Philip Moffatt (6:04)

Thank you. Glad to be back.

Dan Harris (6:06)

So I'm so interested. You have spent a ton of time thinking about and working on and helping people with transitions. Why is that such a salient issue for you?

Philip Moffatt (6:19)

Well, in my own life, I certainly went through my share of transitions, and some of them quite dramatic. And so for an example was when I, I was editor in Chief and CEO of Esquire magazine back in the 80s, and at the age of 40, I'd had enough of being in the marketplace and I left the world just fairly abruptly. And that was quite a transition for me. But it was also quite a transition in terms of I played a role in my baby boom generation. I was the first year of that. And so there were a lot of people had projection onto me and like, it was like I switched what was important. And so a lot of people wrote about that and so forth.

Dan Harris (7:08)

You have these five mindfulness tools for happier and smarter transitions, and we're going to go through them. But let me just ask a high level question. Why mindfulness? Why is mindfulness helpful in transitions?

Philip Moffatt (7:25)

Because it gives you the space to make your own decisions here and not be caught in a reactive mind state. Mindfulness brings you into this moment. It gives you a perspective of looking at the larger surround rather than just reacting to the immediate stimulation. So often what we do, like if you're making a transition or someone's forcing you into transition, you get very concerned and you get very reactive. And that doesn't mean you have any access to wisdom just because you're reacting. And mindfulness gives the chance for you to really connect with what matters to you and to reclaim your nervous system from that Reactivity.

Dan Harris (8:11)

Well, it won't surprise you to hear that I totally agree with what you just said. So let's dive into the the five tools. Number one is starting where you are. What do you mean by that, specifically?

Philip Moffatt (8:24)

By starting where you are means that you accept the external conditions around whatever transition you're facing, and you accept the internal conditions. So your situation may be that you're having to look for another job because someone's just announced that this big staff cut at your company is happening everywhere in the tech world right now. And then you didn't choose this transition, but here you are, and people go, I need to get this done first or that done. They want to be somewhere other than where they are, but you start just where you are. I teach this in meditation because people are trying to get established, get a certain amount of concentration, but they don't start with the amount of concentration they have. They first think, well, I've got to get these conditions to be better. And then I can really get concentrated and do my meditation. And over and over again, for the last 25 years or so, I've been saying, no, you start where you are. And in my transition work with people, it's the same thing. People are upset about the conditions that they have, and they're thinking those conditions won't allow them to go forward. And these are the only conditions that will allow them to go forward, because they're the only conditions that are present. And so you start where you are.

Dan Harris (9:50)

There's a potential for misunderstanding here. Not that you didn't explain it clearly, but in the Dharma, we talk a lot about, you know, accepting things as they are, but that does not erase your agency. That is not resignation or passivity. So can you say a little bit more about that?

Philip Moffatt (10:09)

Yes. So this is where there's a confusion comes up about actual Buddhist meditation, where it seems like there is a passivity. So taking starting where you are as a teaching because you accept the conditions. This isn't maybe the conditions I would like to have in my meditation or in my life, but these are the conditions I have. And I can start right here if I have clarity as to my values. So we start from values, and then we respond as best we are able to the conditions right here. And it brings you into your strength because we so are called in our judging mind, thinking that we're not ready or the conditions aren't right and so forth. But the conditions, all conditions, are a place you can start from. So it's actually very empowering in that way. And Mindfulness gives you that perspective. Oh, this is another moment of being present and again, acting as best I am able to in this situation. There's humility in that, but there's also dignity. There's real dignity. And this. Okay, this is where I have to start, and I'm just gonna start here. And that. That sense of humility and dignity together allow you not to get thrown off by how you're judging yourself or you think others are judging you, or the feedback you are getting from others. You're at a deeper level of yourself. And I have been doing this for 35 years with helping people in transitions. And it's that inner experience is what really creates the empowerment so that you have agency. One of the things I stress is that we are having agency because we are creating the feeling of having choice. We may not be able to change the circumstances, but we change how we're relating to the circumstances. And this is all the difference in the world. And mindfulness is an empowerment tool for being related to your experience in that way.

Dan Harris (12:18)

Yeah. So if in this first step, and we're going to talk about five steps, as I said, for handling life's ups and downs with a little bit more sophistication and resilience, this first step is the foundation. Right. And you want your foundation built on an acceptance of reality, even if reality is shitty.

Philip Moffatt (12:38)

That's right.

Dan Harris (12:39)

But a denial is not an effective foundation.

Philip Moffatt (12:44)

It's not an effective. And thinking it's making a judgment that it's not good enough, you totally undermine yourself. I've seen this over and over again. That kind of undermining. People don't get started and they, they. They waste precious time around a transition because they, they get frozen. Just get frozen. Or go apathetic.

Dan Harris (13:09)

So I think one question people might have at this juncture is, all right, I buy what you're saying. Philip and Dan. Yes, we should start where we are. We should accept reality as it is and build from there. How do I do that? Because when I'm in a tricky situation, I'm in a transition. Often if it's a transition of my own, not of my own making, you know, my amygdala is activated, my nervous system is activated. It's very hard for me to calmly accept things as they are. How do I do it?

Philip Moffatt (13:39)

It helps. If you do have a mindfulness practice, there's not trying to promote that, but it does really help.

Dan Harris (13:45)

You should promote it in that way because.

Philip Moffatt (13:48)

So. Because again, you have practiced over and over again coming into the moment so that's, that's the one thing you could do. And if you've never done mindfulness, you can say, oh, be mindful of the moment in a non judging way. I just want to feel what's true now for me and my circumstances outside. And then what's true, what's going on in me? Oh, I'm panicking. Oh, this is bringing up some old wound when I did not get selected for the team or something. So oftentimes around transition, our past struggles hitchhike in on this and we're living them again and may not even know it.

