of the patients. So there were a bunch of veterans who had PTSD who would be triggered and get, you know, post-traumatic stress disorder. So she had them choose a spiritual word or phrase, and when they used it, they had a significant decrease in their PTSD symptoms. So if it's that powerful to choose a word that, you know, whether it's Ave Maria or Rama or you know, any number of om mani padne hum, from whatever spiritual tradition, if it resonates with you, you can say that, and again it brings you back. And it's something you don't need any special equipment, you know, it doesn't cost anything. None of these practices require any special equipment, actually, other than perhaps walking in nature, you might need to have a good pair of shoes, but you know.
Diane Dreher (36:51.246)
You don't need anything special, just whatever shoes you have, unless you'd like to go barefoot. But we have pine needles in my neighborhood and going barefoot on pine needles is not a good idea. Yeah, there are things we can do that can bring us back to being present, to having peace of mind. And then we're in touch with our intuition. Another is the arts, poetry, music, drama, and a wonderful novel. Meaning, creativity has been part of our human condition since people started painting on the Lescaux caves in Western Europe centuries and centuries ago. I know, it's something that we human beings do and we resonate with art. And so to either create art or appreciate art, again, makes us feel connected and present. And there are studies that show that people who visit art museums in London, for example, increase, have a decrease in depression.
Jess Leondiou (38:03.442)
Wow. Yeah, it's really beautiful what you're saying. And it makes me think too, I think what's so sad is I feel like I was thinking about, you know, the moment when an anxious thought comes up and then that's the moment where you almost arrive at the choice point where you can either step into the breath or continue on the path of the thought. But then I thought, unfortunately, now there's also the phone. So it's like at the moment, I think when people reach that moment of, say, discomfort or rumination.
There's the breath, but I think we've become so trained to pick up the phone. And I think that's the thing that we're doing to intercept and to pull us out rather than something like presence or breath. So what you're suggesting is really beautiful. And maybe that's the habit to try and anchor a breath before we say pick up our phones or just to try and bring that active presence back into our day today.
Diane Dreher (38:54.658)
Yeah, I mean, there's often, it depends on what we do with our phones. Scrolling on social media has been shown to create greater anxiety and depression. In fact, there's a book, The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, who's a psychologist who's concerned that young people, college students these days, are very depressed and anxious and their levels of depression and anxiety rose at the same time that most of them started using smartphones. So it's a significant correlation, you might say, okay? But when we experience anxiety, one wonderful way of dealing with that is self-compassion. There's a Kristin Neff who's a psychologist in Texas has come up with this idea of self-compassion. And there are a few steps. The first step is to acknowledge what we're feeling instead of pushing it away, okay, because it's still there if we ignore it. know, denial is not a good practice, but to say, oh, anxious, stressed, scared, worried, whatever it is, because what happens when we do that
There's a part of our brain called the amygdala, which is the alarm center that goes off when we're stressed and worried or whatever. When we verbalize what we feel, we're acknowledging our feelings. And it shifts the energy in our brain from the amygdala to the Broca's and Wernicke's area, the verbal areas in the left hemisphere. So that immediately just acknowledging what we feel, being mindful of what we feel saying it to ourselves silently. don't, if you're sitting in a meeting, you don't need to say it out loud. And just taking a deep breath. And then the second point she recommends is common humanity to say it's only human to feel this way. You know, there's nothing wrong with human beings, okay? And then the third part is to be kind to ourselves.
Diane Dreher (41:08.11)
What would you say to a dear friend who is feeling stressed and anxious? No, you idiot, you shouldn't feel this way. But, you know, it's okay, I'm here for you, you know, we'll get through this. And she said, you can put your hand on your heart, can, you know, squeeze your shoulders and give yourself a hug. You can even say a prayer if that's a way of connecting, you know, and being, you know connected to kindness and compassion on a spiritual level. But so it's acknowledging, verbalizing what we feel. It's only human. Then kindness, connecting with kindness. That really does seem to help. It helps me a lot more than trying to ignore my feelings, because they don't go away. They're still there.
Jess Leondiou (41:59.54)
Yeah, like to think about it too, like in journaling workshops, like looking at the monster under the bed. You think something scary is under there, but if you just take a look, you know, it's like when you're a kid, there is no monster. So it's better to look the feeling in the face and acknowledge its presence than to try and turn away from it because avoiding it gives you more anxiety than facing it front on.
