Lenore: Okay. So tonight, I'd like to continue on this theme of
Lenore: self-care.
Lenore: and this is
Lenore: the topics that I've been covering. I started off, trying to faithfully follow the folds every day, and
Lenore: and then I found at 1 point it just it. It wasn't flowing. And
Lenore: so then I just ask myself
Lenore: what's the most helpful thing I could offer?
Lenore: in terms of this
Lenore: this theme of
Lenore: engaging ethically in a world in crisis. And
Lenore: this was a key thing that came to me.
Lenore: so
Lenore: sharpening our primary tool for engaging with the world. So yesterday we looked at mindful seeing. and
Lenore: we also looked at mindful, not seeing.
Lenore: deliberately guarding our senses from from input as an important tactic in avoiding overwhelm
Lenore: in this welding process.
Lenore: the importance of mindfully taking time out from the information flow
Lenore: of guarding our mind sense.
Lenore: so that we can usefully engage with and care for our world in crisis without being stopped in our tracks by compassion, fatigue.
Lenore: So I want to take another look at this important issue of keeping ourselves energized for ethical engagement.
Lenore: I was really inspired a couple of months ago at my Sanger. we
Lenore: we were having a conversation about where. loosely going through my book at Sanga. We take lots of detours when when we need to. But we had one discussion where
Lenore: we we each brought a
Lenore: mildly uncomfortable or moderately uncomfortable situation that we're that we'd dealt with.
Lenore: And we use the 5 clusters.
Lenore: you know the 5 heaps, the 5 aggregates and use those as a kind of analysis tool.
Lenore: And so each of us shared the situation.
Lenore: and you know, we looked at, you know, okay, what was the sense data? What was the feeling tone or the perceptions. How did I, you know, label and name and understand what was going on? What were the reactions and what and and what we? What did we do? Consciously?
Lenore: And
Lenore: at the end of that conversation I left Singer feeling really inspired because
Lenore: everyone in the group had shared real life situations where they had
Lenore: used the Duma to influence the way that they responded rather than reacted.
Lenore: You know whether that was in a
Lenore: situation, you know, where someone's spouse comes in and says something unkind or an interaction at work, or there were sort of a variety of different things. But in each case, because we were analyzing it, we had to share the detail of it with each other, and
Lenore: which we do quite openly anyway. And in each case I was just. I felt really inspired. That My! My folk, my my fellow
Lenore: Dummer Wallace were really using the Duma and
Lenore: and and making you know that was making a difference in their lives
Lenore: and and to the people the you know, the ripple effect factor that I was talking about with courage. You know that was having ripple effects.
Lenore: and it occurred to me
Lenore: quite clearly in that setting that Dummar practice is a form of community service. It's not just
Lenore: about me.
Lenore: but
Lenore: so so, you know, sometimes people can have trouble
Lenore: putting attention and focus on caring for myself and being aware, you know, self-aware. And and, you know.
Lenore: doing the work. But it's not just for us.
Lenore: It's it's a, you know, as we develop and grow, that has beneficial effects
Lenore: on everyone whose worlds we touch.
Lenore: So it's it's an important
Lenore: important facet of our practice. So about 30 years ago, I read a book
Lenore: that had a lasting impact on me in some interesting ways.
Lenore: one of the things I love about secular Dhamma, is that you can draw on sources from anywhere. And
Lenore: this author is a Mormon or was a moment.
Lenore: He's not around anymore. And it was called The 7 Habits of highly effective people.
Lenore: So Stephen Cubby was the name of the guy who's a Mormon, and it's a mostly terrific book that's that's really lasted the test of time and
Lenore: the last of his. So he has these 7 habits. That kind of. They're not all work related, but they're very much, you know. Personal effectiveness, home and and work related. The last
Lenore: habit of the 7 is called Sharpen the sore.
Lenore: and to this day I remember you know, probably the details are not quite right, but I remember the story he tells in that chapter.
Lenore: Where he was walking past a lumber yard. And there were these 2 big lumberjack blokes with one of those double-ended saws. and they were sawing or trying to, you know, saw through. The old log.
Lenore: and they weren't getting very far. Clearly the sore was not very sharp, and
Lenore: and he yells out to them, Hey. why don't you sharpen the saw?
Lenore: And one of them years back we don't have the time.
Lenore: And so this idea that you know, we need to take time out to look after ourselves because we are our primary tool in the world. We have to treat it as a priority.
Lenore: If we want to care for our world, which is what we've been talking about all week, we've got to care for ourselves.
Lenore: and we're going to be much more able to ethically engage if we keep our own cups full. our own body minds well tended to
Lenore: caring for and sustaining our peaceful warrior.
Lenore: So to start with, I thought it might just be
Lenore: helpful. And I'd like to hear from you guys, too, on what tactics you currently use. So we've covered one already, mindfully guarding your senses to make sure you don't end up in overwhelm, especially from things like the crime. Death and destruction report.
Lenore: Another one we've touched on, which I
Lenore: can swear by is limiting my time on social media. I probably a year or 2 ago dropped that by about 90%,
Lenore: and my life is much better for it.
Lenore: You probably know some very well researched and well-known tactics these days, like gratitude diaries and specific gratitude practices, like, you know, at the end of the day.
Lenore: listing the 3 listing 3 things you're grateful for, and that's different from 3 3 good things.
Lenore: Specifically, things we're grateful for in this context are things that I didn't bring about.
Lenore: So they're essentially good fortune.
Lenore: So on some days that, you know, might be a the beautiful sunny day it might be already can manage
Lenore: but that that has
Lenore: a lot of research has been done on gratitude, and that's a really powerful tactic
Lenore: for self care.
Lenore: Rick Hanson also has some nice self-care practices. He's got a whole book called Taking in the good
Lenore: so the pleasant and nourishing experiences don't just slip by like we're teflon.
Lenore: This is that negativity bias. So he talks about us being Velcro for the positive and sorry. I think it is used. The one word Velcro for the
Lenore: teflon, for the positive, and Velcro for the negative
Lenore: and we have an inherent that that inherent bias. So he has some practices in there. that turn.
Lenore: he says, turn positive facts into positive experiences. So really allowing
Lenore: the the positive things that happen in your life and in your day to affect you.
Lenore: to affect your body, mind. and then he's got some really neat practices
Lenore: doing that as well as things. Other things, you know, that are quite commonly known, like attending frequently to
Lenore: the moments in our and the phases of our life that are nourishing and and pleasant.
Lenore: noticing
Lenore: the peace and beauty, and compassion, and joy.
Lenore: and love and beauty and kindness, they go on around us all the time, even though we have a world in crisis.
Lenore: Acknowledging that things are good right now, if they are
Lenore: some of those sorts of practices.
Lenore: we also need to get really good at self-soothing
Lenore: because we do get knocked around. We are sensitive creatures in this world, and our senses mean that we get hurt and we get reactive.
