The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz

The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz episode 129 is inspired by a book I’m reading around the time I recorded this, Determined by Robert Sapolsky. What is free will? Has Sapolsky proven it doesn’t exist? What are the implications?

Listen as I argue that free will can be considered from an approach other than the purely scientific, and how that holistic perspective is central to my own commitment to help you escape the influences of your past experience in order to embrace possibility and live a rich and fulfilling life.

I’d love to hear what you think! Be sure to leave a comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Don’t miss a single Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz! Subscribe for free in iTunes / Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or, simply copy / paste the RSS link directly into the podcast app of your choice!

If you enjoy The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, please take a moment to rate and review the show in iTunes / Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. It only takes a few minutes, and adding your review is as easy as clicking this link.

Your rating and review helps raise the visibility of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, especially on iTunes / Apple Podcasts, which is one of the biggest podcasting platforms today. More visibility for the show means more listeners… and that growth means the show reaches — and helps — more people like you.

Thank you!

Help others when Mel helps you: Contact Mel and find out how you can be a guest on the show and ask Mel a question. He’ll put the Possibility Principle to work for you, and your conversation will be recorded for use in a future episode of the podcast so other listeners can benefit. Of course, your anonymity will be respected if that’s your wish.

Hello everybody and welcome to The Possibility Podcast. I’m your host Mel Schwartz. I practice psychotherapy, marriage counseling, and I am the author of the book The Possibility Principle, the companion to this podcast. I hope to be your thought provocateur and I’ll be introducing you to new ways of thinking and a new game plan for life.

Today we’re going to dive into one aspect of the nature of possibility. Possibility on the human level kind of implies that we have free will. If we don’t have free will, then what is possible and what is not possible has nothing to do with us.

I have just been reading a fascinating book on the nature of free will. It is called Determined and the author is Robert Sapolsky. Sapolsky is a professor of biology, neurology, and neurological sciences at Stanford University. Very, very noteworthy intellectual scholar. And virtually everything he’s written has caused a visceral, a deep visceral reaction in me. I cannot dispute his empirical research and science and perhaps his conclusions. And yet on an innately intuitive and visceral level, I want to scream, I want to argue. It’s contrary to my core beliefs.

Sapolsky suggests that we are a product of our lived experience. And by this he means that our DNA, our biology, the society and culture and subculture that we are in, our cultural norms, our lived experiences, all create a scenario by which we may think that we’re consciously making decisions and choices, but they’re all rather programmed into us, not in a simplistic, reductive way, but in what he calls an emergent complexity. The variables are rather infinite, but in their infinite complexity, they form our decision making process and that we make decisions without even knowing that we are making them. It’s actually our neurons firing and making our decisions for us, even if we are unaware that we have already made the decision.

The conclusion from his thesis is astounding. We are at the mercy of our lived experience and our neurons, and therefore there’s no fault, there’s no blame because there’s no free will. In other words, Sapolsky’s proposing that there is no actual intentionality because our will is not free, it is a complex that is decided for us. If there’s no free will, the entire basis of jurisprudence of the legal system falls away because number one, nobody is to blame, nobody can be held at fault if we have no free will. And furthermore, there’s no issue of intentionality. We are simply biologically reactive on the level beneath our conscious attention.

Taking Sapolsky’s thesis even further, there’s no morality. How can we have a moral code absent of free will? If we have no ability to behave or not behave, to act or not act in a certain way, Sapolsky would be arguing that we are imprisoned by everything that has preceded us and we are not agents of free will. So the absence of free will means it’s all in our programming and it’s all predetermined.

Again, not in a reductive way, but what Sapolsky calls emergent complexity. There is such insane amount of complexity going on and our decision is made even before our brain is aware of the decision.

I am only halfway through the book, but my reaction is so strong and the dissonance is tremendous because his arguments sound scientifically valid. I’m certainly in no position to argue them, but every aspect of my intuitive being wants to cry out in objection. After all, I am a proponent, a passionate proponent of consciousness, of sentience, of rising above our biological limitations. And my life and my work is devoted toward helping everyone, myself included, to attaining the greatest capacity for free will that we can. Boy, you can just begin to appreciate how this book has triggered me.

Now, have you ever in your life felt an instinct or an urge to do something that you knew was wrong, morally wrong, legally wrong, ethically wrong, and you chose not to do it? Let’s suppose it’s infidelity or an adolescent excitement of stealing something and not getting caught and perhaps you didn’t do it and you didn’t do it opposed to your instinct to do it because you had a moral consideration, you knew it was wrong. And I guess Sapolsky would argue that if you didn’t do it, that was part of your programming. I appreciate this argument, but I think of it differently.

I think of embracing the dissonance between what we want and what we think is right or what we think will cause pain or harm to another or to our own self. Embracing that dissonance is where creativity and growth lie. That’s the emergent field for me, that dissonance. How about the free will to break past the harms that have been done to you if you have been abused or you grew up in a childhood absent of love or nurturing? Can you break past those harms done toward you by emerging in a healthy, sensible way and living a life full of vitality? Of course you can. I can appreciate what Sapolsky’s argument would be, but my argument is that when we rise above the limitations of our neurons and the functioning of our brain, there is consciousness, there is sentience, a deeper manifestation of creative intelligence. For us, leaving Sapolsky’s argument aside, what does free will mean to us on a more mundane, non-scientific level?

Free will requires the ability, the freedom to break free from our past in some way, to choose differently than we’ve been inclined to choose. That’s where growth emerges. But freedom, having the freedom from not attaching to conformity is a large part of free will. Think about the stress and the imposition of societal and cultural norms of conformity, what we can or can’t say, how we can or can’t dress, how we can or can’t engage one another. We are robotic in our acquiescence to societal conformity. Think about children at play. How have they learned the rules of engagement of a culture? Children have not yet conformed, but in an all too early age, our culture, our parenting teaches children to come into conformity, to act and behave in a certain way, in a programmed way.

Ultimately, free will for me requires freedom from old thought and old felts. So remember, and I have shared this any number of times and wrote about it extensively in my book, The Possibility Principle, old thought imprisons us. Throughout our lives, we continue to replicate hundreds of thousands, arguably millions of times the same recurring old thoughts. And when we have old thoughts, they summon up the old feelings, the old felts that attach to those thoughts. We certainly can’t access free will when we are imprisoned by old thought.

The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead created the term which I had never seen before, I think he created it, that term is concrescence. Concrescence is the stirring of energy before a material thing becomes material. In other words, he’s proposing that energy is stirring in a certain way before it becomes material. I worked with his notion of concrescence to develop the ability to know that it’s the stirring, the energy that ultimately becomes a thought. Now that’s just a nanosecond, but in that nanosecond, feeling that energy preceding the thought allows me to see the thought break free from the thought and just see it and say, ah, that’s an old thought, it’s an old feeling, I’m not going there. In that nanosecond, and to use a quantum physics terminology in that state of superposition where I am poised in a place of infinite possibility, boy is there free will there. It’s a learned skill, but you can learn how to do it.

So the intention here is to be able to become the master, to see my old thoughts and my old feelings and not succumb to them. In that nanosecond between the thoughts and the feelings that I’ve always had, in that nanosecond I exist in the state of pure possibility. Now pure possibility is of course free will.

How do you actualize this intention to break free from the past? The past could be the past moment, the past lifetime, the past decade. I’m sure you know some people and see some people who seem to access change easily. Is that because it’s in their programming as Sapolsky would propose? Or is it they have access to that level of consciousness, they’ve broken free from the constraints of old thought?

Becoming conscious, becoming sentient, sentient is self-awareness, awareness of my thought. Becoming conscious and sentient, breaking free from the grip of old thought allows us to transcend the amalgam, the conglomeration of all our past experiences. Now it doesn’t change our DNA, an argument Sapolsky might make, but remember DNA is not an imprint of a direction you have to take, it is simply a suggestive state, you can shift the direction that antenna is programming you in. In a way what I’m speaking about here is the field of epigenetics, in which shifting our environment, shifting our consciousness allows us to break free of the grip of direct programming of DNA.

So to transcend this complex amalgam of our past experience to access consciousness and sentience requires breaking free of the conglomeration of old thought and old felts and old beliefs, temporarily suspending them. I’m not proposing that you can go through your life without having thought and feeling, but it’s in that moment, in that nanosecond when you can break free from it, that you can choose differently, and choosing differently on every level, to me, looks like free will.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, experiences and comments on this very, very intriguing dilemma. Until next time, wishing you the freest will that your free will can provide for you, as long as you do no harm to yourself and do no harm to others. Looking forward to talking with you again soon.

Bye for now.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Possibility Podcast. I welcome your feedback on this and any episode. Please send me an email at mel at melschwartz.com or leave a comment in the show notes for this episode at melschwartz.com. If you like what you’re hearing, please take a moment to rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your reviews really help boost the visibility for the show, and it’s a great way for you to show your support. Finally, please make sure to subscribe to the Possibility Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, and that way you’ll never miss an episode. Thanks again, and please remember to always welcome uncertainty into your life and embrace new possibilities.

