Cory Muscara || Stop Missing Your Life

on the podcast. Corey is an international speaker and teacher on the topics of presence and well being. He believes that when people are deeply fulfilled, I think I can get through this because you just made a joke before I started. Okay, I'm gonna try. He believes on people are deeply why I do this? Why can I do this? Okay, I'm gonna try so hard. When people are deeply fulfilled their better force in the world for other beings, the environment,

and their communities. For several years, he taught mindfulness based leadership at Columbia University. Currently serves as an assistant instructor

of positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. In twenty twelve, Corey spent six months in silence, living as a monk in Burma, meditating fourteen plus hours a day, and now he aims to bring these teachings to people in a practical and usable way, presenting to schools, organizations, and healthcare systems, as well as through workshops and retreats for the general public. Named by doctor Oz is one of the nation's leading experts on mindfulness, his meditations have now been heard more

than ten million times in over one hundred countries. That is truly incredible, Corey. Congrats. Corey is host of the popular daily podcast Practicing Human, which I try to listen to. I can't keep up every day. I'm overwhelmed, but it's amazing when I listen to it. And as the author of the new book, which we can hold up for those who can have the video version of this podcast, Stop Missing Your Life, How to be deeply present in unpresent world. I made it through. Congrats Corey, Thanks man.

That was fun. That was fun. Maybe I won't edit that at all so people can see our natural spontaneity. Oh yeah, we should just record our lunchtime conversations. Make those into podcasts episodes. Well, oh that would be very interesting. I don't think people realize I mean maybe they do, but just how interesting you are outside of the podcast, how interesting your conversations are, how curious you are as

a human being, And for all those listening. Maybe I'm sure others have said this, but Scott is just the most authentic, curious human I have ever met. I love my time with him totally outside of these like formal settings. You're what you hear on the podcast is him in real life. And it's an honor to be back on man. Oh, Corey, thank you so much. That is that is such a nice thing to say, and I know you mean it.

You're a very genuine human being as well well. So you know, with these kinds of chats, it's always difficult for me to know, like what point to start in. Do I start with you, you know, meditating on the mountain, or do we start But let's start with you in college. I mean, weren't you a bit of like a frat boy. Point let's start before then, because people might might in all these podcasters you're going to be doing when you're in tour, they're all going to start with your tell

me about when you were a monk. But I think it's actually a lot more interesting. The transformation from frat boy to monk to me is a lot more interesting, you know. So yeah, I agree, yeah, especially when you get into all the different parts of the self that can express different points exactly exactly. Yeah. Yeah, So I think, as you know, I got into meditation to impress a girl, and there was no noble impetus for it. Hippy girlfriend

in college, he was in a meditation. I wanted her to think I was cool, and so I started meditating and I made it this New Year's resolution to meditate three times a week for fifteen minutes a day. Really did not know what I was doing. I would just lie in my dormom bed, have my hands on my belly, and I would be thinking inhale and within you know, it wasn't. Within that just short period of time of doing the inhale excel focus practice, my sleep improved, my

focus improved, I started feeling happier. And there was this this progressive maturation that was happening where it went from this superficial undertaking to this recognition that wow, this is a this is a practice that cannot only improve my well being, but can actually help me explore my humanness more deeply and intimately. But it also wasn't that noble.

I think I make it sound more noble in hindsight, and probably when I talk about it regularly, it's the memory of it is more noble than it actually was, if I really get down and with like the honest thread. At that time, there was something very compelling to me about being the guy that was into meditation. I was in fraternity, I was a social chair, I was throwing a lot of parties. I wasn't a terrible human being,

as like can sometimes happen in those ecosystems. Well you're one of the better ones of the worst, yeah, answer, and I'm totally so. Yeah, But I think fair to say as well. But you know, you're you're exploring. I think a lot of people are exploring their identities obviously at any point in their lives, but especially at that age twenty twenty one, twenty two. And I loved being the idea of being the person that nobody expected to be into this, like the guy that was into you know,

throwing parties and also into meditation. There was something mysterious about it, and I still remember people being like, WHOA, that's so cool, Look what Corey is into. And if I'm being totally honest, the first I say, year of getting into this practice was probably heavily driven by the ego identity of being someone that was into meditation, which

tons of irony there. I had enough awareness to catch that as a motivating force for going into this work and also recognizing that at the heart of this work is probably the complete opposite intention. And it was that the recognition that this is still a bit of a superficial undertaking that caused me to want to go over to Burma and take this practice much more seriously and go much more deeply and see if nobody knew I was meditating, if that identity was totally stripped from me,