Dan Harris (14:31)

So having a meditation or mindfulness practice, extremely helpful. I definitely don't want you to hesitate to promote that. I promote it all the time. And even if you don't, or you know you haven't had time to do it, or you find the whole idea slightly annoying, you can muster mindfulness at any moment. It doesn't take some sort of special powers. It's just.

Philip Moffatt (14:51)

That's right.

Dan Harris (14:51)

Clearly seeing what's happening right now.

Philip Moffatt (14:54)

Right. And we, we all do that all the time without noticing it, but we haven't necessarily built the habit to do it. So it's our to go to. And then the second thing you can do in terms of empowering you to start where you are is give yourself a little coaching. Hey, I want to be real here. This is not something I'd chosen. Maybe, or maybe you did choose it, but I want to be real with myself about this. I want to have a sense that I made the decisions. Now that I've got this situation, I'm making my own decisions. I don't want to miss the experience of this because I can grow from this transition. And I can assure you, if you're making the decisions rather than letting others make the decision for you, you're going to feel much better if it turns out well. And if it does not turn out well, you're going to feel better. When we are passive and we feel like something's done to us, that is the worst feeling. It's amazing how true that is because I've seen lots of transitions that did not turn out well.

Dan Harris (16:00)

I want to pick up on this thing about being your own coach because I have very strong feelings of agreement with you on this score. And it's something, a skill that I learned late in life and there's a lot of now I'm talking more to the audience than I am to you. There's a lot of evidence to support the argument that you can rewire your inner Talk track and talk to yourself the way you would talk to a mentee or a kid or a good friend in a supportive but not, not silly blind affirmations like, you're the best to kiss the mirror more. Just like, hey, totally silly. Yes. Here's the good advice I would give to somebody else in this situation. Let me give it to myself. This is a very powerful and often overlooked technique.

Philip Moffatt (16:46)

One word I use is claiming. So when this, this has all come up, now you're having to deal with it. You've got to start where you are. And you claim, I do want to start where I am. And that talk to yourself. You're claiming how you wish to relate to this. I wish to make my own decision. I don't want to be desperate. I don't want to make a quick decision out of desperation if I'm going to be looking for a new job. I want to state what I really care about in a job and whatever you would be claiming, but you're claiming already on the front end how you wish to relate to this whole experience. And then the other ways you talk to yourself is in relation to what? Okay, I want to be real about what my strengths are. If it's that kind of thing, if it's a relationship situation, you can also look backwards and say, this is my pattern. I'm really interested in this person. I really want this to work. So what are my patterns from the past? Not judging yourself, but using this discernment of mindfulness through mindfulness to say, what's my patterns here? And so far as I have choice, I don't want to do those patterns one more time. And it helps. Again, you're establishing a relationship with yourself. And as you said, certainly the science now backs that up.

Dan Harris (18:08)

As you know, I went through a pretty tough transition about a year ago where I was leaving meditation app that I had co founded. It was very painful, quite intense. And in my saner moments, I would talk to myself like, all right, yeah, this is triggering some ancient fears for you around, you know, like living under a bridge or we. And much of this is irrational. You're good, you're fine. You still have your skills. You'll build on what you can going forward with the North Star of being useful in this world while you're here.

Philip Moffatt (18:42)

Yeah, you're a perfect example of that. In that situation, you had to claim for yourself that because your nervous system and your old conditioning of that inner part of you was going from its old reality and you came back to the reality by talking to yourself. And that doesn't mean that you weren't nervous. The nervousness is not a problem if you're not nervous about the nervousness.

Dan Harris (19:10)

Yes, yes, yes. Okay, well, this brings us right to step number two. I should say step number two is starting over is so helpful because when I was in my transition, we're all in mini transitions all the time. I screwed it up all the time. I would have moments where I lost my temper or I said something stupid or whatever. And the knowing that all was not lost when I made mistakes that I could start over was hugely helpful. So am I pointing in the right direction in terms of what you mean by start starting over?

Philip Moffatt (19:42)

You're pointing in the correct direction.

Dan Harris (19:44)

Okay, great. Say more, please.

Philip Moffatt (19:47)

Inevitably, in a transition, you're going to make some mistakes like you got emotionally reactive. That did not help the situation. You also let your emotions distort your interpretation at times. Those are going to happen to all of us. Again, it may be a personal relationship, it may be a transition with your, your tween becoming a teen that suddenly there's a whole different creature there. And you're not always going to be your best, but if you again you using mindfulness but talking to yourself, but always from your values, because that's the one thing you can choose is to stay with your values and that can calm you in itself, as best I am able, I'm going to stay in my values with this. Like with your new teenager declaring their independence. I love my daughter or I love my son. That's what really matters. And yes, I'm nervous about this, but that's not nearly as important as the fact that I love my, my child. And so that helps with the starting over. You have to recognize that you've gotten off the path. Right. Instead of judging yourself for that. Ah, normal off the path, judging, just judging mind, judging, mind, reaction, reaction. Come back to a responsive mind. Responding from where? From your value for how you wish to be in this transition. No matter how it turns out, how you wish to be, how you wish to live it. And that in my experience and by now with all of these people I've worked with all these years, I have a database that I can claim in my opinion that that is actually how it turns out best. When you're oriented from your values and who you wish to be during it, then your mind has more clarity for the thinking. But also your intuition comes more into play. And I bet with you, your intuition made a difference in all of this.

Dan Harris (21:50)

Yeah, but you can't hear Your new intuition. You can't, to use the cliche, listen to your heart or your gut. If you're stuck in the fear center of the brain.

Philip Moffatt (21:59)

That's right. And the fear center is the reactivity. See, you're reactive and the fear center is really an overwhelm. A little bit of fear does not actually fuzz you up that much. It's an alertness. It's when alertness goes to a contraction, then it's in the way and began the recognition of that. So like you're trying to make a decision about something and you're getting all reactive. Stop trying to make the decision. Go for a walk, read a book, read a poem, talk to a good friend, somebody that really cares for you and is not going to catastrophize with you.