The post #129 So Do You Think We Have Free Will? first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW.

In episode 128 of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, let’s talk about the way the mindless programming of the everyday script robs us of our vitality, curiosity, and awe, desecrating our ability to be present and authentic in our relationships with others and ourselves.

What can we do to break free from reactionary, transactional, reductionist routine and reawaken our sense of wonder?

The answer is in this episode!

Listen, and then I’d love to hear what you think! Be sure to leave a comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Don’t miss a single Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz! Subscribe for free in iTunes / Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or, simply copy / paste the RSS link directly into the podcast app of your choice!

If you enjoy The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, please take a moment to rate and review the show in iTunes / Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. It only takes a few minutes, and adding your review is as easy as clicking this link.

Your rating and review helps raise the visibility of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, especially on iTunes / Apple Podcasts, which is one of the biggest podcasting platforms today. More visibility for the show means more listeners… and that growth means the show reaches — and helps — more people like you.

Thank you!

Help others when Mel helps you: Contact Mel and find out how you can be a guest on the show and ask Mel a question. He’ll put the Possibility Principle to work for you, and your conversation will be recorded for use in a future episode of the podcast so other listeners can benefit. Of course, your anonymity will be respected if that’s your wish.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Possibility Podcast. I’m your host Mel Schwartz. I practice psychotherapy, marriage counseling, and I am the author of the book The Possibility Principle, the companion to this podcast. I hope to be your thought provocateur and I’ll be introducing you to new ways of thinking and a new game plan for life.

Possibilities require that we not program ourselves, that we don’t program our thoughts, our feelings, our beliefs, that we free ourselves from programming. Otherwise, how do we ever achieve what’s possible? My thinking today is around how this impacts us in our relationships and our primary relationships with one another, romantic relationships and other close intimate relationships. So I’d like to discuss how we find ourselves programmed and how we can deprogram ourselves so our relationships can thrive and we can thrive.

I believe that we desecrate our humanity and our individuality and we desecrate our relationships as well, which should be a sacred place where our love surfaces and our sense of humanity prospers. This degrading and denigrating of ourselves is part and parcel of what I’m calling programming, where we’re not alive sufficiently. We’re not aware, we’re acting from a programming. I’m not speaking here of an intention to desecrate myself or the other in a relationship. The desecration is just an inevitable outcome.

So a very subtle form of this desecrating, this mind numbing is about the programming, which has us react in the same way, speak in the same way, think in the same way, use the same tones, the same reactions, the same mindlessness to just resurface this moment in and moment out in our relationships. The essence of this invalidating of this desecration is really due to not being present. If we’re programmed, we’re not present. We’re operating from the program.

In our relationships, what does that look like? It can look like asking the same questions or not asking new questions, making the same comments. It’s about a lack of vitality. It’s about an absence of curiosity, an absence of awe, and an absence of wonder. Curiosity, wonder, and awe are required for happiness in life. Otherwise, we’re just transactional.

Without this sense of awe and wonder, we are robotic, going through our days, doing what we have to do, taking care of what we need to do, but there’s not a greater engagement with life. And certainly we’re missing a greater engagement with each other.

Think about your relationship or your primary relationships. Are they transactional? Are you really engaged and creative? You know, mystery creates awe. When something is not at first altogether clear, there’s a sense of awe. And I’ve been thinking about the word awful. Awful is clearly a pejorative, negative. What is the etymology of the word awful? I haven’t looked into it yet, but here’s my instinct. Awful at a certain point in time, a certain deep history of consciousness, awful was something full of awe, mystery, and wonder. Relationships and romantic relationships may begin with a sense of awe. Awe is not being able to reduce something, like in a mathematical formula. Awe is requiring not knowing.

So previously, awful meant something full of wonder and mystery. But as we reduced ourselves to the programming of reductionist thinking, something that was not knowable and full of mystery became denigrated. So something full of awe became a negative, awful. We do this in our relationships. How often do you ask your partner, your relatives, your closest friends, new questions? We don’t. We ask formatted questions and we get formatted answers and we’re operating from a formula.

As I shared many, many episodes ago, I was having dinner with two dear friends who I had not seen in some time. And I thought going into that dinner, I wanted to provoke some real deep program conversation so we could all come into a new experience of ourselves and with each other. So we sat down and I asked my two dear friends, one is in the 70s, the other is 80. I said, do you guys think about death? What are your fears? How do you handle that? We all do that. That’s natural, particularly as you age. But there’s a programming that we don’t talk to each other about that. That programming anesthetizes us. It dumbs us down.

Our relationships with each other and our primary relationships become victims of this programming. Ask yourself this, when is the last time I asked my partner, my closest friend, a new question and received a new answer? Am I operating from a program? In romantic relationships, why does passion die? While sex becomes programmed, we know how and when and what frequency we’re going to make love and what it will look like. How often is there experimentation, a break from the norm? So the lack of curiosity, the lack of wonder, the lack of awe and asking each other how you each felt about your sexual encounter, far too infrequent. In a relationship, we commit to each other.

Now I’m bouncing back to committed relationships, romantic or what should be romantic relationships. Hopefully they were romantic to begin with. What are we committing to? We’re committing to fidelity. I’ll love you forever. But we don’t commit to the process. The process is what keeps us alive. What is the process of a relationship? To return the mystery, the wonder, the awe and sharing your own individual questions of your own selves. I wonder about this. Have you ever wondered about that? What do you think about that? Coming out of the artificial, superficial programming of our lives. Our personal life is a narrative and it’s a deep, complex tapestry. We need to open that tapestry up to each other.

You see in a relationship, we typically tend early on at least to complete each other. You know, my other half, that expression which I’ve spoken about before. So in quantum physics, there’s something called complementarity, which is the opposite. The opposite is needed to complete. So without night, there is no day. Without love, there is no hatred. That’s complementarity. But in our personalities, if we just stay attuned to the complementarity, to the opposition of each other, we don’t grow and prosper. Engage your own tapestry and open up to it. That’s why we trigger each other because we haven’t engaged in our own complex tapestry. Ask yourself when you feel triggered by the other, think about the term my button. The emphasis should be on the word my. It’s not about the other person. Why did you push my button? What do I have to look at in myself? And what do I need to open up to and share with you? Do we simply complement each other? And complement here is C-O-M-P-L-E-M-E-N-T. It doesn’t mean give each other praise. Complement means complete each other. The goal is not to complete each other, but to work toward a completion of self. And that’s the wrong term because we never complete ourself. It’s a process.

So coming back to my primary theme here today, we operate from programming. We learn that programming from our parents as children. We learn that programming from our culture. We don’t ask new questions. We don’t allow ourselves new thoughts. We play the game of life and the game of relationship within the boundary of the rules of engagement. Break the damn rules. They dumb us down. They desecrate our lives and our relationships. To thrive in your relationship with yourself and with others, you must deprogram yourself. Why would we want to live our lives from a programming? Step out of line and worry about what someone else will think about you? Does that make sense?

And who are these other people that were concerned about what they will think? Remember that’s what I call other esteem. Authentic self-esteem requires breaking free of the grip of programming. And programming is the death knell of a relationship. As always, you need to embrace the uncertainty in a relationship by asking new questions, forging into new territory, not in a way that you’re accusing each other, but that you’re provoking each other to growth, toward sharing and toward a greater vulnerability. Love requires vulnerability and vulnerability cannot very well exist under a programming template. To be vulnerable means to be open with wonder and curiosity, perhaps confusion, awe. This requires coming out of the programming, breaking free and accessing your humanity, which will help you personally. And boy, what a change it can make in your relationships. Well, give those things some thought and ask yourself, where am I programmed? What does coming out of that programming look like and share it with others, share it with those closest to you in your life. Your relationship can become vital and real.

Until next time, embrace those possibilities, access your uncertainty, be healthy and get yourself deprogrammed. Bye for now.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Possibility Podcast. I welcome your feedback on this and any episode. Please send me an email at mel at melschwartz.com or leave a comment in the show notes for this episode at melschwartz.com. If you like what you’re hearing, please take a moment to rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your reviews really help boost the visibility for the show and it’s a great way for you to show your support. Finally, please make sure to subscribe to the Possibility Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and that way you’ll never miss an episode. Thanks again and please remember to always welcome uncertainty into your life and embrace new possibilities.

The post #128 Awakening Your Relationships first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW.

Episode 127 of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz looks at that common refrain of the unhappily married: they stayed together “for the sake of the children.”

Is that really why, or is there a hidden motivation at work? And is a loveless relationship full of conflict really the best environment for a child?

I’ll answer these questions and present some alternative perspectives on how we view successful, healthy families.

