In case you're just recently joining us, or however long you've been a listener of the show. You may not realize that we have years and years of incredible episodes in our archive. We've had so many wonderful guests that we've decided to handpick one of our favorites that may be new to you, but if not, it's definitely worth another listen. We hope you'll enjoy this episode with Jinny Gay.
The inner Critic tells so many lies, one of which is that you're the only one.
You're the only one that struggles with this or that.
But the truth of the inner critic is everyone has some component of it, and now how much it trips you up, It can vary from person to person, but it is ubiquitous.
Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Ginny Gay, a certified mindfulness teacher who has worked with Eric to create content here at the One You Feed for the
past eight years. Prior to that, she's spent thirteen years in the corporate world, where she thought climbing the corporate ladder equated to success in life. Instead, that approach ultimately led her to a place of severe burnout, addiction, anxiety, and depression. Now she knows that for her, success in all aspects of life comes from living from a place of authenticity and integration, where meaningful work and relationships are
the fruit and contribution to the world. Jenny loves creating courses, programs, workshops, and written content to help people live life more skillfully and to help them navigate the difficulties that come from the inherent challenges of being human so that they can experience more peace, purpose, and joy in their daily Lives.
Hi Ginny, welcome to the show.
Hi Eric, this is so fun.
Yes, so, listeners, you will have heard Jenny on a couple podcast interviews, and if you've received anything from the One You Feed that's been written in the last seven years, six years, Jenny's little typing fingers had been all over it. And you're running your mindfulness course for the second time soon and taking more of an active role in putting things out into the world with the One You Feed. So I just want to give listeners a chance to
know you better. And of course you are my partner in business and in life, and.
So yes, welcome, thank you. It's wonderful to be here.
You know how, we start with a parable, so I'm still going to read it, or I don't read it, I actually recite it since I know it. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with a grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. What is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it.
For a second and looks up at their grandparents and says, well, which one wins, and the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
I love that parable other than you. It's what caused me to fall in love with the show for the first time.
But it is so important.
I think to who I am, and how have you the world and how have you my life? Because what that parable tells me is that we have choice, and we have impact in the way we show up and the way we experience life. And the more aware we are of what's happening inside of us and around us in the moment, the more.
Choice we have.
And then the more choice we have, often the more skillful we can be. So life can feel better and be better than it does in this moment, right if we have the ability and the skillfulness to choose and to know how to make it so. I always get this hit of like euphoric liberation when I remember that in real time, which is like, oh I'm not stuck here, you know, Oh okay, doesn't feel great? Now I can actually make this feel better or be better.
It's life changing, right.
And I think the other thing that I've come to really understand at a deeper.
Level about the Parable.
Is that it's not about casting out the bad wolf. It's about integrating the two, integrating ourselves in a way that all can be held in some loving awareness.
You know. We may not like or we may not want.
To cultivate certain unskillful states, but we can be with it all right, and we don't have to put anything out of our hearts, and in that way we can really transform. So it's become my worldview and my life experience well enough times. And you know, I'm always amazed at all the different interpretations that this parable has, like that every guest has a slightly different or more or nuanced kind of perspective. And I'm surprised by that because it seems so clear to me and so simple, yet
it's really rich. I think that's the other reason I it.
Yeah, I think you honed in on the main part of it for me is choice. Yeah, you know, because I think that parable just points to we have a choice, yeah, but we often forget we have a choice, yeah, And remembering it is so important and in order to remember it, we have to use mindfulness. We need to be aware, we need to be paying attention.
Well, we just didn't know we had a choice, right, Like, not only maybe we forgot, but maybe we never knew. And then when we realize, like, oh wait a minute, this could be different, It really could be different. It's not like wishful thinking. It's just revolutionary.
So let's let listeners get to know a little of your backstory that brought you to the point that you really started to engage with this work in a meaningful way.
Yeah, where do you want to start?
Well, let's start with very brief sort of biographical sketch where you grew up. Yeah, you come from some of those basics. And then I want to get through to the ideas sooner than.
Well, you know, I do love to talk, and I know this, wee could start back and like I was born February fourth, nineteen seventy nine. No, I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia by to really loving, devoted parents who really just gave me a sense of what support and love meant. And I'm so grateful for that. I mean, I think every family has issues and problems and wounds and areas of rub and a real problem.
But like when I distill it all.
Down, what I know is my parents are and we're loving, supportive parents and people, and so I'm really grateful for that start. You know, it gave me the ability to feel my feet starting on the ground from the get go.
Yeah.
I think there's an interesting nuance in what you just said there, though, which is you can acknowledge that your parents were very loving and you got a lot of benefit for them, and you can also acknowledge ways in which their parenting style, the wounds that they carry, the issues that they had still impact on our lives. And I think we often get stuck in a either I had a terrible childhood or I had a great childhood.
My parents were good, they weren't good. And I think there are some cases where it's clearly almost all good you had just outstanding parents, But it's not, you know, not that common and we certainly know the horrors. Yeah, but for a lot of us, there's a lot of nuance, and so you know, trying to find both the good and the bad in it the thing can be really positive instead of just only focusing on one of them.
