← 10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Happier with Dan Harris
If You’re Stressed, Anxious, Or Depressed, This Is Your Counterintuitive Medicine | Rabbi Sharon Brous
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- [00:01]
Dan Harris
Wondery subscribers can listen to 10% Happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. It's the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing? I'm always struck by how often people tend to look for happiness in the wrong places. I get it. I've done this a million times, still do it occasionally. And yet I remain agog at the fact that so many of us operate under the misapprehension, conscious or subconscious, that the next slice of pizza, the next promotion, the next purchase is going to finally do it for us in some abiding way. And yet, of course, the hole is never filled. Today we're going to talk about what may be, for some of you, a deeply counterintuitive way to address stress, anxiety and despair about the state of the world. It centers this conversation does it centers around the word amen. But I want to be clear, not in a religious way. I will let my guest explain this fully, but the punchline is one we return to often on the show. Human Interaction as you've heard me say before, so much of modern life militates against social interaction. And the good news, as I never get tired of reminding you, is that interacting with other people is a learnable skill, albeit one that very few of us are ever actually taught. My guest today is Rabbi Sharon Brouse, and she has some extremely practical and often very challenging tips for improving what psychologists call your social health. She's the senior and founding rabbi of Ikar, a Jewish community in Los Angeles. Her new book, which is a bestseller, is called the Amen Effect, and she's going to talk about what that phrase means how to get better at connection, how to handle other people's suffering, which is not easy, how not to get overwhelmed, how to handle people you find abominable, and the necessity of joy. We'll get started with Rabbi Sharon Brous right after this. Before we get started, I want to remind you of all the good stuff we're doing over@danharris.com these days. You probably heard me announce that we've started a new community through Substack, which include all kinds of perks for subscribers, such as the ability to chat with me and sometimes our guests about each of the new podcast episodes, video Ask me Anything sessions, even live meditation sessions with me. Plus you'll get a cheat sheet which includes full transcript and key takeaways from every episode. We're having a lot of fun. We'd love you to join us. It's 8 bucks a month or 80 bucks a year or free for anybody who can't afford it. No questions asked. Just head over to danharris.com see you there. The Happier Meditation App just launched a new course called Unlearn to Meditate. This course takes you deeper into the why behind mindfulness. It's a chance to start fresh and challenge what you think you know about meditation. The teachers involved are Devin Haza, Pascal Eau Claire, and Matthew Hepburn. Download the Happier Meditation App today to explore, Unlearn to meditate and rediscover your practice. This podcast is brought to you by Huggy's Little Movers Our son is nine. It's been a minute since we've been in the diapers stage of life, but I have many, many fond memories of having a little critter around the house. You know, the poop part of it I could take or leave, but that's a non negotiable fact of life. And given that it's a non negotiable fact of life, Huggies are a darn good option. Huggies know that babies come in all shapes and sizes and so do their tushies. Huggies has more curves and outstanding active fit. No matter the size of your baby. Said baby will feel comfy in Huggies. Little Movers curved to fit all of your curves with 12 hour protection against leaks. Get your baby into the best fitting diaper. Huggies Little Movers wet fit among branded open diapers. The show is sponsored by BetterHelp. I'd like to take a quick moment to say thank you to you, the listeners of this show and would not do this work without you. I am incredibly grateful every single day for the fact that you show up and listen to this show. So again, thank you. I say all this because November is all about gratitude and along with the listeners of this show who I just shouted out, there's another person who I think we should all be thanking ourselves. I recently saw a clip on TikTok of Snoop aka Snoop Dogg when he got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and he got up and thanked himself for working so hard. And it's hilarious and also quite wise. Obviously we don't want to get into overconfidence or cockiness or self centeredness, but actually I think it's quite healthy to give yourself a pat on the back. So in this month of November, let's send some thanks to the people in your life, including maybe your therapist who are there when you need them. But Also, don't leave yourself out of the picture. If you're thinking about starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. I know my therapist is excellent at reminding me to be grateful for the things or for the people I may be overlooking in my life. BetterHelp is entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Let the gratitude flow with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com happier today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E L P Rabbi Sharon Brouse, welcome to the show.
- [05:53]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Thank you, Dan. So glad to be with you.
- [05:55]
Dan Harris
Likewise. Glad you're here. The Amen Effect. What does that mean?
- [06:01]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
So the essential premise of this book is that we're living in a time in which we are really suffering from a crisis of loneliness, social alienation, and isolation. And I've seen it in my pastoral work as a pulpit rabbi in the way that it's really harming our spirits. We now know also, over the last decade and a half or so from all kinds of literature and research, the way that loneliness is impacting our bodies. And it's very clear to me from just observing what's going on in our broader culture, the way that loneliness and isolation are impacting our democracy and really threatening the social fabric. And so the Amen effect is essentially a call or a challenge to us that. Exactly in the moments that we feel most compelled to retreat from one another, that we instead have to retrain our hearts to turn toward each other in open hearted vulnerability that's kind of driven by compassion and curiosity. That's a big challenge for our time because the instinct to pull away is perhaps stronger than it's ever been. And yet I know that the only way that we can begin to heal as individuals and as a collective is when we figure out how instead to turn toward rather than turn away.
- [07:21]
Dan Harris
This is not a casually chosen title. There's a lot to this word Amen. Can you unpack it a little bit for us?