would I still be interested in this? Would I still pursue it? Prior to Burma, I didn't know the answer to that, And afterwards there was much more clarity. What motivates you now? Do you feel like it's an inverted U shaped curve it all? Do you feel like like do you feel right now just as you felt when you were on the mountain, or do you feel like

you're there's a deeper integration. I asked, this is very seriously, like, perhaps I could see a scenario, and I don't know if this is true, but I could see a scenario where you're you're more integrated whole person now, where you've taken that old Korey in the enlightened Korey and now you're just you know, there's not to know just about it, but you're kind of a different beating. That's that's more whole. I don't know, what do you think about what I

just said? Yeah, I think that's where our interests tend to overlap. I'm more interested these days in that integration of monk Corey and frat boy Corey. Right, like me too? Yeah,

me too. Yeah, Because yes, I was in a totally different headspace when I was in the monastery and connected to my heart in a different kind of way and in a really profound way, and connected to awareness and consciousness and all the all the stuff that people talk about in very romantic ways as something to work toward but tends to be so much harder to access in

day to day life. There was a really strong dichotomy for me when I came back from the monastery of like, oh, that's the deep stuff, like the meditation in the monastic setting,

and then there's real life. And I think the last eight or so years have been trying to integrate those two so that there could be a new evolution and development of depth in the real world, one that doesn't look the same because you can't escape the distractions and the complicated family dynamics and relationship dynamics that you get in the real world that won't be triggered in the monastery.

I worked through so much meditating fourteen hours a day, but there were things related to my parents, related to relationships, like certain qualities of loneliness or insecurity that could only come up in the context that triggered them. And there was a following coming back from Burma. It was just

a whole other spiritual path, if you will. And yes, I do feel like there's much more space for more dimensions who I am now in a way that leads to a sense of wholeness that I didn't have before Burma. I don't think I had during Burma, and only comes now having walked both of those paths a bit more. Intimately. I love that so much. That's so much I'm experimenting

here with the with the colors because I look very angelic. Yeah, so I really really love that, and I think that you are getting you are getting there, and that's probably the best path. But well, what do you think about Okay, I'm gonna just throw this out there. Abraham Masol, one of my heroes, wrote an unpublished essay which maybe someday I'll publish it for him since he can't called can

bunks ever be self actualized? And he argues in this essay that they can't be because actually he criticizes it a little bit. He says, you know, they to be self actualized requires getting your butt off the mountain and doing something in the world, you know, like you know, making the world a better place with your your present and you know, like not just being this like enlightened you know person that just like is all in your head twenty four to seven. And I thought it was

a very provocative essay. What I'm just gonna say something great provocative. What if the core you are now is more more enlightened than you ever would have been if you stay stayed a monk. I'm just put this out there. I think there's a fair argument for that, I think, am I gonna get in trouble? I'm gonnaetro over saying that I won't tell the monks. The monks aren't watching it doing electric electic technology anyway, so they won't see this.

It's a I think the answer to that is entirely dependent on the lens through which you're asking or just explaining what is enlightenment. So if enlightenment means waking up to and integrating and not being controlled by your enslaved by certain parts of who you are or past conditionings,

then yes, I do think I am more enlightened. If it's referring to a quality of I don't know, less attachment to things or less greediness, then maybe a little less enlightened than when I was there, just because the quality of concentration that you get when you're meditating fourteen hours a day does lead to a very balanced quality of mind that I haven't found attainable yet outside of

the monastic setting. So there's so much stimulation for the more primal part of my brain in day to day life that it does get very easy for the ego part of me to get caught up in wanting and desire. My practice these days is more learning to embrace that rather than try to subdue it as much and not embrace it in a way that I fuel it so

that I get like, really really greedy. But just to again going back to this threat, we already open acknowledge it as a part of my humanness and also potentially as an important part of my human is in the context that I'm in right now, which is like being a human among other humans, having to have a job, having to make money, and having to market myself. All of these things are just you don't have to contend

with that in the monastic setting. And so like, what does it actually mean to wake up to be enlightened in the particular context you're in. That's a question I continue to ask myself and explore. I don't know if I have a good answer, but I do think I'm more a weak than I was before, just by virtue of staying with that inquiry in the context sentmon. Thank you for that explanation. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, you slept two three hours a night when

you were doing that. I mean it sounds pretty grueling to me. There was a point where you're back was so much pain. You went and You're like, I'm going to piece the fuck out, and then the monk was like, no, you're not well. His response always was just be more present it. It really didn't matter what you did. Yeah, it just you know, I have there's so much pain. I think I'm going to leave. Just be more present.