Yeah, because I mean, as we grow up, we start to realize how human our parents are, and you know, they have their own wounds, they have their own conditioning and patterning and life experience, and just like me, those things could come in the way of love, or those things could trip them up in ways that made it so that the heart of them, which to this day I still feel like I connected with and know which is loving, just couldn't show up in the fullness it that it wanted to.
And so if anything other.
Than blame, I have compassion and I have gratitude for how they continued to try and show up.
Yep, okay, so okay, childhood, that's well, right, adolescence yeah, exactly, all right.
So adolescence was hard. Let's see, that's about Yeah, it was hard. It's hard for everybody, right. I mean, I think that the wounds of my life, the pain of my life again on the spectrum of pain, could be minimized, right, depending how far out you zoom, I will say that sensing my own pain and discomfort in my own internal world and not wanting to be with it or not wanting to experience it has driven me a lot in my life.
Yeah, so okay, adolescence, some of that pain comes. Yeah, let's keep moving forward.
Okay, I'm starting to think of all the things I could share.
Yeah.
So then I went to college in Mississippi, and being the oldest child, I had the very like I want to do a good job. I want to like please people, and I want to be successful and you know, make my parents proud. And so just show me the rule book, show.
Me what I should do.
I'll do it, and then you'll be happy and I'll be successful.
Right.
So that was kind of my approach, and as it turns out, life it didn't really work that way, fortunately or unfortunately. And I graduated college. I got married right out of college, and got my first job right out of college. We're talking two days after I graduated. And it was in the corporate world, in the pharmaceutical industry. And there was so much about the corporate world and the pharmaceutical industry that I loved and I'm so grateful for that.
Marriage was very short lived.
A lot of it was sort of connected to how dogmatically we had been members of our Christian church, this
branch of a Presbyterian church. It was a very as it turns out, fundamentalist kind of branch of the president here in church, and I feel like that was problematic because not being allowed to show up fully as ourselves cause there to be secrets, and those secrets in the marriage caused the marriage to sort of crumble, and I filed for divorce, and the church did not support that and did not reach out in sympathy, empathy or compassion and did not want to know why, and just sort
of wanted to judge and dictate. And it was at that point that I kind of said, wait a second, you know, like, if there's a God, this is between me and God, not me and a bunch of at the time, you know, white middle aged men telling me in the elders of the church, telling me what could and couldn't be according to God, and so yeah, I kind of rebelled against all that and said, like, forget it.
I can't live like this. I don't want to live like this the rest of my life, got a divorce, and continued on in the corporate world, trying to sort of sort out what's what if it's not what I thought it was.
The church had been an important part of the life, I mean up till then, you were very involved and now all of a sudden, it's just gone.
Yeah.
I mean there were a couple of years in high school when I was like super rebellious and wasn't super church going. But then the last part of high school I really identified as like, oh, that's the right way to do things, and I'll do it that way, and I kind of just jumped in wholeheartedly.
Yeah. Yeah, And so you were in the corporate world a number of years and we're fairly successful at it. Yeah, and there were some good things about it, but it ultimately did not end well.
Yeah, it's soured. Yeah.
I kind of climbed the corporate ladder pretty early on, and I really loved so much of the jobs that I held, both in sales and in sales training and then in sales management. Largely it was the people that I loved, you know, but I also loved the ability of making a real difference. In pharmaceuticals. You know, there's going to be all kinds of feelings about that as I speak at you know, it's a polarizing industry, right.
The part of it that I really connected to was the part that does a lot of good and brings medication or ways to alleviate people suffering into the hands of the people that can get it to the patients that need it. And so I felt very mission driven in that way at every level of the industry in which I worked. And then the people that were around me became like my family. It became really my identity until really I hit kind of that glass ceiling everybody
talks about. My experience was that I got to a certain level of climbing ladder and then there were no more rungs on that ladder for me to climb. Though I saw them, they weren't available to me.
You know, other men that.
Were less successful or less experienced were getting promoted and put in for opportunities before and instead of me. And then it became an environment of having some bosses that were really toxic, and they did not believe in me, and every bit of me that was out in the world and outspoken and assertive. The way it felt to me was that those edges were too sharp and that
needed to be dulled down. And that's when everything soured and sorted to turn is because you know, I kept trying harder and harder and harder to please and do right and be successful and do good, and I just kept getting dulled more and more put down, criticized, and I hit a point to where I felt like, Okay, so my lack of enthusiasm about this industry, this job, and my lack of engagement with it, my inability to sort of focus on it and stay with it.
I was diagnosed in high school.
With add so I was like, maybe this is my add So I went to a doctor. This doctor agreed. They prescribed to me this stimulant similar to adderall called violence and it worked. I mean, you know, it worked to help all of those things in the short term,
it was really helpful. In the long term, that was not a great massive for me because it became something that I leaned way too heavily on, began to abuse, and then began to medicate the abuse of that with things like alcohol to come down off of the high that that stimulant.
Gave me during the day.
