Hello, Diane. Welcome to the Soul Aligned Self-Care Podcast. I'm so excited to have you
here today and talk about some of the things that we need right now in the world. And before
we get started though, if you could just tell people a little bit about yourself and some
of the work that you've been focused on at this time.
Okay, well, I am a positive psychology coach. I have a master's in counseling, a doctor
at InRenossant's Literature. I taught at the college level for a number of years. And I've
just written a book called Pathways to Inner Peace, which is my eighth book. I write
books about how people can find greater peace in various ways. And I'm really committed
to helping us all, including myself, find greater peace in these stressful times. Because
unless we do that, we cannot move forward with hope and we need to.
Yes, I 100% agree with that. We definitely need hope. And one of the things that I started
thinking about myself that I started to try to focus on, and I say try because I go
back and forth sometimes. I'm not perfect. So, you know, how can we rebuild and move forward
now? Because I feel like everything is kind of crashing down on us. And so, like, how can
we move forward now in a positive way and start building community with each other and
doing things like that? And so, I would love to hear you talk more about, because I believe
in baby steps, small steps may, done consistently make big changes, right? So, what are some
of those simple things that we can do to reduce stress and anxiety, even when we're being
bombarded by what seems to be chaos on a regular basis?
Well, we need to do things consciously to regain our balance. We've got a lot of external
demands on our attention from advertising, from the news, from all kinds of external stuff,
political polarization. And so, we need to take charge. One of my great heroes of all
time is Victor Frankl, who said something that he learned in the concentration camps at
Auschwitz, that the one freedom that no one can take from us is our ability to choose
how we respond to anything that life offers us. And we need to choose deliberately mindful
presence, connecting with nature, connecting with other people, meditating, demonstrating kindness
and compassion, finding a sense of purpose, being aware of our inner voice, because I believe
we're all connected to a source of wisdom, to enjoy the arts which can inspire us and
finally to find greater joy in our everyday lives. We need to do this to push back with light
against the darkness that surrounds us. And we need to do that because when we're under
chronic stress, we cannot think clearly. We react with fight, flight or freeze, fight.
We see someone that disagrees with us as the enemy. Have you noticed some of that going on
in the news? Right, polarization or flight, we recoil in fear or we just freeze in hopelessness
and helplessness. Now, stress reactions can save our lives in an emergency. We can jump
out of the way of a speeding car. But when stress becomes chronic, here we are stuck in
fight, flight or freeze, which are not really very effective responses to what life offers
us. They don't help us think clearly. They don't bring us inspiration. They don't connect
us to community and to a higher source of wisdom at all. So the first step when we feel stressed
is just to notice it. Okay. I notice it all the time.
It's to recognize when we're feeling stressed and to actually exercise self-compassion,
which is what psychologists Kristen Neft talks about and has done a lot of research. The
first step is to acknowledge what we're feeling and to say, "Oh, anxious, worried, stressed,
sad, whatever it is, we're feeling." When we do that, we shift the energy in our brains
from the amygdala, which is the brain's alarm center that goes off with the stress to the
verbal areas in our left hemisphere, vernicies and broken areas. So just acknowledging
to ourselves, whether we say it out loud or silently, "Oh, worried." That starts us getting
back to balance. And then to just recognize common humanity. It's only human to feel this
way. And then step three, the final step is to be kind to ourselves. Instead of listening
to the inner critic, which a lot of us have in our heads saying things that we would never
say to anyone we know, to say, "Oh, I'm here for you. It's okay. We'll get through this." Or,
you know, for a more spiritual response, to say a mantra, a spiritual word or phrase, connect
with a source of inspiration, care and compassion, whether it's ourselves or, you know, the divine.