Like the noise is so loud, but the roof workers on the on the roof, like I can't deal with this. Just be more present. Uh this I had just had this amazing enlightening experience. Just be more present. And so it was. It was always to cultivate this quality of equanimity with whatever experience arose, which in that context was the path to greater peace and enlightenment. But yes, that the early the first week of that we treat was extreme grueling physical pain, to the point of wanting to

leave after six days. And that's it was through that struggle that I had my first big insight, which was the distinction of primary pain versus secondary pain. Where I'd be sitting down, the physical pain was there and most of the time like the thought, OK, just be more present. So I'd bring my presence to the pain and I'd be like this is not working, this is stupid. It makes the pain more worse. I want to get out of here, and no way I could do this for

six months. But then I started catching those thoughts that were coming up. So there's a physical pain, then the thoughts about the physical pain. What was interesting is that those thoughts would then trigger the emotions which most of us in the psychology world are familiar with. Right, negative thoughts come up, and then it triggers these negative emotions anger, fear, frustration. But the real interesting piece that I had not ever seen before was that those emotions were actually making the

physical pain worse. I didn't know that there was a relationship between the emotional body and like the sensational body, if that's one way we could put it. So I just saw this insidious meant to loop. Right. There was physical pain triggered the thoughts. Thoughts triggered the emotions, and

the emotions made the pain worse. And it was it was being able to see that there were two forms of pain, the physical pain, but then all the thoughts, the emotions I was kicking on top of it that I found, oh, I actually might have some influence over how much I was suffering. The cliche we often hear is that, you know, pain is inevitable, the suffering is optional. I think that's a little strong because sometimes the can pain be optional too? Can I can? I can? Can

I make both optional? Yeah? So tell me where's that? Where's that inquiry coming from? The guy the monk who put himself on fire because he didn't seem to look like he was even in pain? Yes, and I would, I would agree that he wasn't in pain. So I the one thing I have, you know what I mean? Yeah, oh totally. And this is this is where a lot of people will see that, and it's just so hard

to wrap your head around. But when you're meditating that deeply, and when your concentration gets that deep, you the mind gets to a point where it can literally observe any sensational experience, any aspect of your sense experience, and hold it with equanimity. It's just like, oh wow, there's heat right now, there's tension right now, And that's so hard to fathom what that would be like right when we

don't have that training. But I do mean right in the monastery there it was often one hundred and six degrees, which isn't like being lit on fire, but the concrete walkways would get very, very hot. And I remember when I first got there, like five days in, I took my sandals off to walk on the concrete because I wanted to be more grounded, and I could hardly do it for more than fifteen seconds without my feet just feeling like they were burning. So I didn't do that again.

And then three months went by and I started getting interested in exploring, like being with discomfort a little bit more, creating more discomfort to see how it would react to it. And it was a hotter time of the year. The concrete was hotter than it was before, and I remember walking on it and actually being able to tolerate it, and not just tolerate it, but almost be not feel any of the emotional impact that I felt before, of

the fear, and the pain itself wasn't as intense. So that was like a small dose of seeing what the mind is capable of in relationship to experience. Is that we typically think there's no way we could possibly be with them, but that kind of This is what I'll just say about my general thoughts of that level of

concentration and enlightenment. To get to that depth requires such a well trained mind and almost being I hate to say, disconnected from your bodily experience, but you're in another space of awareness that I just found fund it very difficult to interact with people that in like a day to day setting that weren't in that kind of that level of awakening or awareness that I first noticed when I

came back from Burma. I was actually better able to help my students a year after getting back from Burma because I could more identify with like the mind that they were in, whereas before then there was just such a separation from the depth of practice I was in where they were that it was it was harder to connect. If we could say that, does that make sense? Makes a lot of sense? Okay, it's very interesting to me.

