Mini Episode- Tending Our Own Gardens

declining those requests. However, I'm going to start considering some of those on sort of a limited basis. So if that's something that sounds like it might be interesting to you, drop me an email at Eric at one you Feed dot net and I can talk you through the details of what that looks like. With that, let's go into the mini episode. So the topic this week came from a listener on Twitter, and I had tweeted out a quote from Oliver Berkman. He was our second guest Great Interview.

If you haven't listened to it, I'd go all the way back and get that one. I love that one. But the tweets said, your beliefs about the world or what cause you distress, not the events themselves. And this person wrote me back and said, I would like to believe this, but recent events in the Middle East are

distressing too many help question mark. And I found that to be a really great question or really profound statement, because it gets to the heart of how far do you take this idea that our beliefs about the world or what cause our distress. We've talked on the show an awful lot um and I've done a mini episode, I think, on the idea of the second arrow. So there is one type of place where it's clear that our beliefs about the world or what causing our distress.

So for example, if UM, I break my arm, I've got the pain of my arm, and then if I go on and think about how stupid I am and all the things I'm not going to be able to do, that is a Those are stories I'm projecting onto that. That's the second arrow that I'm adding to that. So I think that's pretty straightforward, and it's something that I think it's important to watch out for and can be really helpful when we catch those and stop those. But

this is a very different kind of question. There are genuinely horrible things that happened in the world to people all the time. And the question is are those only

horrible because of our beliefs? And I think the answer to that is probably no. But this is not a deep philosophy podcast, so I'm going to stay away from that, and I think I'm gonna talk more practically about what do we do with those kind of things, because it is um those things are distressing, and so I think the first thing is to think about what distress means

to us and what are our reactions to that. In the beginning of the course I did on the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, we talk about a concept. It's Stephen Covey's i'll call it his circle of concern

and circle of influence concept. And the way to think of this is if you've got a really big circle that's and within that circle are all the things that you're concerned about, and then there's a much smaller circle that's your circle of influence, and the things that are inside that circle are the things that we can actually do something about or have some sort of impact on.

So you can imagine that that you've got the big circle with everything in it that you are concerned about and and events in the world that are horrible, whatever they might be, would fall into that category. And then the much smaller circle is your circle of influence, of

of where you can actually apply some effort. And so one of the ways that I like to think about this is and what what Covey says is that if you spend time in your circle of concern but not in your circle of influence, your circle of influence actually gets smaller. And that is because we wear ourselves out fretting about and thinking about and worrying about things that we have no ability to do anything about. Whereas when we spend more time in our circle of influence, then

that circle of influence tends to grow. And one of the things that's right in the heart of the circle influence is our thoughts about the world and how we see the world. One of the things that is probably not in our circle of influence, at least initially, is some of the events that are happening around the world in distant places that we find to be horrible. So what do we do with this? It's something that that

is painful to watch often to hear about. If we're compassionate people are our hearts go out, and yet we've got this, there's there's very little ability to do anything about it. So the first thing that I would say is, if it's something that matters a lot to you, that you deeply care about, and you can find something to do about it that you think is helpful, then by

all means, I would recommend that you do that. The challenge, of course, is that the number of things in the world that are really difficult to stomach are far more than any of us could take on as one person. Any of those problems consumes an entire lifetime. But I do think it's important to say, all right, is there something I can do about it? Is there some action I can take, send money to a charity. Is there something I can do that's gonna that's gonna allow me

to do something about this. If the answer that is no, that there's nothing I'm going to do about it, then I think we get into a slippery slope. I don't want to be a calloused person who doesn't care about those things, and yet a lot of times, spending a lot of time caring about those things makes it much harder for me to care about the things in my life that are right around me that I can do

something about and have some sort of impact on. So it becomes a question of being very realistic about the way the world is and realistic about what our own abilities and capabilities are. The French philosopher Voltaire in his famous book Candid as a quote where he says that we must take care of our own garden. And I think the idea is that what he's saying is that we have a space, we have our own garden, however

big that might be. You can call it your circle of influence, that we are able to work within, and that if we work within that we are very effective in the world, and we're able to do a lot of things that matter both for ourselves, for the people

around us, and the broader world. But if we let the world set our agenda and the things that are happening in the world set our point of view, our mindset, and where our energy goes, we have very little that we can do, and we're buffeted about by the storms of life all of the time. So I think that circling all the way back around to the quote, your beliefs about the world or what caused your distress, not the events themselves. I don't know how you know. I don't.

I think there's a fundamental truth in there. I also think that any statement you can take way too far into too much of an extreme. But I do think there's a practical lesson in there, which is what do I do with these things that are in the world? And um So, for one, I've mostly stopped really paying

a lot of tension to the news. And I know a lot of people think that that is sticking your head in the sand and hiding, and I've thought that often, and I sometimes still do think that, actually, But what I think is important to think about there is how little I do anything with those things. So I can listen to NPR all the way to work and I know what's going on. But by and large, um I may be more educated or informed, but I doubt that I'm any more effective at work. I doubt that I'm

any kinder to the people around me. I doubt that I'm better at caring for my family. I actually think I'm probably less able to do some of those things, at least it seems to me as I've observed myself. When I am doing that and when I'm not doing that, what what my reactions like are in the world. And so although it maybe you know, I choose to not think of it as sticking my head in the sand.

I choose to think of it as as as Voltaire said, tending my own garden, taking care of that circle of influence in which I can work, and by doing that, increasing the size of that circle of influence. An example, uh, in my own life would be this show, right, So I'm not going to be as bold to to suggest that this is some huge circle of influence, but I'm certainly um reaching more people than I ever have before, and that is a direct result of really choosing to

tend my own garden pretty diligently. That allowed me to get to a place that something like this was possible. And so I have some personal experience in the fact that this concept is a very useful one. So I don't think, as I said, we're not a deep philosophy podcast. I don't have the answer to why is there suffering in the world and what should we do about all

of it? But I do think I have some thoughts on how can we be live more effectively, live better, live a more powerful life within those things that are happening in the world, so hopefully you find some of that helpful again. If you are interested in working with me individually, let me know. Send me a note at eric at one you feed dot net and we can talk through it. Another episode out on Tuesday. Has always hope you have a good week. We'll talk again soon. Bite