So three steps, acknowledge what we're feeling in the present moment. It's only human to
feel this way and kindness to ourselves. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think it's very interesting
just by acknowledging it that your brain changes in your brain, which is good to know. A lot
of times when I'm learning something, I want to know why something is happening. And when
somebody tells me that, for some reason, for me, it's just more powerful, you know. And
I've heard many of my clients, many people just saying over and over again, I can't believe
that we're expected to, like, pay our bills and pay rent and go to work in the climate of
the country right now. Like, everybody's just pretending, we're just moving forward, like
everything's normal and nothing is normal. And I feel crazy and I feel like nobody else
is really acknowledging it. And it makes them feel worse just because other people aren't
acknowledging it. And, you know, I feel like over the past months, a few months, I've said
over and over again, you're just, you're having a normal response to the situation. It's
very normal. Like, there's nothing wrong with your response, you know? But I feel like if
more people start acknowledging and speaking about it and sharing it, it makes it better
for everyone as a whole because you don't feel like you're the only one experiencing
that. Okay? So, what else could we do? So, that's very helpful. That could help us reduce
stress. And I know there's plenty of ways that we could bring our, you know, our nervous
system back into balance, you know, like with meditation or movement or, you know, getting
into nature, like you said, maybe breath work. But how can we start to move towards that
hope and joy in our lives? I think a lot of people feel guilty sometimes almost for feeling
joy when they know there's a lot of suffering in the world. Also, they might just have trouble
experiencing joy when, you know, they're feeling so horrible. So, what are some steps that
people can take to help them move forward? Okay, there are at least two answers that I
could give to your question. The first one is that we need not feel guilty for taking care
of ourselves. You know, I have a new little puppy and I take care of her because I love her.
She's a darling. Okay? I don't feel guilty taking care of my puppy. I don't need to feel
guilty just taking care of myself. And somehow when things are going wrong out there, there's
something in us if we have a conscience that's saying, how can you take time to do this
whatever it is that makes you happy if you when there's so much going on out there. John
Cabinzen came to my university a number of years ago and gave a talk Santa Clara University
in California. And after his talk on mindfulness and, you know, how we can be in the present
moment and mindful and there are thousands of studies showing that mindfulness based
stress reduction really does work, reduces chronic pain, you know, relieves stress. And she
said, so women stood up in the audience and said, with everything that's going on in our
world. And this was years ago. How can you take the time to meditate and do yoga every
morning? Don't you think that's a little bit self, you know, interested? And John Cabinzen
smiled, took a deep breath and said, well, you know, when I go to the Boston Symphony, I
notice that the musicians always take time to tune their instruments before they begin
performing. We need to do something. And, you know, we all kind of sat back and, and, uh,
acknowledge that to tune our instruments so that we can perform well during the day. It's
not self-indulgent at all. It's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a question of taking care so that
we are at our best so that we can respond at our best to whatever life offers us. So,
um, yes, we need to do something. We also need to connect, uh, and there are many ways to connect,
as you said, connecting with nature is one thing. There's research that shows that walking
around in nature can relieve depression as well as some anti-depressant drugs. And it doesn't
cost anything, okay? There's research on forest bathing in, um, the east where people would
walk around in a forest and look at the, at the trees. For a half an hour, it reduced their
inflammation, relieved their stress, activated their immune systems in, in 30 minutes, right? Like
that. There are things we can do that, that bring us back to a sense of connection. There's
also connecting with the people around us. Uh, our former surgeon general, Vivek Murphy,
said a couple of years ago that our country is experiencing a, an epidemic of loneliness
and isolation. Well, which is hazardous to our emotional and physical health and a surgeon
general, he felt like he needed to warn people about that. So, we need to connect with nature,
with one another. Uh, how can we do that? Wow, it's, you know, I think a lot of us got out
of the habit of, of connecting during COVID. A lot of our routines, you know, were changed
because we couldn't go out. A lot of people have things delivered. In my neighborhood, people
still have things delivered all the time. I see these little trucks going by and I'm thinking,
if we sacrifice community for convenience, we're going to lose our community. And indeed,
um, one of the local drug stores closed a lot of local restaurants shut down because people
weren't going there. So we need to cultivate community around us. And we can begin by just
acknowledging the people that we see. There's something called micro-moments of connectivity.
You know that one from, I don't, I don't, yeah, share that with me. Okay. Barbara Fredrickson
is a psychologist at the University of North Carolina who studies positive emotions. Imagine
spending all your research time doing that. And she's discovered. Yeah. Um, she's discovered
that waving at a neighbor, exchanging a kind word with the clerk at the grocery store,
just saying good morning to somebody like that. That micro-moment of connectivity relieves
stress, reduces inflammation, activates the immune system, increases the sense of, of
positivity for both people in that short period of time. And that doing this can cause a
positive ripple effect throughout entire communities. And it's, it doesn't cost anything.