Listen, and then I’d love to hear what you think! Be sure to leave a comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Don’t miss a single Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz! Subscribe for free in iTunes / Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or, simply copy / paste the RSS link directly into the podcast app of your choice!

If you enjoy The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, please take a moment to rate and review the show in iTunes / Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. It only takes a few minutes, and adding your review is as easy as clicking this link.

Your rating and review helps raise the visibility of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, especially on iTunes / Apple Podcasts, which is one of the biggest podcasting platforms today. More visibility for the show means more listeners… and that growth means the show reaches — and helps — more people like you.

Thank you!

Help others when Mel helps you: Contact Mel and find out how you can be a guest on the show and ask Mel a question. He’ll put the Possibility Principle to work for you, and your conversation will be recorded for use in a future episode of the podcast so other listeners can benefit. Of course, your anonymity will be respected if that’s your wish.

The post #127 For the Sake of the Children first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW.

How can we change the direction of our lives? What does it take to break free of our personal status quo?

In episode 126 of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, I spell out why New Year’s Resolutions fail, and explain the key technique to achieve meaningful and lasting change.

Listen, and then I’d love to hear what you think! Has this quantum perspective on romantic relationships helped you? Be sure to leave a comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Don’t miss a single Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz! Subscribe for free in iTunes / Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or, simply copy / paste the RSS link directly into the podcast app of your choice!

If you enjoy The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, please take a moment to rate and review the show in iTunes / Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. It only takes a few minutes, and adding your review is as easy as clicking this link.

Your rating and review helps raise the visibility of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, especially on iTunes / Apple Podcasts, which is one of the biggest podcasting platforms today. More visibility for the show means more listeners… and that growth means the show reaches — and helps — more people like you.

Thank you!

Help others when Mel helps you: Contact Mel and find out how you can be a guest on the show and ask Mel a question. He’ll put the Possibility Principle to work for you, and your conversation will be recorded for use in a future episode of the podcast so other listeners can benefit. Of course, your anonymity will be respected if that’s your wish.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Possibility Podcast. I’m your host Mel Schwartz. I practice psychotherapy, marriage counseling, and I am the author of the book The Possibility Principle, the companion to this podcast. I hope to be your thought provocateur and I’ll be introducing you to new ways of thinking and a new game plan for life.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Possibility Podcast. I welcome your feedback on this and any episode. Please send me an email at mel at melschwartz.com or leave a comment in the show notes for this episode at melschwartz.com. If you like what you’re hearing, please take a moment to rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your reviews really help boost the visibility for the show, and it’s a great way for you to show your support. Finally, please make sure to subscribe to the Possibility Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, and that way you’ll never miss an episode. Thanks again, and please remember to always welcome uncertainty into your life and embrace new possibilities.

The post #126 The Pathway to Your Change Process first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW.

In this 125th episode of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, let’s use a quantum physics metaphor to examine romantic relationships.

Throughout the episode, I define several terms new listeners to the show may not be familiar with, such as quantum entanglement, mechanistic thinking, wave collapse, and others.

Don’t worry, there’s no science or math involved!

By mapping the concepts of quantum physics onto romantic relationships and the experience of falling and being in love, we’ll see how to sustain romantic love and maintain intimate, authentic communication with our partner.

I’d love to hear what you think! Has this quantum perspective on romantic relationships helped you? Be sure to leave a comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Don’t miss a single Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz! Subscribe for free in iTunes / Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or, simply copy / paste the RSS link directly into the podcast app of your choice!

If you enjoy The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, please take a moment to rate and review the show in iTunes / Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. It only takes a few minutes, and adding your review is as easy as clicking this link.

Your rating and review helps raise the visibility of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, especially on iTunes / Apple Podcasts, which is one of the biggest podcasting platforms today. More visibility for the show means more listeners… and that growth means the show reaches — and helps — more people like you.

Thank you!

Help others when Mel helps you: Contact Mel and find out how you can be a guest on the show and ask Mel a question. He’ll put the Possibility Principle to work for you, and your conversation will be recorded for use in a future episode of the podcast so other listeners can benefit. Of course, your anonymity will be respected if that’s your wish.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Possibility Podcast. I’m your host Mel Schwartz. I practice psychotherapy, marriage counseling, and I am the author of the book The Possibility Principle, the companion to this podcast. I hope to be your thought provocateur and I’ll be introducing you to new ways of thinking and a new game plan for life.

Buckle up. We’re going to take another deep dive into the art and nuances of relationship. And again, as I have done in the past, I’m going to look at some aspects of relationship through a quantum perspective. For those of you who are new listeners, I will be defining again and describing some of the terminology that I’ll be using about quantum applications to relationship.

Let’s begin by looking at the nature, the experience of falling in love. You know, the experience of falling in love is altogether reminiscent of something called quantum entanglement. In quantum entanglement, two photons, which have a shared state, think of that as they are in proximity to one another, they’re forever connected no matter how distant they become from each other. The falling in love part requires a falling away of the individual boundaries. As two people merge significant parts of themselves, they become a whole. Some people will refer to this as my other half or my better half, which is a frightful expression in my opinion, because it means I’m incomplete and I can only complete myself through you. That’s a relationship built upon neediness and insecurity. I’m talking about the falling in love, which speaks to a coalescing and emerging of two individuals into this entangled state of oneness, just like the quantum particles or photons.

Now all living beings are actually energy fields. And as energy fields, we manifest through physical form. Energy becomes physical. Mere physical attraction to each other, you know, just sexual attraction on a sensory stimulation level, that’s being in lust. But it’s not quite the same as being in love. Being in lust can create a oneness and lend to falling in love. And falling in love can invite in a sense of lust. But falling in love requires that our energies coalesce with each other. When this happens, our energy field resonates with our partner’s energy field. Think about two vibrations harmonizing with each other. Those two individuals, for a period of time at least, are no longer distinctly separate. This energetic interchange happens simultaneously on physical, emotional, and spiritual levels.

That’s what we call falling in love. And it makes falling in love potentially the most fulfilling experience in life. Sadly, though, over the course of time, many people say that they may still love each other, but they fell out of love. There’s a common belief that as the years pass, falling out of love is natural and to be expected. I would suggest that it may be ordinary, but that shouldn’t make it natural. We retreat from the sense of oneness. It’s often caused by the influence of mechanistic thinking, otherwise known as Newtonian separation. The illusion of separation falls away to allow us to fall in love and be as one.

But after a while, we retreat back into the separation, into this illusion of separation. Falling in love and sustaining it requires maintaining the shared energy, the entanglement. What happens when we retreat from the oneness? We forget that we were separate people who merged as one and then we start to impose our oneness on each other. We begin to think that my beliefs and feelings ought to be your beliefs and feelings. We superimpose on each other our own script and when the other person does not conform to our script, it’s a falling out of love. When two individuals are entangled in the state of oneness, empathy is obviously naturally occurring.

Now, of course, empathy and compassion become unsustainable when we retreat to separation and excessive individualism. As a couple slips from that endorphin-laden experience of Eros, they each start to fend for their individual needs at the expense of their entangled coupling. Now, you should always maintain a healthy sense of yourself within a relationship, but you need to secure a balance, which means that you’re in harmony with yourself and you’re in equilibrium with the relationship. That balance is an art form.

Relationships always offer a special opportunity for personal growth, but they come with disturbances and challenges. I have never worked with a couple where I have not seen the learning opportunity for both people through their conflict and struggles. Interpersonal relations showcase the chronic issues that each person brings into the relationship. You see, we each have our own individual coping mechanisms and our wave collapses from childhood spill over into the relationship.

For those of you who are new to the show, a wave collapse refers to those very significant events that shaped our identity and beliefs from childhood. They could be acute or chronic, but they really created the form through which we see ourselves and we see reality. Through those wave collapses, we develop a tendency to blame each other for relationship problems and that results in each person feeling invalidated, upset, or angry. When this happens, we pull back from the sense of oneness and we experience ourselves as separate and distinct. We begin to differentiate issues as his problem or her issue. What began as a loving, connected union starts to dissipate into conflict and the oneness withers into separation.

I’ll provide an example. I had been working with a couple. In the early stages of their relationship, they had been together for perhaps less than a year. They weren’t married, but they thought of themselves as in a monogamous and committed union. Judy had been recently divorced. She had two college-aged children and she maintained a close and amicable relationship with her ex-spouse. As our sessions progressed, it became evident that Judy had a need, emphasized the word need for cordiality with her former husband. That was masking an underlying issue. She felt compelled to be well thought of by her children and their father, by most people. That compromised her authenticity because she avoided any risk of confrontation.

This was due to a childhood wave collapse in which she did not feel the proper attention or love for her mother. So her coping mechanism was to go to the extreme and make sure everyone thought well of her. Protecting herself from the threat of not being well liked, she appeased her ex-spouse and avoided providing appropriate parental guidance to her children. This provoked her new partner, Howard. He was perplexed by her behavior. He felt she was disloyal. He thought that Judy was more concerned about what her former husband felt than by what he himself felt. And I could see that. Judy’s desire to avoid confrontation, to make certain not to displease others, had its root in that childhood. So again, this is the coping mechanism she created as a child in defense of a primary wave collapse, not feeling loved by her parents and in particular her mother. She believed that other people would find her lovable only if she accommodated them.