Dan Harris (22:35)

Let me, let me pick up on values because you come back to this several times and I want to make sure we highlight it appropriately. How are you defining values? And just remind us again very explicitly. And you said it a little bit, but I want to go back at it in a very direct way. Why are values so helpful in a transition?

Philip Moffatt (22:55)

You have to have a base and a transition from where you're starting. Who's making this transition? What matters to the person that's making this transition? You know, there's a whole bunch of different you's inside that come up, different committee members inside. We all know those committee members. And so the values among all of those committee members, which some of them are way old and no longer relevant, but they're still there, jumping in. We claim for ourselves. Hear that word claim again. We claim what really matters to me. And in terms of values and the way my own practice evolved, there's what I call core values, which from the Buddhist point of view is the intention moment to moment, no matter what you're doing, whether you're making this kind of decision or that kind of decision or just living your life, you live from this set of core values. So for instance, a non harming, being present, having kindness, those he listed as core values. He didn't call it core, but it's what he gives in his teachings. And then there's situational values in this situation. What is it that I need to be careful about? And so where can I get lost and desert myself and end up someplace I don't want to be? Or in what way could I harm others in the way I'm making this transition? Like my family around a job change or damage my relationship with my daughter or her self esteem around accepting her in her new mode. And so we are being mindful of what in this particular situation, where could I get myself off? And that helps to consider that because then you'll recognize when you do get off and you come back and you don't. When you get off, if you get reactive, then you get further off, you get defensive, you know, or you, you want to blame somebody else or you just quit on yourself. But if you view it, this is what transition is like. It's going to have these moments and I want to live through this because I want to be a more empowered person in general after this transition. I don't want to just go through all of this pain and uncertainty as a one off. Let's get something from it. It's a very shift in view right there, if you see what I mean.

Dan Harris (25:22)

I learned this term recently, hopefully I'm using it correctly. Theodicy, the idea that suffering for some purpose. I don't believe that per se, but I do believe that we can turn whatever we're dealing with into something beneficial.

Philip Moffatt (25:40)

That is my view. Also, suffering can be meaningless if we don't relate to it in some way that creates value. But any suffering we can in some way create some value from it can be very difficult. Things that are going on in the world where the suffering just seems so unnecessary and so cruel. So how do we get any value from that? The world has cruelty in it. We live in a world of opposites. There's kindness and cruelty. I have to make my way through those opposites. There's gain and loss. Just like the Buddha said, the worldly wins praise and blame. I have to make my way through it based on my values and my choices. My choices and what happens to me. I don't want it to be meaningless suffering. If nothing else, I am giving witness, as you know, some of the great Christian saints did. Giving witness to the way the world is.

Dan Harris (26:46)

Another question on values, specifically core values. I don't think this is an exercise people go through a lot. And actually we're talking to another guest in this series this month, Susie Welch, about values. And she has a whole set of instructions for discerning your core values. But I'm curious for you, what, what do you recommend for people in terms of figuring out what our values are?

Philip Moffatt (27:10)

Well, in the life balance work, when we do workshops, we actually have a whole section on values and we take people through a number of steps that can't really describe them quickly, but we give them a, a kind of a worksheet to start with. This and then some instructions. And they go through different steps to identify both core values and their what situational values and what changes brought them to this workshop. But for myself, I, at an early age, under some difficult circumstances, realized, if I'm going to get through this, I've got to say what is me and mine in the way of claiming my values? Not what other people are telling me, but what matters to me. And I just started doing that at a very early age, and it made all of the difference in the world.

Dan Harris (28:05)

Would it be safe to say that anybody listening right now could simply just in a very healthy way, ask themselves the question without expecting specific answers immediately, but just get into the habit of asking themselves the question, like, yeah, what do I care about?

Philip Moffatt (28:19)

Right, right. And again, so that with the core values, like, I bring a commitment to kindness and everything I do. And I didn't start out with that as a big one in me. I started out with truth. I will be truthful. I will be genuine, real, you know, sincere. That was my big claim initially. And then as I grew older, kindness became more important. And then I realized that if I'm not present, I can't exercise my value. So therefore, being present in this moment, in mindfulness here or not, became important. And then I had this realization of the difference between my view. You know, we can have these wonderful view of how we wish to be in our values, but in this very moment, what is my intention? And I really learned to be accountable, which is not always pleasant, even after these decades of training with it. It's not always pleasant to be accountable, because like, righteous indignation, that's a very dangerous thing. But boy, is it seductive when we're feeling it. So.

Dan Harris (29:36)

I have taken many long baths in the warm waters of righteous indignation and never, never cleanses. Let me just say one last thing about starting over. And this echoes something you said earlier, having a meditation practice, which I often joke that meditation is where perfectionism comes to die, because you just definitionally have to just start over because you try to focus on your breath or whatever it is you're focusing on, and then all sorts of thoughts come barging into the room, like Kool Aid, man breaking down the wall. And you have to catch that and start again, again. And so this practice of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 minutes of meditation daily, ish, can really help us in starting over in our lives when we get off track.

Philip Moffatt (30:28)

Yes, it can. It really can. In that moment, you are pausing, which is sort of the next step of this process where you have to stay in touch with ourselves in some way. And when we're in a transition, there's a lot of sorting out to do and then understanding of once you've sort out, you know, really what's right for you, what's your measure in this? We have to pause in pausing where we really catch up with ourselves. I call it the interrupt many times because we're interrupting this reactive mind that's, you know, where the nervousness is feeding on itself. Right. And again, you can have judgments about others or judgments about yourself, and it's just a storm that's going on and on. There's a need to start over, but you're in the storm, so you can't go back onto the other side. Rather, you stop. You just stop. And bringing the kindness to yourself in this moment around this. I know I'm doing as best I'm able. I know what my values are. So let's just. Let's just stop here and what's going on here. You're catching up. You're recognizing, I've gotten reactive or I've gotten afraid or I felt insulted and I'm acting out of that sense of worthlessness that's old in me or out of my. I'm going to show them. Instead of having them understand you more deeply, you're kind of slapping them back in a situation that that's. You don't have the power to be doing that. And so whatever it is, you stop and you come back to your values. You breathe, you come back into the body. The body is such a good signal, in many ways better than the brain AT signaling, whoa, I'm off. Because it gives you all sorts of signals if you start watching it. And in the midst of a transition, you can feel the, oh, this feels wrong. Before your brain ever figures out what's wrong. So the pause is just really important. It is interrupting the reactive mind and it's giving you the choice as best you're able. I've used this over and over again as best you're able to come back to your values and your plan. Oftentimes, you've lost the plan. You've lost the. You've lost the thread of what you're trying to do.