Okay. It doesn't require any special equipment. So it's sort of, uh, I don't know. It's a
game I play now. During COVID, I used to be walking my dog on one side of the sidewalk and I
across the street. There'd be somebody coming toward me and I'd actually cross the street
to avoid encountering that person because he or she wasn't wearing a mask and, you know,
but now I actually wave at the person. If I see a neighbor driving by in your car, I wave
and think, Hey, this is good for both of us, you know, and it is. There's research that proves
that. So we can play this game of connection, you know, micro-moments of connection all day
along every day, um, just, you know, connecting with community. We need it. And I think that
connecting with community also empowers us recently during the snap, free is with snap
benefits. My neighbors and I decided we wanted to have a food drive because there were people
who needed food at the local food bank. So we put, uh, brown grocery bags with canned
goods and all that by our front doors and another neighbor came by and picked them all up,
took them to the food bank. And what that did was it fed the hungry people, but it also
fed and nurtured our sense of connection and community and made us all feel better. Like,
okay, we can do something, you know, we can take a positive action. It, it can't solve all
the problems in the world. And there are so many problems. There's a whole menu of possibilities
about where we can put our energy, but to get a couple of friends together and say,
what can we do about this? Let's do something together is really empowering. Margaret
Mead said long ago, never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, committed
citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. I still believe
that.
Yeah, I do too. I also think that that's where it begins to. Those small things that we do
within our communities can build into bigger, bigger projects. Like you said, it's a ripple
effect, like even just a smile instead of, you know, nothing in the morning when you
go into a coffee shop, just smiling at the person behind the counter and saying, hello,
can make a big difference in someone's life instead of just being someone who's just like,
you know, not friendly, not smiling, not responding in any social way. There's two different
ways you can approach going into that coffee shop. You could just be, you know, you could
just be very monotone or you could just be like, hi, good morning and smile at them. And
that one act can just change everything in that person's day, you know, and then they,
in response to that, reflect that back on other people. And so it changes, it just moves
on, like a ripple, like you said, on and on and on. And I think taking these little tiny
steps, I mean, it doesn't really take much to smile and say, good morning, you know, it's
pretty easy, you know, and also it doesn't, it doesn't take a lot to, you know, get together
with some friends and put some cans and a paper bag. And that could be life changing for
someone who has no food, you know? And so, yeah, I think that it's really important. Also,
these are little things that we could do to make us just feel more connected. And, you
know, I think that is the answer to bringing, bringing us into like lowering the stress,
lowering the anxiety and bringing us more joy into our lives is that connection piece, I
think is so important. I do, however, find, I don't know, let me tell me if you run into
this as well. I do find that a lot of people are not always willing to connect. They're
almost like, they might, they might be little like standoffish, you know, when you try to
connect with them. And I think it's because so many people don't try to connect. So it's
almost out of the ordinary to be friendly and outspoken and talk to a complete stranger
or whatever. So what do you think that is about? Like, what do you think? Do you run into
that at all? I mean, you're a little bit California.
California? Yeah. I mean California, the sun is shining. Well, it's actually been raining
a lot. But I think that people get out of the habit of connecting. It feels weird when
some stranger says hello to them. You know, especially if you're a woman, you think,
"Whoa, what's going on here?" "Yeah." "Is this stalker?" You know? So fear, you know. But in
the old days before we had freeways and cars, people lived in small groups, a hunter-gatherer,
you know, small communities. And even in New York City, there are neighborhoods, right? And
people would know people in their neighborhood. And my neighborhood, the only people who know
each other are the people who walk their dogs. Otherwise, people just, they leave the garage,
you know, pull out in their car, garage door goes down, they go away someplace, come back
and then repeat the process and reverse, go into their garage and we never see them. I
mean, there are some people that I've lived in this neighborhood for years and years and
years and years and I do not know some neighbors. But the ones with dogs, yeah, we know each
other because we actually walk around. Okay. So I think a lot of times people do get out
of the habit of being part of a neighborhood, part of a community and they feel threatened.
So, you know, maybe just smile and, you know, go on your way and maybe they'll get used
to it. Yeah, maybe the thing is, I do notice too that the younger generations aren't as open
to it. I'm a runner. So I see a lot of people when I'm on my runs and I always find it very
interesting the way different age groups respond to me if I say hello, you know. So also,
there's a difference in region. So like when I'm running in New York, it's completely different
than when I'm running down in North Carolina. So like now in North Carolina, when I go
on a run, every person I say hello to always says hello back every time. Like, but up in New
York, not so much. A lot of times they wouldn't even make eye contact with me, you know. So it's
really, it's very interesting. It's an interesting social experiment if you're ever out on a run.