Lenore: you know, we're going to have reactivity arise. We're going to feel hurt and pain and loss and sorrow. They're part of the package being human.
Lenore: And so I'm actually really interested in this topic right now, and I'd love to hear, just before I go on?
Lenore: What tactics you use
Lenore: for
Lenore: self-soothing in particular? you're lining up to get a microphone. Is that what
Lenore: that would be? Great? Yeah, I just. I'm really keen to hear what people do. So when you've when you've sort of been knocked on your bum by something hurt.
Lenore: you know. Disappointed.
Lenore: What are the things that you do
Lenore: close to that moment in time to help self self soothe?
Lenore: Lot of these, I guess, will be obvious is enough. This is working, but writing, you know, I think, is a huge one. I try to journal, but
Lenore: latter half of the year has been pretty pretty spotty with my journaling. But when I am, I take in
Lenore: more of my life, I reflect, better process things, emotional difficulties. Better.
Lenore: Let's dig it closer.
Lenore: Okay? Yeah, II take in my experience my life in a more considered way. So I think writing is is one that I thought of
Lenore: definitely. Yep, I find journaling really helpful.
Lenore: something I've learned relatively late in life, and largely thanks to the dharma
Lenore: and know other things as well, is to allow myself to feel my body.
Lenore: where? Where it's happening, what I'm where I'm feeling, where I'm feeling it, what I'm feeling.
Lenore: and if it's self-soothing to
Lenore: put my hand on my heart. That's often something really helpful.
Lenore: and be my own friend.
Lenore: So I guess it's, you know, self compassion, but very body based.
Lenore: thanks, Kate.
Lenore: Music is one thing for me that
Lenore: tends to be classical jam for music.
Lenore: I'm a little bit uncertain sometimes whether I use it as a way of escaping.
Lenore: but it doesn't feel like it. It just feels like A mode to to be able to be in the present in a comfortable way. And another thing that it's not so much immediate self soothing, but
Lenore: has been remarkably therapeutic. Is this practice called nature journaling? I don't know if anyone has heard of that.
Lenore: I was taking an art class in Canberra. It was based around drawing nature and the the the practice is you have a
Lenore: blank art journal, and you you simply draw some piece of nature, and you make notes about it, and if you do that every day, it's both a very stilling process of observation and
Lenore: connection to the to the natural world. And it's it's truly remarkable nice, thank you.
Lenore: Tina's at home as well
Tina Gibson: right. and it's sound. So I talk to myself. The sound of
Tina Gibson: the same way. I would talk to a a small child, the soothing vocal tones, and I think we underestimate the
Tina Gibson: the effect on our nervous system of the way we talk to ourselves.
Tina Gibson: And you know, with mindfulness we can. We can better understand the harshness often of our inner voice. So
Tina Gibson: these days II make soothing sounds, and I talk to myself in a soothing, supportive way, and that's something I've had to learn.
Tina Gibson: But oh, so I just wanted to speak to this term. Compassion, fatigue, because I think we're better position to realize its more empathy, fatigue, compassion.
Tina Gibson: When we learn about what it truly is, we can't fatigue from it when we're tired. The compassionate response is to rest. I think there's
Tina Gibson: a great deal I've learnt to prevent future burning out by really understanding what compassion is, and that
Tina Gibson: we can only burn out if we have the old idiot compassion, you know. So we're not bringing in the wisdom
Tina Gibson: or where not, including ourselves, in our compassionate response. So compassion is the sensitivity to suffering in ourselves and others.
Tina Gibson: and then that shift to a wise response. And sometimes the response is an action. But sometimes it said, That's enough, Tina. You're just one human
Tina Gibson: that'll do for today, you know. So it's been shown
Tina Gibson: by Tanya Singh putting people like Matthew Ricard under Fmri to show that empathy is in a quite different part of the brain and takes a lot of energy. And that's what we
Tina Gibson: burn out from when we really haven't learned to pause and and work out in that moment the balance of wisdom in our response. So
Tina Gibson: it's really common that it's out there and called compassion, fatigue. But all of the people in this group will really benefit by understanding the difference.
Tina Gibson: because it may prevent us all from burning out is that it's that
Tina Gibson: empathy fatigue
Tina Gibson: that is actually burning us out. If that makes sense, I hope well enough.
Lenore: Thanks, Tina. Yeah, that's really really helpful. I have always thought of compassion as the combination of empathy and the desire to help, or the desire to respond. So there's a movement to action there as well, which picks up on what you're saying. A wise response.
Tina Gibson: And somehow, Fmri, show that it moves to our frontal cortex a motor region of the brain, even if the response is seeding, you know, is not action, but it's still a caring response.
Tina Gibson: you know, like in compassion meditations, and wishing people well and talking to ourselves.
Tina Gibson: Hopefully. That makes sense. It takes a bit of while to explain, but it still shifts from that more posterior region of the brain where empathy and our pain network is into the frontal area, this motor region, whether we're actually physically taking action or in our heart. Mind, we've moved to a compassionate response.
Tina Gibson: Yeah. So both sides of compassion, you know. Still, with the strong backs off from. But we just mix
Tina Gibson: up the emphasis, like like a good dark chocolate.
Lenore: Thanks, Tina.
Lenore: And I'm with you. Music?
Lenore: So I always try and find time in my day pretty much every day for some practice on the instruments of my choice, which is the piano on the violin. And it's it's probably more of a I need to do this, you know. Sometimes I've got something to practice for
Lenore: other times I just like to play cause it helps me concentrate. It helps me
Lenore: my mind to sort of think with that, but in a sort of abounded way, it helps me feel it allows me to express what I'm feeling. I usually randomly find the sort of music I feel like playing, depending on what's going on. And usually, after an hour in the music room, I'm I'm a different woman, interesting and playing music as well as listening to music. Yeah.
Lenore: I might be a bit old fashioned.
Lenore: along your lines, Kate, do something
Lenore: for my body to help me relax. So it's sort of like the end of the day, and it feels like the old song of, you know, some days of diamonds. The others are just stones.
Lenore: Having a hot bath. having a sock, the bath getting with jams on earlier
Lenore: and and going to bed
Lenore: early earlier. Don't get distracted with with too much and keep to that routine to allow your body to.
Lenore: through its normal circadian rhythm.
Lenore: Help calm. You go to bed because whatever felt that difficult
Lenore: generally feels better the next morning.
Lenore: Thanks, John.
Lenore: We might go to Angie online.
