The One You Feed - A Conversation With Susan Piver

You can't think your way into intuition or inspiration or knowing,

But if you make space,

It arises.

Welcome to The One You Feed.

Throughout time,

Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.

Quotes like,

Garbage in,

Garbage out,

Or you are what you think ring true.

And yet,

For many of us,

Our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.

We tend toward negativity,

Self-pity,

Jealousy,

Or fear.

We see what we don't have instead of what we do.

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

But it's not just about thinking.

Our actions matter.

It takes conscious,

Consistent,

And creative effort to make a life worth living.

This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,

How they feed their good wolf.

Thanks for joining us.

Our guest on this episode is Susan Piver,

Who is here for the second time.

She's a New York Times bestselling author of nine books,

Including the award-winning How Not to be Afraid of Your Life and The Wisdom of a Broken Heart.

Susan has been a practicing Buddhist since 1995 and graduated from a Buddhist seminary in 2004.

Her work has been featured on The Oprah Show,

Today,

CNN,

And in the New York Times,

Wall Street Journal,

Money,

And others.

Her new book is The Four Noble Truths of Love,

Buddhist Wisdom for Modern Relationships.

Hi,

Susan.

Welcome back to the show.

Hi.

So glad to be here.

Thank you.

Yes,

We have had you on before.

I don't remember which episode number it was,

But it's been a while.

But you have a new book out that we will explore in depth.

But let's start like we always do with the parable.

In the parable,

There's a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter and he says,

In life,

There are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.

One is a good wolf,

Which represents things like kindness and bravery and love.

And the other is a bad wolf,

Which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.

And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second and looks up at her grandfather.

And she says,

Well,

Grandfather,

Which one wins?

And the grandfather says,

The one you feed.

So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Well,

Thank you.

And I love that parable.

And as you were saying it,

I thought about it in a different way than I ever had before,

Which is I was thinking about the bad wolf.

I'm a long-time Buddhist practitioner,

As I think you know,

And in certain schools of Buddhism,

There's this idea that afflictive emotions have a positive flip side.

And so I was thinking of what is the flip side of hatred and greed and anger,

The three qualities you named?

And what is the vulnerable part in those qualities?

And how can we touch those vulnerable parts?

Instead of running in fear from the bad wolf,

Can we somehow uncover the goodness of the bad wolf in some way?

I love that idea.

And it makes me think of something that you say in the book that sort of caught my attention.

And it was that underneath other emotions like anger or rage and fear and all that is sadness and that sadness is a more tender emotion that we can work with.

And what I wanted to ask you about that is that my experience seems to be that sadness is the emotion that is relatively easy for me to access.

And that certainly I have had people say before that my depressive condition looks more like anger turned inward.

And so I'm just kind of interested in what you think about what I just said,

Because there are kind of different approaches to that thing or a different way of looking at sadness versus anger.

I think certain people have a tendency toward one or the other or neither.

You and I apparently both tend towards a depressive response to unhappiness.

Some people respond with anger,

Which is their first response.

And I think in both cases,

A similar emotion underlies the response,

Which is some kind of fear or some kind of being hurt.

Because the truth is we're vulnerable and we're fragile and we're sensitive,

I think is a better word than fragile.

And when something upsets us,

We want to turn it into something we can work with,

As opposed to just feeling the pain directly.

And anger is something you can work with,

Is something you can turn on others.

It's something that you can express.

It obliterates everything,

Actually.

I just want to differentiate between depression and sadness,

Because depression,

I think,

Does something similar as anger does.

Anger turns it outward,

And like you say,

Depression turns it inward,

But it also sort of calcifies it.

I think of depression as a kind of calcified sadness.

In both cases,

Anger and depression could be thought of – this is my experience,

I'm not a therapist,

But this is my observation – as unfelt sadness.

Because sadness makes you feel so vulnerable.

Once someone was interviewing Gloria Steinem,

The feminist icon – I think I mentioned this in the book even – I'll never forget what she said when an interviewer asked her if she was depressed over the recent death of her husband.

They'd only been married a few years.