I'm there to think of from like a learning perspective, do we learn do we overtime learn that certain labels we've used are associated with certain sensations, like you know, sort of like linguistic categories, and that some of this process is unlearning those categories and treating every sensation as a new uh, detached from any sort of rubricizing as Mass would put it, you know, I you know, ticking or cutting, you know, like like like cordining off certain

things is oh, well that's pain. Oh that's pain, or that's that that's you know, happiness, that's what happiness feels like. Oh, that's what sadness feels like. But it's kind of like retraining that. I'm just I'm just throwing some stuff out there. Yeah. When you think of the retraining it what what are we retraining? Is it simply the decoupling of the label

from the emotion? Yeah? Yeah, absolutely, So it's just like oh, like oh that's a feeling, but it's like, you know, I'm not going to like put a label on it just yet. In a lot of ways, it's the exact opposite of the emotional intelligence approach that I had last episode with Mark Brackett, where his whole thing is like having people learn how to label precisely their emotions. And I almost wonder, I just I'm just thinking, now what's better,

actually his approach or the mindfulness approach. Yeah. I think both are incredibly important, and I think that that's integration. Yeah, right, that's the integration, especially when working with trauma. I'm not sure if Mark talked about this, but a key thing is, Yeah, so being able to use that part of your brain net more, the prefrontal cortex, he would be able to speak to it more diligently than I could to help

that to right. And when we're resolving trauma, those emotions and those sensations just feel so soupy and they're not well integrated in the part of our brain that can reason, that can understand, that can think through it. And so a big piece of that is as those emotions come up, being able to discern, like what actually is this rather

than this soupy feeling that doesn't have any boundaries. That's very disorienting, and maybe is okay when you're sitting in a monastic setting and you don't have to get anywhere or do anything or really be anyone. But in the real world, being able to have like a coherent sense of self that has some boundaries that know what an emotion is or what I'm feeling right now is incredibly important.

And what I will say is in the monastery, the practice we were doing is a labeling practice, which means whatever is coming up, you're labeling it for what it is. So as soon as the eyes open. The first thing in the morning, when you wake up, you're going eyes opening, eyes opening. If you're feeling sleepy, you might note fatigue. Fatigue, it's a mental note in your head. But the idea is to show that in each moment there's an experience,

and then there's the awareness of the experience. So it's a way that we track our moment to moment experience without without losing an awareness, but also to see it precisely for what it is, rather than letting it proliferate into something else. So when the pain comes up, being able to name it as pain or heat or tain, which then prevents it from going into I hate this pain. I can't be with this pain. And if those thoughts come up, then you just lay those as thoughts. But

you could get more granular with it. And if there's fear, you label fear. If there's sadness, you label sadness. So I think that packaging of it psychologically is a very im important aspect to not being controlled by the experience and just and to start creating some boundaries around it so that we're not just blindly swept away by it. So my label of that noise was annoying piece of shit. Now you're saying I shouldn't, I should just listen to the sound and going on on my head, And that's

that's my initial response as well. There it is, So if you're a monk, you're like, oh, that's a beautiful sound. Not quite, but maybe it all depends on kind of

what our intentions are. When there there was about a month long, now I said three week long period in Burma where they were redoing the roof and where we meditated was on the top floor right next to the roof, and it was open door, so you heard anything that happened outside, and starting from eight am every morning until around four pm, you just hear this hammering on the roof as loud as you can imagine people talking, all while you're meditating, doing this really deep work of trying

to concentrate in practice and the instructions in those in that setting. With that practice is you're bringing your attention to your breath. When the mind wander is, you bring it back to the breath. But if there's an experience that is more vivid and really catching your attention, you

bring your awareness to that. So I spent a few weeks just listening to and holding with awareness this very obnoxious sound, the roof workers hammering the roof, talking to each other, making jokes, and the powerful thing about it was starting to see that the sound wasn't doing anything to annoy me. It didn't have an agenda to ruin my day, or my life or my meditation. It was just doing its only thing, which is to make sound. That's the nature of that experience, and everything has its

own nature. So giving that experience a space to be what it was and not create an issue out of it has absolutely translated a transferred into my own life to see when I'm caught in these things that I originally perceive as making an issue for me, I don't have to fuel that thought process, and if I want to fuel it, I can. Sometimes there are contexts where it feels more important to feel that threat of anger. I think, especially in relationship to other people, where somebody

is saying something that is rude. I could take the perspective of that, Okay, what I'm feeling right now is just an emotion of roote anger, and I could let it come, let it go if I want to. But I think for deepening connection it actually requires being more attuned to and honoring and connecting through the emotion rather than in spite of the emotion. So I'll actually bring

that into the connection more. And so actually you just said really made me angry right now, and I actually I won't stand for that or I don't like when you speak to Yeah, Scott, I don't know if you've ever made me angry. I mean the space for that in our relationship if it comes up, but don't ever make me angry. Though it's uni directional. I'm joking. I'm joking, well, really great points. You're making really great points. And I

