Welcome to Moments with Marianne.This is your host, Marianne Pestana.We're here today with special guest, Susan Kaiser Greenland, who's here to share with us real-world enlightenment, discovering ordinary magic in everyday life.
So are you looking for practical, approachable insights woven together with mindfulness, psychology, science, and time-honored traditions and cultures?Well, today's guest is going to share with us just that.
Susan Kaiser Greenland is a best-selling author, globally recognized mindfulness innovator, leader, and mentor.Her new book, Real World Enlightenment, showcases her trademark accessibility and joyful approach to life.
with 50 transformative ideas to help navigate the pressures of modern everyday life.Drawing from global wisdom traditions and scientific insights, Susan shares stories from her life of being a seeker, wife, and mother into strategies for everyone.
So welcome to the show, Susan Kaiser Greenland.
Oh my goodness, what an honor it is to have you here to talk about this book.So what inspired you to write this?
A couple of things inspired me to write it.
The first was just that we live in such a time of polarization that it felt as if I could write something about the universal themes that are woven through so many of the global wisdom traditions and what they have in common that that might be helpful because then we focus more on the commonalities than the differences.
That is definitely something that we can use now.I mean, how many people are so focused on the slight differences without really kind of getting into the fact that we're really all pretty much the same in many ways.
I'm not kidding myself or saying that there aren't differences that are important, but I just find that when we can focus first on what we have in common, then we can build some bridges, develop some empathy, and from there it's easier to talk about what the differences are.
So can you share with us some of your personal experiences that influenced the themes in your book?
Sure.Well, I come from a sort of a tossed salad spiritual background.My father was Catholic and my mother was Presbyterian, and they got married in the early 50s.And at that time, my father had to give up his religion to marry a Protestant,
So that was a big deal in our household, and that was the first time I really started getting a peek at how there's so much in common, so why are we so concerned about these relatively slight differences?
Or at least in my mind, they seemed relatively slight. And then as I grew older, I kind of did the same thing.I married and fell in love with a Jewish guy.And it was important to him that the kids were raised to be Jewish.
So I didn't convert, but our kids were bar and bat mitzvahed.And then I was a Buddhist practitioner for many, many years.
And just over and over again, I would participate in services in all of these different traditions with different family members and people who were very close to me, you know, weddings, funerals. just holidays.
And over and over again, it was just so clear to me that there was so much in common.
So that's when I really started integrating these themes into my thinking and into my teaching because I come out of a background of teaching mindfulness and meditation, starting with kids and then to the family system, so the parents and to teachers and to clinicians.
And so I really integrated this insight that I had had from childhood into that work
Well, what great insight it is that you have with the background that you have and the different religious experiences.
I think that really, in many ways, I would see how that would have helped pull together the 30 universal themes that you're talking about.
Absolutely and I've got to tell you in my life because I've mentored so many people and taught so many people and the mindfulness-based practices are incredibly helpful and necessary for kind of grounding and for stress reduction but it is these universal themes really understanding things like just
kindness, simple things like kindness, or how we're all connected, or how everything is changing, or how things don't necessarily look like what we think they do, or the intellectual humility that comes with understanding how little we know in many respects.
Those are the themes that I've really seen change people's lives when they start to internalize those.
So how do mindfulness practices and psychology intersect in your approach to easing anxiety and stress?
Well, I'm not a therapist, but I've worked with many therapists and many teachers, and the therapists and the therapeutic community and the neuroscientists have done a tremendous service to the mindfulness community in that what the meditation and mindfulness folks are now starting to really integrate are these insights from neuroscience around stress, around our nervous system,
around the way our minds affect our bodies and our bodies affect our minds.So there's so much commonality again in those disciplines, but everybody comes to it from a little bit of a different angle.
And so when you can bring them together, the practices become far more rich, excuse me, and impactful.
I like how in your book, you ask a question, you talk about safety and kindness, and you ask the question, what do you need to be safe and take care of yourself? Why is that an important question?
It was a huge, huge question for me because the promise of meditation really in the first instance is awareness.We become more aware of what's happening within and around us.
And what I really started to see was that I was having some reactions based on my not feeling safe that I wasn't realizing that that's what was the basis of it.
So for instance, very often we'll feel snappish, or we'll push back against something, or we go into some kind of minor fight, flight, or freeze mode, but we misattribute the cause.