And she said – I'm paraphrasing – I'm not depressed,

I'm sad.

And the interviewer said,

What's the difference?

And she said the most beautiful thing,

When you're depressed,

Nothing has any meaning.

And when you're sad,

Everything does.

So when we turn towards sadness,

We can enter the realm of reality,

I think,

A little bit more directly than when we turn it into something else,

Whether it's anger or depression.

Yeah,

I've always loved that quote.

And I think it's interesting because my willingness to be sad,

I think you're probably right,

Is a more recent phenomenon in my life.

And probably as I was younger,

That wasn't something I was looking to do.

I like that idea of calcification.

That's a good word for what depression feels like.

It's almost like this really tight calcification.

I like that.

So let's turn to your book,

Which is called The Four Noble Truths of Love,

Buddhist Wisdom for Modern Relationships.

And as most listeners know,

The Buddha expounded four noble truths about life,

And you have reinterpreted those to relationships.

And so I thought,

Why don't we just start with talking about what those four noble truths are?

The Four Noble Truths of Love,

Just as you suggest,

Are based on the Buddha's very first teachings upon attaining enlightenment.

He taught four things,

And the entire Buddhist path is based on these four things.

And at one point in my marriage,

We had hit a really bad period.

And anybody who's been in a relationship knows what this is like.

Everything seems okay.

And then suddenly you can't get along.

And we were in one of those phases where whatever one did,

The other one took offense.

And we couldn't tell why.

We argued about the silliest things.

We couldn't get along.

And this went on for months.

One day I was sitting at my desk.

I was crying because I didn't know what to do.

I had thought we loved each other,

And I thought I still did.

But it seemed that there was nothing but coldness between us.

So I was crying,

And I had this thought upon wondering.

I don't even know where to begin.

I had this thought that said,

Begin at the beginning.

At the beginning are Four Noble Truths.

And as a Buddhist practitioner,

Like I say,

That meant something to me,

But I wasn't sure what,

Because what do the Four Noble Truths have to do with my relationship?

So I sat and thought about it.

And this is what I came up with.

The First Noble Truth of love is that relationships are uncomfortable.

They just are.

If you've never met the person,

You're about to go on a blind date,

It's uncomfortable.

What if they don't like me,

Or what if they do like me,

Or what if I repeat all my old relationship patterns and you haven't even met the person and it's already very uncomfortable.

And if you fall in love,

I mean,

That's heavenly,

Literally heavenly.

But it's also oddly uncomfortable because it's so intense,

And every moment is so fraught,

And every look and every word could have some extraordinary kind of meaning.

And you could spend a lot of time wondering what that expression meant and worrying that this is just going to disappear.

And then if you're in a long-term relationship,

It just so happens,

Nobody really told me this,

That there's a lot of irritation.

People have habits,

People do things that trigger you and they do them over and over again.

And you just sort of live with this sense of,

It's just hard to live with another person,

Even if it's,

You know,

There's certainly matters of degree,

But it's just,

It's hard.

So that's the first noble truth,

Relationships are uncomfortable.

I want to ask you a question here about this because this is a point that I am struggling with in my own life,

And it's this.

I get the general idea that we should,

You know,

Resistance causes us a great deal of trouble,

Right?

Now,

I am somebody that wrestles with being irritated,

Particularly by sounds and things that are around me.

And I have this happen semi-often where I will find myself very irritated and then I find myself thinking I should not be irritated.

And I do this,

I go back and forth between these two things.

One is that I try and go,

Just allow the sound to be whatever it is,

Just let it be,

Right?

So I'm trying to decrease my resistance there and just let it go,

Right?

So that's one approach.

And then I,

Sometimes that works and often it doesn't.

And then I go,

Okay,

What I'm going to try and do then is just let my irritation be.

And I never know which of those is more effective.

And maybe the answer is the one that works at that moment.

But I'm just kind of curious on your thoughts because that's a dilemma that shows up often in when you're talking about not resisting what's happening.

So I guess just your thoughts on that.

Yeah.

And I share that,

By the way.

I'm auditorially very sensitive.