don't know. Sometimes if I'm a headache, I meditate and and I really get as close as I can, just like zoom in on the pain of the headache. Sometimes a headache goes away. And I find that a fascinating phenomenon. I mean, I know that all the meditation people will be like, what you did is you change your relationship to the headache. But it's like, okay, whatever, but I don't actually feel it, you know, Like, So I mean

that is to me the most fascinating thing. Like it's not that I just changed my relationship to It's like it's like No, the actual sensation went away, and I'm trying to understand what how that's possible. Yeah, I am too. I don't know. I mean, you'd be more familiar with I'm sure the research on all of this. I haven't seen anything that come out that's come out that's answered

my question around that. But when when we're talking about acceptance, a lot of people and it's relationship to well being, a lot of people perceive it in the way that I think you initially perceived it, which is that, Okay, I'm not fighting the experience anymore. I just kind of allow it to be here. Yea. But it almost that almost communicates this idea that the experience is still there, we're just not like pushing against it. And sometimes that's true.

But in my experience, what immediately happens as soon as you stop pushing against it on the most subtle level, the experience transforms, it changes, and with deeper meditation, experiences can arise, like physical pain, and as soon as you bring your attention to those experiences, they completely evaporate and they dissolve. Yeah, and and that's really fascinating to me. Wait, if we get really deep here, maybe the headache thing

is to metaphor for life. So people like everything has its own sort of nature that wants to be expressed and sort of laws of we have no free will, right, so it's the laws of you know, of of of that was set out by the Big Bang. And like the more that you like try to the more you come in contact and try to change it, the more

it's going to naturally resist. So there are situations where you certainly you want to resist something, but it's about finding a way of getting away of like letting it do its thing, but you not being affected by it, yeah,

either physically or mentally. So sometimes that might be figuring a way to kindly tell someone, you know, hey, you know, if you're in a phone conversation with someone who just won't stop talking for two hours and you're just like exhausted, you know, and you don't want to hurt their feelings, you don't want to push against that, you know, but be like, you know, hey, this has just been so valuable to hear your perspective, and I just want to know I'm there for you, but I need to go

to bed now, you know, Like I don't know what do you think about it? Just said well, one, I think you do that very well because you've done that with me a handful of times where we're like in these interesting conversations and you fully acknowledge it and you're like, I actually have to get to sleep right now or something like that. Weren't really sick, I need a nap.

So you do that, You do that better than most people, Better than I used to be, because when I was in college or grad school, I was known by my best friend Ben to. He would know, he would see it coming. I'd be like, you're done. It would get to a point where like he's like, nap time. I'm like, yeah, nap time, You're done, And like I was known for that. So I've been I've been trying to be a lot more kinder in my uh in saying that, yeah, yeah,

you're doing it gracefully and so to a better effect. Yeah. Chapter five, So I talked about four pillars of presence in the book, focus allowing, curiosity, and embodiment, and this most relates to the allowing pillar of presence, which is developing the container to hold the many dimensions of our experience with and at least getting to a point where we don't immediately need to get rid of them, which most of us are trying to find happiness by pushing

at the expense of experiences. So the counterintuitive approach there is actually first or one thing we can deepen into is developing the inner container that can hold the many dimensions of ourselves. Doesn't mean we have to stay in each of those dimensions, but just having that capacity allows us to feel and experience more integration and wholeness. But the subtopic within that threat is but I can't just allow everything, right, because people then think, well, am I

just going to like passively resign to life? Or if my child is ruining their life with drugs, am I just supposed to say? Okay, well that's just going to have to allow it to happen. Right. We notice in justices around us just let that happen. And this allowing pillar and equanimity, which is the mind state that's often spoken about with this is more about our internal experience than it is our external experience. And so to allow we can allow the desire for boundary, we can allow

the curiosity, we can allow anger. It doesn't mean that we have to follow that thread. It just means that we can at least acknowledge this dimension of our humanness and see it there and make space for it if it feels appropriate in that context, or be able to set a boundary internally around it and go okay, not right now. But when it comes to external experiences, let's say we say, okay, I should just allow my child

to ruin their life with drugs. This is a complicated one because sometimes we need to let someone just walk their own path and we can't do any intervening. But if we just said, oh, I'm just going to allow it because Corey said I need to allow it, well, that also might mean that we're disallowing a part of us that has our heart or our value to help this person. So allowing externally is different than allowing internally, and I think is more into passive resignation, as many

people would would think. I'm more interested in the internal experience of allowing. How does that relate to the pain box? The pain box? Okay, so the I think it does? Red, Yeah, it does, so the pain box. This is your phrase, right, this is Corey's phrase. I like giving people credit. Yeah yeah.