Dan Harris (33:01)

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Philip Moffatt (35:28)

Yes, the pause is central. And again, I use that word interrupt because you're interrupting that reactive mind. You're stopping. You're reclaiming yourself again using that word reclaiming. But you're stopping this mind that is feeding on itself and it's just going one after another after another after another. It's not like the car's drifting off and you jerk it back in line. It's deeper than that kind of system. It's all in your inner wiring. And so pause, you interrupt. I tell people if they even three seconds is an interrupt, in 30 seconds a lot can happen. And in three minutes your whole system can reset.

Dan Harris (36:15)

So what are the practical tools that you recommend for the pause?

Philip Moffatt (36:20)

The first thing is recognize. I'm choosing here. There's a choice I'm making to pause to create an interrupt. So that is you returning to your values. That's also a positive stroke to this reactive ego. Because I'm claiming something and you're able to do it. Does that make sense to you?

Dan Harris (36:46)

So there's a kind of self induced dopamine hit.

Philip Moffatt (36:49)

Absolutely.

Dan Harris (36:50)

That can result from just noticing I've gotten carried away. I'm going to pause now.

Philip Moffatt (36:56)

Yeah. It's not like you're instantly all cool, but you have paused. You have interrupted the selfing that's going on in that reactive mind. And that is a dopamine reward. And then when you picture yourself, this is like the internal speaking. You picture yourself returning to yourself so you recognize that's a pleasant feeling. And again, it can bring respect for one person. For someone else, it brings relief. For someone else, it brings in the heart quality. We're each different and we're different in different transitions in our life at different times also. So that's one of the benefits. And then the body, you come back to the body and then there is reorienting. You're reorienting yourself. You're reminding, you're reminding yourself what you're about. You're enhancing recognition. If it's the kind of recognition that gives you choice as to how you speak or act. And from the Eightfold Path, you're coming back to wise view.

Dan Harris (38:11)

Can you explain what that is?

Philip Moffatt (38:13)

So the view is you have a vision as to how you want to live. Going back to the values and the Eightfold Path of the which is the fourth Noble Truth. There is this evolving of a view of how you would want to live in this world in relation to causing harm, in relation to what is important to you and all that. You come back to that as a view. And then in the Eightfold Path, wise intention, it's this moment. Am I acting from that, that view right now or not? Right now, this very moment when people start to discover that they can reorient themselves during the pause.

Dan Harris (38:55)

I'm definitely not a Buddhist scholar, so I might be about to blow what I'm about to say. But just for anybody who's new to the Dharma or forgetful in any way as I am. The Buddha's first utterance post enlightenment allegedly was to deliver the four Noble Truths that he, after he got enlightened, he went and found some old meditation buddies of his and was telling them about what he had learned. And he delivered it in this list of four things. And the fourth item on the list is a list within a list. And it's basically the Buddhist recipe or cookbook for a good life. And it's the Eightfold Path.

Philip Moffatt (39:32)

It is. That's right.

Dan Harris (39:33)

And the first entry there is right view or wise view. And it is. It essentially is basically understanding things as they are. How am I doing? Am I. Am I taking us.

Philip Moffatt (39:45)

You're doing fine.

Dan Harris (39:46)

Okay.

Philip Moffatt (39:47)

Things as they are and how they might be, that if we understand the way it is, then we have a wise relationship with that. It's that kind of the wisdom part. And then there's a behavior part, like wise work when. Wise speech. And then there's a practice part, mindfulness and concentration and wise effort. So, yes, there's three parts to that. And you don't have to know the Four Noble Truths. You don't have to know the Fourth Noble Truth to use the pause. But since we are going back and forth here, I wanted to include that. Sometimes Buddhist practitioners don't realize how much the Dharma works for the street of life.

Dan Harris (40:34)

Works for the what?

Philip Moffatt (40:35)

Street of life? They're living on the street of life. They're not living in a monastery. They're not living in a retreat center. They're living on the street of life where. Where the opposites. You get knocked around. It's. Life's unfair often. So this middle path allows one to be empowered but not become part of the problem of causing suffering for others.

Dan Harris (41:00)

And if you notice that you're causing suffering, see, subtly or grossly, to be able to catch it, to pause, to begin again.

Philip Moffatt (41:08)

That's right, to begin again. Sometimes you realize, whoa, I'm so far off, I'm going to have to start over in some way from the very. I'm going to have to start where I am, because I'm not starting over. Isn't just like, oh, I'm all together. I've gotten way off here in some way. There's a deep recognition, and I need to attend to this. And I have a pattern of this. I don't want this pattern to go on. I will not be helpless, you know, like a puppet on the string of this pattern. I will not allow that myself. And again, that's that kind of coaching. It's kind of an affirming. It's a loving, kind relationship to yourself and letting loose of a lot of demanding, like, it's not supposed to be this way. It's unfair at times. It's very painful at times. But life is all of that. Life's not just sugar plums, you know, it's just not. It's it's the opposites. And we got to relate to this realm of being here on this earth just as it is. We do. We really do. And if you start relating to that, people feel humiliated. When it's such a misperception, it just breaks my heart. These people will come in and they're so distraught and it's such a misperception. They're comparing to a perfect or to the story, or we're still to someone else's story they put on them that they're dutifully trying to live out. So.