And then later it became I needed ambien to be able to go to sleep because I was taking so much stimulant, and so my weekdays were medicated my ups and my downs, my consciousness and in my sleep and weekends I was just completely dead to the world. To try to recoup so that I could start all over
again on Monday. Meanwhile, I was in a relationship that I really had identified myself with, had become very messed with this person, but it wasn't a great match, and that crumbled like and like now, which is truly a very different story which we can get to. But yeah, so that crumbled. Everything around me was sort of crumbling, and I was living so far outside of myself that I caused a lot of pain, not only for myself
but others. And I carry a lot of shame and weight around those days when I just I was not showing up in the world in the way that my best self would want me to. I was struggling to figure fure out how to survive, forget thriving, just survive in this world. I just couldn't see any other world. I couldn't see any other way to exist. I didn't know what other industries were out there or jobs. I didn't think I could find any other way to be.
I certainly thought, well, I better figure out how to moderate my viabance usage because I don't know how to live without this medicine. I feel dead inside. I look at the next thirty years of my life, and I feel exhausted, not excited. I felt completely detached and empty, and I didn't see another way forward.
And all of that ended.
In sort of a crash and burn and landed me back home in my parents' house. It probably around thirty years old, my early thirties, and I had to kind of figure out what next.
So, Okay, you are now addicted to vibants, have an alcohol problem because you're using alcohol to cope with it. You have lost your job, which was kind of your identity and career of you lost this relationship that was sort of another part of your identity, and your back living with your parents. Yep, so things are going well.
Things I'm really living the dream. No, I'm sort of back home.
Thank god I had a home to go back to where I could sort of pick up the pieces and sort things.
Out, which I began to do.
I mean, I will say that it's always been my experience and therefore it has always been my belief in the thing I've held on too, that we grow through difficulty. And so I did think, oooh boy, like I'm probably going to be doing some really big gross in and through this, and I was I really held on with faith, this hope that like on the other side of this is a full or more beautiful like soul of me. You know, I don't know how to get to that yet,
but I know it's there. And I think that hope and that knowledge and that faith and that experience having seen that for yourself is really critical to grow and as supposed to like calcify through difficult times. And so I've always been spiritually sort of attuned and connected to things that speak to a deeper of life. I mean, back in my days of Christianity, but then even now, I mean I was searching through all kinds of things in the spiritual realm of things to help find a
thread to grasp onto. And so I began to explore mindfulness and meditation, and that's how I began to put the pieces of my life in place to begin building a foundation that was stronger than the one I'd had before.
So what do you think were some of the key things that allowed you to sort of transform from that till now now? I know it's been a long journey to get there, But what are some of the key ideas or key learnings you know, as you started to kind of put things together. You just identified one, which is at least being willing to identify this as a possibility for growth. It doesn't mean to minimize the pain that we're in, but to at least have part of
one eye on. Oh yeah, this could be a growth opportunity. So that's one. What are some other things? Well?
I have a seminal moment that I remember. Of course you know this, I've told you this many times, but it's this moment sitting watching an interview of Pemma children. It's the beloved Buddhist teacher, and she was talking about difficult feelings and how we have a tendency to not want to feel them right. And she posed this question, which was when we sensed difficult feelings, there just asking can I be with this? And I just remember it was like an acorn dropped to my head, you know,
and I was like, what I mean? It had never occurred to me can I be with this? The message I had always gotten somehow was do not.
Be with that.
In fact, if you do, you will probably never recover that abyss of sadness or fear or whatever that unpleasant feeling was was something that you just don't recover from, so you just don't go there. But when she was like, can I be with this? It sparked my curiosity and I was like, well, I don't know, can I? And I thought, why don't I just try and not like try to open to it fully, but like try to like slide my toe over into that area and just like see what it kind of feels, and we'll just
take it from there. And that was a turning point because instead of running away from those uncomfortable, unpleasant, difficult, scary feelings, I started to turn towards them. And that shift is radical and critical, right, because I stopped running from things.
Yep. I often think that is the seminal critical shift in every alcoholic addicts life. That sobriety is not possible until there is some grasp of okay, whatever comes, I can be with it. I may not like it, I may hate it, it may be awful, but I can be with it. I don't have to escape it. Because as long as we think we have to escape, we've got a very convenient escape that we've often gone to, you know, one that does for a period of time and in some ways actually work for a very short time.
So it makes it very difficult to achieve lasting sobriety until we get that. Okay, I can be with this.
Yeah, And it wasn't like immediately I knew I could be with it all fully. But what I started to see was I can be with a bit of it, and it's not nearly as obliterating as I thought.
It was going to be.
In fact, I might even say in that moment for me, I was like, this isn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. And so that showed me I could be with a little more of it, and a little more of it, and a little more of it.
As I look back on it now.
What I realize is it was the building of that skill and sort of ability to tolerate discomfort that everything else unfolded.
I mean, it is so.
True that where the wound is, that too is where the healing is. Though we may not have all the knowledge in the world, it has been my experience that I do have wisdom inside of me, and that wisdom can help guide me. Right, I can grow that wisdom. I'm not like you know a finished product here and just tap into it and you'll know everything you need to know. But there is some wisdom there, There is some discernment, and you can begin to tap into that when you begin to open to the wounds in a
skillful way. That has some support. So fast forward a bit. One of the ways I found support was in the podcast I was first a listener, And we can save our story of how we connected for perhaps another episode, because that's a whole.