Ironically, she ended up displeasing her new partner at the cost of not upsetting her former partner. Now, Howard came into this relationship with abandonment issues, dating back to his mother’s departure from his life at a terribly young age. She shared with me that his fear of rejection had affected his prior relationships as well. So Howard tried to calm his anxiety about Judy’s commitment to him by exhaustively examining her behavior, feeling unloved. He relentlessly critiqued her interactions, her emails and text exchanges with her children and her former husband. As a result, Judy felt perpetually blamed. Their relationship started to unravel and they blamed each other for its demise.

When we see our partner’s insecurities and challenges as separate and distinct from our own challenges, we become tricked by the illusion of separation. Their issues become our issues. The issues may be different, but they are not separate. Think of a drop of ink as you drop it into a beaker of water. The ink disperses throughout the water and you can no longer find its trail. The same thing happens in relationship. Each person’s fears and challenges and unresolved issues become interspersed with their partner’s challenges and that triggers more reactivity, exacerbating the problems. As Judy and Howard clamored to have their individual needs met, they started to become warlike with each other, competing with each other rather than tending to each other. This leads to a competitive energy that was the opposite of the energy of falling in love. What had been affirmation turned to repudiation and the ability to listen defaulted to right versus wrong attacks. They retreated from their loving engagement into a competitive spirit of toxic individualism. These themes are sadly commonplace in many relationships, but perhaps even more so in a romantic partnering than in platonic relations.

I often hear one person say, I have no issues, but my spouse certainly does. How incredibly silly. If you believe your partner has issues, they are going to affect you, which means you have an issue as well. When you try to compartmentalize and separate the other person and yourself into separate silos, you’re seeing through the lens and the illusion of Newtonian separation. Two people who are intimately connected must see themselves through the filter of a co-participation. Think of yourself on a seesaw with the other person. You’re up in the air, the other person’s on the ground. Can you move to the ground without changing the other person’s position? Nope. You are inextricably connected, each person affecting the other. If we move past the attitude that sets up a win-lose, you versus me stance and move into the perspective entanglement, into the perspective of oneness, we begin to operate from a win-win mindset. That is the heart of a participatory relationship.

As I continued working with Judy and Howard, I helped them recognize and take ownership of their habitual coping mechanisms, which were exacerbating each other’s sense of upset. I worked with Judy to develop a genuine self-esteem, enabling her to get past her fears about how others saw her. I helped Howard appreciate that Judy wasn’t abandoning him, but she was operating from fear as she avoided confrontation. Their problems were personal to both of them, but it was essential not to personalize them. They each came into their relationship with their own personal histories and their own confining wave collapses and fears. And these artifacts had an impact on how they felt about each other. But by choosing not to personalize the artifacts of their past meant that they had no intention to inflict pain on each other.

Unresolved challenges have unintended ripple effects, but it’s best not to succumb to the angry emotion that arises when we think they’re doing this to me. No, they’re not doing this to me. This is who they are. You see, entanglement allows for the rise of empathy, which can help us remember that we came into this coupling with another human who’s probably still working past the scars of their past, just as you are. I helped Howard depersonalize Judy’s fearful attachments to her ex’s approval and asked him to feel compassion for her. She was operating from a fear grounded in her childhood, long before he came into her life. It was greatly affecting him, but it wasn’t about him. She wasn’t choosing her ex over him. After some time, this approach began to succeed. Howard no longer felt threatened by abandonment, and he began to lighten up on Judy.

Now, when you find yourself in an adversarial situation with your partner, ask yourself, is she or is he intending to hurt me or devalue me? You might even ask your partner if it’s their intention to be hurtful. If harming you isn’t their intention, then try not to personalize the behavior. This is not to suggest you have to surrender and accept unhealthy behavior. You can say something like, I feel so unimportant to you when you ignore me or tell me I’m wrong. I feel hurt. Do you care how I feel? Remember the importance of not arguing facts, but asking, do you care how I feel? However, if you’re thinking the worst of your partner because you’ve personalized their behavior and you go on the attack, you’re going to trigger your partner’s worst reaction, not a connected and concerned response, and so you will both spiral down. Whether you choose to connect with empathy or to separate in conflict, whichever you choose, you’ll get the corresponding result. When our relationships become hurtful, conflicted, and in turmoil, and it becomes adversarial, we need to acknowledge or change something to shift the energy away from the illusion of separation and back toward entangled wholeness, oneness. Making that shift may mean changing our beliefs and our perceptions or our behaviors, or maybe all of the above. If you set your intention to reenter the energy field of the initial romantic entanglement, you can selflessly try to get in the other person’s shoes. Now this doesn’t mean you’re abandoning your position. It simply means loving and validating your partner.

If I try to appreciate and care about my partner’s upset feelings, I’m invoking a shift of energy. Connecting empathically with your partner is the most powerful thing you can do in troubled moments. It’s not easy, but it is powerful. It can turn the tide from a competition and an emotionally and verbally abusive exchange, perhaps, back into the loving energy field. If you try this approach consistently and with genuine affection and your partner doesn’t reciprocate, then you might well rethink whether the relationship is the right place for you to be.

Another way of shifting the energy of your relationship is to express positive feelings for your partner. You know, once a couple’s entangled participatory energy drifts into separation, we often default into sharing critical thoughts and feelings. Negativity then fills the space, often in therapy. When I’m working with one individual without their partner and they share something positive or appreciative about their partner, if I ask, did you share that with your husband, with your wife, or with your partner? It’s almost the absolute exception for them to say yes. Look at that. We become acclimated to sharing the negative, yet we’re reluctant or awkward to express positive approving feelings because we’ve gotten stuck in a groove of negativity and that widens the gap. We may be holding back approval or appreciation not to give the other person a stronger hand. That is a sign that we have set up separate battle stations.

So set your intention. If you feel good about something your partner said or did, share it with them. And before you go into criticizing and defending, ask yourself, does this really matter? If it doesn’t, and you choose to let something slip by, you have a new wave collapse, and this can be an energy shifter. You know, from the mechanistic view of separation, the expression you can’t change the other person appears sensible. But from the quantum view of inseparability, if you change some aspect of yourself, that must affect your partner because you are as connected as quantum photons. My clients, Judy and Howard, were both demanding change from each other, a strategy that almost never succeeds. I explained the concepts of self-change and inseparability to them, both in couple sessions and individual meetings. And after some time, Howard was able to share with Judy that he appreciated her dilemma and he was happy to support her in her attempts to break through her old behavior. By making this change in himself, Howard was able to turn the tide of their entangled relationship. Dissonance, struggle is always an opportunity for growth.

I’m going to close with these thoughts today. Relationship provides golden opportunity to grow. It doesn’t mean you may be happy or should spend your lives with each other. But it’s an opportunity for growth. Each person’s challenges evoke and invite growth in the other person. The question is what that growth will look like. Going back to the theme of shifting from a stuck inner state of being into the process of becoming, a participatory evolving process. Think of your relationships as catalysts for your process of becoming as you try to move past your challenges. If two individuals see themselves through this filter, this prism of becoming, they have to see their relationships as such. That’s the heart of a participatory relationship. This is why relationships struggle and suffer and don’t succeed because we drop out of a cooperative participatory relationship. I think the fundamental purpose of close relationships is to open our awareness to aspects of our own selves that we need to tend to. If we existed in isolation, we’d never come to see aspects of ourselves through the eyes of the other. Our close connections with others catalyze our entry into this increasing consciousness, this awareness, this flow of becoming as we move past our stuck state of being.

Ask yourself, what do I need to see in myself that’s being provoked by the other person? And conversely, what am I precipitating in them? By opening to this dissonance that arises and you’ll look at yourself differently. If the other person sees you differently from how you see yourself, does that make the other person wrong? You see that conclusion doesn’t allow dissonance. This opening to dissonance, this inviting of dissonance as a positive value opens the door to new possibilities. So our own personal evolution vaults into this process of becoming. And it also facilitates the greatest potential for thriving in a relationship. Participatory relationships allow us to see our role in the whole of the relationship rather than separate from each other. As though we’re part of an equation and we’re on different sides of the equal sign. That’s a transactional relationship and they don’t work except with rare exceptions. Participatory relationships are opportunities for enormous learning individually on the relationship level as well. This shift of paradigm into participatory evolving relationships coming away from the illusion of separation, you versus me, back into oneness, that’s the path toward harmony.