And when we take some time to really consider what does it take for us to feel safe outside of the moments that are emotionally charged, then we can start to see the causal connection inside the moments of charge.
Maybe to help if I gave you an example, I really thought for my whole life that all I needed to feel safe was for people to see me, to understand me, to listen, and to hear.
I thought if I knew that people were really giving me that kind of respect, I would feel safe.But I did a course with Ruth King. who does a fabulous mindfulness of race course where she introduced this notion of safety in the context of groups.
And in doing that course and looking at the question, what do I need to feel safe and welcome?I realized I'm really uncomfortable in a chaotic environment.
So if everything is kinda chaotic and people don't have clear roles, that makes me feel uncomfortable.
And then without even thinking of it, kind of outside of awareness, I jump into action and I start to try to fix things and organize things and control things. And that has often backfired in my life.
Often people don't want somebody to just come in and do that unasked.And when I made that connection and realized, oh, I'm doing that because I don't feel safe,
then since then, when I start to feel uncomfortable in a situation that's chaotic, I'm able to interrupt that reaction and realize, okay, that's just because I'm not feeling safe, but what is my role here?
So I don't know if that's helpful, but that's an example of the kind of stuff we start to see when we look and see what is it that makes us feel more connected and safer in a group.
I think that's so much more empowering to, and what a great thing to realize.Cause I mean, I've done the same thing too.You get into situations where there's pure chaos and you're like, okay, wait a minute.Someone's got to take charge here.
And maybe that's not what needs to happen.
I know, or even if it is what needs to happen, maybe you, I certainly have stepped on a lot of toes in that process without, I'm thinking I'm helping, you know, I'm thinking, oh boy, they're going to be delighted that I'm coming in to help.
And then when I'm not faced with that response, I'm confused, they're confused. It's a mess.
Yeah.It can, it can get a little messy there.Well, and so there's so much going on right now.So many people are feeling stress, anxiety, overwhelmed.So I know you have these great practical tools in your book.
Which ones do you find the most impactful for managing like overwhelm?
I would say there's two different ones in that they complement each other very well.The first is just that sense of a mindfulness-based or an awareness-based stress reduction strategy that is where it's a grounding strategy.
where we move our attention from what we're worrying about or from our anxiety into a neutral or a pleasant present moment sensation.
What you usually hear about are breathing, you know, feeling the deep breaths or listening to the sounds in the room or feeling your feet on the ground.
And that way of stopping, moving your attention away from ruminating and thinking, thinking, thinking into sensory experience
That has a way of grounding the nervous system, which is important because when our nervous systems go on high alert, our cognitive abilities get a little bit more narrow because our energy goes into our bodies so that we can guard against a threat.
So our capacity to do critical thinking sort of narrows.So that's the first one.But the other one that is extremely important and always available to all of us is appreciation. Again, so much of this is we're hardwired for survival.
We're hardwired for survival, so when we feel under threat, our mental bandwidth narrows so that our energy goes into our bodies so that we can protect ourselves.When we're hardwired for survival, we also pay more attention to what scares us.
than what's good.And it only makes sense because if something scares us, it's threatening, so that's where our attention—it's like a magnet—that's where our attention goes.
What's happened in the modern world is we start reacting as if we're threatened when we're late for a meeting or when you know, something breaks in the kitchen or something like that, that can start to trigger this automatic stress response.
So we need to balance that out.That stress response isn't a bad response, but we can balance it out by taking in the good.And so these appreciation practices, when we're feeling upset, when we're feeling overwhelmed,
of acknowledging the challenge, we don't want to sweep that under the rug, but then also broadening our perspective to think of just a few things that actually are good right now.That has a way of helping us step back and see the bigger picture.
I think this is something that really is worth the time in talking about it.In your book, you talk about humility and its ripple effects.And I'd love for you to share about that with us.
I think a lot of times when people think about humility, they don't understand maybe some of the nuance portions of it.
Yeah, humility is one of the greatest reliefs that I have ever experienced in my life, intellectual humility.
Because when we really take a moment to recognize all of the things that our all-too-limited human perception is unable to pick up, that starts to create a way of thinking that's a little bit different than clamping down on our opinions and beliefs.