- [07:28]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Yeah. I love the word because it has a resonance in so many different faith traditions. It's also known to people of no faith. And so the ideas in the Jewish tradition, when somebody says a blessing either from grief or from joy and another person hears it, they say amen to affirm what's been said by the first person. The expression is actually an act of faith, but not necessarily even a faith in God or the Holy One or the Divine but it's really an expression of faith in another person. I believe you. I believe you when you say that your heart is broken. I believe you when you say that you're full of gratitude or joy today. I see you in your joy. I see you in your pain. And so it's really a relational word. It's a faith word, but it's a word that's about relationship with another human being. The origin of the word is connected to the word emunah, which means faith. But I do love that it's Amen. If you're in synagogue, it's Amen. If you're in church, it's Amin. If you're in a mosque, it has the same echo or resonance to Asher in African traditions. So it's a powerful expression of human affirmation for another human being's experience. And to my mind, it's about reaffirming the interconnectedness that we all have to one another and the incredible gift that we can give each other when we actually show up for each other in those moments of sorrow and celebration.
- [08:55]
Dan Harris
Let's stay in this world of history for a second. Because connected with the word, you're also interested in this is a major motif in your book, in an ancient practice in the Jewish tradition that involves walking in a circular manner. Can you talk about that as well?
- [09:16]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Yeah, absolutely. So this is a fairly obscure, ancient ritual that has been really my north star for the last couple of decades. So the ritual is a pilgrimage ritual. And what would happen is, several times during the course of a year, hundreds of thousands of Jews would ascend to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. We're talking in ancient times, so 2,000 years ago, they would come from all across the land and the Diaspora, and they would come up to Jerusalem, which is a city on a hill, and then they would climb the steps of the Temple Mount, the holiest site on the holiest days. And they would go through one of these great arched entryways at the head of the Temple Mount, and they would turn to the right, and they would circle counterclockwise around the perimeter of the courtyard of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Hundreds of thousands of people all moving at once. And then they would exit, essentially right where they had just entered. Except we learn for someone with a broken heart, a person with a broken heart would still go up to Jerusalem, still climb the steps of the Temple Mount, and they would go through the same entryway, but they would turn to the left, whereas everyone else turned to the right, and they would do their circle in the opposite direction. And so you literally have a person who's walking against the current of humanity, this mass of people moving in the other direction, and the people who are moving with the masses. One of them would see the brokenhearted person and would stop and look into their eyes. And this sacred encounter would occur in which the people going to the right would ask a simple question. They would say, malach in the ancient Hebrew, tell me what happened to you. Tell me about your heart. And this person, the brokenhearted person, would answer, saying, my father just died and I'm devastated by it, or I just got the test results and it doesn't look good, or I'm just worried sick about my kid and I need someone to tell me it's going to be okay. And the person who's engaging them from the other direction would offer them a simple blessing, Something like, may the one who dwells in this place hold you with love as you navigate this dark chapter. And then they would move on in their pilgrimage ritual. And what I found so moving and so profound about this ritual is that really none of the parties who are engaged want to participate in this ritual. Because we know that feeling when we're the brokenhearted. And sometimes we don't even want to get out of bed. It's hard to face the world, let alone to go into a place where the whole world's moving one way and you're moving another way. And if we do show up, we feel compelled to turn to the right like everybody else, and kind of blend in. But the ritual says, no, you're not like everybody else. So you have to show up, but you have to be clear about the fact that you're not okay today. And so they have to walk with honesty, trusting that their broken hearts are going to be held with love in this community of people who may or may not know them. And the people who are okay, the people who are on their pilgrimage ritual, are having the most profound spiritual moment of their lives, walking with hundreds of thousands of people in common purpose. And the last thing that their instinct will tell them to do is to peel away from the crowds and go check in on some brokenhearted person who seems like they're not okay. And yet that's exactly what they're there to do. And so it feels like the ancients who wrote down this ritual literally 2000 years ago and codified it in the Mishnah, the ancient Jewish code of law, are kind of whispering to us from the past. It's exactly at the moment that you least want to Engage that you have to turn your hearts toward each other and you have to do it with vulnerability and you have to do it with love. And I found this ritual to really be a kind of paradigm for encounter in our time that has been such a guide for me and helped constantly remind me to practice when I want to retreat, instead turning toward with a kind of spirit of inquisitiveness and wonder and curiosity and love. And I know from now my own time of mourning, because I'm just coming to the end of the year of grieving for my own father who died after I turned in the manuscript and before the book came out. I know how powerful it is now to walk in both directions. And when we're grieving, to actually be held with love and when we're hurting, to have our community not run away from us, but instead be there not to fix us, not to repair us, but just to hold us, just to sit with us in the dark. And what a powerful gift of love that can be.
- [14:01]
Dan Harris
First of all, I'm really sorry to hear about your father. My condolences.
- [14:05]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Thank you.
- [14:06]
Dan Harris
Let me see if I can refract some of what you're saying through my own mind and then run it past you to see how it lands. All the things you're talking about are very important to me. I think I use a bit of a different framing, a different language. So I want to restate it and see how it lands for you. For me, as a secular person, I did have a bar mitzvah, but you know, as I often joke, that was only for the money. So I'm. I'm not. I'm not a observant in any religion, except for maybe Buddhism, but that's not really a religion and that's a whole different conversation. It can be practiced as a religion, but I don't practice it that way. I practice it as like a set of mental exercises and ethical precepts anyway. So I don't use words like sacred much. I'm not offended by them, but it's not just on my language. And loneliness as a framing doesn't speak to me much. And I suspect there's some population of people, even if they are lonely, don't see themselves in that word. I think as my conditioning as a hyper ambitious guy is, and I use this word somewhat tongue in cheek, but optimization, you know, just doing life better, getting better in every aspect of my life. And what I have learned late in life is that the most important variable in your health and your happiness and your success is the quality of your relationships. And that that is not a factory setting, but is instead a skill. And what I hear when I hear you talking about the amen effect and this ancient practice of circling the temple and developing the skill of being able to encounter, I believe was the word you used, encounter somebody who's suffering. I hear that as a skill that redounds to your benefit and then that ladders up to the health of the whole society. Okay, so I just said a lot there. How does that go down with you?