Dan Harris (42:41)

So I think what you're trying to say there, and I'm going to project some of my own stuff onto it, is when you have a transition thrust upon you, you get fired or you get broken up with or your project that you launched is a failure, quote, unquote. It's easy to compare yourself to your friends Instagram profiles where they look like they're doing nothing but winning all the time. And at a party that you're not invited to. And that kind of story is incredibly painful.

Philip Moffatt (43:12)

Yeah. Things not turning out the way we want them, which seems like just all bad news. But if we stick with that and the pause really helps. Starting over really helps. Starting where you are, all that really helps. We start to have a clarification of our values and we go, I'm not going to be defined by that. Who cares what party one goes to? That affects the ego, but it doesn't affect the inner life.

Dan Harris (43:43)

I do want to double click on the. When we were talking about how to pause, you said listening to the body or being in the body is really helpful. Can you just to be a little cute, put a little meat on the bone there and talk about. This is kind of one of the ultimate contemplative cliches. Listening to your body, how do you actually do it in your view?

Philip Moffatt (44:09)

Well, let's start with a word. Felt. The felt sense. The felt sense is what registers somewhere in the body moment to moment in our lives. There's very few things in our ordinary consciousness that doesn't have a mirroring in the physical body. And through one of the sense gates, it's not always the physicality itself. It could be in terms of like a smell or a taste or the vision. Something changes in the vision. They all, all of these, you know, we're this complex, beautiful, amazing system of that. And so that felt sense is what we're orienting to. We have our ideas, our perceptions. Many of those are. We interpret as. From the concept we have not from our actual immediate experience. So, oh, here I am screwing up again. I always screw up. That could be seeing a pattern, but it also could just be a reactivity where you're pulling your whole life into this one view of yourself. That may be sometimes true, but not always. But now you're reifying it, you're making it the truth. The truth be the truth. Then you ask, okay, how am I feeling in my body right now? And oftentimes in feeling in the body, you come back to a more balanced perspective, the felt sense of it. And the ego can be upset in terms of the emotions, but actually you don't feel that bad even though like you're upset emotionally. But if you go, but okay, how am I? Is my knee hurting? Is my back hurting? No. Well, like, okay, is my face relaxed? Oh yeah, my face can relax. So you break up the falseness of the overreactivity by feeling it in the body. And another way you have that embodied experience is, is through feeling your own earth element in your body, your own fire element. You're seeing the elementary nature of our experience. And then something that's upsetting you go, boy, look at the fire I have around this. Woo. I've really got a lot of fire. Is this serving me or not? Again, the solidity, the seemingly never stopping of a reality. You're interrupting it. You come back to a balance. I don't mean to make this sound easy or something like that, but I do really have your listeners know how we can all do this much more than we are doing it. Very few exceptions of people that are beyond in that that this reclaiming of ourselves. Have mentioned this word as best I am able to. I've mentioned that phrase a lot because that judging mind, that comparing mind, it's a tyrant. It's a tyrant. And it may be judging, if not even our own opinion, but what we inherited, we were told as children or it just got conditioned in and you're neurotic about it, you're compulsive about it. So as best I'm able pulls us back, back into a kind of inner dignity and our integrity is that we actually are doing as best we're able. And when we aren't, then we can own that we can do that. It gets out of all that judging and comparing and gives you a larger perspective during these transitions. I've seen this hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. You don't have to be anything special. It's that if we arrange our noticing, our mindfulness the way we are Understanding the experience. Things correct themselves sometimes it'll surprise people.

Dan Harris (48:17)

I love what we're talking about. I would describe what we're talking about as kind of like Mindfulness 101 or Meat and potatoes mindfulness. And especially this aspect, the pause. Because our emotions can seem so monolithic. It seems like the anger or jealousy or sadness that's speaking to us in our head is like an anchorman. Definitely telling us the truth, Capital T truth. But actually, if we pause, it can be through meditation, deep breathing, taking a walk, whatever it is. You notice that all emotions have a half life. Like the anger is only going to stay in you if you don't drown in it or, or feed it or compartmentalize it and deny it. Like, if you just let the anger be a non, in a non interfering, mindful way, it will come and go and then you can make a sane decision on the other side. It's incredibly useful to have that pointed out.

Philip Moffatt (49:20)

Yes. And we're all capable of it. It's not like you got to be somebody special. You know, One thing that I have done with, again, this is people in my life balance work of working with transitions. I will give them a stone to carry in their pocket of some kind. And when they're in that reactive, they're supposed to put their hand in the pocket and fill that stone and it's a talisman, it's a grounding. It's like, oh, this is a solid way to come back. Their attention goes to the stone and all that relationship with the stone and. And it interrupts them, the soap opera that's going on in their heads.

Dan Harris (50:01)

Yeah. Coming up, more tips from Philip Moffett about managing transitions with maximal skill and happiness and resilience. You know those moments when someone just takes care of something for you? That's what ATT is doing. With the ATT guarantee, staying connected matters. That's why AT&T has connectivity you can depend on or they will proactively make it right. That's the AT T guarantee. Because staying connected isn't optional, it's essential. And AT and T wants you to feel that somebody's got your back. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com guaranty for details. AT&T connecting changes everything. Huge savings on Dell AI PCs are here and it's a big deal. Why? Because Dell AI PCs with Intel Core Ultra processors are newly designed to help you do more faster. It's pretty amazing what they can do in a day's work. They can generate code, edit images, multitask without Lag draft emails, summarize documents, create, create live translations. They can even extend your battery life so you never have to worry about forgetting your charger. It's like having a personal assistant built into your PC to cover the menial tasks so you can focus on what matters. That's the power of Dell AI. With intel inside with deals on Dell AI PCs like the Dell 16 plus, starting at $749.99, it's the perfect time to refresh your tech and take back your time. Upgrade your AI PC today by visiting Dell.com deals that's Dell.com deals. Okay, so step one was start where you are. Step two, start over. Step three, the pause that overcomes obsessive thinking that counter programs against the soap opera, as you just said. Step four, and I love this, and this is something that I think we don't think about enough, or at least I certainly didn't think about enough for much of my life. Step four is recognize your motives when you're making a change. What do you mean by that?