Now if you have a dog, that's a whole different story because it's so much easier to connect
when you have dog because the dogs, the dogs force you to connect sometimes. They come
together, you know. Yeah, yeah. It's really, it's really, really nice. Could you share a little
bit about your most recent book? I know you've written quite a few books, but your most recent
book, can you tell me, you know, who is that book for? Who would that help? Well, I went
through a number of losses during COVID myself and was feeling disconnected. So I thought,
what can I do? You know, I've studied all these things. So I found these nine pathways to
greater peace of mind that have been described by poets and philosophers for centuries, practiced
in centuries in spiritual tradition and are now validated by recent research and psychology
and neuroscience. And I thought, okay, these things really work. And they don't cost anything.
They don't require any special equipment, perhaps running shoes if you're going to go running
out in nature, but you know, okay. But you know, for example, mindful presence. All right,
my first chapter is about being present and what our attention is a very valuable resource,
which is being bottled and sold by advertisers. It is being, you know, attacked by social media.
We think we're using our phones, social media, but they're using us. They're getting information
about us so they can bombard us with more, you know, algorithms of stuff and advertisements.
So what we need to do is take back our attention. Be mindfully present, you know, again,
back to John Kabat's in. There's research that shows that most people feel that spend 50%
of the time doing one thing and thinking about something else. And that's, you know, multi-tasking,
right? It doesn't work. We didn't evolve as human beings to be doing all these different
things. We're not computers. We can't have all these windows open at a time. So to regain, you
know, our sense of presence is really important. And we can do that by, oh gosh, taking, by breathing,
which again, we do it anyway, but by taking three deep mindful breaths, which I interviewed,
Dr. Jim Doty was a neurosurgeon at Stanford and he said he would take three deep mindful breaths
in the middle of stressful, challenging brain surgery so that he could focus on what he was doing.
And so in one case, stop this young boy's brain from bleeding and save his life.
This could be a very stressful situation. So in order to deal with instead of fight,
flight, or freeze, which wouldn't help him, he wanted to use his surgical skills,
he just took three deep mindful breaths and I thought, well, if it works for brain surgery to be present,
it should help us whatever we're dealing with too. So I think we need to do that.
My second chapter is about connecting with nature. I think that we human beings have an
affinity for nature with nature and we're part of a larger pattern. The trees breathe out, right?
What we breathe in in an exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen that is yin and yang that is
the harmony of life that we give and take with each other. And we need to honor that.
So I have trees outside my all around my house. I feel very blessed. And there's research that shows
that even looking out the window at nature is healing. There was a study years ago in a Philadelphia
hospital where patients had abdominal surgery and they had the same surgery, the same nurses,
the same doctors, the same hospital food, everything was the same with one exception.
Some of the patients looked out their windows at a view of trees outside and some of the patients
on the other side of the hall looked out at only bare brick walls. Guests which group of patients
needed less pain medication, suffered fewer complications and were discharged earlier than the others.
Yeah, the people with the nature are the trees.
Yeah, and isn't that amazing just looking out at the trees.
Yeah. So we need, you know, we need that connection. My book is all about different ways we can
regain our sense of connection. Yeah. The community for sure, you know, is another one.