Angie Bucu: Lovely. Thank you
Angie Bucu: great ideas,
and
Angie Bucu: many that I've
Angie Bucu: w want to use or have used. I'm actually suffering really badly at the moment from a terrible respiratory, flu cold, whatever it is. And
Angie Bucu: so I found self-seating like sitting touch just been so so helpful. But something I wanted to share, because, of course, being in nature is also a very wonderful way to do. Then I live in Hong Kong, and luckily on in a community where
Angie Bucu: you know 10 min out of my front door, and I'm in the mountains. And
Angie Bucu: I was walking down the street yesterday, and someone had put these beautiful hand painted stones, with Christmas decorations and lovely little messages in amongst all the the base of the trees
Angie Bucu: along our main road.
Angie Bucu: and I realized, gosh! Just looking up. You see such beautiful things
Angie Bucu: right in, you know.
Angie Bucu: in our.
Angie Bucu: you know, right where we are looking. All we have to do is lift our gaze, and there is so much beauty that can help to sue us and get us out of our
Angie Bucu: for me. You know self
Angie Bucu: just feeling miserable about having this flu? So yeah, just
Angie Bucu: just wanted to say, you know, opening our eyes and looking up and seeing what nature can offer, and some of the beautiful things that other people in the community have
Angie Bucu: contributed to that savoring, savoring the beauty and the good. Yeah, beautiful. Thanks. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Thank you.
Lenore: Thanks, Angie. This is a technique which
Lenore: one can use when you triggered.
Lenore: and you don't have time to to go out into nature or to, you know, to do the things that you would normally do to help you. It was developed by an Australian therapist.
Lenore: And he accepted some commitment therapist by the name of Russ Harris. and it's called Dropping anchor.
Lenore: And what you do is
Lenore: you. You sit down and take a few breaths.
Lenore: and the principle is that if you're a a ship, and a huge storm comes up.
Lenore: and you're certainly battered by the waves. If you drop anchor you'll still rock backwards and forwards, but you won't be blown onto the rocks. So what you do is, and the formula is a CE, which is acceptance.
Lenore: The Cs connects and the E is engage. So what you do is, you see you sit down, take a few breaths, close your eyes, and you
Lenore: see yourself physically stepping back.
Lenore: and you acknowledge. So it's not accepted that knowledge. You acknowledge your difficulty. And so you're not resiling from it. You're not trying to push it out of the way you just acknowledge that it's there.
Lenore: Then you connect, you connect with your body. You can do a little bit, little body, scan. Just notice how your body is in that moment, and breathe into it.
Lenore: and then engage re-engage with the world around you. So if you're at a window, look out the window, look at the trees around you and notice the leaves, notice the sky, etc. And it's it can be done in in a few minutes, and it's very, very powerful
Lenore: I've just shared a lot of my clients, but I will use it more about myself, and it's really powerful fabulous thanks in a book. If you. Anybody wants to buy the book? It's cool. I'm not touting for for us, but it's for us. It's
Lenore: called the Reality Slep.
Lenore: That's a very reasonable book.
Lenore: The title sounds like a fascinating little book.
Lenore: I'm John, the generally when I get stressed. I engage there's a some training we did in sensory motorcycle, psych sensory motor psychotherapy.
Lenore: where we follow the emotions, we follow the physical symptoms and the dynamics.
Lenore: So you know, if it starts off in our chest, we think, what color is it, or what's it doing? So is it going, you know? Is it stable, or is it moving? Is it shaped. Is it pliable or hard? And so I explore the feelings.
Lenore: That occurring within me. and generally that sort of really helps me to
Lenore: at least get back in touch with my body.
Lenore: The other things that I do is like going for a swim or going for a walk, and just being very mindful when I'm walking. And but I would do. Firstly, I'd do my my sensory awareness.
and I found that's very effective. Yeah.
Lenore: thank you.
Lenore: There's some lovely ideas.
Lenore: Was there another one
Lenore: saying this to Lenore sounds like reaching to the choir. But another great thing is to do some physical exercise, like to go for a run
Lenore: or go for a swim. It's fantastic. In fact, the the fastest way to process cortisol in your body is exercise.
Lenore: So yeah. absolutely
Lenore: fantastic. Let me check my little list of ideas and see if there's any we've missed.
Lenore: You guys have picked up on several of them already.
Lenore: I find a couple of you have given ideas in this vein, but physical comfort. Actually, I find really helpful hugs.
Lenore: My husband is fabulous hugger. So when I need self-soothing. He's he's the bomb.
Lenore: Now, this is going to sound. possibly silly, but it works.
Lenore: Cuddle up with soft fabrics
Lenore: for a dog. Yeah, seriously. And if you've got a nice, cuddly soft dog. Yep. So that physical.
Lenore: that physical comforting almost like you're a baby, you know it. Actually, I find, really helps exercise. We've said time in nature
Lenore: was one journaling. We've already got
Lenore: sharing it with people who care about you.
Lenore: Was another one for me.
Lenore: and I mentioned one the other night the the touching, the ground thing that was especially helpful when self-doubt starts coming your way. They're touching them, you know, like the does. Everyone know that story with the Buddha when he touched the ground? Lots of nods around the room. Yeah, so just you know.
Lenore: what evidence is there that
Lenore: you know that's not true, and or that that you know I deserve to be here, or I deserve to be doing this, or I have the right to. You know. Line up the evidence.
It's going to be
Lenore: the practice or the sure. So
Lenore: I have a little tool. Actually, it's it's available on my website called fixing the frame
Lenore: When
Lenore: when I was 17, I think it was. And I was going for a job. and I
Lenore: didn't really think I had much of a chance of having a job and I was going to not go to the job interview.
Lenore: and I got out my
Lenore: so-called Cv. I mean, there wasn't much to it at the age of 17.
Lenore: but I read the references that my teacher had written for me. There are a couple of teachers who'd written me references from school and whatever.
Lenore: and
simply
Lenore: making that my frame of reference.
Lenore: gave me the
Lenore: the confidence and the hump and the energy to just go out and and go out and have that job interview. And I got the job, and you know
Lenore: so the touching the ground thing for me is
Lenore: shifting the frame of reference. When something has.
Lenore: as I say, I find it especially useful with self-doubt. And and something's happened.
Lenore: And you're thinking, oh, maybe I'm not good enough, or maybe I am. You know those horrible things someone just said, I am, or, yeah, maybe I'm I'm not worthy of doing this or is to. There is to just fix the frame and go. Okay, what's the evidence
Lenore: that suggests? I am.
Lenore: and just line it all up one after the other.
Lenore: so that that fills your frame.
Lenore: But my little activity fixing the frames. Actually, a bit more, is it? And there's more to it than that. But it's essentially
Lenore: focusing your attention or bandwidth
Lenore: on the confirming evidence that you are worthy. You are competent, you are lovable, you are deserving of respect, you know, whatever it is that has been shaken
Lenore: in that moment, and so just filling that frame with all of the evidence that
Lenore: that's the confirming evidence that you are.
Lenore: you know, worthy of those.
Lenore: Thanks.
Lenore: My practice doesn't literally involve touching the ground. But yes, the touching the ground came really from the from the Buddha's touching the ground thing. Yeah.