Story in and of itself.
But yeah, the parable when I first heard that, I realized, Okay, so let's name some things here. Let's name that we have choice. Let's name that we all have all the tendencies inside of us, right, and that we have the ability to nurture the life we want to live and have in the way we want to experience things. And so starting a meditation practice where I sort of began regularly sitting with myself, connecting to myself because up until then I had lived so far outside of myself, with
my north story being somewhere out there. I don't even know if I could have identified it, but I began cultivating a connection to it within myself. And so that was, you know, give or take ten years ago.
Yeah, and the short version of our meeting story is we met online, but not in the way people normally meet online, not through a dating service, but through the podcast.
Yeah.
Yeah, I had started a blog and I did a blog post on the parable and I tagged you in it, and you shared it, and I was thrilled, And yeah, begin diving deeper into some of the episodes of The One You Feed Like. One of the first I remember is the first episode with Emily White on loneliness. Well, first of all, I realized I had no idea what it was. I was necessarily feeling other than inside of me.
It just felt bad. But when I listened to that episode, I was like, oh, wait, part of this is loneliness because I had sort of walled myself off from the world and so much of everything. It's so powerful to be able to name a problem name of human experience. It's like, instead of it then having a lot of power because you've named it, like you've given it power, it's actually the opposite of at least in my experience.
What happens is you have then the power to recognize it when it shows up, figure out how to work skillfully with it. You're not so en meshed and entangled and identified with it it's like you and then that thing over there.
You know, it's really powerful.
Yeah. You talk a lot about the power of naming things, and I think some people struggle with naming because naming can become labeling and can become identity. But when we don't take it that far, it's an enormously helpful tool.
Yeah, it really is.
Hi, everybody, it's Jinny. You've probably heard me with Eric on some episodes of The One You Feed. I have a question for you. Are you your own worst critic? I mean, when you pay attention to how you talk to yourself, is it just kind of mean? And do you often feel beat down and.
Just heavy and side?
If so, I truly understand the struggle. I used to believe that relating to myself this way was what kept me performing at any acceptable level, and without it, I thought I'd drift off.
Into the deep end and become.
A failure in pretty much every aspect of my life. But it turns out that's actually one of the inner critics worst lies that it helps you. I mean maybe short term you get a push and do well, but long term it's corrosive and it actually keeps you from living to your potential. I've created a free three part video series that teaches you how to get to the other side of the inner critic like I have, and you can grab it today. Just head to oneufeed dot
net slash Inner Critic. I'm sharing this with you as not only an inner critic survivor, but also a certified mindfulness teacher, and you can learn to relate to yourself differently, living with an inner lightness and not a sense of being at battle with yourself, and life is so much better when you're a friend to yourself, I promise. So go to oneufeed dot net slash inner Critic for my free mini course see you in the videos.
So let's move into one of the areas that you really specialize in working on and helping people with, which is the inner critic. You refer to yourself as an inner critic survivor.
Yeah, I mean not to joking, yeah, not to like make the word survivor or anything trite, but I do feel that way in terms of like, the inner critic can be so corrosive that it feels like a slow death inside, and to come back from that does feel like you've fought a good fight and survived, at least in my experience.
You've said that you think the inner critic is perhaps the number one cause of self created suffering.
Yeah, well, I mean that would be a hypothesis. I don't have evidence behind that, but I do know it speaks to a couple things.
The first is how common it is.
The inner critic tells so many lies, one of which is that like, you're the only one, You're the only one that struggles with this or that. But the truth of the inner critic is everyone has some component of it. And now how much it trips you up, it can vary from person to person, but it is ubiquitous. And in terms of suffering, your inner critic might want you to think that it's showing up for your own good, but as an adult, it actually does the opposite. It
keeps you small, it keeps you in pain. It's very painful, and it tells you lies about who you are and who you aren't, and so you don't really ever step out into who you could be.
And so how do we work with the inner critic versus the inner I don't know what the word I would call it is inner guide conscience. You know, the part of ourselves that does genuinely reflect on when we've made a mistake, Yeah, when we need to do something better, when we need to apologize. How do we differentiate the inner critic, which is a destructive force, from I'll just use the word conscience, which is a good force.
Yeah.
Well, I mean I could talk a long time about this, but I'll say a couple of things.
The first is.
You have to sort of discover for yourself that indeed you actually are enough.
You are a whole.
You may not be a complete work of a human yet, but you are whole.
You are not missing key pieces, You are not.
Lacking in a way that would give you the right to show up in the world with dignity right like, you are a whole.
You are worthy, as Brene Brown says, of.
Love and belonging, and you are enough. And that's one of the things I love about mindfulness is that it orients towards you having a direct experience of something, and so you know the first thing is to know that, because until you know that you have that basic in Buddhism it would be called basic goodness, it might be
easy to believe the lies of the inner critic. The second part of the answer I would say is, and this is a key distinction, is the inner critic attacks who you are as a person, your identity and your worthiness to take up space and belong. It is who you are, That's who the inner critic is talking about. Your inner discernment, your inner wisdom would actually point to behaviors or actions and how they could be more skillful.