For example, if you think of birds or dolphins or your pet dog or bats who navigate at night based on their radar, I mean, these species, these beings out there are picking up wavelengths in the universe
that we can't pick up just outside of our perception.So I'm not talking about these massive touchy-feely things, just these very specific things like our dog can hear things we can't hear.
The bats can somehow fly in the dark based on echo navigation, I think that's what it's called.So when we start to think of that, then it's very easy to
become more comfortable with the fact that there are all sorts of causes and conditions that lead up to every single moment.
Just think of all the causes and conditions that led up to you and I on this show right now talking, and to whoever is out there listening to their listening.
If one little thing had happened differently in our days, or in our past, or in our lifetimes, or in our parents' lifetimes, or in their parents' lifetimes, this would never have happened today.
So when we think of all of that, and we think that it's impossible to know all of these little causes and conditions that led up to this moment, it has a quality of opening our minds, opening our hearts, and lowering our shoulders.
For me, it was just a relief. So now I am very comfortable with this not knowing quality.That doesn't stop me from doing what I can do.It doesn't stop me from doing the best to get the job done or to change things that I think need to be changed.
But it does change my sense of being absolutely certain that I know what's best for everybody or that I know why something happened or I know what's gonna happen as a result of something.
It really brings things down to the very basics so we don't get stuck in other people's stories or events.
That's right.That's right.And it also opens our minds and our hearts so that we can be more open to possibilities that we can't be open to when our minds are closed.
And again, like I had mentioned, the three good things that you think of that you appreciate when times are tough
When you're faced with someone who has an opinion that is so very, very different than yours, another one of these exercises that's very helpful is to just stop and think, what are a couple things that could have
could have influenced that person's perspective.How might things have changed or what are the things in his or her or their life that might have created this view of theirs?
And it allows things to loosen up a little bit because our opinions get so tightly wound.
I was talking the other day about these little necklaces I wear and they get tied up in knots and in order to undo the knots I have to take a pin off of the bulletin board and go and very carefully go through and sort of loosen all the little knots so that I can get
get one of these necklaces straight again so that I can wear it.That's kind of like what our opinions are like.They can get so tied up that we need to loosen them up a little bit, and these kind of inquiries help.
Well, on that note, we're going to pause here for a quick break.We've been speaking with Susan Kaiser Greenland in regards to her new book, Real World Enlightenment, Discovering Ordinary Magic in Everyday Life.
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Join his newsletter, be part of his community, and download his music. Welcome back to Moments with Marianne.
We're here today with special guest Susan Kaiser Greenland, who's sharing with us her new book, Real World Enlightenment, Discovering Ordinary Magic in Everyday Life.
So how does the practice of kindness transform our relationships and overall well-being?
Well, kindness is another one of these survival mechanisms, right?We regulate and we co-regulate one another, and we often forget about that.
And so I bet you, you and every one of your listeners has had this experience where you're sitting in a room and you're feeling a little glum, And somebody comes in and their spirits are high and they lift your spirits.
And the other way around, when you're feeling pretty good and somebody comes in the room and drains all the energy out of the room because they're kind of glum and dreary.
So our energy, our way of being in the world has a ripple effect that goes well beyond us to the people around us.
So when we are kind to other people, even if we're just a tiny, tiny little thing like a smile on a hiking trail or a smile while walking through the park, that can have a ripple effect that affects other people.
And again, these nervous system regulation mechanisms I'm talking about, like moving your attention into your sensory system away from your thoughts and emotions or that sort of thing, regulating and co-regulating one another, that too has a grounding effect on your nervous system.
So I know in your book, you talk about the just right for me rule.What is that and how does that work for us?
Well, I think we have to find one of the things that I have been teaching ever since the beginning and all of my work with kids and with families are these four basic human qualities of playfulness, attention, balance, and compassion.
And balance is really key to this.And one of the pieces of balance is to just figure out where at this moment in time is your nervous system, is your mind and your body and your heart the most settled and balanced.
So sometimes we talk about pressure and we talk about stress, But stress is not always a bad thing.Stress can be a good thing.You know, good, healthy stress lights up our neurons.It helps us to be sharper and brighter and ready to learn.
So what we want to do is have enough input that gets us to that point of the just right amount of stress so that we are open, receptive and ready to learn.But too much stress then can tip us over into an area where
it's a bit of overwhelm or an overwhelmed zone.And at that point, just like I was talking about before with these stress responses, our bandwidth narrows and we really can't learn in that place.