Diane Dreher (42:22.892)
That's absolutely right. It reminds me of when I was really a little kid. There was some place where we lived and I would go from the door of my bedroom and take a flying leap onto the bed so that the monster couldn't grab me. I didn't know any better. I could have looked under the bed, but I was too young, I guess. But again, that was avoidance and avoidance, you know,
Diane Dreher (42:52.684)
That didn't repair the problem because I have to do it every night. Whereas if I looked under the bed, I think, there's really nothing there. Yeah, that's really sweet. And you mentioned too, Dana, you mentioned at the start there's a new book that you're working on. Did you want to share something around that or is it not quite ready?
Jess Leondiou (43:19.954)
this book. I thought I read this book, Pathways to Inner Peace. I thought you were saying there was a different one in addition. Pathways to Inner Peace was fantastic. Okay okay.
Diane Dreher (43:27.568)
no, that's my newest book. Although I am now going to be writing a new book, I'm writing little notes and getting insights and inspirations. And it's, okay, the working title is Beyond the Clouds. What is that all about, right? It's a spiritual book, actually, of meditations and with some research. The story is that my father was a pilot. He got his pilot's license at age 16. He left home because his mother wanted him to be a priest and he was really poor and moved into the attic of the Louisville flying service a long time ago during the depression actually. And would help, he was going to high school but when he was finished with school he'd help wash the airplanes and fuel them and do everything because the idea of seeing a plane fly overhead was a form of freedom. It was something that spoke to him deeply. So he got his pilot's license at age 16 because the old barnstormer pilots kind of adopted him and taught him things. And he was on the front page of the Louisville paper as the youngest pilot in Kentucky at age So he loved to fly. And I decided I was going to take flying lessons. So I got so I could solo in a Cessna 150 and flew around the San Francisco Bay Area. And my dad and I would go flying when I would go down to Southern California to visit my parents. And one day it was really cloudy. And I said, well, it doesn't look like we're going to be able to fly today. And he said, no, let's go out to the airport. And took off broke through the clouds and above the clouds, the sky was blue and the sun was shining. And he said, the sun is always shining. Sometimes when you're too close to the ground, you can't see through the clouds, but the light is always there. And I thought, wow, what an image. What is it that clouds our vision and keeps us from seeing the light that the sun is always there? Because it always is.
Diane Dreher (45:50.613)
And we can get clouded by anxiety, by being too busy, by being afraid, by any number of things that cloud our vision. And yet, that inspiration, that joy, that sense of being above the clouds is fantastic. So more about that later. I've just begun.
Jess Leondiou (46:14.582)
That's fantastic. I really look forward to it. I really do. As I said, I really enjoyed your book, The Pathways. I thought it was fantastic. And yeah, I look forward to your next work as well. Yeah. What's inspired you to distill down this wisdom in the way that you've done? So you've got your personal story. Is that where it began? You worked out this roadmap for yourself and then you wanted to share that with the world?
Diane Dreher (46:48.148)
Okay, a couple of things. My father was an Air Force pilot, you know, so we moved all the time. I mean, we've lived in the Philippine Islands, we lived all throughout Western Europe, all throughout the continental United States, and we were always moving. I was in 10 different schools before I graduated from high school, which was a lot, I'd have to leave all my friends behind. So at every new place where we were stationed, I'd go to the library and they had some of the same books in the library that were in the last place. So I checked them out again. And I remember reading Louisa May Alcott's Little Women at various different destinations. You know, it's like, they were like my neighbors almost. I go, there they are again. I'll reread this book. And I remember walking around the libraries looking up at the books in the stacks thinking someday I'd like to write a book that people can read too and I'd like my book to be up there. So I always, you know, I loved books and since we lived in the Philippine Islands when I was, again, my father was stationed at Clark Air Force Base, we had people coming from China, from all over and my father would go on these trips. He'd fly the airplane, obviously, and come back with stories and with Asian artwork and beautiful tapestries. And so I fell in love with the art of the East and the wisdom of the East and thought, it's very different. Asian art has a lot of what the Japanese call yōhaku, now, empty space. There's, you know, some trees or flowers or something, but then there's, you know, there's empty space.
Whereas in the West, we tend to fill up our canvas with all kinds of stuff. We're much busier and busier. now, the yin space, the empty space is not so much there. But it was there everywhere when I lived in the Philippines. I really was fascinated by the wisdom of the East. And so I suppose I've been interested in Eastern art and Eastern philosophy since I was 10 years old.
Jess Leondiou (49:12.262)
Yeah, that makes sense. And that's really interesting what you're saying about the philosophies across the East and the West. Do you think that something like the ideas that the Tao puts forward, would almost sort of feel like they've come to somebody naturally if perhaps they've grown up in the East? Is it almost like something that not that you take for granted, that's sort of embedded so thickly into culture that it wouldn't come across as a new concept like it might to somebody over in the West?