- [16:07]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Well, I think that's absolutely right. And this is a wisdom that comes from a faith tradition, but is not faith dependent. In other words, it really translates very powerfully into social environments that don't have anything to do with necessarily having faith in God or connection to one religious tradition or another. In fact, the whole book is rooted in Jewish wisdom, but not written for a Jewish audience necessarily. And I think that what you're saying is exactly right. There was that Harvard study that came out recently, the study with, I think, the greatest longevity of any social study ever. And, of course, it doesn't surprise anyone what the conclusion is, that the key to a rich and meaningful life is deep and meaningful relationships and the power of our connection with other people. I think even for people for whom loneliness doesn't resonate as an idea, we can acknowledge that the fracturing of our society is having a profound impact. There's the work of Jonathan Haidt on the anxious generation. And just looking at the way that a whole generation of kids and young adults now have grown up not really knowing how to have real human interactions, how to build thick relationships with each other, how to work through differences and difficulties and stay at the table. Because we're being trained by the algorithm to respond to only to voices that really speak to exactly what we want to hear. This is really dangerous. I also will bring in here the writing of Hannah Arendt, who warned us in the 20th century that our isolation from each other, that not knowing our neighbors, not knowing each other is actually a precondition for tyranny in our society, that totalitarian regimes cannot take root in a society in which people know and trust their neighbors and have really strong relationships and connections with people around them. We know that conspiracy theories cannot take hold among populations where people know and trust their neighbors. Because, I mean, I think about this all the time. If it rains on your wedding day and someone tells you that the Jews control the weather with our Jewish space lasers, then you could develop a tremendous amount of resentment toward Jews unless you actually know a Jew, and you know that it also rained on my wedding day. And then you realize it doesn't work. And so I read a study in 2019 that said that one in three Americans do not know the names of our next door neighbors. This is a society that is really in crisis. The Surgeon General speaks about this very powerfully, about what the pain point is in a society in which we have failed to really know each other. And I think the power of this for me is that in the face of so many crises in our time, we might feel powerless. We feel like we don't have any agency. There's the climate crisis and the democracy crisis and war and poverty and racism. And we're warned that AI is going to bring about the extinction of the human race. So what do we do about it? And the power of this ancient wisdom, to my mind is that it says you are not powerless, that you can actually turn to your neighbors and get to know your neighbors. You can learn the people in your zip code, you can engage your colleagues in a different way. And that can have a transformative impact not only on your own heart, but also on the broader society and the broader culture. That's not a religion based idea. It actually grows out of religious tradition, but it's not dependent on being an observant practitioner of a religious faith.
- [19:57]
Dan Harris
Yes. And to be a little cute, amen to all of that. Just to get to the second part of what I was saying, and I'm bringing this back up not for any other reason that I want to just hear what your thoughts are on it. So the first part of what I was saying is that I sometimes struggle to resonate with anything that smacks of religiosity. I think you answered that utterly to my satisfaction. The second part is a little bit framing it based on what my sense is of what lands with people and certainly what lands with me, which is. And I'll just have to own my selfishness on this score, if I'm honest. I'm less motivated by what's good for the society. You know, healing the society. Tikkun olam, to put it in Jewish terms, you know, healing the world and more motivated by what's good for me. I think that is true. I can tell this from titling my podcast episodes and seeing which episodes get more clicks. And when I lean into the pain points for individuals as opposed to for the society, those episodes do much better. So I don't think I'm alone in this in terms of, like, what truly motivates me the most. And so while I agree that learning this skill of encounter, intimacy, love, whatever you want to call it, would be good for the society. And I, notwithstanding my selfishness, I feel very strongly about that. But I think the real framing for me, the most powerful framing for me is that it is good for me to learn this stuff, as the Harvard study that you referenced indicates that if I want to be healthy and happy in an age of optimization, where everybody's telling us to track our sleep and our steps and all this other stuff, this is the thing to optimize. Yeah. So I'm rambling at this point, but that's kind of what I would want to hear your thoughts on.
- [21:45]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Yeah, I mean, I think that's absolutely right. And I want to share with you a story. One of my colleagues here at Ikar, who's an educator, was in pottery studio, which is her beloved hobby, and she was listening to the audiobook. And a stranger sat down at the wheel across from her. And so she took out her headphones for a moment and just said hello to this guy and then put the headphones back in. But she's listening to this audiobook that's about really, the power of human connection and how important it is to be present with other human beings. And so she took the headphones off again, and she just started to engage this guy for a couple of minutes and just to chat a little bit. And she mentioned that one of her kids just got married. She asked him if he had kids. He said he had three children. One was 30, one was 32. And then he awkwardly kind of got up and walked away for a moment. And she thought, oh, my God, all I want to do in the world right now is just put my headphones back on and pretend I didn't just hear what he was clearly signaling. But she said, I can't. I can't. I have to do this. So she got up and she walked over to him, and she said, hey, if you don't mind, can I ask you, you said you had three children, and then you told me the ages of two of them. It sounds like you lost a child. And he said, with really tears in his eyes, he said, I did. He said, my daughter died by suicide two years ago. And she said, do you want to talk about it? And they sat down and they ended up talking for an hour about his daughter, who was this beautiful young woman. And he said that the circumstances of her death were so awful that even his closest friends have been avoiding talking to him about it. So he's really been isolated in his grief for the last two years. And he ends up showing my colleague a picture of his daughter taken when the. When he and his daughter were on a bike ride the morning of her death. And she was so vibrant and beautiful and full of life. And he said, I've been sitting with this question for the last two years. How could somebody who's so alive in the morning need to die by the evening? But I don't have anyone to ask that question to. And they just sat and cried together. And she called me afterwards and she said it was this incredible encounter. And I know it helped him to be able to talk to me, but she said, the thing I didn't expect is what it meant to me. I felt like I did something meaningful today. It helped her heal, to just be present to another person in his profound suffering. And so I do see that. I know that in this time when so many people come to talk to me for pastoral care, saying they just don't understand how to even make sense of the world right now and where to find meaning and how to connect with some sense of purpose, they feel so broken and lost and despairing that actually showing up for another person in a moment of grief or helping support another person in a moment of joy can actually be transformative for us. Not only for the other person, but also for us.