We learn at the edge of our comfort zone where we're stretching a little bit beyond what we're comfortable.So not enough stress and we're in our comfort zone and that's a good thing to be in sometimes and to relax and to recharge your batteries.
But to be able to grow, we need to go out of our comfort zone, but just enough so that we're open and receptive and not too much external input so that it tips us over into the overwhelmed zone.So just right for me is that amount of input.
that gets us into that challenge or that stretch zone.
But what's really important to remember is what's just right for me is not just right for other people, but also what's just right for me right now today isn't the same as it was yesterday or tonight or tomorrow.Today, I had a good night's sleep.
It's the middle of the day, got a lot of energy.I'm not hungry, I'm not tired, I'm not stressed.But if I was hungry, tired, or stressed, I wouldn't be able to take in so much input.
And the same amount of input that puts me right now in my challenge zone, that amount of input could well put me in the overwhelm zone.
So we have to keep an eye on how we're feeling, how we're doing, whether we're hungry, whether tired, whether we're stressed, whether we're angry, those sorts of things, and factor that into how much we can take on.
So how can focusing on sensory pleasures help us in managing stress and enhance our mindfulness?
Yeah.Well, I always think of, you know, the Japanese practice of, of forest bathing, right?You know, years ago, Japanese doctors were telling their, their clients, their patients to get out into nature. do forest bathing.
There's beautiful forests in Japan.I haven't been there yet, but it is on my bucket list.And it seemed to work, but there was no scientific evidence to support that.So scientists, researchers in Japan started researching forest bathing,
And sure enough, they found that the simple act of being out in nature, soaking up the sensory experience, getting out of your usual environment into the natural world, actually did have positive physical effects.
So that's a good thing to remember, and we don't need to be in Japan, and we don't need to be in a forest.It's always good to be, if you can, in a place that's a little blue, like near some water, or green that's near some,
outside a park or trees, but even if you're in the city, just getting out of your apartment and getting out in the world and walking and soaking in the sun, that can have a really great effect to help you regulate and to help you recharge your batteries.
And another thing that happens in a city type of an experience or an experience with other people is that you can also find when you're out in nature,
And when you're more relaxed, then you can find ways that you are connecting with other people, seeing the commonality, even without saying a word.So that's, I strongly, strongly recommend going out into the natural world and soaking up the good.
What a great tool for people, regardless of where they are on their mindfulness journey.I mean, that's a great way just to start for anybody.
Yeah, I think way too often with mindfulness and meditation, people think it means sitting still or only paying attention to the breathing or only doing listening practices or not moving around, but that's not the case at all.
All of us are different.We're wired differently.Some people respond more to action, so they respond more to practices that involve movement, like walking, for instance.Some people do enjoy sitting.
Some people benefit from brief moments frequently throughout the day.Some people prefer longer.So, so much of it is, again, finding what's just right for you and recognizing that what's right for you will change over time depending on circumstances.
So what is a life hack from your book to promote kindness and compassion that our listeners and readers can use?
Well, one of the life hacks that I really do like is the idea of just shifting perspective.You know, I talked about it a second ago, but the idea of taking a moment to just ask yourself with somebody who you just don't understand at all,
Just ask yourself, what is it that I might be missing here? Consider it.But that helps a lot as far as helping us start to broaden our perspective and start to see other sides.
The other thing that's an important thing to remember is that most of us are yearning for something.Most of us, I mean, I identify with being a seeker.Most of the people I meet are really just looking to be happy.
And when you think of that, sometimes people get lost along the way, sometimes people make missteps.
But if the motivation for a lot of behavior, not all behavior, but a lot of behavior is really their desire to be happy and their desire to take care of their family.
and their desire to be safe, like we've been talking about before, that allows us to see people more as the human beings they are.
Doesn't mean that there aren't differences, I don't want this to sound too touchy-feely, but it does mean that we can at least better understand and look at people through a more human lens.
Well, I really like in your book, you also invite the reader to start asking questions about what it is that they're telling themselves, the stories that they're telling themselves, because how often is our brain already trying to make up a story about something before we really know what's going on?
Absolutely, and then it really helps when you realize that those stories you're telling yourself are just that.They're stories, and so often they feel real, but they're not true.