Diane Dreher (49:42.159)
It depends on where in the East, you know, I think that people in the East tend to think more in terms of the empty space, the in space, they aren't, you know, into constant busyness. I live in California Silicon Valley, which invented computers.
Diane Dreher (50:10.058)
and all kinds of cars, traffic, and noise. My house is surrounded by trees, but out there in the world, it's very busy. And in the East, not so much, in villages. But I went to China a few years ago. Some of the people in China have forgotten about the wisdom of the Dao De Jing. They're just trying to be as busy and productive as anybody in the West.
Jess Leondiou (50:41.342)
Yeah, is this a worldwide problem that we're having? Have we all kind of forgotten ancient wisdom and then the art of presence, do you think?
Diane Dreher (50:49.902)
I think that we created these wonderful distractions, technological distractions for ourselves. Meaning, in the old days, people didn't have cars, so they walked into town and they saw their neighbors. They had more community, they had more connection with nature, they got more exercise, and their lives were slower and simpler. And now we've got these, you know... busy freeways, cars going everywhere, traffic, people are in a big hurry, you know, they have this rushing hurry sickness, because our inventions, our external technological inventions have speeded up our lives and made them very busy. And we then, I think, need to consciously choose, you know, to slow down, consciously choose to connect with people on a regular basis.
Because during COVID, people didn't want to go to the grocery store because they still had their groceries delivered. It was safer. They didn't want to die of COVID. I can understand that. And some of my neighbors still have everything delivered. I see Amazon trucks delivering things here and there. And I'm thinking, what? I like to go to our local hardware store.
They have all kinds of wonderful things there and they have people there who can give me advice on how to fix things and how to build things. And this is fun. It's one of my favorite stores in town. I like to go buy my groceries and I have friends that work in my local grocery store that I see on a regular basis. It's important to have community. and in the old days, before all of our inventions, everybody lived in a community. lived, people lived in small towns. They didn't get in their cars and. jet around. They walked. They had front porches in a small town I lived in in Kansas in the Midwest in America. I could walk into town and neighbors would be sitting out on their front porch and we'd wave at each other and everybody knew everybody. That was a real advantage, you know. Now here in my neighborhood we don't have front porches. have
Diane Dreher (53:11.926)
The garage is there and the garage door opens, the car goes out, people leave and then they come home, the garage door goes up, they go inside. You don't see them.
Jess Leondiou (53:24.338)
There's no time for those incidental moments, the smile and the wave that add that connection that filters through.
Diane Dreher (53:29.548)
No, we have to make it happen, you know? I mean, the neighbors that I know are the neighbors who have dogs because they walk their dogs around the neighborhood. But the people who I know a lot of my neighbors, obviously, but there's one house about four doors down the street. And I was asking Kathy, one of my neighbors, does anybody live there? I never see anybody.
Diane Dreher (53:58.783)
yes, I mean, I've been here for years, I've never seen them. But their yard is taken care of and you know, but apparently, you know, they must go to work really early before I get out. And so I don't see them and they must come home at a time when I'm not there. But I have never seen these neighbors. That's really weird.
Jess Leondiou (54:21.438)
Yeah, yeah, that is a really good example of the kind of, yeah, this strange moment in time that we're sort of living in.
Diane Dreher (54:30.166)
Yeah, so we need to consciously embrace the ancient wisdom and bring it back into our lives, which means mindful presence, nature, community, meditation, clearing our minds so that we can listen to the still small voice within and also, you know, connecting with the arts and connecting with joy. When people are stressed, they're too busy to feel joy. And yet joy is what we really need when we're feeling stressed. So one of my friends who writes about hope says we need to cultivate happiness habits to do something every day that brings us joy. If we have other habits that we do our laundry and the grocery store and, you know, go to work, etc. Do the dishes. But a lot of these things you know, some of the things I hope our work brings us joy, something that's fun, you know, adults somehow feel like fun is for children, play is for children. And that's, that's too bad because play is what we do as human beings that brings us a sense of joy. And of course, gratitude also brings us a sense of joy. So we need to do something every day that brings us a sense of joy, lights up our lives.
Jess Leondiou (55:58.13)
Yeah, I agree with that also. And I feel too, it's another one of those topics that I feel has become a little bit muddied by social media because I feel like sometimes the moments that are the most joyful are the ones that happen behind the scenes. Now, it's like laughing on the couch with your friends or like, for example, my parents are staying with me at the moment. And what's been most fun is when everybody's hanging about together. It's not the moment when you're at dinner or it's not necessarily the moment when everybody's dressed up.
There's a nice photo that you could say put on social media. It's like the moments between. And I think too, we're sort of forgetting what joy means and we're getting a little bit confused with things that we can show and share versus things that truly ignite that feeling.