- [25:02]
Dan Harris
Yes, exactly. Thank you for that story. Thanks for being willing to play with me on this subject because I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to frame this incredibly important subject. In particular, I think about men who I think often are the hardest to reach. Human connection. I have this sense that framing or loneliness isn't that there are a lot of men, especially the men I know, who aren't going to. It's not what they click on in their social feeds. Right. It doesn't speak to them as primally, at least not the way it's framed. And if you can reframe it as a skill, a set of skills that will help you be healthier, be happier, be more successful. And then, of course, not to hide the ball on the fact that it's good for the world, but to just stutter, step it in that way, to present it in that order, seems particularly powerful. Does any of that make sense to you?
- [26:01]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Yeah, I mean, I think everybody needs a different entry point to this conversation. And I fully recognize that for some people, speaking about loneliness and brokenness is very, very difficult and inaccessible. And I also know that a lot of men struggle with loneliness and with A sense of brokenness and purposelessness. And so honestly, that leads people often to very dangerous and self destructive behaviors. And so I really understand that people need to walk in through different doors to this conversation. But I do think it's important to talk, even with men, about what it means to not feel seen in the world, to not feel like there's somebody who recognizes you as you truly are in the fullness of who you are and how much we all yearn to be known by another and how we actually have the power and capacity to see another and to let ourselves be seen. That is a really essential conversation. I think the tagline for our community when we started was this is not your bubby's synagogue. Meaning this isn't the old school what you'd imagine organized religion to be. Especially Jewish organized religion from the 50s, 60s, 70s. We wanted to do this kind of radical intervention in faith community and stand at the intersection of spirituality and social justice and make music that would actually be so good that people would look forward to Shabbat on Tuesday and serve scotch with services. Many things took me by surprise in the beginning of the community, but one of the things was that the guys self organized this men's group. I'm Talking about like 27 and 32 year old guys who built this men's group where they got like matching hats and they gave each other like old Jewish men names. They would sit together and like talk about real stuff. I was so shocked by this, and it was a little tongue in cheek, but there was obviously something in it that they needed. They desperately yearned to be seen by each other and to be recognized by each other. And I end up thinking what a powerful acknowledgement that in this time even they, even the guys needed to find their way to each other. And actually that group continues to this day, 20 years later. Sort of taken different forms over the years, but there's a kind of vulnerability and sense of connection that people yearn for, even if they don't necessarily enter through that door.
- [28:41]
Dan Harris
I mean, a million percent, absolutely. Men need all of the things that every human needs. I think it's just about how to get them in the door. And I don't want to speak for all men at all. I have a lot of humility around that. And anyway, this is a podcast for everybody. So mostly I think about how to language things in a way that will be maximally relatable. Coming up, Rabbi Sharon Brouse talks about some practical ways to get better at connection, the spiritual necessity of joy, and how to protect yourself from overwhelm. One of the cool things about fall is we get to do a little shopping, a little retail therapy. I recently went to quince.com got myself a Mongolian cashmere sweater and a new set of socks. Quint's is great. One of the amazing things about having them as a sponsor is that I get lots of great clothes. You've heard me rhapsodize about my Quint sweatpants. I also have T shirts and now this new sweater. I love it. Quint offers affordable, high quality essentials for any wardrobe. That includes seasonal must haves like the aforementioned Mongolian cashmere sweaters from 60 bucks and comfortable pants for any occasion. Quint only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices along with premium fabrics and finishes, and they partner with them directly, cutting out the cost of the middleman and passing the savings on to you. That means Quint's Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands so you can update your look without breaking the bank. Upgrade your wardrobe with pieces made to last with quints. Go to quint.com happier for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q U I N C E.com happier to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com happier listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Find the genres you love and discover new ones along the way. Explore bestsellers, new releases, plus thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and originals that members can listen to all they want, with more added all the time. Audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as part of your daily routine without needing to set aside extra time. There's more to imagine when you listen I've been checking out recently are the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I'm a little embarrassed that I haven't gotten to this one until now, but I've been checking it out. Amazing. Another hole in my cultural literacy Lonesome Dove, which won a culture like many decades ago. As an Audible member, you can choose one title a month to keep from the entire catalog, including the latest bestsellers and new releases. New members can try audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com 10% or text 10% to 500. 500. That's audible.com 10% or text ten percent to 500. 500 to try audible free for 30 days audible.com 10% before we get started, as everybody knows we're in the midst of an anxiety provoking election week here in the US One of my favorite slogans is Never Worry Alone. So we're going to put that into action this week with live guided meditations every day. I will be going live each day at 11 Eastern. That's 11am Eastern and 8am Pacific. I'll do a 10 minute guided meditation and then I'll take questions. This is open to all subscribers, free or paid, but you do need to download the Substack app. So head over to danharris.com to find out how to do that. And if you can't make it live, you can watch the replay@danharris.com the Happier Meditation App just launched a new course called Unlearn to Meditate. This course takes you deeper into the why behind mindfulness. It's a chance to start fresh and challenge what you think you know about meditation. The teachers involved are Devin Haza, Pascal Eau Claire, and Matthew Hepburn. Download the Happier Meditation app today to explore Unlearn to Meditate and rediscover your practice. Okay, so now that we've established, I think we've established that A it's incredibly important to have human connection and it's good for you and that B it's a skill, what do you recommend? If we're buying what Rabbi Sharon is selling, how do we get better at interacting with other human beings in an era where many of the structures of society kind of militate against connection?