I know I’ve said a lot in this episode. It’s a lot to digest. If you need more clarification about this, please, I would advise you to read or reread my book, The Possibility Principle, particularly the section on relationships. It is a deep dive, but it’s the most valuable dives that you can ever take. It’s well worth it. So jump on in. Until next time, be well, be healthy. I look forward to speaking with you again soon. Bye for now.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Possibility Podcast. I welcome your feedback on this and any episode. Please send me an email at mel at melschwartz.com or leave a comment in the show notes for this episode at melschwartz.com. If you like what you’re hearing, please take a moment to rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your reviews really help boost the visibility for the show, and it’s a great way for you to show your support. Finally, please make sure to subscribe to the Possibility Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, and that way you’ll never miss an episode. Thanks again, and please remember to always welcome uncertainty into your life and embrace new possibilities.

The post #125 A Quantum Perspective on Romantic Relationships first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW.

In The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz episode number 124, I take a look at why arguments trap us in the need to be right, how that drive to be right hamstrings communication and intimacy, and most importantly, how to move past the argument and re-establish truly empathic communication in the relationships you care about.

Listen to learn about…

In the episode, I provide a few examples from my therapy practice, and have a brief interview with my guest, Claire, who brings her own struggles with conflict to the table.

Be sure to leave a comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Don’t miss a single Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz! Subscribe for free in iTunes / Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or, simply copy / paste the RSS link directly into the podcast app of your choice!

If you enjoy The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, please take a moment to rate and review the show in iTunes / Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. It only takes a few minutes, and adding your review is as easy as clicking this link.

Your rating and review helps raise the visibility of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, especially on iTunes / Apple Podcasts, which is one of the biggest podcasting platforms today. More visibility for the show means more listeners… and that growth means the show reaches — and helps — more people like you.

Thank you!

Help others when Mel helps you: Contact Mel and find out how you can be a guest on the show and ask Mel a question. He’ll put the Possibility Principle to work for you, and your conversation will be recorded for use in a future episode of the podcast so other listeners can benefit. Of course, your anonymity will be respected if that’s your wish.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Possibility Podcast. I welcome your feedback on this and any episode. Please send me an email at mel at melschwartz.com or leave a comment in the show notes for this episode at melschwartz.com. If you like what you’re hearing, please take a moment to rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your reviews really help boost the visibility for the show and it’s a great way for you to show your support. Finally, please make sure to subscribe to the Possibility Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and that way you’ll never miss an episode. Thanks again. And please remember to always welcome uncertainty into your life and embrace new possibilities.

The post #124 The Five Percent Rule and Other Ways to Get Past the Argument first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW.

In episode 123 of the The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, rather than talk principles and philosophies of approach, the focus is on therapy itself.

I’ll explain it all. Let me know what you think! Be sure to leave a comment with your own thoughts and questions.

I’ve written a companion article to go along with this episode. Check out “Getting Beyond ‘How Does That Make You Feel?'”

Don’t miss a single Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz! Subscribe for free in iTunes / Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or, simply copy / paste the RSS link directly into the podcast app of your choice!

If you enjoy The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, please take a moment to rate and review the show in iTunes / Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. It only takes a few minutes, and adding your review is as easy as clicking this link.

Your rating and review helps raise the visibility of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, especially on iTunes / Apple Podcasts, which is one of the biggest podcasting platforms today. More visibility for the show means more listeners… and that growth means the show reaches — and helps — more people like you.

Thank you!

Help others when Mel helps you: Contact Mel and find out how you can be a caller on the show and ask Mel a question. He’ll put the Possibility Principle to work for you, and your conversation will be recorded for use in a future episode of the podcast so other listeners can benefit.

Hello everybody and welcome to The Possibility Podcast. I’m your host Mel Schwartz. I practice psychotherapy, marriage counseling, and I am the author of the book The Possibility Principle, the companion to this podcast. I hope to be your thought provocateur and I’ll be introducing you to new ways of thinking and a new game plan for life.

Hello everyone. I’d like to do something different in this episode. I do deep dives into so many different aspects of my work, helping people illuminate their problems, seeing how to get past them. I jump right into the therapy, but I have never really talked with you about the process of therapy. So I thought that for today’s show, let’s talk about therapy.

Very often people will ask myself or others, do I need therapy? I think that that is a misplaced and culturally derived value, which sees therapy as there’s something wrong with me. So I turn that question into, could I benefit from therapy?

Now that is a question that doesn’t have a pejorative implication to it.

Could I benefit from therapy? Could I benefit from working out more? Could I benefit from eating healthier? Could I benefit from getting a better night’s sleep? Yeah. Could I benefit from therapy? Well, if I have a good fit with the right therapist, the therapist is a good fit for me and I am for them, no doubt.

It’s essential we move past this pejorative of therapy. If you look up therapy in the dictionary, it talks about a treatment for overcoming a disease or an illness. Well, psychotherapy is kind of leaked into that same place. Although in recent years or recent decades, that is beginning to shift.

Can you benefit from therapy? Your answer may be, I have no idea. I’ve never tried it. Or I have tried therapy and it didn’t help. Well, one size doesn’t fit all. It may be that you and your therapist were not the right fit for each other. It’s like saying, I went out on a date once and it didn’t work out. So I’ve spent the rest of my life alone. I never dated again. Or I tried a friendship once and it didn’t work. So it’s not for me.

Every close friend of mine has been in therapy or is in therapy. When I was single and dating, if I learned that a woman I was interested in had never been in therapy and wasn’t open to therapy, I would head in a different direction. To me, people who engage therapy are thoughtful, reflective, seeking to live a better and more authentic life with less fear. I think therapy is something to be proud of, not embarrassed by.

So let’s talk about the therapeutic experience.

First of all, people who are open to therapy experience life differently. I have been in therapy with different therapists at different times in my life, beginning at the age of 25. To me, working with the therapist when there’s something I want to work through, when there’s something that doesn’t feel clear to me, or just when I have an itch that I can’t quite scratch, that’s a luxury that I can afford and I make use of it. People will ask, does it work? Doesn’t it work?

It’s much more subtle than that. Therapy may not necessarily be measurable and you may do some therapy this month or this year and think it had no impact on you, but many years from now, it’s leaked through. The unconscious is always at play and things are beneath the radar. So it’s not an objective question.

Now, how do you know the therapist is the right therapist for you? That’s a good question. I have an approach or belief, actually more a method, which is I think there’s three things you want to look at with the therapist and you should know by your first meeting, at the latest by your second session, which is number one, does the therapist seem to get me and that’s almost an intuitive reflection. Do they get me? Do they have a sense of my experience? Who I am? What I’m struggling with?

Number two question, do I think the therapist has the ability and the skills and the experience to help me? Now it’s important in the second question that you interview that therapist in your first meeting, which is have you ever worked with this kind of issue before? What are the challenges I have with what I’m facing? And if you have, what are your approaches? How often are you successful? This is a question that I often encourage parents to ask when they’re putting children or adolescents into therapy, interview that therapist. My daughter has a self-esteem issue. Tell me about your experience with self-esteem problems. What’s your approach? How do you help? Interview the therapist.

The third point in evaluating your therapist is I don’t think that you have to actually like your therapist, but listen, you can’t dislike your therapist. If you dislike the therapist, that therapy is not going to be effective. So those are my three criteria for is this the right therapist for me? Now therapy is about an engagement and sharing your vulnerable self. Open up, having no fears or issues around what you think they will think of you. Most people go through life not fully being transparent, being selective about what they will share or reveal about themselves because of a fear of judgment.

You know, I’ve spoken with you many times before about the fact that no one can judge you unless you confer upon them the role of being judged. They’re just people with opinions. But a therapist has a more lofty opinion and ought to share that opinion with you. But that opinion is a moving vehicle. It’s not stuck. It’s not static.

There are so many different approaches to therapy. Let’s talk about the standard model, which is, you know that question, how does that make you feel? That’s the typical throwaway in therapy. We see that in so many movies. Now a therapist should care how you feel, but that should not be the default question. If that’s the default question in the middle or the end of every session, I say time to look for a new therapist. You want the therapist to care how you feel. When I ask the question of a client, how does that make you feel? It’s out of curiosity. It’s not a way of ending a session or completing a sentence. I really want to know in that moment. We all want to feel validated in our feelings and our experiences, but we need more than just validation in therapy. We need to be challenged.

I’ve worked with people who’ve come to me from another therapist and spent years in therapy and I’ve asked them, what did you learn? What were your breakthroughs? And they shrugged their shoulders and they said they didn’t have any. And I then asked, well, why did you stay in therapy for so long? Well, it felt good to be understood and validated. Of course it does, but you need more. You deserve more. I challenge, I validate, I nurture, but I challenge. And when I say challenge, I don’t mean it’s critical opposition, but I’m challenging how did you come to that belief about yourself? How did you come to that belief about other people? Or perhaps I’ll hear, I can’t change. You know, people don’t change. Well then I will share my thoughts, my work about the change process. How did you come to the belief people don’t change? Beliefs of self-fulfilling prophecies. So I roll up my sleeves. I’m very proactive. I share a lot.