Philip Moffatt (52:30)

We are presented with a situation of our making or someone else's making that we're having to make a change. And what we're doing, where we live, what we can do, because it's a health change, it's our relatedness to a person. And so there we are, we're presented. We would assume that when we are responding to that, it's with the best of motives. But if one looks closely, it's a mix of motives. It's a mix of motives so often. So if we've talked about this newly teenage daughter who's declaring a new level of independence, you know, dad would think, oh, my motive. My motive of course is I just want to help her stay safe and all this. But in fact there can be a motive. What happened to my authority here? Yes, you know, or what happened to I was the greatest dad in the world and now it feels like this. And, and so we can have a lot of different emotional motives that some of which we don't recognize and some of which if we look at, we're clearly not serving in this situation. So there is this clarifying of the motive that we want to go through, which then leads us back to our deepest values and the same in terms of a situation at work. You're going to show them. Right.

Dan Harris (53:59)

How did you know?

Philip Moffatt (54:02)

Just by chance, the motive that has some good aspects to it, but it really can start turning you into a different kind of seeing the world from this, showing them, you know, not being Open to the world, being guarded in a way that is way over compensation.

Dan Harris (54:25)

I love this aspect of your teaching. I love all of what you're saying here, but in particular, I love this because I don't think it's a. This is an inventory. I'm not sure most people do. And I have been pushed in recent years to do this. On occasion, I found to be immensely helpful, although often humiliating. But embedded in the way you're talking about it is a permission to have crass motives and to recognize that for all of us. And Joseph Goldstein, my meditation teacher, our mutual. And he talks about this a lot, that motivation is always a range. And this is where mindfulness is so helpful that you can, if you can see clearly, take the inventory, get a sense of. Okay, yeah, on the high end of the range, it's about sticking to my values, standing up for myself, whatever it is. On the crass end of the range, it's bloodlust or something like that, and just to see it clearly and then choose to emphasize the motivations that align with your values.

Philip Moffatt (55:27)

Yeah. There is abandoning of the ill motives as best as one is able. It can take you. If you feel betrayed by someone, it can take years before that works its way out of you. And I'm saying this because people give up on themselves way too soon about motives. The motives have all of these conditions formed over many, many years. And it's not realistic to think, oh, I see, that's where they're wrong, and suddenly they're gone. But they do start lessening. And moreover, when you recognize them, you can stop acting from them temporarily, even if you go back, you know, but in this moment, you can choose not to do that. And it's those moments that those one individual moments create the conditions for this larger change.

Dan Harris (56:21)

Yes. And in my opinion, the permission structure that you're providing here is so important. I'm going to make a reference, Philip, to something that you already know, but I'm going to explain it to the audience. In the Dharma in Buddhism, we talk about the second arrow. There's a parable in the Buddhist texts about a guy who's walking through the woods, he gets hit by an arrow, and he goes into this whole internal tirade about why am I always the guy who gets hit by an arrow? Now I'm going to be late for dinner, blah, blah, blah. That tirade is the second arrow inserted voluntarily. And I think for many of us, when we get a whiff, often at an oblique angle, of our motives, especially the crass ones, we Insert a second arrow of shame. Like, we're a bad person for having these things, these feelings. But we're all selfish. We all are capable of all sorts of darkness. The answer is not to deny it, compartmentalize, or even to feel bad about it. It's to see it clearly and not be owned by it. And that's, I believe, what you're pointing at.

Philip Moffatt (57:25)

Yeah. To see it from your values.

Dan Harris (57:27)

Yes.

Philip Moffatt (57:28)

And feel it in your body. And you go, I don't want to continue this insofar as I have choice. As far as I have choice, I don't want to be motivated by that. There's one sutta in the Buddhist text where the Buddha is saying, motives that are healthy motives bring healthy results, positive results, motives that are negative, that are unhealthy bring negative results. And in between those two are mixed motives which bring mixed results. And for most of us, maybe we're in that mixed category, but we are able to be slightly, steadily moving to more and more wholesome motives. We are not taking identity. We're not, oh, I'm a person of healthy wholesome motive or unwholesome motive. But insofar as I have choice, I choose to have wholesome motives. And if this is a chance to let loose of this motive right now, I let loose of it. But you don't think now I got to keep trying to only have wholesome motives? No. Just by choice. Just gentle choices. Over and over.

Dan Harris (58:35)

Yes.

Philip Moffatt (58:35)

Over and over.

Dan Harris (58:36)

Yes.

Philip Moffatt (58:37)

No hurry for me.

Dan Harris (58:39)

It goes back to what you said earlier about the internal committee, this fractious intracranial committee that we all have these, you know, the jealous part, the angry part, the well intentioned part, the generous part, all of these different modes that are available to us, many of them horrifying. So when I think about motives, I think about the inner committee and I think about relating to all of these parts with, with my coach, with my inner coach, like, you know, I can talk to myself. Yeah, dude, your, your greed monger, your inner greed monger, it has reared his head here. Or your inner rage monster has reared his head here. But you're good. Like, this is an ancient neurotic pattern that's been with you for a long time. It's the organism trying to protect itself, as Jack Kornfield says, but you don't need to be owned by it, and you're not a bad person for having it. It's all good. Let's get back to some sanity and move from our values.

Philip Moffatt (59:40)

Yes, indeed, that there is. The recognition is A recognition of kindness towards yourself. You're not seeking fault, you're seeking to see what is harmful. And so you see there's a positive in the recognition as opposed to condemning oneself. Condemning does not bring about change. We can be ashamed of ourselves in a moment and that's okay. But if we start to create an identity, I am a shameful person, which you could easily have gotten on your childhood and that gets triggered. That's not helpful at all. That's not helpful because that's a shutdown. There's no movement in that shutdown state. Takes all the air out, everything. So this kindness. But a clear I wish to be responsible as a human being to my values. That's the one choice I have. Because all sorts of things are going to happen to each of us that we would not prefer.