Lenore: So that's great. Thank you.
Lenore: So I'd like to share with you tonight a tool to also to help with this job of
Lenore: of keeping ourselves void, and of looking after ourselves and and sharpening our our tool.
Lenore: One of the insights we had a couple of Sanger meetings where we were kind of debriefing after the referendum
Lenore: and
Lenore: one of one of the singer members was volunteering in the referendum activities. And
Lenore: and so we were
Lenore: asking him, you know. So he was doing a bit like what I did with the Sophie Scumps campaign. He was standing in shopping centers, and, you know.
Lenore: offering to talk to people who wanted to talk about the referendum. And what have you? And
Lenore: yeah, he said, there were lots of unpleasant responses he got from people. And what have you and we were. We were asking him, you know, really curiously, you know. Help us understand. Why? Why were these people so against it? And what have you?
Lenore: And there are a number of reasons, but
Lenore: one that really I found we all sort of found easy to empathise with is that when you're really struggling
Lenore: it's hard to be generous of spirit. It's hard to have that generosity of spirit
Lenore: and at least a portion of the people that he came across that were negative about the referendum were in that
Lenore: category.
Lenore: So how do we orient ourselves towards a flourishing life so that we're
Lenore: flourishing and blossoming so that we can engage in this world, not just for ourselves.
Lenore: but so that our tank is full so that we can be this peaceful warrior. And the Dharma offers a lot of guidance on how to attend, to
Lenore: understand and adjust the way we receive experience. whatever that experience might be. It's immensely helpful in that way.
Lenore: But I think of it as having a lot to offer on the how of human experience.
Lenore: But I've also found it really helpful to know the what of human flourishing. So Stephen touched on it this morning, talking about
Lenore: you know the basics that we need to be able to
Lenore: pursue a contemplative life. You know, food, shelter.
Lenore: clothing, medical support, that sort of thing.
Lenore: So just look at just like our bodies will be malnourished if we don't
Lenore: imbibe certain nutrients in certain quantities.
Lenore: Our minds are out, our minds and and psyches. However, you want to
Lenore: conceptualize that
Lenore: have certain needs, too.
Lenore: and certain experiences that we know
Lenore: through research, help us live fulfilling lives.
Lenore: So we've we've actually been researching this as a species. We've been researching this for a while. We know a fair bit about it.
Lenore: in terms of what makes us happy and satisfied and fulfilled creatures.
Lenore: So just to explain what I mean by the what and the how.
Lenore: let's say we're feeling hungry, like physically hungry. Our Dharma practice might help us notice that. Be mindful of the irritation that's arising.
Lenore: Notice. I'm getting hungry. Maybe.
Lenore: If I can't feed myself soon, it might even help me be economists about that unpleasant feeling in the stomach.
Lenore: But we know sooner or later we're going to have to eat.
Lenore: or our well-being will diminish. Human bodies need food, water, air. and it's cruel, and, in fact, lethal
Lenore: to deprive them of these nutrients, these nourishments, however, that. Yeah, we all know this. However, that basic kind of knowledge about what do we need
Lenore: psychologically. is not as widespread.
Lenore: So what are the key elements of a flourishing life? The boxes you need to tick in terms of the what what kind of experiences do I need in my life if I really want to flourish as a human being
Lenore: so like the boxes we need to tick for the various nutrients for our body. What are the boxes we need to tick for our mind and our and our Psyche out of interest, and we don't need the microphone for this. I can just repeat them. But what would you say if you just had to off the cuff? Say.
Lenore: what? What are the what are the things that would that lead to if I had to say a
Lenore: list of things that we need psychologically connection
Lenore: belonging. Yep.
Lenore: meaning
Lenore: peace.
Lenore: sleep. Yeah.
Lenore: Any other ideas. Purpose? Yep.
Lenore: Stimulation, stimulation.
rena czaplinska-archer: safety
Lenore: agency. Yep.
rena czaplinska-archer: safety.
Lenore: Good. Okay. Psychological safety. Yep, yep. Nice friendship. Yep.
Lenore: because in the connection, bucket as well, yeah. validation. Right? So you guys are onto it.
Lenore: So I'm gonna share with you a tool that I put together. It's just part of my flourish person, both business that will help you. Assess how well you're harnessing the app. These opportunities to flourish as a human being. So these are the what
Lenore: so if the dharma is mostly the how of experience, this is one conception, it's not the be all and end all. It's just a tool that I've put together. That kind of
Lenore: tries to put it all in one place to say.
Lenore: you know, if I want a quick
Lenore: sense of where things are going well and where I could put some effort. If I want to flourish more fully.
Lenore: Here's here's a a little map we can use?
Lenore: So the people online already, hopefully, they've all printed out their little sheet. And I'm just going to hand around
Lenore: to the people in the room, the one that we have here, and then we'll go through.
Lenore: It's called the 9 Elements
Lenore: of Flourishing. So
Lenore: I just give. I think, that one take a round.
Lenore: You need a highlighter
Lenore: so there are highlighters. Does anyone need a highlighter that doesn't have one?
Lenore: Understand?
Hey?
Lenore: You've got here ones. Anyone else for a highlighter
when you don't have.
Lenore: See? I don't have one now. I gave them all the way.
Lenore: Yes.
Lenore: so you guys just
Lenore: invented this yourselves like 5 min ago.
Lenore: So let's go through these. And
Lenore: The idea of the highlighter. You can see each each
Lenore: There are 9 of them. There are 4 on the safe. There are 4 on the bars, and then there's one is a ribbon on the flowers, so I'll go to each one, and so, as we talk about them.
Lenore: you can
think about your life
Lenore: as it is at the moment. This is a state thing. It's, you know, just my life at the moment it changes over time.
And give yourself a rating. You can see it's got little scale, 10 point scales on each one there, so you can give yourself a little rating for my life at the moment. How am I?
Lenore: How am I doing on this?
Lenore: So if we start at the bottom left. So the 4 the 4 elements that are on the safe are on the safe because they are kind of safety needs.
Lenore: So the first one we were talking about this morning. You know the basics
Lenore: material security. So food, shelter.
Lenore: physical safety.
Lenore: this. So do I have enough to get by.
Lenore: Am I not worried
Lenore: that I'm not going to be okay physically?
Lenore: So to what extent do I feel at risk?
Lenore: That I don't have enough, or that I'm not going to be able to cope financially. So it's not about having as much money as we want or retiring in the you know manner to which I'm accustomed, or anything like that. It's it's about.
Lenore: Have I got enough? Or am I worried about getting by?
Lenore: Yes, sorry. Yep. So 10 out of 10 is, yep, I've got I've got. I never worry about my material security.