I will share with my clients anything about my personal life experience that I think would be helpful for them to know. I’m not sharing that information to be buddies, but I want to help people in their own critical thinking. By critical thinking, I don’t mean being critical about yourself. God knows we have too much of that. When I use the term critical thinking, I am saying, are you looking at your operating beliefs and asking yourself, do you have reason to think they’re valid? Are you looking at your game plan for life? You say you want to be happy. All right, let’s look at what you think will bring you happiness. Has that worked out so far? Why do you think that will bring you happiness? Whatever your dominant beliefs are, people are always taking advantage of me. I’m not lovable. I will help my clients break down the critical thinking and see how they came to that belief so we can ultimately release that self-limiting belief.

Ask yourself, are there people in your life that you open up to without reservation? Probably not. If we include that without reservation piece, we hide parts of ourselves. So it’s time to depathologize this notion of therapy. If you can afford it, you may work out with a trainer or hire a tennis coach. Isn’t it more valuable ultimately to have people at different points in your life who can assist you in guiding you and perhaps even mentoring you through life so you can navigate it well, joyfully, harmoniously? Now finding that therapist who’s going to be able to assist you in navigating that, that may be challenging. You may want to meet with and have any number of initial sessions so that you can evaluate the therapist. Very, very few people do that. This is an absolutely essential and important relationship, a critically important relationship. Don’t just dive in unless you truly connect and end that first session thinking, wow, I already learned some things about myself. I have some new curiosities and new inquiries in my life, new way of looking at things, my relationships, myself. Choosing a therapist is a very, very important thing. Value yourself and choose carefully.

I think I’ll probably go forward with a few more episodes about the therapeutic experience. And if you have questions, please send them to me, mel at melschwartz.com. Any therapeutic questions you would like addressed or if you’d like to be a guest on my show and have me assist you through certain different challenges in your life, I’m happy to do that.

So until next time, be reflective, embrace possibilities and ask yourself, am I getting the guidance and the assistance in life that I deserve? And if not, shouldn’t now be the time. Be well, be safe, and I’ll see you next week. Bye for now.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Possibility Podcast. I welcome your feedback on this and any episode. Please send me an email at mel at melschwartz.com or leave a comment in the show notes for this episode at melschwartz.com. If you like what you’re hearing, please take a moment to rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your reviews really help boost the visibility for the show and it’s a great way for you to show your support. Finally, please make sure to subscribe to the Possibility Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and that way you’ll never miss an episode. Thanks again. And please remember to always welcome uncertainty into your life and embrace new possibilities.

The post #123 Let’s Talk About Therapy first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW.

(This special episode of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz is also cross-posted as an article on my blog! You can listen to the companion podcast episode through the player above.)

Authentic leaders are, by definition, singular individuals. They possess an array of qualities and skills that enable them to lead. Yet, we shouldn’t assume these attributes are unattainable or too challenging to learn.

Leadership skills are exceptional simply because most of us likely didn’t receive either the education or the upbringing to develop the inner path toward leadership. If mathematics wasn’t routinely taught in school, mastering math would also be a rare achievement. The same is true of leadership.

Culturally, we tend to focus on the external characteristics of leaders: how they present themselves, their intelligence, their style, and their affect. The path to sustainable and genuine leadership, however, is an inner path that can be learned and cultivated.

There are three pillars of authentic leadership. Learning these skills develops genuine leadership ability for corporations, organizations, associations, and families.

Great leaders communicate with consummate effectiveness. This first pillar of leadership is sourced through emotional intelligence, which is the ability to deeply connect with others through feelings, not simply facts.

Our focus on cognitive intelligence, which devalues emotional intelligence, is stunningly incomplete. The thoughts, ideas, and information we need to share with one another are typically pursued transactionally. We exchange instructions, strategies, and concepts and believe they’ve been received and understood as we intended.

This belief is grossly misinformed. We aren’t robots transacting with one another, but complex humans with unique personal narratives, feelings, and beliefs. The same words or phrases may mean different things to different people. They might inspire some and leave others feeling ambivalent or worse. This this leads to failed, ineffective communication.

Emotional intelligence requires both an awareness of the other’s feelings and beliefs and cognizance of your own stirrings. The subterranean realm of our private, personal existence has a profound sway over the business of business.

From my professional experience, clients don’t typically speak to me about factual or substantive issues they’re having with their bosses or colleagues. Instead, they present their troubled feelings, challenges, frustrations, and miscommunications.

Authentic leaders connect on emotional levels with those around them. They tune in to their people  in order to appreciate how the other person perceives matters, addressing issues that typically go unspoken.

Leaders seek correspondence with those around them. Emotional connectivity facilitates coherent communication. This relatedness prospers when empathy is valued. Empathy, the ability to best appreciate what the other person is feeling and experiencing, allows truly informed communication to prevail.

The concept of radical transparency, a fundamental motif of Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio, proposes that all individuals should openly challenge one other’s positions for the goal of reaching the most credible truth.

Although this endeavor has obvious merits, it doesn’t also consider that we are not only thinking but feeling people. If we pretend that our values, personal history, emotions, relationships, and beliefs don’t spill over into the reasoned and rational discourse, we are sorely misinformed.

Radical transparency must incorporate how our subjective beliefs and feelings filter and inform what we ultimately hear and how we respond. I refer to this as radical emotional transparency.

Leaders engage in deeply effective communication which seeks shared meaning. This collaborative dialogue checks in to assure what we share is received as intended.

This checking-in process is also respectful and sincere, as it enables leaders to get closer to their team. For the musicians in an orchestra to be “in concert” with one another, the conductor must make certain they are all playing from the same score. The same holds true for consummate leaders.

The next pillar of leadership is authenticity. I use the term authentic leadership to evoke the qualities of truly special leaders. Meeting or witnessing such individuals, one notices they are extraordinary. They shine by virtue of their authenticity, which is a very rare quality.

For example, the Dalai Lama exudes authenticity. You simply know you’re in the company of an extraordinary person.

An authentic individual evokes an image of someone who has not been adulterated by fear, concerns with self-worth, or worries about what others may think of them.

Most people are concerned with what others think of them, or more to the point, what they think others think of them. These individuals may disguise, manipulate, or hide their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs due to their insecurity. This is what I call other esteem, which is sadly common, and absent the authentic self-esteem unique leaders possess.

Most people deflect or mitigate their communications and actions because they worry about how they will be seen. From the authentic self, we invest in and articulate our thoughts and beliefs free from the constraint of worries.

Being authentic allows you to be receptive to the feedback and opinions of others; you simply don’t betray your genuine self out of fear. When our thoughts conspire to weave a narrative about why we shouldn’t say or do something, we lose our authenticity.

Authenticity requires a genuine sharing of our inner self. Very often, our actions reflect an intention to avoid certain consequences. And so, we alter or suppress our communications and play it safe. These tendencies diminish our authenticity as they constrain our growth and self-esteem.

Great leaders don’t fall prey to these concerns.

Authentic leaders learn from those around them as the separation between self and others falls away. The core sense of authentic self is always an emergent process, never static. Unfettered by the constraint of worry over how you’re perceived, you’re free to tune into yourself, those around you, and your ever-changing environment.

The third pillar of authentic leadership requires a counterintuitive embrace of uncertainty.

Our orientation toward predicting future events—a remnant of Newtonian determinism—has addicted us to seek certainty and predictability and therefore avoid uncertainty. From this paradigm, we see ourselves as separate and detached from future events, which nullifies genuine leadership, as we become spectators rather than leaders.

This state of analytical bondage is contrary to leading. We can’t lead others by sitting back and calculating as if we were playing a chess match.

Leaders must be informed by pertinent information, but not suffocated by an avalanche of data.

When an authentic leader embraces uncertainty to actualize new possibilities, the fear of making mistakes retreats.

What we call a mistake is but a snapshot frozen in time. But time doesn’t stand still. Authentic leaders don’t fret the consequences of their actions as much as they consider the consequences of their inactions.

We need to take a deeper look at the concept of change and the change process. The word change suggests that there are times when things are static and inert, and times when they are not, hence, the concept of change. Quantum physics suggests otherwise. It appears that reality is never static or unchanging. This is why I refer to it as the reality-making process.

The adage, “The only constant is change,” needs to be revised as “Everything perpetually flows.” Great leaders must relish the flow, dive in, and truly lead. This requires seeing uncertainty as your ally, the realm from which new possibilities are created.

This is participatory leadership, as we participate in the unfolding of what we call the future.

These three pillars of leadership create a formidable platform from which to lead others.

Let me know what you think! Be sure to leave a comment

In addition to an expanded version of the article above, this episode includes a brief conversation with marriage and family therapist Cathryn Leff, PhD, LMFT of Soaring High Counseling, in which Cathryn shares her insights on leadership and the origins of her own leadership style.