I do, I do like the way you say regain connection because I truly believe that I think a lot of
people feel that we're not a part of nature, but we are a part of nature. Like we're part of the whole
thing. We've just been so separated from it and I feel very connected to nature. I'm definitely a
nature girl. And so I experienced this firsthand and I remember during COVID, which this was very
interesting to me. I used to go out and go for runs during COVID. And one of the things that I noticed
was that nothing in the nature world was stopped. Everything was going on as normal, you know. The
birds were singing and they were happy and they were making babies and doing all the stuff that they
normally do and the trees were blooming and the flowers were blooming and like our world was
standing still and the rest of nature was moving forward. And I was just, it just was very profound to
me because because I was like if we reconnected with nature, we could move forward with nature. And
that's, I just spent as much time outside as possible to like connect with that. That made me, that
made me feel better. It made everything the problems of the world seem really small and then it
made me feel better. And I think nature has always done that for me. It makes everything seem so
insignificant and small. You know, like how you hear people say, yeah, we're just this tiny little
spec that's on a rock that's spinning around the sun, you know. And it does put things in perspective,
you know. So I can't live without going outside almost every day. Like I just have to. And
when you have a dog that is another, I think this whole podcast is going to be okay, go adopt a dog,
you know. Well, you know, having companion animals, there's a lot of research that shows having a dog
or a cat, you know, or even feeding birds, you know, connecting with another living being is really,
really healthy and opens our hearts to a feeling of love and connection. And there's research on
something called awe, you know, just being inspired by the beauty of the cosmos or the beauty of a sunset
or, you know, being out in the middle of a forest, which makes us transcend our ego and our day-to-day
worries and makes us realize we're connected to something much larger than ourselves. Yeah, that's
yeah. That's how I feel when I look at flowers. I like if you really look at a flower, you're like,
that can't be real, that can't be like it's just they're so beautiful and they're so intricate and
they're so also different. So whenever I look closely at flowers, I paint flowers, so I look at them
really closely. And so I'm like, how could that even be real? It's so colorful, so bright, so amazing,
you know. So yeah, I think that this was such a good conversation for people. I think
it's the the the things that you brought up during this conversation are things that are very
simple to do. And I think that that's what people need right now. I think they need simple, easy to do,
like you said, free things that they could do to feel better, probably immediately. And just keep
doing those things. But before we go, I would like to ask you, when I remember to ask my guests,
I always ask them this question, what is one of your favorite ways to what is your like your
favorite self-care practice? How you take care of yourself? I have a lot of them, but one of my favorite
self-care practices is gratitude. Every morning, I you know, raise the shades, look out at the window
and whatever the weather is like, give thanks for another beautiful day because, you know, it's a gift,
right? Each day is a gift. And we need to acknowledge and accept and embrace that gift. And then
during the day when something good happens, I just pause and give thanks. And there's the gratitude
practice is one of the most powerful interventions in positive psychology. It's something people
used to say grace before their meals, you know, to give thanks for the food and for the people who
help to grow it and prepare it and bring it. So gratitude in every way, I think brings me a greater
sense of joy and connection to, you know, to the world. And also, so that's one of the practices I
also meditate every morning, one of my favorite practices, but I would acknowledge, you know, it's
again, gratitude is not a selfish behavior because we're acknowledging our connection to whatever
good thing has happened and acknowledging that there is good in the world. And we need to remind
ourselves of that so that we can go out with a sense of balance and hope to make a positive
difference, to think clearly, to connect with other people, to, you know, to use our own particular
strengths to make a positive difference in the world. Yeah, thank, I'm glad you brought that up. Thank
you for sharing that because we didn't talk about gratitude and that's a, it's a very big deal
and you're right. And, and a lot of people, when they do a gratitude practice, you know, I think any
gratitude practice is good, right? But I think one of the things that I always share with my clients is,
you know, when you're doing a gratitude practice, I'd rather you just have gratitude for one thing
and feel into that gratitude as much as you can, then write 10 things down that you're grateful for.
Like, feel into the feeling of gratitude and if there's one thing that comes up every single day,
like, I'm so grateful for my dog or whatever and that helps you feel into that feeling, then,
then do that every single day, you know, that's perfect. You don't need to write a list of 10 things
or three things or five things or whatever, you know, so thanks for bringing that up. I appreciate
that and how can, what's the best way for people to connect with you and find your books?
I have a website which is my name, www.Diandry or D-I-A-N-E-D-R-E-H-E-R.com and it's got my books. It has
meditations. It has all kinds of information, you know, media information and a thought usually,
a thought for the day connection to my newsletter which has the wisdom of the seasons
because connecting with the wisdom of the seasons again, that's that's something I'm grateful for.
Every year, daffodils bloom in my front yard and every year, there are more of them. They naturalize.
Yesterday I walked out there and looked and saw there are 50 daffodils in my front yard
so that they keep multiplying. The good in our lives when we pay attention to it with gratitude
keeps multiplying and we need to spread that so that we can bring our life to our beautiful but
troubled world. We need to make a difference together. So yes, go to my website, diandryr.com and
you can find out more about my seasonal newsletter and I just wish all the people that are here today
to recognize that together we can make a difference and a piece needs to begin with us individually
and then it extends out collectively. Yes, absolutely. I second that. Thank you for that and the
website will also be in the show-nose for people so you can check it out. Thank you again for coming
on. It's been such a pleasure talking to you. Thank you, my pleasure too.