Lenore: So then the second one, which I think Guy said the word agency, which is related, although not quite the same. So autonomy. So
Lenore: this one is about. Am I able to
Lenore: to make make choices for my life that I want to. Am I able to live where I want to marry? Who I want to do the job? I want to. You know, practice what religion or no religion I want to, without any kind of coercion
Lenore: or punishment.
Lenore: From my world. so I am. Am I able to exercise my autonomy, my own choices over my own life.
Lenore: Now the next one is is this is the main one where I need to do a little bit of explaining. It says certainty on there, but think of it as
Lenore: peace with uncertainty. So what I mean by that is. if we are
Lenore: if we've as we were talking about earlier in the week, uncertainty can feel unsafe. So if I have a fearful relationship, and and but you know life has lots of uncertainty in it
Lenore: reality. So what do I do with that? And and what is my relationship with that? Am I okay with it? Do I realize. Yep.
Lenore: life is full of uncertainty. And that's okay. I can cope with it. I understand enough about the way that life and experience works, that I trust my ability to deal with it.
Lenore: So someone who might score a low score on certainty would be reaching for reaching for certainty in places like
Lenore: dogmatic beliefs. Black and white thinking dogmatic views.
Lenore: you know, is. And isn't that kind of stuff that we've been talking about this week?
Lenore: Get rid of that uncertainty by pinning things down
Lenore: with more certainty than is actually real. whereas, if you feel yep, no, I accept, and I can. I know life is, you know, rife with uncertainty. but I'm okay with it.
Lenore: and I'm confident in my ability to deal with it.
Lenore: Then you'd be attending.
Lenore: So the next one is belonging, which somebody said, I think that may mean treatment, said or so. No, anyway belonging. So
Lenore: I make a distinction in this little model between belonging and connection.
Lenore: and they may overlap, but they're different. So belonging is.
Lenore: do I feel I belong to a group?
Lenore: So that might be as straightforward as
Lenore: so I get a lot of my sense of belonging from the athletics world.
Lenore: So the idea is, am I well known? Is there a seat at the table for me?
Lenore: People expect me to be there. They'll notice if I'm not
Lenore: you know. So when I'm injured, which I have been in the last couple of years, and my friend Philippa goes to weekend comps, and she's constantly asked, Where's Lenori? Is she still competing? What's happening.
Lenore: So they're they. I'm I'm so.
Lenore: I'm enough a part of the group that the athletics world that. as I say, there's a seat at the table for me. People are expecting me to be there.
Lenore: Now it may be a physical group, it may not, may be a virtual group, so it might be that you feel a strong sense of belonging with the secular Buddhists around the world because you're involved in you know this, that, or the other.
Lenore: you may or may not feel a deep connection with the people. I don't feel particularly deep connections with many of the people in the athletics world
Lenore: have a lot of fairly shallow connections.
Lenore: but nevertheless, I feel I feel a sense of belonging there.
Lenore: so give yourself a score on that.
Lenore: and then the next one is pleasure.
Lenore: And first of all, notice that it's on here. you know. Pleasure's not
Lenore: as we know it's not bad. And it is actually important
Lenore: in flourishing. Now I include in pleasure. fun. entertainment, adventure.
Lenore: You know, walking in nature
Lenore: anything that you do for fun or or pleasure. Obviously the the normal, you know. sensory pleasures as well.
Lenore: Yeah. Yeah. 5 senses plus the mind.
Lenore: If you're a lover of learning that can be a pleasure, I find learning a pleasure.
and
Lenore: I'll give yourself a score on that one.
Lenore: Yeah.
Lenore: My favorite description is that something? They're more dependent.
Lenore: maybe sorry for your benefit.
Lenore: Sorry? Asking a question about.
Lenore: and
Lenore: clarifying pleasure and being contingent on mood.
Lenore: Can you say some more about that, Kate? What's your thinking there? So
Lenore: if somebody is depressed, even though there may be many sources of potential pleasure, there is not not available. Right? Yes, so it is. Yes, sorry. I see what you're saying it. It is the experience of pleasure. Yes, yeah. So if you normally, you know, love this food, and you're feeling
Lenore: upset or depressed, or what have you? And you're not enjoying it, then that's not a pleasure. The pleasure is in the actual subjective experience. Yep, thank you.
Lenore: Since you've got a date on it, because it may maybe date and time might be a good one. Yes, yeah, that's right. You've noticed I've got a date at the bottom of the page, because, you might want to redo this at another time and compare it to how it is today.
Lenore: It changes.
Lenore: Okay. So the next one is engagement.
Lenore: So you might have come across the concept of flow.
Lenore: Mikhail chicksen Mahai is the psychologist
Lenore: who's associated with this concept. So flow is a very task-oriented
Lenore: state.
Lenore: It's where
Lenore: that whole attentional bandwidth that I've been talking about this week is devoted to applying your energy and effort and skill to a task.
Lenore: So
Lenore: with flow we often lose, and literally they say this in the literature about it we lose self-consciousness
Lenore: because all of our bandwidth is devoted to this activity. None of it is devoted to thinking about me. or even thinking about the fact that I'm enjoying myself.
Lenore: It's usually, once we get to the end of a flow experience when we go. Oh, that was so good!
Lenore: I really enjoyed that. It's an experience where often our sense of time
Lenore: disappears, you get in flow. And when I'm creating tools and things for my personal growth business, or I'm creating content.
Lenore: I get in flow. And then
Lenore: all of a sudden, I look at my watch, and it's 6, 30, and I haven't done my gym session yet, and I was supposed to do it at 50'clock.
Lenore: so it's that kind of experience we just get so deeply into doing what you're doing that you kind of lose track of time
Lenore: and it's been shown to be, you know, in a very, very
Lenore: satisfying experience for human beings.
Lenore: So give yourself a rating on that extent to which you
Lenore: do that. I wonder, Meredith, whether the music might might be part of that for you.
Lenore: Yeah, the playing music. Yeah.
Lenore: Okay. So the next one is achievement. Now we all more or less know what this is. But just to be clear.
Lenore: So it is the applying of our
Lenore: time, energy, skill, and effort
Lenore: to achieve a specific goal. So
Lenore: if if the specific goal bit is important here.
Lenore: so you know, I'll for example, bringing up good kids.
Lenore: you know. I mean that that's that's kind of a goal. But it's a pretty fuzzy one.
Lenore: And can you tell whether you did or whether you didn't so with achievements. It's most neatly considered achievement. If it's very clear what the goal is that you're
Lenore: aiming to bring about.
Lenore: So for a long time for me. I was actually getting for many years. Actually, in the last decade or so, almost all of my sense of achievement came from athletics
Lenore: because I was running a business that I'd been running already for several years. It didn't
Lenore: kind of it wasn't challenging me in any way. I don't care about money that much. So you know the idea of growing my business to be, you know, earn this much money, or whatever didn't excite me. I never had any goals like that.