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MEL: Hello everybody and welcome to the Possibility Podcast. I’m your host Mel Schwartz. I practice psychotherapy, marriage counseling, and I am the author of the book The Possibility Principle, the companion to this podcast. I hope to be your thought provocateur and I’ll be introducing you to new ways of thinking and a new game plan for life.

MEL: Today we’re going to be exploring the concept, the notion, the phenomenon of leadership. What this word really means, what signifies leaders, and how you can learn to develop the attributes for leadership in whichever way it suits you in your life.

MEL: Now, of course, authentic leaders, genuine or exceptional leaders are by definition very singular people. They stand out. They possess a very unique array of qualities and skills that differentiate them and allow them to successfully lead other people.

MEL: I’m talking about leadership in many capacities, corporations, organizations, associations, leaders of teams. Families require leadership, arguably from both parents if it’s a two-parent family or from the one parent.

MEL: It’s an error to assume that the skills and attributes that come with leadership, that we’re born with them or that they’re too unattainable for us to achieve them. These skills are uncommon for one reason. Leadership is not taught to us in school.

MEL: Think of it this way. If mathematics wasn’t taught in school, then learning to master math at a certain point in life would be a rare and unique achievement. It would be hard. The same is true of leadership. It would have been very different if these skills of leadership were taught to us in school.

MEL: We’re going to be focusing today on what I call the inner path of leadership. You know, culturally, we tend to focus on the external characteristics of leaders, how they look and present themselves, their cognitive intelligence, their style, how they carry themselves and their effect. But the path to genuine, sustainable and authentic leadership is the inner path. This is a pathway that you can learn and I’ll be trying to teach this to you so you can cultivate it.

MEL: I envision three pillars that platform authentic leadership. Notice I said I envision. I’m always reluctant to say there are three pillars or there are seven chakras or five rules because we make this all up. There may come a time when I envision four pillars or two pillars. At this moment, I see three pillars that platform authentic leadership. And learning these skills enables genuine leadership in whatever capacity you choose to use it.

MEL: Let’s start off with emotional intelligence, the first pillar.

MEL: You know, great leaders have something in common. They tend to communicate with incredible clarity and with consummate effectiveness. This principle pillar of leadership is sourced through emotional intelligence, which is the ability to deeply connect with ourself and with others. In our society, our focus on cognitive intelligence tends to devalue emotional intelligence and our awareness of emotional intelligence is stunningly incomplete and harmful in so many ways. The thoughts and ideas and information that we need to share with one another in a leadership capacity are usually pursued in a very transactional manner. In other words, we exchange with one another instructions, strategies, and concepts. We believe they’ve been understood and received as we intended.

MEL: This, folks, this belief that what we say has been received just as we intended is grossly misinformed. I don’t care if we’re talking about a friendship, a marriage, or a business. You see, we aren’t robots just transacting with one another, trading information, but we are complex human beings with very unique personal narratives, feelings, and personal beliefs. The same words or phrase may mean different things to different people. You can use a phrase that might inspire some people and leave other people feeling ambivalent or worse because of their personal history around that phrase or that word or the way they recall it from childhood. Personal communication, communication where we leave it at the surface of the words, leads to failed, ineffective communication, and it completely impedes the ability to be an effective leader.

MEL: Emotional intelligence requires an awareness of the other’s feelings and beliefs, and as well a cognizance and awareness of your own stirrings, what’s coming up for you and getting in the way. This subterranean realm of our private personal existence has a profound sway over the business of business.

MEL: In my executive coaching practice, my clients don’t typically speak to me about factual or substantive issues that they’re having with their peers or their bosses. Instead, they present their troubled feelings and challenges and frustrations and miscommunications to me. But they’re not communicating those in the workplace because they’re not tended to. Leaders have to seek a correspondence with those around them. You see, emotional connectivity betters the opportunity for what I call coherent communication. This relatedness prospers when the quality of empathy is valued. Empathy, the ability to best appreciate what the other person is feeling, not on the basis of what I assume, but a checking in that allows truly informed communications to prevail.

MEL: The concept of radical transparency. This is a term, a fundamental theme created by the hedge fund Bridgewater’s founder, Ray Dalio. Ray proposes that all individuals in his corporation should openly, willingly challenge each other’s positions for the goal of ultimately reaching the most credible truth about any matter. This goal and this endeavor has obvious merits. It puts everything out in the open, but it’s failing. It’s lacking terribly in one way. It doesn’t take into account that we are not only thinking, but also feeling people.

MEL: If we pretended our values, our personal history, emotions, our relationships, and our beliefs don’t spill over into the reasoned, rational discourse, again, we are sorely misinformed. Radical transparency must take into account how our subjective beliefs and feelings filter and ultimately inform what we hear and how we respond. So I call this radical emotional transparency. I’ve added the word emotional. Deeply effective communication requires a shared meaning.

MEL: Shared meaning, again, is a collaboration. It’s a collaborative type dialogue which checks in with each other to assure that what we have just said, what we’ve shared, has been received in the way we intended. And furthermore, it checks in to see how the other thinks and feels about what we have just shared. Leaders realize that what they intend to communicate may not have been received as planned.

MEL: This is true in all relationships. If I intend to articulate A and you end up hearing B, that falls on me. It’s not the listener’s fault. The person sharing the information has to check in and confirm that you’re both on the same page. This checking in process is also respectful and sincere. It enables leaders to get closer to their team.

MEL: Think about an orchestra. For the musicians in an orchestra to be in concert with one another, play on words there, concert in harmony. For the musicians to be in concert with each other, the conductor must make certain they’re all playing from the same score. The same holds true for leaders in all fields.

MEL: The second pillar of leadership is what I call authenticity.

MEL: I use the term authentic leadership to evoke the qualities of truly exceptional leaders. Should you ever have occasion to meet or witness authentic people, you notice there’s an extraordinary quality to them. Let’s think of the word extraordinary as extraordinary. These people shine by virtue of their authenticity. It’s a very rare quality.

MEL: For example, the Dalai Lama comes to mind as exuding authenticity. You simply know that you’re in the company of an extraordinary person. An authentic individual evokes an image of someone who has not been adulterated or in fear because of their concerns around their self-worth or worries about what others may think of him or her. Most people, average people, people who aren’t leaders, are concerned with what others think of us or more to the point, we may be concerned with what we think other people think of us. We may disguise or manipulate or hide or conceal our thoughts or feelings and beliefs due to this insecurity.

MEL: This is the opposite of authentic self-esteem. This is what I call other esteem, which is sadly common and it’s missing, it’s absent authentic self-esteem that unique leaders possess. In the pursuit of learning to become an authentic leader, you must learn to pursue genuine authentic self-esteem. If you’re interested in this area, I’ve written many articles on this. I have other podcasts on authentic self-esteem and you can check out my book, The Possibility Principle, which speaks to this.

MEL: Now from the authentic self, we invest in and articulate that which we’re thinking and that which we believe free from the constraint of worries. You see the vast majority of people deflect or mitigate their communications and actions and decisions because they’re worried again about how they’ll be seen. Being authentic allows you to be receptive to the feedback and opinions of others, but you don’t simply betray your genuine self from fear of what they think. You take it in, you digest it.

MEL: When our thoughts conspire in a tangled web of why we shouldn’t say or do something, we lose our authenticity. Authenticity requires a genuine sharing of our inner self, the inner path to leadership. Very often, our actions in a given moment are intended to avoid certain consequences, and so we alter or suppress our communication and play it safe. These tendencies again diminish our genuine capacity and they limit our growth and genuine self-esteem.

MEL: Great leaders don’t fall prey to these fears. Authentic leaders learn from those around them. It’s the separation between yourself and others falls away. You see, when fear retreats, there’s no divide between yourself and other people, and that’s a powerful learning opportunity. The core sense of the authentic self is always in an emergent process, never static. Freed from the fears of worrying about how you’re being perceived, you’re now free to tune into yourself, those around you, and your ever-changing environment.

MEL: The third and last pillar of authentic leadership is the ability to embrace uncertainty.

MEL: This third pillar requires a counterintuitive notion. In our culture and in our world, we are taught to seek predictability and certainty. People at the heads of organizations often are working hard to predict future events. In my book, The Possibility Principle, I speak about our addiction to certainty and fear of uncertainty as being ruinous in all areas of our lives, including personal growth and relationships. This need for predictability is a remnant of Newtonian determinism, 17th century thinking, which taught us that if we had enough information and data, we could reasonably predict the future.

MEL: From this paradigm, we see ourselves as separate and detached from future events, which nullifies genuine leadership. We become the spectators, predicting the future rather than leaders. This is kind of like a state of analytical bondage, and it’s contrary to leading. We can’t lead others by sitting back and calculating as if we were playing a chess match. Leaders must be informed by pertinent information, but not suffocated by an avalanche of data. Leadership requires embracing uncertainty to actualize these new possibilities. The stewards of leadership participate in a reality-making process.