And one of the things I find really useful to remind myself of that is I remind myself of what it's like when I'm dreaming.I think it was either last night or the night before.I can't remember which night.I woke up in the middle of the night,
And I was absolutely certain I had done something.I don't know if you've been to a stadium concert recently, but now when you go to a stadium or a concert outdoors, at least in Los Angeles, you have to put everything in a plastic bag.
You can't bring a backpack or a purse because they wanna be able to see through it.And somehow in this dream, I had forgotten my plastic bag and I was at a stadium and I couldn't get in.
I woke up in the middle of the night and I had to really go through my mind and say, did that really happen or didn't that happen?It took me like a minute to realize that it was a dream.That's a lot like what our thoughts are like, right?
We can really believe them to be true.We can believe them to be solid.We can believe our perception of what is happening actually is everything there is to know, but it's like a dream.
It may be one piece of the puzzle, we may know part of what's happening, but again, we don't know the whole picture.It's impossible to know the whole picture, so we can relax a little bit and make our best guess.
We make our best guess, we do the things that are
sensible in response to our best guess, but there has to also be an element of letting go of the certainty that we actually know absolutely what came before, what's happening now, or what the outcome will be.
What are some ways that our listeners and readers can be kinder in their journey?
Well, I would start with being kind to yourself.I think one of the biggest issues we all have is that so many people beat themselves up so much.
So kindness really starts by taking good care of yourself with simple things like making sure you get enough rest, making sure you're eating healthy food, making sure you're giving yourself the time and the space for reflection and for some fun and for some playfulness.
So kindness starts at home.It's like the thing they say in the airplanes, put on your own oxygen mask first.And once we're more kind to ourselves, it's easy to forget that there's a ripple effect.
Because if we're just a little bit less neurotic, if we're just a little bit less reactive, if we're just a little more lighthearted and playful, then that ripples out to everybody around us. and that's contagious.
Our lightness, our less reactivity, and our openness and open-heartedness, that is contagious and has a ripple effect.So that's where I would start.I would start by being kind to yourself.
You know, kids are always taught about kindness in way too often.It's just about being kind to other people.And we completely forget to teach them to also be kind to themselves, develop healthy boundaries, that sort of thing.
It seems in many ways that children nowadays really need to be taught different levels of compassion, how to be compassionate, because while some folks do understand and do know that, there are many people who are never taught that.
could be their environment or just how they were brought up.
Yep.Yep.And, you know, it all starts with attention and with awareness.
And, you know, I've been working with kids and in schools for 30 years and was at the very beginning of the mindfulness and awareness, uh, educations and, uh, initiatives and social emotional learning in schools.
And it was really, really clear then that we tell kids to pay attention, but we never teach them how.
And so we're saying, pay attention, pay attention, pay attention, but we don't give them strategies to help build that muscle of attention just as you build your capacity to do math or to read or science.
Similarly with kindness and compassion, we tell people to be nice, we tell people to be kind, we tell people to be
empathic and think of other people, hold them in mind, but we don't give them specific strategies to help them develop this muscle to kind of default toward a kinder and a more compassionate way of being in the world.
So yeah, we do need to teach kids, and it's not so hard to do.You know, there's so many fabulous children's books out there that actually represent and, you know, and show, not tell like a good storyteller does, these universal themes.
Themes like kindness, things like how things change, things like open-mindedness.And so, by just going to the bookstore with your child and looking through some of these fabulous picture books and finding the ones that resonate with you,
We can then teach our kids by our own example and through children's literature ways that they can actually do what we're asking them to do when we say, pay attention, be kind, be compassionate.
Well, Susan, where can our listeners connect with you and learn more about your work and your book, Real World Enlightenment, and be part of your community?
Oh, well, thank you for asking.My website, Susan Kaiser Greenland, will tell you all you need to know.There's all sorts of resources there.And I have a newsletter that you can sign up for on the website.
And if you're a social media person, I'm most active on Instagram and Facebook.So it's just SusanKaiserGreenland.com.I know it's a long one. But that'll get you all my information.
Well, Susan, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show with us here today.
Thank you for having me.I really appreciate it.And I enjoyed our conversation.
Well, thank you, Susan.It's been such an honor to spend this time with you and to talk about your new book, Real World Enlightenment. Well, we're at the end of our time today.I'd like to thank everyone for tuning in.
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