But it doesn't question your basic goodness as a human being, right, and so it can be useful to reflect on how we can be more skillful, or how we can act and show up in a way in this world that more closely aligns with our values, how we can be more kind, any number of things that's really important.
Territory to content rose.
But instead of I did something bad for lack of a better word, the inner critic would say I am bad. That is not helpful, untrue, and really keeps us wounded.
Yeah, as you were saying that, it hit me that another key distinction is, or another way of thinking about that, is that the inner critic does not have a growth mindset. True, right, Like, if I'm examining my past behavior for ways that I could do it differently, inherently, there's a growth mindset. There's a belief in there that I can change. But to your point, the inner critic doesn't believe that we're going
to do better, right. It actually thinks that that thing that you did is a reflection of who you are. It's the best you can do. That's what you are. Yeah. Whereas that internal conscience or that holding ourselves accountable or all that is inherently growth oriented.
Yeah, that's such a good point, and you know, it makes me think about how the inner critic is not always holding you back in the world. Sometimes it's propelling you forward with such a frantic fear and fury that you're trying to overcompensate for some inner deficiency.
And both are like you say, I love this term.
It's running on dirty fuel that over time that causes an engine to collapse. Yeah, but both tell you that you're you're not good enough, you know, and you either have to overcompensate or you're not good enough, So why even try?
Right.
The other thing about the inner critic is it would have you believe that it's actually acting on your behalf. Like if you didn't have the inner critic, you would not get out of bed that day or if you didn't have the inner critic, you would not work as hard at your job, or you wouldn't ever hit the gym like you need to when in actuality, there are much better ways to motivate ourselves than shaming ourselves into
doing something. And my background in education tells me, and I think personal experience might inform everybody that you know, you actually don't perform better in an environment where you don't feel safe. Right, If safety is in jeopardy in any level, you shut down. And so we cannot possibly realize our fullest potential if we're always stuck in a shamy kind of place. So that's another lie of the inner critic.
So where does it come from? I mean, I know this is just a speculation, but yeah, you know, why do we have this?
Well, there's a lot of theories.
The most common quota that I've heard is that it does go back to Freud and the super ego. Right, this part of us when we're young that keeps us in line with our family of origin or any caregivers that we have, that helps us to act and behave and relate in such a way that we don't jeopardize the connections that give us care and love and food
and shelter and all of these important things. And so that is the case up until about age eight, And at age eight, that part is pretty fully developed, and we begin to be able to operate in a more nuanced way with more wisdom and discernment. So we continue to grow, and we really outgrow the usefulness of this super ego, or this inner critic, so to speak. But this eight year old super ego continues to live on
inside of our minds. It doesn't really evolve, but it continues to tell us and dictate what is good or bad about us, what's right and wrong about our inner world and outer world. And we end up being bossed around by a really bossy eight year old self, right, that doesn't have the adult wisdom to live and discern an adult life.
Right.
It's a conditioning, it's a habit of mind that we really have to sort of wake up out of and begin to work skillfully with.
So we'll move on from the inner critic in a minute. But you have actually produced some videos about working with the inner critic, where you've got a variety of strategies. Yeah, can you share one of them?
Yeah? Oh man, how to pick one.
I know.
So the first thing I would say is maybe going back to the power of naming something, It can be really helpful to sort of name your inner critics so that you begin to recognize it. Now, I'll say one more thing, because I would be remiss if I didn't describe this. I wish I had heard this long before I actually did, which is, the inner critic can show up as a voice and actual like we hear the words in our head. It can also up as more of an atmosphere. And that's how it shows up for me.
So I needed to begin to recognize and name like this inner weather system, this inner atmosphere that felt really icky. It just felt dark and heavy, like I was wrong and something was wrong and just bad, you know. And so when I began to recognize that feeling as the inner critic showing up, then I began to learn how
to work skillfully with that. But know that it can show up in a variety ways, right, But however it shows up for you, you can name it, And I mean, I encourage you to be playful with this, like, because humor is just a wonderful way to poke a pinhole and deflate things pretty quickly, and I wish I could have like a visual aid right now to show you, because the visual of this is funnier even than you
can imagine. But for some reason, when I just like close my eyes and think of my inner critic, the image that I get is like the Wicked Witch from snow White from Disney snow White cartoon back the day, the old old one. And then I went and googled it just to get like, am I remembering her correctly?
And like she is.
Even more wretched, lecherous and just hilarious looking like as an archetype and caricature of like the Wicked Witch than I even remembered. But now that's who I think of when that part of me kind of comes up, and it helps.
Me take it a little less seriously, and.
It also helps me name it so that I can begin to work skillfully. But yeah, I put together this video series and you can get that free training at one ufeed dot net slash Inner Critic, and I plan on, you know, diving even deeper into this work in the future because it has been the primary pain point of my internal world in the last I don't know, in
my adult life. Let's just say and I have come to realize for myself that you can live without it, that you don't have to have its oppressive tyranny tearing you down all the time, and it is wonderful. So I want to help other people like find their way to that way of being so that they have a fighting chance in this life of feeling into their true as full as selves free from that burden.