- [33:16]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
So how do we get good at this? How do we shift the dynamic? We have to practice showing up for each other. And I think that this requires a kind of a mindset shift in which our default moves from retreat to engagement. When you hear that a colleague or a friend, even someone who you maybe haven't seen in quite some time has had a loss, instead of saying, oh, it won't matter if I'm there or there are going to be so many people there they won't even notice. Or well, we haven't talked in years, or maybe they don't even want to see me. Or what if I say the wrong words instead? To actively reorient toward I'm just going to show up at the funeral. I'm just going to the house of mourning, I'm just picking up the phone and making a phone call. And that actually requires combating a lot of internal demons that tell us that we shouldn't step forward, but instead stepping forward. And I also think that part of what we have to do is we have to Change our idea of what we're trying to do. When we do encounter the other, especially in difficult moments, we have this kind of American fix it mentality that our work is to if something's broken, to repair it. What we actually need to do is just be present to the brokenness. There's this incredible story that the rabbis tell that comes from the beginning of the book of Genesis when on the sixth day of creation, when God creates the first person, Adam. Adam is alone. It's actually the first thing in the Hebrew Bible that is called not everything else is good. It's good, it's good, it's very good. But Adam's aloneness is not good. And so Eve is created to be this ezer kinegdo. It's in the Hebrew, which means to be someone, to help him by sitting opposite him. And the rabbis explain what that mean. They tell the story that at the end of the sixth day when the sun set, it was the first time that there was darkness. And as the sky started to darken, Adam got really scared because he'd never seen darkness before. And so he did what we do when we encounter darkness for the first time. He started to catastrophize. He thought, it's never going to be okay again. I'm going to be in darkness for the rest of my life. And he started to blame himself. And he said, what did I do to bring this on? And Eve just approaches him. It's so delicate the way the story's told. And she just sits across from him and she weeps with him and holds him throughout the night. And I think what the story's coming to say to us is there are always going to be periods of darkness. Who will weep with you throughout the course of the darkness until the new dawn emerges? And so can we shift our mindset from one in which we're trying to fix each other and repair what's broken, to one in which we're just trying to bear witness, as they say. We're just trying to sit with another in their pain, to understand that suffering is very much a part of life and that that intensity of human presence and connection can actually help us survive even some of the most terrible chapters of darkness and loss. Witnessing each other's sorrow and not running away from it as a path toward, eventually toward healing of the self and the other.
- [36:55]
Dan Harris
What you're pointing at there, it gets to one of the biggest self sabotaging questions we ask ourselves. And I'm sure you get asked this all the time about how to Handle it. When somebody we know has gone through something awful, which is like, I don't know how I can help. I don't know what to say. I'm going to make things worse, as I heard you say there. That is to kind of fall into this misconception that our goal is to fix it, when in fact our goal is to do this incredibly hard thing, but in some ways very, very simple, which is just to show up and just like the brute fact of your presence, especially if there's nothing you can do about it. That's the point.
- [37:39]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
That's exactly right. And in the book, I share the story of this beloved family in my community, very dear friends, who suffered this horrific, tragic loss when they were on a trip with their kids and they were hit by a drunk driver who was driving more than 30 miles an hour over the speed limit, no headlights on, drunk and high, down this dark desert road and collided with their car. And both of their kids were killed. It was this most unimaginable tragedy. And the parents walked away with just some bruises and broken ribs. The father went on to write a book. His name is Colin Campbell, and I highly recommend the book, which is called Finding the Words, essentially arguing that we avoid people in their deep grief because we think we don't have the words. It's our job to find the words. Not to avoid them, but to find the words and step closer. But he shared this story with me, which he also writes about in that book, that on that horrible night when they were in the midst of discovering that their kids did not survive that one of the doctors in the er, immediately as the death was pronounced, pulled them into another room and said to them, tell me about your kids. Tell me about Ruby, and tell me about Hart. And he said, this one moment was an incredible act of love and grace, because they had just experienced the most unimaginable loss. And somebody was saying to them, I'm not running away from you. Even though. Especially when we encounter loss like that, it's so destabilizing because it forces all of us to deal with our own vulnerability. Just the reality that this could happen to anyone any day, and we don't want to confront that reality. And this doctor said, I'm not running away from you. And in fact, I want to know your kids. I want to help you hold the memory of who they were and who they are in this world forever. And I really take that as a model that it's exactly when we want to pull away. Nobody wants to get that close to that kind of loss, that instead we have to really actively counter the instinct. And I really call this a spiritual practice. You might call it just a practice. I don't know. But can you make a practice of showing up at the funeral? I have another practice in the back of the book. I include eight practices, one for each chapter. Because I really want us to get in the habit of showing up in this way of optimizing our encounters with each other through practicing connection. So one of the things that I started to do after reading that study about how Americans don't know their neighbors and realizing that I actually didn't know my neighbors, even though I'm in the business of building community, I leave early and I get home late because I'm building community at my office, but I wasn't building community in my neighborhood. And so one of the practices that I took on was going for a run just in my immediate neighborhood every single morning. And when I do, I kind of awkwardly introduce myself to every single person I see. And I got to know my neighbors. It happened pretty quickly. And so one of the practices is literally go for a walk around your block or go for a run in your neighborhood if you can, and just get to know each other. And this is a very powerful shift in the way that we engage each other. And now I have a sense of neighborhood. I have a sense of community in my neighborhood. So now we have a neighborhood WhatsApp, and there's a thread, and people talk to each other, and we help each other, and we check in on each other when somebody's not well. And it's actually changed the dynamic of my street. It's not just because of my run. It's because they're great people on my street who actually care about relationship, too. But I didn't know them before, and now I do. So that's one of the ways that we can build internally a new approach, a new way of thinking about how we walk through the world.