Lenore: So for me, you know, setting myself goals with my different events, you know, breaking a Pb. Or breaking a record, or, you know, winning world championship, or you know, something like that. They were my.
Lenore: they were my goals, and I had a great time trying to achieve them.
Lenore: So with this one, just have that in mind that it's you should be able to clearly tell whether you've achieved it or not.
Lenore: It's a process of achieving it. Yeah.
Lenore: So you might have achieved a bunch of stuff already in your life. But if you're not currently
Lenore: applying your skills and energies and efforts to achieve something, then your rating on achievement might be quite low.
Lenore: and the research shows that we will do this. Whether or not, there's an external reward. So there's human beings. There's an intrinsic joy
Lenore: in applying myself to try and achieve something and doing it.
Lenore: and human beings will will do this. even if there is no
Lenore: extrinsic reward from it.
Lenore: The process itself is very satisfying.
Lenore: so they're now. So so give yourself a rating on that if you haven't already.
Lenore: And then our eighth one is connection which somebody mentioned
Lenore: exactly in our little
Lenore: guessing game, so different to belonging connection is more personal. It's more you know. I see you. I know you. I care about you.
Lenore: So it's that that deeper personal
Lenore: connection that you have with people. So there's out of all the hundreds of people I know in the athletics world there's probably only one or 2.
Lenore: That I connect that, I would say, are real connections
Lenore: of any meaning to me.
Lenore: So rach yourself on that, and then the last one, and for me this one couple when we were sort of just you know, coming up with ideas of what these needs might be. They were so. Someone said, meaning, I think that might have been Joseph and
Lenore: There was another one on that on that same vein. So contribution is that
Lenore: giving to others, so that
Lenore: citiz
Lenore: that sense of
Lenore: giving my time and skills and energy and care
Lenore: for the benefit of others.
Lenore: So meaning and purpose. It's quite interesting.
Lenore: And
Lenore: yeah, when you, when you ask people about, you know what's meaningful to you and what's your purpose? Often what they'll they'll talk about is the the areas where they contribute and where they give
Lenore: to others. And that's where they get their sense of meaning.
Lenore: you notice the spirituality word isn't on there anywhere, and it's definitely not that I don't see that as important. It is partly largely because I see that as a large part of the how
Lenore: and my design design decision on that was
Lenore: you know, like the flies out the window.
Lenore: That if we it's very easy when we put
Lenore: spirituality out there. Or, let's say, we put awakening out there
Lenore: that we get really caught up with with with being there with being like that and
Lenore: forget that in order to get there we have to put the goal aside and focus on the room that we're in. And my sense is that if we're doing all of these. We're filling all of these. We've got all these elements in our life, including contribution.
Lenore: And there's more to the story as
Lenore: which I'll I'll fill in in a second.
Lenore: The how of how we go about
Lenore: ensuring these elements in our life
is a lot to do with
Lenore: spiritual growth and personal growth.
Lenore: So if you haven't already, give yourself a score on contribution.
Lenore: and you know that can be volunteering. That can be for me, that running the sanger is a contribution piece for me. Coaching the
Lenore: kids in athletics is a contribution piece for me. So anything you do where you're giving of your skills and time and care and energy for the benefit of others.
Lenore: so
Lenore: find my middle notes.
Lenore: Okay, so
Lenore: so I find this this helpful, because it helps me see where, at any given sort of point in time, I'm a bit malnourished, or at least
Lenore: under flourished to give myself the appropriate compassion for that.
Lenore: and potentially the appropriate pushing to action on self-care. So, for example, let's say that you rated yourself on these things, and you found that your connection score was a bit low and that you realize. Yep, I feel a bit lonely a lot.
Lenore: and so
Lenore: well, if you notice, you might notice that just through your Duma practice, just through meditation for instance.
Lenore: if I was just
Lenore: using my demo practice on this, I might sit with it, I might explore it.
Lenore: I might notice how it feels. Notice the body sensations, notice the mind, activity that goes along with
Lenore: feeling lonely might notice some of the proliferation that goes on, when that when that body sensation of loneliness is going on. Notice the mind activity. It might trigger. You know, mental movies narratives
Lenore: that go along with it, maybe even a sense of failure. You know how come? Everyone else has got friends, and I haven't
Lenore: and and that, you know alone might have some beneficial effects. However, it may not ever lead to the insight
Lenore: that connection is an essential part of human flourishing.
Lenore: So
Lenore: what I find is helpful with this is that
Lenore: is the realization that this is a this is an important part of flourishing. So if I'm low on it.
Lenore: actually need to do something, I need to try and change my circumstances.
Lenore: In order to address this issue of under connection in my life.
Lenore: So realizing that it's actually, it's a fundamental need. It's in our DNA.
Lenore: Yeah, I think I might have said this earlier in the week. But yeah, we didn't. We didn't survive as a species, because we were stronger or smarter or faster. We survived because we were more cooperative
Lenore: with each other. And so it's no wonder that the need to know and be known as well as the need to belong which is on the safety end. Are in our DNA.
Lenore: So almost all of the neocortex, almost all of the new brain
Lenore: is involved somehow in the processing of social queues. We are really social creatures. And it's it's not just a nice to have.
Lenore: It's an important part of flourishing.
Lenore: So okay, so I've realized it's important. I know what it's like I'm I'm familiar with it.
Lenore: so where did? How did? How does the the how on the what fit together? How does my Dhamma practice, and the knowledge about how I'm going on these 9 elements. How does that all work together?
Lenore: So let's say we'll stick with the loneliness example. So I realize I'm
Lenore: undernourished on the connection.
Lenore: So and this is so, I might start to investigate that in my meditations.
Lenore: So
Lenore: what's going on there? Why haven't I built good connections with people.
Lenore: I might realize that maybe I haven't been a particularly good friend myself. and then you can imagine a whole. Another investigation that might go on
Lenore: from that. Well, what's going on there? Why, why do I behave like that when I want connection? And yet I'm behaving like this?
Lenore: I literally had this experience earlier in my life.
Lenore: My husband and I both had this thing. We sort of laugh at it now, but.
Lenore: We will, you know, meet some new people.
Lenore: decide they weren't. Your kind of people. Cut them loose.
Lenore: That was that was the sort of phrase. If you, if we?
Lenore: You know they they annoyed us, and we didn't like them that much, or.
Lenore: you know, decided we didn't want wanna be friends with them or just cut them loose. So you know that kind of thing. Well, what's going on there? So we might we might not be particularly
Lenore: good friends ourselves. Maybe we don't show
Lenore: care and interest in other people. Maybe we don't go out of our way for other people. Maybe we only see people when it suits us.
Lenore: We never communicate the importance of
Lenore: spending time with our friends. Maybe we have fear around opening up and sharing our full selves with other people.