So a big part of the inner critic work has emerged from the deep work you've done with mindfulness. Yeah, so let's talk about mindfulness. It's very much a buzzword, yeah, of course, And it's a buzzword that I sort of react to a little bit. But I don't think you do. I think its original and beautiful potential is still very alive in you tell me what.
You love about it?
Yeah, Oh my gosh, how do I count the ways? So I love so much about it. What mindfulness is, as I know it now, is not as much an intellectual exercise of life. Like it's not about like cognitively intellectually knowing about something or letting your mind pay attention to things during your everyday life. I mean, that's a
piece of it. To be able to be present with our minds, but even more so, it's about an embodied presence, an embodied awareness in and of the present moment, in and of our experience in the present moment, both inside of ourselves and also what's going on around us without judgment, right without the inner critic or really any kind of judgment, that allows us to open fully to what is, know it directly and clearly, experience it directly and clearly, and
just to know the fullness of life in that way. Now, that's a little bit of a departure from the word mindfulness sounds very intellectual, and it's actually the opposite of that in the terms of like it's one thing to know or to think. We have stories about the world and stories about people, and stories about the way things are, and so often the stories that our minds sort of
make up based on our conditioning of various sorts. It's not the truth of that thing, it's not the essence of that thing gets lost because it's obscured by our story and our conditioning, and so we can either miss out or we cause a lot of suffering, both for ourselves and others.
And again back to kind.
Of the beginning of the conversation when I said that, like my own aversion to feeling unpleasant and uncomfortable sensations and feelings and emotions has driven me a lot of my life. Well, now it's finally driven me to alleviate suffering in a way that is not an addiction, not a masking, not a running, but in a healing way, in a way that makes your whole right. And so I think I'm all about trying to suffer less myself, like cause less harm to myself and also less harm
to other people. I don't want other people to suffer either, And mindfulness has proven for me to be the most skillful way to do those things. Realizing all of the ways that we create suffering for ourselves, I'm just like, show me those ways so I can stop that I don't want anymore. I mean, life is hard. Life is painful in and of itself. It just is, and it always will have moments of that. And I don't want
to make it harder and more painful than it is. Right, So, if there are things I'm doing that are causing more pain and suffering and are keeping me from living fully and experiencing even the beauty and joy of life, and the fullness of who I can be. Let me figure those things out so I can be more skillful. It's ultimately me just being sort of pragmatic, practical and like
really hating to suffer. Mindfulness also it's a really instructive way to show up in life, like in other words, in my past with previous like religions and churches and things, and not to paint them in any kind of negative picture, because I think everybody has to find where they fit and where they flourish. And it just wasn't there for me because I did not know how to do a lot of the things that the church told me were good things to do, or like how to stop doing
the bad things that were causing me. I just I knew what maybe to do, but I didn't know how. Mindfulness has taught me the how, the how to be really skillful in life so that we suffer less. That's another thing I love about it. And finally, it's not about just have faith and believe and don't ask questions. It's all about ask the questions, bring curiosity and see for yourself in your direct experience, Like don't believe what
anybody tells you, right like discover for yourself. It really points you towards your own experience.
There is a critique these days of mindfulness. They call it make mindfulness right, where mindfulness has been pulled out of its original Buddhist container, you know, depending on how you want to frame it, it's been watered down, it's become a tool of the corporate patriarchy. It lots of different things. Yeah, and one of the criticisms is it has been divorced from what you were just talking about.
That seems to be most apparent in a lot of churches, and in the church one of the things that's most apparent. And again I'm painting with a broad brush. Churches are different, but there's a big focus. We hear a lot about morality, but morality is pretty deeply baked into Buddhists thought too.
So for you, how important is when learning mindfulness and using mindfulness to have other aspects of the tradition that came from baked into that approach or do you feel like it stands alone on its own pretty well and is a pretty powerful tool that way.
Yeah, it's such a good question.
Actually, in the training program where I got my certification to be a mindfulness teacher. We were divided into pods of other students in groups small groups, and someone in that small group asked the question I think you're kind of asking, which is like, if we strip mindfulness of its Buddhist roots, is that kind of cultural appropriation?
What are we doing here?
And I'm not going to pretend to like say like I know the answer to this, but a couple of reflections I'll offer I was trained in a secular mindfulness practice, that you can practice these tools which are very skillful, and not have to like officially affiliate yourself with a Buddhist religion. Right, that there are universal truths that we can all recognize, Like in life, they're suffering, it's hard, things are impermanent, they're always changing.
Right, there are certain truths.
That we can all learn and then begin to practice out of in a skillful way that can make life easier and more full and.
Better for us all.
There are other traditions besides Buddhism that practice meditation and mindfulness under a different name. These principles are found in the works of a lot of teachers researchers, and so it is most often associated with Buddhism.
Buddhism doesn't have the exclusive rights to it.