- [42:02]
Dan Harris
Just to go back to the talking to people who are suffering or in the middle of some horrific life event. I just want to remind everybody, as hard as this is, again, the way I think about it is, and I think this is consonant with what you're saying is a practice, a kind of exercise, a workout that is good for you, just the way, you know, as you said, Rabbi Sharon, your friend in the pottery class sat and did this totally counterintuitive thing of crying with a stranger for an hour about the death of his daughter. She walked away feeling ennobled, empowered and we can. You know, there's a way in which we look at the events of the world, whether it's war or politics or whatever, and we feel powerless. And this is the antidote. And that's not the only benefit. I mean, it's an antidote to powerlessness, but it also is a massive bolus, to use. My wife's. A term I learned from my wife, who's a physician, which. A bolus is a big dose, a bolus of meaning and perspective. So, yeah, if you want to lead a good life, this is right there waiting for you.
- [43:12]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Dan, can I give you another one, please? One of the practices I call take a joy break, and this actually comes from my dear friend Shifra, who fell in love with the most wonderful man. It was a kind of later in life love, and they traveled the world together and had this most beautiful romance, and they were supposed to spend the rest of their lives together. And he was unfortunately diagnosed with a terminal cancer. And within nine months of the diagnosis, he died. And so she was immediately thrust from this kind of new love into deep grief. And she called me just a couple of weeks after he died, and she said, it's not working for me. The traditional putting on sackcloth and ashes and sitting like a bereaved widow isn't working. I fell in love with this guy because he was full of laughter, and he loved having friends over, and he loved seeing people, and he was the life of the party and always told stories and laughed. And she said, I feel like I need to incorporate some of that joy even into my grieving. And so she created this practice in which she would set an alarm on her phone for 18 minutes in the depths of her grief, for 18 minutes a day, she would force herself to do something that would give her joy, whether that is blasting music and dancing in her apartment or eating the whole chocolate cake or walking in nature or going in the hot tub or something that would just make her feel good. And I realized from listening to her that we think about joy as a luxury, but joy is actually a spiritual necessity. And if we actually want to take seriously what it means to show up for each other and be present in a world of sorrow and grief and pain, we have to take joy seriously, too. And so I started to take on the joy break in solidarity with my friend and her grief and started to just literally force myself to experience joy not as an escape from the grief, not as an escape from reality, but as an expression of the grief. Because death is part of life, and life is Part of death. And so how can we embrace all of that with a whole heart? And for me, it has been an absolutely transformative practice that actually gives me the strength to continue to show up even when things are very, very hard.
- [45:44]
Dan Harris
I love that. And it, I think, answers one of the questions I was going to ask you, which is, you know, how do you protect yourself from getting overwhelmed? You know, we're recommending, you know, leaning in, walking towards suffering. Maybe this is the answer to that question of titrating it so that you don't drown in it.
- [46:05]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
I think this is one of the answers. Another is that if we go back to that paradigm from the Temple Mount, essentially, there are people who, either by profession or by nature or both, always turn to the right. We always turn in the direction of the people whose eyes are up, looking for those who are brokenhearted so that we can offer support and care for them. And it is impossible to always walk in that direction, because at some point, either we experience our own loss and grief and brokenness, our own crises, or we fill up with other people's pain and other people's sorrow. We need to be strengthened by others. So what I really strongly believe is we have to learn how to walk in both directions. We have to know that sometimes even those of us who are patterned on walking to the right, we'll also walk to the left. And when we do, we need to let other people hold us. We need to let someone else say amen to our brokenhearted cry and to just hold us. And again, I think we can all think about moments in our lives when we really felt like we were in the depths of darkness or we were at the edge of the abyss, or whatever's your metaphor, where we really felt like things might not actually get better, whether from physical illness or mental illness or whatever the pain was coming from. And the presence of others who came to us with love in that time could be an incredible source of strength and sustenance in that time. And so what does it mean to allow ourselves to receive the love and receive the care, to actually be vulnerable enough and trust that someone else will hold us with tenderness when we cry out in pain? Just the same way that we're used to holding other people with tenderness when we see that they're hurting? It's really hard for caregivers to do this because we're the ones who show up. For people who live on the front lines of care. We have the muscle memory for showing up for others. We don't have the muscle memory for receiving the love, but we also need to learn how to receive the love. That's just part of what it means to be in a human community to be able to both give it and also to receive it.
- [48:26]
Dan Harris
So what do you recommend for those of us who struggle to take it in?
- [48:32]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
I mean, we have to let down our guard and actually allow others to sit by our side and weep with us in the dark. So for those of us who are oriented toward caregiving and not toward receiving, it's really a mental and emotional shift to recognize that not only can we receive love and care, but we actually have to that that's part of the nature of being in relationship, is actually receiving the love that others give. And I'll tell you, just as a come to the end of this time of mourning for my father, I've been reflecting a lot on what it means for me as a rabbi and a caregiver to have been in a position where other people were there to hold me. And I was so resistant to this for most of my year of mourning. I really. Every time someone would ask me, how are you? How's your grief? I would answer with, how are you? And how was your surgery and how's your mother doing? And, you know, try to kind of like, push back into the natural pattern that I'm used to. And really, it was in the last couple of weeks of my mourner's Kaddish, my prescribed 11 months of grieving, that I just let down the defenses. And just when people would ask me, even strangers, how are you doing? I found myself just bursting into tears and letting people just hug me because I miss my dad. I just miss my dad. And it's okay. It's okay to experience loss after a loved one dies. It took a long time for me to get there, and I saw it happening. I saw that even in the immediate aftermath of the funeral and the house of mourning, hundreds of people came to my house, and they were trying to hold me, but I was responding by holding them even more. And I just. It was very hard for me to shift from one mindset to another. And then I guess because I got really close to the end, and I felt like my mourning is ending now, and I haven't really grieved yet. The wall broke down, and I just let myself weep. And I'm so grateful for that because I feel like that, of all the things, like that honors my father and it honors my own broken heart in a way that ultimately will make me a better caregiver and a better Rabbi and a better human being. What I want to do is help caregivers receive. I want them to be receivers of care as much as they are givers of care. And to know that not only is it okay, but it's absolutely essential that we're able to do both.