Dan Harris (60:42)

Yes.

Philip Moffatt (60:43)

But how we relate to them, that's our little bit of freedom. To me, that is freedom. And so you're in a circumstance, not you're choosing it all. And you see that if I'd done something a year earlier, I wouldn't be in this situation, but here I am. And so then, right there, right there in this moment, how do I. How do I reestablish through starting over, getting back to living my values right here? And it doesn't matter that it's a bad situation or a good situation, you're staying on your through line here towards living a life that you're in harmony with, not in some sort of syrupy way, but in relation to harmony with the way it is in this realm. The opposites, gain and loss and all of this, as I said before, that's the way it is in this realm. And so many people lack that perspective. And instead of it their idea of perfection or if something's going wrong, or that something wrong with them that they have suffering. But suffering is the coin you pay to get to live in this realm.

Dan Harris (61:56)

Well, you're doing my job for me because you've brought us to the fifth aspect of your. Of the Philip Moffat recipe for handling transitions with maximal grace. And that is. And I did spoil this a little bit earlier, but the fifth entry here is Noticing, reacting versus responding in times of transition. Can you hold forth on that one?

Philip Moffatt (62:21)

Yes. First of all, once again, you've got to be present to participate in your own life. That's the mindfulness requirement again, I call that being available to your life. Through mindfulness, you become available to actually experience what's happening in your life because you're available, because you're willing to See, to feel the good and the bad, then you're also able to respond because you're there. If you run away out of frustration, anger, helplessness, then you're not there. So you don't get to affect your life in that moment. The way you can notice whether you're able to affect is if you're caught in reacting. There's so little choice. There's so little choice in the reactive mind. It's quickly interpreted and it's justified itself, and off it's going in its reaction. And again, many times these reactions are from old habits, those committee members we've talked about and so forth. And the responding is where you've got some space around the experience. You're angry or you're afraid or you're embarrassed. But there's this knowing, oh, I'm angry. Oh, embarrassment. Wow, look at this. I've not been embarrassed this long in a dozen years. You know that you've. You're in relationship to your experience as you're having it. I'm gonna say that again. You're in relation to your experience as you're having it. And that gives you the choice to respond because there's space in there. You've not taken birth in the experience. You've got space around it. So you're both having the experience and you're observing it. To go one step further, this takes some practice. You can get to the point that you are observing the experience from within the experience. So if you're embarrassed, you're not just you go, oh, embarrassment's happening in one part of you and the observer's somewhere else. No, you're feeling the felt sense of embarrassment, and you're knowing it simultaneously. That makes life so different. It makes life so different. We're all capable of that. We live in an alienation from ourselves. So much that I do not see as necessary. And again, I've seen so much of humanity by now, and we don't recognize the possibility. And we've not had sort of anybody help us entrain ourselves to this new way of relating, which is a responsive way of relating, even though it really still feels bad. People hear this. They think, oh, then I won't feel bad anymore. No, this is a situation where you feel bad, but you just feel bad. That just in front of the. Feeling bad, just in front of suffering, just in front of defeat, is a game changer.

Dan Harris (65:31)

It is possible for people, and I hear this from people in my little substack community sometimes, that there can be confusion here around, like when you Say, don't be attached to emotions. Do you mean detachment? What do you mean? And I think you're pointing here at the middle path. Like there's we often when we have a strong emotion, we either feed it, you know, get owned by it, we're totally in the anger and we're acting out of it, or we deny it, compartmentalize it, try to shove it down. But what the Buddha talked about was, again, the middle path of where you're actually allowing it to be there, but with an investigatory capacity, an investigatory, warmly investigatory mindset of like, oh, yeah, let me check this out. How is the anger showing up in my chest? What kind of thoughts am I having watching it come and go, watching the meteorological conditions come together and then fall apart? And then when it's over, because it will end because everything ends, then you can respond wisely instead of reacting blindly. Am I restating this with some fidelity?

Philip Moffatt (66:39)

Yes, yes, you are stating it with fidelity. I would add to that, as we first start learning to do this, it is after it's all over that we kind of have the perspective. But more and more, you could be in the middle of it and have that perspective in the middle of it. I mean, you're still caught in your anger, but you're now witnessing in real time your own anger. And then as you do that for a while, you start to realize, I got choice. I can do an interrupt. I can pause in the middle of my anger. I can be really setting my teenager straight and stop right in the middle and go, sorry, just got a little bit of overreaction there. I love you. You know, just, you know, sorry. The interrupt can happen in the middle in that way. And then in time, in terms of the patterns, you start to recognize the pattern. You can hear these words forming in your brain, and you go, ah, no, no, you start to have choice on the front end of how you're conditioned. Because they're just tendencies of mine. They're not who you are. They are trained tendencies. The other thing I'd say about this is this again, which the Buddha stressed and. And another teaching that's foundations of mindfulness, teaching about recognizing pleasant and unpleasant. This is the other way in transitions or anytime in our lives that we get defined by pleasant and unpleasant equally. And we can be very unskillful in relation to pleasant, or we can be very unskillful in relation to unpleasant. Feeling yourself being swept up in that pleasant watching, wanting to hold on to it, starting to imagine having more of it, and going, oh, I don't want to live that way. I don't want pleasant and unpleasant to be commanding me. The middle way is that you don't get called in either. That makes the pleasant, by the way, more pleasant because you stay with it and it makes the unpleasant less unpleasant because you're not exaggerating it.