Diane Dreher (56:44.91)
If we all become our own PR firms, that keeps us from being, you know, from being honest. I have one friend who actually puts honest posts on social media when she's feeling bad, even though she's sick or whatever she posts.
But everybody else is all dressed up and they're having gourmet meals. So they're going on vacation. And so you look at everybody else's posts and think, my gosh, know, everybody's doing these wonderful things and I'm, what am I doing? You know, so we can, we can feel a sense of competitiveness and feeling left out, you know, which is ridiculous actually, because those impromptu, experiences where you do something and you find yourself laughing with a friend, that's somehow more energizing and more authentic than some of these post-formal engagements.
Jess Leondiou (57:47.7)
Relating back to what you said before too, in terms of the, now, that we used to live in a village and we used to see, you know, say 40 people or so. I do wonder also what is the impact of the volume of comparison that our poor brains must be going through? Because I thought to myself, even just during COVID, how many faces have I seen today? And what sense would my brain be making out of this myriad of gorgeous women's faces?
Because at that moment, I was living by myself and so I wasn't really seeing any humans. I was just seeing these kinds of gorgeous filtered women day after day. And I watched my self-esteem become lower as a kind of COVID passed. But it was very interesting to me because I'm like, my poor mind doesn't even know what a real person looks like anymore. It just knows what an amalgamation of filtered faces looks like. And what the heck is that doing for everybody?
Diane Dreher (58:45.036)
Yeah, yeah, I used to date a fashion photographer and he told me, well, you know, they don't really look like that in real life, you know. We have this lighting, we have, we do retouching, you know, all this. said, really? So, reality, I mean, this is to embrace reality, you know, and to laugh at our mistakes and to be able to be vulnerable and authentic, I think is so much more. I don't know, more comfortable ultimately than trying to put on perfection and to try to be something that we're not or to feel like we're the only one that isn't perfect. It's only human, as Kristin knew. And we can learn a lot from our mistakes, from funny situations.
Jess Leondiou (59:46.418)
Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Actually, it's completely off topic, but I just wanted to ask, where do you think we're going, Dana? Where do you think we're going in terms of AI, in terms of the human spirit? Do you think we are going to be able to navigate our way back to something more human or do you have an opinion?
Diane Dreher (01:00:05.918)
Well, I plead guilty since I live in the tech world. You know, if it's used wisely to do routine things can free us up to do more creative things. However, there are people who use AI for therapy. Can you believe that? And there's something called chat GPT.
Diane Dreher (01:00:35.532)
I'm glad I'm not teaching college anymore because the students will have the chat GPT write their papers for them. But one poor young man who was in high school was having chat GPT help him with his homework. His parents are now suing the company that made chat GPT because he told chat GPT, well, you know, I don't really feel like my life is going well. And I think I'm going to kill myself, and instead of calling 988, which is the suicide prevention hotline here, Chad GPT doesn't know enough to do that. And it is not a mandated reporter as a therapist would be. you're a teacher or a therapist, whatever, hears that coming from a young person, you take action. The Chad GPT just said, well, how do you plan to do it? Are you going to take pills? Are you going to hang yourself? mean, you got a gun in the house? So he killed himself, and his parents were devastated and are suing chat GPT because, you know, their son needed help and he was really suicidal. And they obviously this chat GPT he thought was his friend. People develop relationships with this AI being and it's not human. It has no empathy. It has no compassion.
So you have to be real careful about not using it for the wrong reasons. And unfortunately, there's some information that's come out. A lot of people like to have an AI relationship because AI tells them what they want to hear. And if you have a relationship with a human being, no relationship, even the best relationships I've ever had, never do they tell me exactly what I want to hear.
Diane Dreher (01:02:33.262)
No, because we're all different. We're all unique. We're all human. But Chad GPT just saves up what you've told it before and then has a store of information and gives you back what you think you want to hear. So I think what's going to happen is that we're probably going to go off the deep end for a while and then realize the incredible value of our humanity and of our human relationships.
Jess Leondiou (01:03:12.702)
Yeah, I think so too. Yeah, that's a beautiful sentiment. Well, I wanted to ask, this is my final question. I just wanted to say, I love to leave the listeners, I guess, with a journal prompt. Is there something that you would like to leave people with if they were to write or reflect or to sit with a question after this conversation? What prompt would you suggest? Or even from your own book?
Diane Dreher (01:03:38.104)
Okay, I would ask them what brings them joy and to write about that and to think about how they can add more joy to their lives. We're all so stressed these days, you know, we need to have the light of joy and to think about, to write about a time when they felt a deep sense of joy. there another person, were they in nature, were they experiencing music? what were they doing that brought them joy? And to just be in touch with that and then to ask how can I get more of that into my life?