And if two people start talking to me at once,

I actually feel my temper flare.

Yeah.

They're not doing anything wrong,

But it does something to my nervous system that is uncomfortable.

So I would say my approach is if you get irritated,

It does not help to become irritated by the fact that you're irritated.

You're just still irritated.

You just changed the object.

So I would say be irritated.

But the key here is without the story of the irritation,

Because it's the story that actually causes more pain and suffering than the original,

The presenting issue.

So feel the irritation.

Like what does it feel like in your body?

That's where most people feel it.

Like their chest gets tight or they feel their shoulders hunch.

Some people feel it in the environment.

Like the actual environment feels different.

It feels combative or dark or whatever it might be.

Place your attention on that.

And when a story tries to arise,

It says,

Well,

If only people would be quieter or I shouldn't be irritated.

Those are all thoughts.

Just put those aside to turn toward the felt sense of the irritation.

That tends to be more expeditious and also kinder to yourself.

That doesn't involve any condemnation or self-improvement.

You just feel it and eventually it dissipates.

Yeah,

I think that's really good advice.

It's funny.

That is the one emotion.

I've just recognized this very recently,

But it is the one emotion that I am absolutely the most uncomfortable with because I think sadness is sadness.

Even anger,

It's not one of my most comfortable.

But usually if I'm angry,

There's a reasonable,

At least in my own brain,

A reason.

I can say,

Well,

This person is doing X or Y and this causes that.

But with irritation,

It's just this.

Like you said,

The person isn't doing anything.

They're doing absolutely nothing wrong and I'm seething.

So it's the one that I am uncomfortable with because it feels completely unjustified to me.

I get that my emotions have to be justified,

Is that the root of part of that problem.

I really in the last week or two have noticed this.

I don't think I've ever been able to put it quite together what happens to me in those situations and how much worse I might be making it by the storyline,

Which is this is not okay.

Well,

I have something that I want to suggest and this is my theory based on nothing,

Which should be the title of my next book,

I think.

It could be the title of all my books.

But my theory based on nothing is that the irritation that you feel and that I feel is not the same as being angry at someone for ignoring you or hurting you or doing something that you think is wrong.

It comes from a different part of the organism.

There's a psychological and emotional hurt of someone doing something upsetting to you.

That's not the case here.

I feel like this is a limbic system response in your nervous system just fires and then you attach a story to it.

But I think sound and you're,

I mean,

Look what we're doing right now.

Your life,

So much of it,

I imagine revolves around sound and there's a threat.

I think your limbic system perceives a threat.

And so when I get irritated like that,

I try to think not,

Of course,

I think,

Well,

I shouldn't be irritated or why can't I be a nicer person?

But I also try to think,

Well,

Something is some,

Although it does not make any sense and there is nothing threatening me right now,

Some part of me perceives a threat.

So can I turn toward that part and just go,

Everything's okay,

Sweetie,

Let's just relax.

You read about like highly sensitive people and that's the one thing like when I read about highly sensitive people,

I went,

That one is me right there.

When they say that,

Like that incidental noises just,

I really do have a very difficult time.

It's like there's a TV on in one room and another room or somebody's talking or I just,

When there's multiple sounds coming at me,

I get,

Like you said,

I almost just quickly get angry.

Beared.

Yeah.

And here's the rest of the interview with Susan Piver.

I think we had just finished the first noble truth of relationships and we're about to hit the second.

Yes,

Yes.

So relationships are uncomfortable is the first noble truth because they never stabilize.

That's something else no one ever tells you.

And the second noble truth is that thinking they should be comfortable and stable is actually what causes them to be uncomfortable and unstable.

In other words,

Instability and change,

That's a part of life.

There's no feeling that is solid.

Love and connection are always pulsing in and out of existence.

They don't,

It's not solid.

So okay,

We have to live with that.

We have to figure out a way to deal with that.

But then we think,

Well,

There's a problem here that we have to fix.

And when we fix this problem,

Either something small,

Like you're always late,

Please be on time,

Which may not be that small for some people or something really big,

Like,

I don't know.

We don't seem to have problem.