- [51:16]
Dan Harris
Coming up, Rabbi Brous is going to draw from ancient wisdom for some practical advice on how to connect with people with whom you disagree. And also, I'm going to flex some skills I learned at my Bar Mitzvah 40 years ago. My son, who's 9, loves Pokemon. Loves it. If you want to win that dude over, get him some Pokemon cards. In fact, some friends of mine have done that in the past. And he still remembers it. My son does. He still remembers when people give him that gift. So imagine my surprise and delight when I received in the mail a huge box filled with Pokemon trading cards, which I then, of course, gave to my son. It was one of those rare moments where he thought I was cool. Why did I receive said box? Because they're sponsoring the show. Specifically, the Pokemon trading card game is what I want to tell you about. It's a gift sure to delight gamers, collectors and Pokemon fans. Each Pokemon set has dozens of new cards in different styles by different artists, ranging from cute to stunning. You can learn to play in minutes. Enjoy the TCG and new cards for years to come. Find gift ideas for all ages and at every price point@tcg.pokemon.com holiday this episode is brought to you by Hills Pet Nutrition. Every shelter pet deserves a second chance, and you are making it possible for thousands of them every day. Because when you feed your pet Hills, you help feed a shelter pet, which helps make them healthy, happy, and more adoptable. I am a huge, unrelenting, unreconstructed fan of adopting shelter cats. We've got three shelter cats marauding around our home. And actually my friend and former colleague Whit Johnson was here the other day. He's an anchorman at ABC News. But he's got a side hustle. It's not really a hustle. It's a volunteer gig on the side where he fought fosters puppies. And he brought a puppy here the other day to our house. And we almost adopted that puppy, but pudding, that was the dog's name, went to somebody else. Anyway, I think it's really cool that Hill's Pet Nutrition supports animal shelters by feeding shelter pets. Hills has provided more than $300 million in pet food to more than 1,000 shelters. Over 14 million shelter pets fed and adopted science did that. Visit hillspet.com podcast to learn more. I'm not a big fan of cliches, but here's one that I think is apt and it's that you can't pour from an empty cup. So if you want to be effective, you need to be able to receive some of this stuff. Let me ask you about another aspect of human connection, the art and skill of human connection that is particularly thorny, which is interacting with people with whom we disagree strongly that we're recording this and releasing it in the middle of a presidential election where this is all too timely. This question, what are your thoughts on this?
- [54:22]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
This ancient ritual that I keep coming back to as a kind of paradigm for how we can heal and how we can grow, speaks not only of broken hearted people turning to the left in that sacred ritual, but also people who've been ostracized from community. And this is really powerful. And so let's just play this out for a moment. So in the ancient world, the people who were ostracized were the people who had actually caused grave harm, either to individuals or to the community as a whole. So much so that you don't engage these folks anymore. They don't come for dinner, they don't come into public spaces anymore. They're considered dangerous. Their ideas or their actions are so harmful that we don't want them coming home for Thanksgiving dinner. And yet they show up at that most sacred place on the most sacred of days and they turn in the direction of the brokenhearted. And they, like the brokenhearted, are met with curiosity and with compassion. And they're asked the same question that we ask the brokenhearted. They're asked, tell me about your heart. What do you see from your vantage point? And the answer saying, I've been ostracized from community. Which means in the discourse of the ancient world, I've done something really bad, right? I've been punished because I've caused harm. And what's extraordinary about this is once they acknowledge that they've been ostracized, we don't avoid them or kick them out of the place. In that place on that day, we bless them and we say, either may the Holy One open up the hearts of your community so that they can one day welcome you back, or may your heart be opened so that you can recognize how much pain you've caused people and change your behavior and one day come back. But either way they get a blessing. And that is such a powerful lesson for our time. Because what it's forcing us to do is think about not just how do we relate to people who are coming toward us with broken hearts, but what do we do with people who are coming at us with ideas that really hurt us, that we see as posing an existential threat to our rights, to our dignities? How do we engage people who really see the world differently from us? And what the text is saying is that if you can do so safely. Right, because not everybody's allowed in that sacred place, like the people who've been totally excommunicated don't come in. This is one step short of that. These are the people who. It's safe to have them there. It's just uncomfortable. And part of what we have to do in our time is distinguish between what makes us unsafe and what makes us uncomfortable. But if we can engage someone in a way that's safe but uncomfortable, we need to. And we need to engage them with curiosity and with compassion. So imagine turning to somebody whose Instagram posts have really hurt our hearts, who've really caused us pain, and saying to them, tell me, what do you see from your vantage point? Because you've hurt me with what you've written. But it's also shown me that we see things really differently. And I want to know your grief, I want to know your sorrow, and I want you to know mine. That's a radical mindset shift, and it's not going to always work. It's not like a panacea. It's not going to transform everybody from an enemy into a friend. But I actually believe that the only way that people will change is when we turn to them with genuine curiosity and real sincerity, trying to understand where their pain comes from, understanding that their behavior is an outgrowth of that pain and that we will only grow in our understanding if we turn to them with an open heart.