This idea has been spoken about in different ways, but the first chapters titled Being Human Is Hard and talks about the various traumas of life that develop these walls that prevent us from experiencing different parts of ourselves, different emotions, whether it's joy or vulnerability. Over time, we learn like what's safe to experience and what's not safe to experience, and that ends up confining us into a smaller way of living that I call living within the pain box.

It's called the pain box because the walls are made out of pain. There are no actual increase slabs that we need to break through or get through. It's just the perceived pain that I might have to experience if I try and get to where I'm trying to get. So an example of that is maybe where we're trying to embody a little more authenticity, which is a complicated word, but let's just say it's like being able to honor

our present moment experience. But that might require experiencing a sense of shame around something, and we might go, oh, last time I felt shame, it was way too painful, So I don't want to experience that. So the shame becomes a wall to experiencing authenticity or the pain of experiencing that shame, so as it relates to the allowing pillar presence to These walls don't get softened by ramming through them or breaking them down or trying to jump

over them. They only get softened by meeting them or I won't say only. There might be other ways, but the main way I've seen them soften is when they're met with kindness, when they're met with presence and awareness and seeing as also an integral part of who we are. These walls are trying to protect us. They're saying, like, hey, last time you experienced this, it was really uncomfortable, and I don't want you to have to experience that again.

So when we can see the heart behind the wall, we can learn to love the wall and hold it with awareness, then the wall feels safe enough to soften and let go. And that's where I see profound integration in my students and where they actually start making real, big, meaningful shifts. It's when they befriend that wall, this thing that they perceive as an enemy that they have to break through or jump over or get rid of or suppress, when they see the wisdom in it, hold it with presence,

allow it to be there, then it organically softens. I love that, like the headache, yes, yeah, yeah. Go on specific for people that might be curious if you're working through something yourself and like, what does this actually look like? Just contemplate anything in your life that you want more of, connection, love, even success, however you define that, and then reflect on what do you perceive gets in the way of you getting there? What is the discomfort that comes up when

you perceive trying to get these things. Whatever that discomfort is is going to be most closely associated with your pain wall. And you can do a meditation practice where you imagine yourself trying to get to that thing and experiencing that pain wall when it comes up. And when it does come up, just practice allowing it to be there, and you can you can even personify it, give it a shape and a color and say, hey, it's nice to meet to you. I'm not here to get rid

of you. I just want to learn what your positive intention is. How are you trying to serve me, how are you trying to help me. There's a very good chance that part of you will. It'll be such a breath of fresh air for it to be seen and acknowledged rather than constantly having the usual experience of trying to be suppressed. So it's just a process of making friends with all dimensions of yourself, including those parts we most resent. So this building off what you just said there,

which I agree with whole wholeheartedly. You you s what I did there. Yes, that's good. You have this thing in that in your book. You say, but but if you knew the real me dot dot dot, And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, because I've been really interested in dispelling the myth of that there is such a thing as a really you,

you know. So I was wondering if you could kind of talk about because some people might say, like, you know, I'm scared of like getting too close to people, you know, because that seems like a real barrier to connection, is like afraid that someone's going to see the real you can. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure? So there's there's a whole section in the book on connection and into see and overrated, overrated, over not really I mean, anyway,

I'm being cheeky. Yeah, So one of the ways I mean, I talk about intimacy beyond the usual idea of sex and romance and it as this this experience you have when you feel like you are truly seen and accepted. But the word that I focus on on in that is the you. And I say, well, what is this you? Who is this you? Because if we've been exploring up until this point in the whole book, is that the you, as you're saying, Scott, has many different dimensions, many different parts.