At this point in my life, I do find myself most closely like relating to the Buddhist tradition in terms of Buddhist psychology and the way the Buddha taught for us to live so that we might suffer less and live more. But I don't think that's a requirement to be able to benefit from or practice these things, right. It's not necessarily a religious experience. It is a spiritual practice of being able to unburden ourselves from suffering and
live more fully. I'm not sure if that speaks to your question, and I'm not even sure if I fully like have explored that terrain enough to come to a real definitive conclusion, but it's certainly a question to keep in the conversation.
I just find it an interesting ones. Some people will be like, well, mindfulness is taught to soldiers to make them kill better. What do you do heavy, what do you do with that?
Pretend to know that?
Yeah, And it's really just more philosophical discussion than it is anything. It's not real practical. So mindfulness is though, as well as being associated with the Buddhist tradition.
Well, can I pause you actually really quick, because I will say that one orienting question around mindfulness is like becoming aware of in any given moment, like where does this lead?
And do I want to go there?
Realizing that our actions have impact, and that with every moment we are practicing ways to relate to ourselves in the world, your favorite world or neuroplasticity, right, But our ability for our brain fat I'm kidding, but the ability for our brains to form connections that then with repetition strengthen, And it's those connections in our brain that really take the way we see and experience the world and show up in the world. So in a lot of ways,
we are practicing these things in any given moment. So when we become aware of the impact that what we're doing is having, we can then begin to ask that question earlier and earlier on in the process, which is where is this leading and do I want to go there? And if I don't, let's reorient to where I do want to go. So, like to your point about soldiers killing, I mean, I don't know the answer to that, right, It's again kind of a philosophical situation and certainly not
pro killing over here. I couldn't even kill the praying mantas in our apartment the other night. I had to like escort him out in a Mason Jarrard delicately, And I'm still afraid that he may have fallen too far and hurt himself. But anyway, I don't know, But I do know that we can bring awareness to things, and shining the light of awareness on something illuminates aspects of it that we kind of can't unsee once we've seen them.
And once something is brought into the light of awareness, it just doesn't have the same power over us as it did before.
So if anything, you.
Know, err on the side of more rather than less awareness, right, And that's what mindfulness.
Will help you do.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's kind of where I come down on the whole topic too, is that being more aware, being more reflective is a positive thing. It doesn't matter where you get it, how you get it. We need more of it in the world, and you know, like, let's just get it out there. Nothing in the world is ever perfect, nothing is ever pure. It's just that's
not the way things are. But you know, particularly in a culture that is driving us further and further away from any time in our own experience, any quiet time, any antidote to that seems positive to me.
Yeah, yeah, it's really true. I think so too.
So mindfulness is often associated with Buddhism, it's also associated with meditation. Tell me the ways that they are linked and that they are not the same.
Well, I mean, there's certainly a ton of overlap. I look at meditation as a daily practice that helps me come back to the very simplest aspects of my direct experience, both inside myself and what's going on around me. That I can practice being in my body in a very somatic embodied way. I can ground myself there, I can practice noticing what's coming up and how I'm relating to it and finding a way to have that daily stillness.
Practice is really the laboratory in the training ground and the practice field for a lot of the skills that we hope will grow out and become our default in the rest of our life. And so you know, it's not just about the insights you have like on the mat as you're meditating and the AHAs that will inevitably happen, but you're just sort of practicing the way to relate to things and connect with yourself and be grounded and present and who and where you are.
That then allows us.
To do more and more of that in a maybe unconscious way, in a mindfulness way, you know, during the
rest of our lives. Now we can also have very meditative experiences that are off the map and in our lives and Buddhism that's talked about like you have a work practice or like karma yoga it's called, or you can take some sort of activity you do every day and do it mindfully, meaning like you're not thinking about the future, you're not ruminating on the pasture analyzing the present, and when you catch yourself doing that, you bring yourself
back to your direct experience of that activity. You know what it feels like, what you're hearing, you know, the sensations that come with it, and being very present in that moment to the very smallest details of it, so that we aren't absent minded, but we are very present for that moment in our life. And again, as we practice these things, they do begin to grow in the rest of our lives. So meditation can be an active
practice in the midst of your day. It can be a set aside practice that you do, you know, in the quiet of a place in your home, and it's also a way of living.
So what would you say your definition of spirituality is?
I love this question.
So for me, spirituality is anything that simultaneously both draws me deeper into myself the depths of myself, and connects me with that which is larger than myself. So those moments feel spiritual to me. And that can be anything from you know, hearing poetry read that feels really deeply spiritual. You know, you're recognizing some aspect of yourself and also the universality of it. And it can be religious, but
it's so not limited to that. Spirituality is and can be in any moment of connection with others and with ourselves and with the world. I mean, I feel that the arts are very spiritual because they tend to speak to the bigger pains and beauties of what it means to be human in a way that is broadening and not reductive. But yeah, that's spirituality for me.
That's what I'm landing on right now. Anyway, It's my definition.
Yeah, I happen to like your definition a great deal.
Thanks.
You're running a program called the well trained mind spiritual habits is taking the fall off. Folks. Sorry, if you plan on sign I hate to break it again.