Lenore: So you can imagine a whole. You know some some llama work around that exploring that
Lenore: maybe we're so scared of the pain of rejection
Lenore: that we just can't bring ourselves to invite someone to come and do something.
Lenore: and then we can use our dumber practice to investigate that. get curious about it.
Lenore: So
Lenore: that's just an example of how you know it's it's the the tool itself can kind of give you a little reading on how things are. But then the how, the the
Lenore: the inquiry, and the curiosity into our experience can then start to help us feel well, if I if I want to.
Lenore: if I want to improve my connection. Feelings of connection in my life.
Lenore: What do I need to do? But might need to do a bit of growing
Lenore: in order to do that.
Lenore: So just before we maybe
Lenore: share our our thoughts about this have again, you might find this helpful, and also might sound partly familiar to you.
Lenore: So I have what I call the 5 growth superpowers that. Oh, I've managed to get to start with a letter C,
Lenore: so these are the personal characteristics
Lenore: that
Lenore: I think are really key to then being able to.
Lenore: through the use of our dharma work, and whatever other personal growth methods we have at our hand to help us actually move and make change. So one is courage.
Lenore: surprise, surprise.
Lenore: and you know it can take courage even to ask yourself those questions. You know. Why am I? Why don't I have enough connection in my life
Lenore: and take courage just to admit that I haven't been a particularly good friend myself. and take courage to admit that I'm scared of opening up. I'm scared of rejection. so courage is
Lenore: really really key in my view.
Lenore: The next one is clarity.
Lenore: So meditation is obviously a really key tool for helping achieve clarity.
Lenore: But I find journaling also. Can be really good in in helping with that. And there are a bunch of other introspective, you know, devices and mechanisms we can use
Lenore: to achieve clarity about what's going on.
Lenore: Another word that we've already used a lot. Here is the third one which is compassion. So you know, if I discover that the reason that I am low on connection at the moment is that
Lenore: I'm terrified of rejection.
Lenore: I need to have compassion to myself, for that
Lenore: rejection hurts literally, we feel physical pain when we're rejected. Even if it's someone we don't want to be friends with
Lenore: us. Humans are relational creatures. We don't like being rejected.
Lenore: Yeah, it hurts so compassion for that. If that's what we find through our clarity.
Lenore: Number 4 is curiosity. So you know, then then we get curious about that. And for me, that combo of courage.
Lenore: compassion. curiosity.
Lenore: are
Lenore: so powerful. and they really help on the clarity front.
Lenore: And then the last one is commitment commitment to growing.
Lenore: It's hard.
Lenore: We fall off the wagon.
Lenore: scrape our knees. dust ourselves off. and the commitment to growing is we get back on. And we keep trying.
Lenore: So
Lenore: what I actually, just before we go to discuss this with each other, the
Lenore: somebody said this recently. It's that same
Lenore: thing of you know. Apply your own mask first, like when you
Lenore: on the aeroplane, and they say, you know, if the
Lenore: the cabin loses pressure, and the oxygen mask falls. Make sure you apply your own mask before you help infants and other people. This is about applying
Lenore: our own
Lenore: self-care mask.
Lenore: So what I am going to suggest is that we once again just find somebody. Maybe we haven't spoken to
Lenore: yet on the retreat, or haven't spoken too much. There's no obligation to share. If you
Lenore: don't feel comfortable sharing your
Lenore: your little chart there, you don't need to. You can just talk about well, what insights or is, you know, is this helpful, or any way? Or if you have any confusions or questions? And it's now
Lenore: 25 past 8. Just
Lenore: excuse me.
Thank you. So
Lenore: so take 20 min to to just have a chat in pairs, or
Lenore: and then we'll come back. Oh, okay.
Lenore: maybe people have got some advice about how
Lenore: how do you? How do you identify moments of achievement in the raising of children?
Hmm!
Lenore: You won't have to say anything. Yeah.
Lenore: The parents in the room should answer them.
Lenore: but it doesn't have to come from there. So you know, if there's a sense that I'm not getting any sense of yeah, because it is a pretty, it's pretty vague and ongoing kind of pursuit.
oh.
Lenore: yeah. And there's one online as well, after. Yeah. Great
Lenore: if, when things go wrong, you can get back on track with your kids
Lenore: so that you're both good with each other without too much difficulty on either side. Then you're doing well, that's that's a really good goal.
Lenore: Nice. Yeah.
Lenore: And Queen Queens is at home.
Qingqing Beijing: So it's changing. So thank you, Lennori, for sharing this tool. So actually, I'd like to have a clarification from you on
Qingqing Beijing: the framework
Qingqing Beijing: of these 9 elements. So when would you recommend us to use it. So, either for our own reflection or working with the group. Let's say, when I mean
Qingqing Beijing: what I mean
Qingqing Beijing: by framework.
Qingqing Beijing: it is, should we
Qingqing Beijing: uses to go through one particular event, one particular moment of our life, or its small
Qingqing Beijing: general.
Qingqing Beijing: for instance, the
Qingqing Beijing: so the whole friends in the whole mentioned achievement, though the achievement voracious for my own reflection I've thought of.
Qingqing Beijing: For instance, see this retreat. So we are going through together all the the care I'm
Qingqing Beijing: So in attending. So, my elder parents.
Qingqing Beijing: so do you have any
Qingqing Beijing: a clarification or specification on the framework in using this?
Qingqing Beijing: My element.
Lenore: Sure.
Lenore: it's really my intention with it is that it's an easy little
Lenore: kind of temperature check in a way that you can apply. The idea is thinking about your life as a whole.
Lenore: You know. How well are each of these boxes being ticked
Lenore: at the moment.
Lenore: so Any anybody can use it every. If you're a human being it's useful.
Lenore: I use it periodically over time. I especially find it helpful if I'm if I notice myself feeling a bit
Lenore: I'm happy with the world
Lenore: because it helps me identify. you know what's missing.
Lenore: So, for instance. A little while ago I was a bit low on the belonging
Lenore: one. and
Lenore: actually took that to heart and thought, Well, yeah, where? Where could I get this sense of belonging from.
Lenore: And
Lenore: because it's about group participation
Lenore: group involvement. The group that I have that I see the most frequently is the athletics crew.
Lenore: I see them numerous times a week every week, you know, for most of the year. So I put a bit of effort into actually fostering a bit of a sense of belonging with them.
Lenore: So it's very easy in my sport that you know some people train on their own. Some people train in a squad. Some squads don't really talk to each other. Some, you know, coaches. There are numerous coaches who will be training athletes
Lenore: sometimes they don't really have much to do with each other. So I did some really simple things like started a little Whatsapp
Lenore: chat for people who are out there regularly, you know just the people that I see all the time and say hello to. And what have you? And that is is.
Lenore: I mean, it's one of a few things, but it's
Lenore: treating that as a priority. And then and then realising, Okay, you know, belonging's important
Lenore: at the moment. I don't feel it. Where can I? Where can I reasonably look for it in my life?