So what does it mean for you to be fully seen and accepted? I know what that means now, but I didn't know, like you know, ten years ago, right right, So, so there might be some parts of us in connection with another person that we're fully okay with letting someone else se the part of us is really successful and funny and happy. But maybe this other part that has a bad relationship with our mother, that's insecure, that doesn't really like going out on the weekends, whatever, we might

feel like, oh that's less okay me me, Yeah. So, the depth of intimacy we can experience with another person, this is my own theory, is directly related to the depth of intimacy we can experience with ourselves, because so much. Yeah, until we can start to feel okay with these parts of ourselves enough that we can say, hey, this is

like more of who I am. If we don't perceive that another person sees the deeper parts of us and accepts and loves that doesn't necessarily need to love them, but at least accepts them, then we're always going to have this sense that this person only like doesn't really

love me, only loves part of me. And that's not always on the other person, because some of us are so disconnected from ourselves that we don't even know the parts of us that we resent that we're not bringing to the other person true And that's that's where the but if You Knew the Real Meet comes in the book, and it shares this story about this couple and Chris and Jared and Jared they had a great relationship, but Jared always felt like Chris didn't really love and accept him,

and Chris was like, what are you talking about? Like, we have this great relationship, I love you, and when we go deeper into it, Jared didn't even know what it was he felt that Chris didn't love about I mean, there was just his sense. And when I started doing more work with Jared, it was very clear that he had a lot of parts of himself that he didn't love, that he didn't accept that he was there you go. And it wasn't until he could do that work of saying, oh, wow,

there are these parts of me radical acceptance. Yes, that radical acceptance, and first doing that himself but then being able to bring that into the relationship then allowed Chris to also start to accept those parts. This is it's touchy territory because you don't want to go, like on your first Tinder date at McDonald's and say like, hey, you're all my demons and my shadow parts like this stuff we progress and isn't that the best place to do it? If there is a place to do it,

do it on that McDonald's. Yeah, when you're eating like a greasy burger, I mean that's you're already showing your dietary things, right, So it's like that's one step towards showing your shadowside. So we acknowledge that that there may only be like a couple of people in your entire life that you do show the depth of yourself too. And there's a container that gets created over time where we use some wise discernment around when does it feel appropriate to maybe bring more parts of myself in but

as we do. I think anyone that and everyone's experiences to some sent within their relationships where they feel like when they feel a little safer to be themselves, there is a sense of connection with that person and something in your nervous system softens and settles, and it's so rich and fulfilling and allows you to experience more of

your wholeness. And since this part got cut out of the book, but since we're such tribal creatures and we depend so much on like other people's sense of ourselves as being okay for like a sense of like for a fundamental sense of wholeness, Yeah, sense of fullness like that is actually really important. I think there are only certain stages of well being that we can get to

when we feel another person accepts parts of us. And it might not be the whole tribe that accepts parts of us, but our most intimate relationships, if there's a commitment to really really getting to know one another, that can deepen in a profound way. And the more parts of you that are brought in and accepted, the more you feel that the wholeness of you is accepted and seen, and that that's a lifelong journey, and not every part has to be seen and accepted, but the more that are,

the deeper that sense of wholeness and intimacy becomes. Thanks Corey. That's why I try to with my guests on the psycho Psychology podcast. I try to just let you know, let let my personality shine in no inhibited way. And so far, so good. That's why people love you. So technology can obviously be a double edged sword. On the one hand, technology can bring out this constant neediness to be liked by others. But in what way is technology

allowing us to be more mindful? And do you have any sort of leaving you know, as we close our interview today, some recommendations of things people can do to use technology to help them be more mindful. Not sure. Yeah, So technology is still a big area of interest for me in terms of how we bring presence to it and develop presence through it. And I think a lot of people in my space, the meditation space, focus a lot on healthy boundaries around technology, which is absolutely important

and I'm a big proponent of. But I also think we need to start addressing technology in the same way as an extension of our humanness. So just because we have negative thoughts doesn't mean that we would start campaigning against having brains. We have to learn to work with those negative thoughts and see them, and also when we focus on the good thoughts, the negative thoughts just see like, Okay, this is the part of the whole thing of what

it means to have a brain. In the same way with technology, there's a lot of good and there's a lot of bad. We don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater just because there's a lot of bad to it. So I'm in addition to creating those healthy parameters and designing technology ethically, I do think we

need to explore our own relationship to it. And this is where I have a whole a series of meditations in the book that help us just develop a more intimate relationship to technology in such a way that we use it purposefully and are not completely hijacked by it. So one of those meditations is it's very simple, but it's called the scroller coaster. And this is where who called it that I did. Oh, that's clever. Thanks. People have been into that one. So instead of being present

without your phone, you be present with your phone. You can see it as a meditation practice. You open your phone, you open your favorite social media app, let's just say Instagram or Facebook, and then you start scrolling. So this is where the scroller coaster begins. You start going through and then it's like you see a cat and go, oh my gosh, I love cats. And then you see your friend got a job that you wanted. Oh I hate that friend, and the highs and lows of the emotion.