I have to wait till next year.
I hate to break it to you over the airwaves.
But the good news is but the.
Good news is it'll run again in the spring. But the even better yeah is.
Yeah that the well trained mind. I'm going to offer that again this fall, and I'm so excited about it. It was one of the most wonderful experiences to run that program this last time, and so to do it again feels really exciting to me. We essentially walk through the foundations of mindfulness and of mindful meditation. So I you've ever been interested in what that really means, how
you actually do it. If you have wanted to start a meditation practice but just sort of have never gotten the traction, or maybe you're looking for a way to reinvigorate your own practice breathe some life back into it, all of those reasons would be great reasons to join
me and everybody else in this program. Because another thing I love about mindfulness of these teachings is that though foundational, they are not elementary in the sense of like, oh, beginners learn that, and then everybody else goes on to learn something else, right, Like if you're advanced, you learn something else. These concepts are rich and deep, and depending on where you are in your life, when you meet them and encounter them for yourselves, they will mean something
different for you. They will open up something.
New for you.
So even if you've been practicing for a while, it's a wonderful time to revisit the foundations of mindfulness at this place in your life. And so we do that in a group format, and it'll be live sessions, six of them, two hours each on Sundays, so six Sundays. And it's also really nice to connect with other people who are also seeking to learn and deepen themselves in kind of this unifying topic, this really deep and rich
topic of mindfulness and mindful meditation. So that's another exciting part is to be able to like see those connections form in the group. We live in such a virtual world now that like, you don't need to live in the same neighborhood as your new closest friend. You know a friend who's been doing a virtual learning program and one of her best friends now is someone that she actually is not met in person. But that she talks with almost every day virtually, and she lives in another
country you know than she does. But they would not have met if not for this program. So all of that's really exciting, and I invite people to see if it's for them and check it out.
Well, you had a similar experience, I mean, I guess you met her, but she's primarily a virtual friend. Oh my friend, dear Anna. Yes, other side the world.
Yes, she's on the other side of the world, but never far from my heart. I don't know what I would do if I had not met my dear friend Anna. And she'll be a friend for life now, I just know it. And we're connected through this deeper topic of mindfulness, right, So like we met over kind of like you and I.
Like we met over a.
Topic that feels really deep and important and like values driven, and those are deep roots for a relationship to take soil and take hold in.
They certainly can be. Yeah, why do you call the program the well trained mind?
That term I've come up across it a couple of times. Just this idea that the mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master, I think is the quote.
I can't remember who to attribute it to.
But the idea of being like if left on its own, to run wild and free. Our minds are kind of a like chaotic bed of suffering to like exist in right, like we're all familiar like you just all you have to say is monkey mind and most people know what that feels like. Or if we believe our thoughts right all the time, then how much suffering can come from that?
So when we have a mind that we aren't so enmeshed with, we can disentangle ourselves from and we can begin to practice ways of being and connecting with and orienting with the world. In this way, we are training our minds so that the world in which we live is less chaotic and suffering, and that you know, all of the things that a mind left to its own would read. So in this way we're learning to train the mind.
We can do that.
That's amazing. We can practice things like back to the parable. You know, we can choose the wolf we want to feed, We can choose the things we want to train.
So let's learn to do that.
Beautiful listeners from around the world have insisted that you now sing opera for us.
Oh my god, Rascal, I will not do it.
I will not do it.
Let's see if we hit how many people in the program, If we hit a hundred enrollies in the program, maybe I'll sing some opera.
Well let's be clear, you can sing opera.
And I can.
I do it was like the thing that was my thing in high school. We skipped right over high school. There was so much more there.
Yeah, yeah, you dated a guy who wore a cape.
Oh my god.
Look look it's nothing against cape, no nothing.
They're very in Yeah, well maybe not for men. I don't really know.
I mean, let's put you in a cape rizzo.
You ever wear a cape? We're in a studio.
Oh my god. That's the funniest story. I will say.
Like, I grew up in a very conservative family, and I have this memory of this really crazy guy I dated, very theatrical guy. My dad's sitting in his recliner by a window, but which is by our back door. This guy comes to pick me up for a date, and he like comes like pretending to fly in towards the back door and runs up to the window where my dad is with his cape kind.
Of flared out. It's like hello, and.
My dad just turning around like barely reacting other than the look in his eyes like what in gods?
And I'm like, that's my date.
Your dad's pretty dead pan, and it explains why he is so happy to have me around.
You and my dad do get along quite well. Oh I have so much where I want to say. Can I come back and do this again?
Sure? Another time?
Should we tell people where they can learn about I guess we should my program? Yes? So if you are interested in learning more about the Well Trained mind program and potentially signing up this fall, you can go to one ufeed dot net slash mindfulness again when you feed dot net slash mindfulness. We'll put the link in the show notes, right, Yeah, folks that are interested, and yeah, I invite you to come and check it out. I would of course love to connect with you there.
All right, Well, miss Jinny, thank you, thanks babe.
I appreciate it.
On.
Yeah, it was really really fun.
Let's do it again, Okay, okay bye.
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