Lenore: And then putting in some effort to try and foster
Lenore: and receive what I needed, you know, from that group.
Lenore: But you know life changes, and so in another, you know, if I
Lenore: well, it's going to say gave up athletics, or even if
Lenore: you know I had a 4 month break
Lenore: earlier this year from training, and so I didn't see that crew for quite a while. You know, just situations like that where it might, it might go up and down, depending on what you're doing in life at the time.
Lenore: so yeah, yeah, any anybody can use it, and I would say, use it, you know, periodically to check in
Lenore: with yourself on
Lenore: how how well you're meeting each of those elements.
Qingqing Beijing: Does that answer the question. Thank you. Thank you very much for your clarification, and in particular your own examples. Oh, you're welcome
Lenore: any other
Lenore: insights. Yeah.
Lenore: Believe. First of all on achievement, on bringing up children. Well, it's a day by day, job, and you probably know that if everyone's alive, safe in bed and you've had a shower that could be an achievement on a particular day. Another example.
Lenore: If you ever hear your children talking among themselves or to their mites, and they're using your friend phrases in your own language, which you think is going all over their heads. That could be an achievement. It's sinking in somewhere. So and just on the model itself.
Lenore: I do like how you say, Lenore, it's a temperature check, but it also shows where you potentially out of balance, because I believe all these 9 indicators are interrelated.
Lenore: and where I find myself that I am so striving for some of them that I'm prepared to ditch something else.
Lenore: And this model shows that very well. So you may be so striving to achievement that you completely neglect your connections and friends.
Lenore: Right? Right? So, yeah, yeah. So that's the insight for me. Yeah. Great.
Lenore: An important thing actually, just pick up on sort of a few threads here is that
Lenore: you know, achievement doesn't have to come from a specific or no, you know, from a specific place you can get. So you know, I, as I said, I wasn't getting achievement from my job.
Lenore: but I was getting it from my sport.
Lenore: You know you might have a hobby that you've decided to
Lenore: write a book
Lenore: or
Lenore: you know, compete in chess and win a chess game, or you know it can be it can be any. The idea of achievement is just that you set yourself a specific goal. You apply your energy and and skills and resources to achieve it. And that's that can be in any realm
Lenore: in life.
Lenore: It's just some of us really like to achieve things doesn't matter what it is. But we should be aware that it always comes at a cost. Yeah, yeah.
Lenore: So that's I'm still keen to hear if there are any more questions. But just that's quite a nice segue to. If you think about those 9 elements. Any one of them can turn toxic
Lenore: so we can overdo it.
Lenore: So you think material security? Okay, yep, that's important. But if we overdo it. We get
Lenore: obsessed with money and stuff. you know.
Lenore: a bigger house, a better car. You know that that's going to make if if having enough getting to the point where I had enough made me feel good. Then more is better.
Lenore: So we just overdo it. and you know how many
Lenore: people to your point earlier are devoting so much of their time and head space
Lenore: to more and more and more and more on the material security front. You know, more stuff, more money.
Lenore: and neglecting other things, so more is. It's not the case that more is better always.
Lenore: You can think about that on any of them. So
Lenore: What's the next one autonomy? You go overboard with autonomy. You become controlling got to empower
Lenore: powermonger control freak.
Lenore: You certainty. We end up in the realm of dog dogma, dogmatic thinking, black and white ideologies. This is the only way.
Lenore: what are we next belonging
Lenore: in group out group dynamics. You know us and them. My entire identity invested in belonging with this group into group conflict.
Lenore: pleasure, obvious addiction.
Lenore: engagement getting so hooked on
Lenore: the joy and the satisfaction of that
Lenore: feeling of being, you know, engaged in a task that I enjoy, that we let some of these other things suffer same with achievement.
Lenore: My husband used to work for
Lenore: Mckinsey and Company, and they even referred to themselves as insecure overachievers.
Lenore: You know her whole achievement was everything. That's where they they looked to get all their
Lenore: fulfillment from achievement.
Lenore: and would sometimes neglect other things.
Lenore: So
Lenore: yes, so so you can sort of use it in in in that way of sort of going. Am I overdoing it on something and under doing it somewhere else?
Lenore: Am I looking to any one of these things, you know, for the answer, and forgetting that
Lenore: there's all these elements of flourishing
Lenore: the other thing. That sort of floats past my mind sometimes is, you know, we've talked a bit about how. You know. Gdp,
Lenore: is the primary measure of a country's success.
Lenore: what if we. you know, aim to have everyone ticking all these boxes.
Lenore: I don't know if you've seen it, that the Federal Government is sort of starting with this. Well, being index or something. I've only had a very brief look at it, and it's it's not completely kind of on track with this, but at least the fact that we're.
Lenore: you know, starting to measure and track and care about some things other than Gdp is a good thing.
Lenore: Liang.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): Yes, if I could just say one thing very quickly.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): What the insight that I got during this process? Oh, sorry I had to turn. I turn the lights off, because all the Christmas bugs are flying around me.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): The thing that the grading shot that I got from this was that
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): when Stephen was talking about in one of his lectures the other day about remember that sense of
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): having a sense of deep contentment. and that was in the same conversation where he started to ask the question about Well, what is enough?
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And in our in our dharma community we've done a lot of inquiry around.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): enough what that is, and
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and I guess it for me. It's related to really, you know, living the middle path
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): with regards to the embodiment of that experience of of enough as well. So when I was doing this process, I actually rated myself very highly. But the only reason I rated myself highly was because I think underlying all of that
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): currently is a deep sense of contentment and and enough.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): So, even though I don't have a lot of you know I live in a van and all that sort of thing. I still could rate myself quite highly with that sense that oh, you know I've got enough. I'm going okay, and I've got super, and I've you know, da Da, da. And
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): the thing that rated I rated the most highly on was certainty.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And and and I think that was because I've done once again we have done so much deep inquiry into uncertainty, and being comfortable with not knowing, and and all of those sorts of practices. And also I'm a death dueler. I've studied, you know, end of life practitioner, and I'm
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): done the year a year year to live with Stephen Levine, and
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and all those sorts of contemplations which have been so
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): powerful with regards to coming around to that sense of of of feeling, comfortable with uncertainty and and the not knowing and
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): feeling of enough, and a deep sense of contentment, even though, you know, like, I'm a very low achiever.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): But still I'm achieving enough. So that's I. Just thank you for letting me share that.
Lenore: Thanks, Leanne. Yeah, that's amazing
Lenore: and great to hear the fruits of practices like those
Lenore: those contemplations your Dhamma group's been doing.
Lenore: Hmm great to hear it paying off
Lenore: any other thoughts before we meditate.
Lenore: Alright.
Lenore: thanks everyone. Hope you find it useful.
Lenore: 7.