This is the roller coaster of emotions that we experience. So that's why it's called the scrollercoaster. Start scrolling and then we feel the roller coaster and usually we're going, I'm always so proud of you. Well I post things on Am I doing it wrong? No, you're just like on the high end of the roller coast. Okay, okay, okay God. So we usually do that process on automatic pilot, and those emotions just hijack us as they come through.

I think taking a dedicated period of five minutes to explore what it's like to go through that through the scroller coaster with more awareness makes us more sensitive to when it comes up in future moments. So this isn't necessarily a meditation you do every day. Every day, and it's I don't expect that all of us are going to bring that same quality of awareness to every time

we're scrolling there our phones. But if someone listening to this right now after this is over, pulled out their phone started scrolling through, but made it a meditation practice to watch what is your mind thinking about and what are you feeling? And see if you can watch all of that shifting and changing without being so caught up in it, I think it would be really illuminating. It is really luminating for anyone to say, Wow, this has

so much control over me. And also I don't have to be so stuck in it on automatic pilot like I usually am. So it's just a little bit of awareness that we can gain in relationship to the technology. That's a great, great tip, and I love the name of that, I really do, Corey. Is there anything else you'd like to say? Or you know, I don't often give people my guests a chance to plug things because

I just hate plugging. But I'm going to give you a chance right now because this is your first book and I think I know how much it means to you. Is there anything you want to talk about right now? Yeah, yeah. Well, the book is called Stop Missing Your Life, How to Be Deeply Present in an unpresent World. The book took a solid year and a half of writing, and when through a lot of iterations, I originally wanted to call the book Deep Presence and Well, then a bunch of

people said this sounded like an eighties porno. I was like, okay, so I can't market that, And then I want to call it Permission to Be Human, and that really felt like it got at the heart of it. But they still didn't feel like that would be You know, when you're working with a publisher, they have their ideas of what's market marketable or not. And then they then we went with stop Missing your Life. And I originally resisted it because it's not something that I would say to someone.

I wouldn't ever say to my students, stop Missing your Life.

But when I reflected more on the zeitgeist, the flavor of our culture right now, this feels like an important way to communicate this message where our heads are down so frequently, where we're moving through the motions so quickly, and many of us are so disconnected that it's almost like we need something that stands out, does shakes this by the shoulders and says like stop at least just stop, drop in and this this book will take your hand on that journey of reconnecting to the pulse of your

own life. What I love about it is that you can't get the whole book in chapter one. Each chapter builds progressively all the way to the very end when we're talking about technology, connection, intimacy. So I'm really excited for people to read it. You could learn. You get it anywhere books are sold Amazon, Barnes and Noble, stop Missing your Life dot com on the black market, on the black market, and for anyone that I want, I'd

love to give your listeners free resources. If you want guided meditations, app recommendations like mindfulness starter kit, anyone could just text their email address to plus one sixty three one four zero five four six three one and you'll get a bunch of free stuff so you don't need to buy the bookie Yeah sixty three one four zero five four sixty three one. Yeah, that's it. Got a daily podcast called Practicing Human It's Great, which you already

talked about. And otherwise, just a big, big thank you to you, Scott. I love who you are. In this world, and that you get to do it through such a great platform and our friendship. I'm so grateful for it. I think everyone's really lucky to have you here guiding us into more self actualization, transcendence, and just becoming good whole humans. Well, thank you, Corey. That's usually how my ending sounds, so I don't know how to top that, but thank you Corey for being on the show today

and of course being a dear friend. But I just really wish you I'm giving a good intention here. I wish you well on this book journey here because it's a I know it's it's very well, it's very well deserved, and I think it's will help a lot of people. I like the book. In fact, my burb is on the back of the book. I'm going to read my burb. This down to Earth, clear and capacit book is one of the best distillations of the benefits of mindfulness I've

ever read. It will help you savor the good in your life as well as bring out the immense good that all realizes within you. Stop missing the wonder beating connection in your life and read this book right now. Thanks again, Corey for being on the show. Thanks Scott, thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast

dot com. Also, please add a reading and review of the podcast on iTunes and subscribe to the Psychology Podcast YouTube channel, as we're really trying to increase our viewership on YouTube. In fact, many of these episodes are in video format on YouTube, so you'll definitely want to check out that channel. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the podcast, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity. No