- [58:17]
Dan Harris
I like so many things you just said there. One thing that's coming up in my mind is my wife who sometimes comes on and does interviews with me on the show. She and I interviewed this guy, Bruce Perry recently, who is a psychologist. And the question he wants people to ask is, instead of asking, what's the matter with you? What happened to you? And you referenced this question earlier. Malach, I believe, is the Hebrew word, the phrase for it. What happened to you?
- [58:47]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Not bad for the bar mitzvah you described. You did great.
- [58:51]
Dan Harris
Yeah, I mean, I confront. So, I mean, I just think that framing, as long as you're safe, that framing is so useful because especially in election season, we're Confronted with people we find really obnoxious. And instead of just reverting to taking the easy route of just going right to hatred, which actually isn't easier, it's seductive, but it's not easier. Ultimately, the truly easier route is to get curious and try to get a sense of why do they believe what they believe. Which I think just takes a lot of the unproductive vitriol out of it. How does that go down with you, what I'm saying?
- [59:28]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I really resonate to Dr. Perry's work in this space. Actually, I had just turned in my manuscript when my sister in law called me and said, oh my God, have you read Bruce Perry? And I was so moved. He shares this one example that's kind of a repeated theme, which is a kid acts out in class and the disciplinarian responds, saying, what's wrong with you? But what they should ask is, what happened to you? Because you might learn if you ask that just that morning this child has been taken from their home and put in foster care. And if you knew that, then you would understand why the kid is cursing at a teacher. And so what I realized, I read his book right after turning in mine, and I realized that what he's writing from a kind of neuroscience perspective is exactly what I'm arguing from a spiritual perspective. And it's so powerful to me that the ancients use precisely the language that the neuroscientists today are saying that we need to use from a psychological perspective and neurological perspective, which is like really trying to understand what's driving the behavior of the person. And I think one thing that's really critical here is that people mistakenly perceive that curiosity leads to capitulation, that if I get curious about this person, then I'm capitulating to their worldview. And actually I feel that their worldview is very dangerous and harmful and challenging again, to my rights and to my dignity. So I don't want to get curious about you because I don't want, God forbid, to threaten my own existence for the sake of yours. But curiosity did not need to lead to capitulation. What it leads to is rehumanization. It just means that I'm willing to see you as a human being. I'm not going to justify your behavior. I'm just going to understand where you're coming from. And that is a really powerful mental shift for us to say we know our own humanity, we recognize our own sorrow and our grief, and how our own trauma drives our engagement with the world. But it's very hard for us to see that in other people, especially people who we think are doing harm to us and to people we love and to the greater good. What if instead of monsterizing others and demonizing others, we actually see them as human beings with really bad ideas that are rooted in their trauma and in their grief? It just changes the conversation because I think in some ways, when we monsterize other people, we're actually removing human responsibility from them. We're saying, like, we don't expect more from them because they're monsters. But they're not monsters. They're people who have ideas that might be ill formed or ill conceived. And we have to engage that. When we engage human beings as human beings with bad ideas, it shifts the whole discourse, and we're able to find ways of connecting and communicating that we could not have before. It does not mean capitulating. It means rehumanizing. It means actually engaging on the merits of an argument instead of erasing or invisibilizing or silencing an argument, because we think the people who are offering that argument are monsters.
- [62:55]
Dan Harris
I completely agree. Before I let you go, two questions I always ask. One is, is there something you were hoping to get to that we didn't get to?
- [63:03]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
There's so much, Dan, I wish we could talk for a couple more hours. No, no. I think we covered a lot.
- [63:10]
Dan Harris
And then finally, can you just remind everybody of the name of your book and any other assets or resources you've put out into the world that they should look at. Websites, social media, et cetera, et cetera?
- [63:21]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Sure. The book is called the Amen Effect, Ancient Wisdom to mend our broken hearts and world. And you can also follow we post all the sermons every week@ecar.org and on social media on Instagram, under my Instagram and also Ecars.
- [63:40]
Dan Harris
Excellent, Rabbi. Thank you very much for your time.
- [63:43]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Thank you.
- [63:48]
Dan Harris
Thanks again to Rabbi Sharon Brouse. Great to talk to her. Just a reminder, I will drop in the show notes a link to an episode that actually came up in today's conversation, the one with Bruce Perry that my wife and I did a few months ago that will be in the show notes if you want more. And I encourage you to go check this out. I've got a whole lot going on over@danharris.com if you sign up, you can get a cheat sheet where we will summarize the top takeaways from Rabbi Brouse today. We'll also give you a full transcript and time coded highlights. Lots of good stuff you can get if you sign up@danharris.com that's really just the tip of the iceberg because if you sign up, you can also chat with me directly. You'll also get access to monthly AMAs where you can ask me anything live and on camera. Yeah, this is a big new venture for me. I'd love your support. You can find it@danharris.com or just search for my name on subst. Finally, I want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this 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 production manager, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, DJ Kashmir is our Executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. If you like 10% happier and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey@wondery.com survey.
- [65:32]
Rabbi Sharon Brous
I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in US History. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, the Houston Astros shock Major League Baseball by going from last place to winning the World Series in just four years. This remarkable turnaround seems to vindicate Astros general manager Jeff Luno, whose unconventional use of data and the latest technology stirs controversy around the league. But when two reporters uncover that some players and coaches have been using that technology to cheat, it casts doubts out on the Astros culture of winning at all costs. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery. You can join Wondery in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today.
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Dan Harris
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Rabbi Sharon Brous
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Dan Harris
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Rabbi Sharon Brous
Free Shop the full wow in the World toy collection today@Amazon.com wonderykids.