Dan Harris (68:53)

So just to fill that in a little bit and please, I'll say some words and you'll jump in and correct me where I mess up. One of the Buddhist most famous discourses or speeches is called the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. Basically, here are four ways to be mindful. And one of them was be, you know, mindful of the body. Another is to be mindful of what are called in, in the language of Pali, the vedana or the feeling tones which are pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. So if you can just pay attention as objects, sensations, thoughts are rising in the mind. Is this pleasant? Is this unpleasant? Is this neutral? If you're unaware of pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, it is a hatchery of reactivity because you're just going for the pleasant, trying to avoid the unpleasant and numbing out at the neutral. But if you're mindful of them, that's a great way to short circuit said reactivity. Agree or disagree?

Philip Moffatt (69:48)

Oh, totally. That's the whole teaching. That's the whole teaching in that way. And again, we don't fall into judging ourselves because we are pursuing the pleasant. We all want good things, like for our children. We want them to be safe and get a good education and all of that. It's letting the pleasantness in a moment or the pleasantness of the whole idea cause you to be unskillful or get trapped for my own life. I came to a point where I've said, and could live it, that I'm not going to measure the success of my life by how many pleasant moments there are versus unpleasant. That's like how I'm going to measure my life because I saw for myself that pleasant and unpleasant are like puppets. You've got a puppet on a string. If it's pleasant, you pull this way. Unpleasant, you pull this way. But what about me in that? What are my values in that? I'm just like some Pavlov dog being trained to respond to the stimulant. That again, is a kind of reclaiming. We're reclaiming for ourselves our own sense of inner choice based on our values.

Dan Harris (71:01)

This has been a great pleasure. Philip, two questions I often ask at the end of a conversation. One is, is there something you were hoping we would get to that we didn't.

Philip Moffatt (71:11)

No, I would not say that. We've really. I feel like we've covered the waterfront.

Dan Harris (71:17)

Great. The second question is, can you please remind everybody about the books you've written, the various websites you've got. We'll put the links to all of these in the show notes. But to the best of your ability, can you just plug away?

Philip Moffatt (71:32)

Okay, I'll plug away. So my books, the first one I would mention is Dancing with Life, which is about the Four Noble Truths. And it's from the point of an old text that says there's 12 insights in the Four Noble Truths that each is to be understood. And it's very, very interesting. I learned this from my teacher, the Venerable Ajahn Sumedo. It's very, very interesting. And I have endless examples of daily life. So I bring all those teachings into our regular life. Not our retreat life, but our regular life, which I call the street of Life. There's also a 52 week the Dharma wisdom website. That's just one of my websites, Dharma Wisdom, where you can sign up for excerpts every week. A little small, like a paragraph size excerpt from the book and then a half a paragraph reflection on it. Dharmawisdom.org Dharmawisdom.org the second book is emotional Chaos to Clarity. And that's more about mindfulness and all of these different ways. And it includes things like understanding the difference between the experience you're having and your interpretation and mindfulness get frees you from that interpretation, that compulsive interpretation. Many different chapters on lots of good subjects and very much for everybody. No Buddhism required in any way. And then the third is a book called the Nine Dimensions of Consciousness, the Nine Bodies of Consciousness. It's about these different capacities of consciousness that we have that we utilize all the time, but we don't know we're utilizing them. And the effect of starting to deliberately cultivate being familiar with those different dimensions of consciousness, that has proven to be much more impactful than I thought it would be for everybody. I thought it was only for senior meditation students, but it turns out everybody. That's kind of a mystery to me why that's true. But it is. And there's a lot of my teaching now is through this organization that's an online dharma organization called Dharma Ground. They put on a lot of online retreats and they're all for free. There's no. Nobody pays any money. You give donation at the end if you want to at the end. But there's no. So that's a Way to get to know your meditation. And in those retreats I teach what is a new seven years old offering on my part. I call it Natural Arising Practice Method. And it's just like I was saying today, this all can just happen. There's no hurry. And just the orientation. So I have all these preliminary practices we do and then we turn to the four foundations of mindfulness and the four noble truths and so forth. And I think some people would really like that. And the other thing I would say is there's a lot saying on Dharma Wisdom. There's so many articles about the difficulties in life and so pick your difficulty. And there's probably an article there for you that I've written over the last 25 years.

Dan Harris (74:58)

Philip Moffatt, thank you very much. Great to talk to you.

Philip Moffatt (75:01)

Thank you. It's really nice speaking with you.

Dan Harris (75:03)

You my quest. Thanks again to Philip Moffat. Don't forget this episode comes with a guided meditation specifically designed to help you manage the inevitable ups and downs, the inevitable changes of life from a place of some measure of equanimity. It's called Start Here and it comes from our great meditation teacher of the month, Vinnie Ferraro, who's doing custom guided meditations for all all of our Monday Wednesday episodes. These are only for paid subscribers over on danharris.com paid subscribers also get live video meditation and Q and A sessions every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. The next one is coming up on September 23rd. I'll be doing that one. And if you want to meditate with me in person, I've got a couple of events coming up. As I mentioned earlier, one of them on September 21st at the New York Insight Meditation center and another at the end of October, a weekend long thing at the Omega Institute. It's another installment of our ongoing meditation party events. I'll put links to both in the show notes. And finally and really finally going back to Philip Moffatt for a second, there's a worksheet that is freely available. It's called the Core Values and Essential Intentions worksheet and it's available on the Life Balance website. There's a link to that in the show notes. Finally, thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard on the show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses. Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Beautiful Anonymous changes each week. It defies genres and expectations.

Philip Moffatt (77:19)

For example, our most recent episode, I talked to a woman who survived a murder attempt by her own son.

Dan Harris (77:25)

But just the week before that, we.

Philip Moffatt (77:27)

Just talked the whole time about Star Trek.

Dan Harris (77:29)

We've had other recent episodes about sexting in languages that are not your first language, or what it's like to get weight loss surgery.

Philip Moffatt (77:36)

It's unpredictable.

Dan Harris (77:37)

It's real, it's honest.

Philip Moffatt (77:39)

It's raw. Get Beautiful Anonymous Wherever you listen to podcasts.