MEL: You see, that welcomes rather than resists uncertainty. And from this vantage, the fear of making mistakes retreats. After all, what we call a mistake is really just a snapshot frozen in time. But time doesn’t stand still. Authentic leaders don’t fret the consequences of their actions as much as they may consider the consequences of their inactions.

MEL: We need to take a deeper look at the concept of change and change process. The very word change suggests there are times when things aren’t changing, when they’re static or inert, but quantum physics has revealed otherwise. It appears that reality is never inert or static. And that’s why I refer to this as the reality-making process. The old adage, the only constant is change, needs to be reconsidered. Maybe we should say everything perpetually flows. Great leaders have to relish the flow, the perpetual movement. They have to dive in and lead and truly lead in a participatory way. And this requires seeing uncertainty as your friend, your ally, the realm from which new possibilities are created.

MEL: This is very participatory leadership as we are part and parcel of the unfolding of what we call the future. These three pillars of leadership create a formidable platform from which to lead others.

MEL: I’m delighted to introduce my next guest on this episode, Cathryn Leff. Cathryn is coming to us from California and Catherine is a licensed marriage and family therapist and the president-elect of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapy. Have I got that all right, Cathryn?

CATHRYN: Of marriage and family therapists.

MEL: Therapists. Okay. Thanks for the correction. So thanks for joining us in this episode, Cathryn, and I look forward to hearing your perspectives, questions, and insights. As you know, today’s episode is an exploration about leadership. People often wonder what do we mean by leadership? There’s leadership of leading others. There’s corporate and executive leadership. There’s more informal leadership. But for me in my work, I often find that some of the leadership is about developing an inner sense of leadership. When we develop that really calm, placid inner authority and inner leadership, it’s so much easier to guide and facilitate others in our lives. What are your experiences around this topic of leadership, Cathryn?

CATHRYN: Well, Mel, I’ve been mulling this over for a couple of days and I often wonder how I got into a leadership position because it was something I never planned on or even necessarily wanted to be. My earliest memories, I’ve always been, from being a little girl, I was always really shy, never wanted to speak in front of people. I used to have to be dragged up into the front of the class and have my teacher help me to give speeches. Those are my earliest memories. And then something happened in high school where we were doing a debate and the class was divided into, or there were two teams in the class. And one was arguing against the use of nuclear power and the other group was for nuclear power. And in the for nuclear power group was our school valedictorium. And I was in the other group and I remember we were having this discussion and I was pretty passionate and saying why I was against nuclear power. And as I’m expressing myself, my group, they all kind of got quiet and they looked at me and they said, you should take the lead on this. You should lead the debate. And I was like, oh no, no, I don’t want to do that. But they were insistent. And so I did it and I actually won the debate against the school valedictorian.

MEL: Wow.

CATHRYN: And I was so amazed that she left the class in tears. And I thought, what just happened? And that was kind of my first taste of that I have the ability to influence and to be a leader. But I think a lot of it comes from having an inner passion about something. Because if you have a passion about something and you can’t hold it in, then you have to speak about it. You have to speak about it. And that often puts you into then a leadership role, which is how I got on the California Association State Board for Marriage and Family Therapists. The same thing happened where, this is back in 2013, I was on social media and I was voicing my opinion on some things that were happening. And the next thing I know, or the next thing I knew was I got a phone call from someone on the board asking me to run for an open position. And so that has happened repeatedly in my life. It’s something that I just will start speaking about and people seem to notice it in me more than I think I do in myself. And so beginning to recognize that and trying to nurture that more is something that I’ve been working on.

MEL: So I’m sure some of the listeners may have questions about how you quiet any insecurity or self-doubt that you may have in regard to this, about how you have overcome self-doubt, insecurity, hesitation. Has there been a process for you to be able to allow yourself to embrace the uncertainty that’s necessary to become a leader?

CATHRYN: I think I just embrace uncertainty. I think that’s what all life is. I mean, we don’t have anything that’s guaranteed from moment to moment, really. And so I try to embrace that uncomfortableness and push myself to get out of my comfort zone. I just think it’s healthy and that’s where we grow. And so that’s just the way that I’ve approached it, even doing this podcast. I was like, do I really want to do this? This is something that I think I am interested in and would like to speak about. So I just tell myself, you should do this.

MEL: So therefore, I assume for you, I know it’s this way for me, there is no threat around the idea of making a mistake. The concept of mistakes kind of falls away in its importance if you’re going to embrace uncertainty and lead.

CATHRYN: Correct. I agree. And mistakes are okay. I do them all the time. And like you said, I embrace them. I think that’s how you learn and how you grow. If you didn’t make any mistakes, you wouldn’t grow or learn anything. So I think mistakes are positive and a lot of them you can correct. So I don’t really see mistakes as a negative. I see it as something that’s necessary that helps you grow and helps you develop into a leader, in fact.

MEL: So therefore, simply put, we choose not to honor the importance of mistakes. We view mistakes as absolutely vital and necessary life experiences.

CATHRYN: Yes.

MEL: Now, as you know, as a therapist, we often come across people who in the past have been embarrassed or traumatized by their mistakes. In my book, The Possibility Principle, I talk about how simple experiences, often early in life, create core beliefs about ourselves, like you raised your hand in third grade and you answered the question in such a silly way that everyone in class laughed at you and you decided, I’m never going to take that risk again. I’m never raising my hand or saying anything unless I’m completely certain, because there was an emotional trauma around the humiliation and the embarrassment. So certain people, regrettably, a lot of people have this fear and this apprehension of making a mistake. Do you have any advice for those people?

CATHRYN: Well, I look at it as if you’re in the third grade and something like that happens to you, of course it’s traumatic because you’re so young, you don’t have any real life experience, so it hits you so much harder. But I think as you age and get older and you have more and more experiences, I think those types of blows you can absorb so much easier. At least I know I can, and I’ve seen that in my clients as well. And so I think it’s important though, if you recognize that you’re still hesitant about things that happened when you were a child, that that is the time to seek therapy and to try and work through whatever trauma that you experienced with a therapist, because that’s the only way you’re going to move forward. And I know for me, the past traumas that I’ve had in my life as a young child, I look back at it now as, well, yeah, that was really traumatic at the time, but I’ve talked about it, I’ve worked through it, and it’s just now just a small chapter of my life that’s a part of who I am. And I’m actually grateful for some of those traumas because they really helped me grow and learn and to be a better therapist.

MEL: That’s precisely right. These events happen to all of us one way or the other. What our power is about is our choosing how to deal with it, whether we’re going to hide it and secret it away and make it part of our shame and insecurity and self-doubt, or whether we’re going to expose it and make it transparent and it then loses its power over us. I think a key component of leadership is around being comfortable not knowing. It’s about being comfortable not having the answer or choosing not to pretend to know in advance the answer. It’s about navigating the unknown. So for me, authentic leadership is not pretending that I know what’s in the future or what is out there and telling you I’m going to guide you through it. That sounds more like data analysis and predictability or playing chess. For me, the embrace of the uncertainty in terms of leadership is I trust I’ll be able to figure this out. Often when I am working with people around parenting issues and the individual may say to me, well, I get stuck. I don’t know what to say. That’s not the issue. The issue is that they don’t trust that the words will come to them, that the wisdom and the insight is potentially there so they don’t access the inner wisdom, which is there for all of us because we’re looking for a script to follow rather than just the intuitive sense it will come to me. So leadership can really galvanize and manifest when we allow the uncertainty and just trust it will come. Do you experience that?

CATHRYN: Yes, I do. It’s interesting you bring this up because yesterday I ended working at a nonprofit organization where I was supervising associates, seeking licensure. I’ve been supervising them for the last two and a half years. When I started in this role, I had never done supervision like that before where I ran a group of eight and also I did individual supervision with another different group. My sendoff yesterday, they put up a chart and everyone went up and wrote what they thought about me. It was just such a great sendoff and so meaningful to me and what they wrote. They wrote a lot of the things that you’re speaking to about how they really appreciated my authenticity, that I was collaborative. I would let them struggle to find the answers themselves. I didn’t always just provide them the answer. All the things that they listed, and I’ve been reviewing them even this morning, I realized it was something that I stumbled in and I wasn’t too sure about, but it really worked out great. Just trusting my inner spirit, what I think is true for me. I didn’t always have the answers either, but I would just say, I will look into that for you. I think it goes back to not being afraid and being to embrace that uncertainty. Of course, it’s very important to be authentic. That’s one of the things that they really loved about me and I just so appreciated that.

MEL: You and I have both used this word authentic a number of times. Why don’t we drill down a bit and share each of us what we mean by authentic or authenticity? For me, authenticity or to seek to become authentic means that I won’t hide anything, that my feelings and my thoughts are transparent. I will share them and I may be sensitive to what others think about me. I care about what they think, but I won’t betray my own genuine self to try to get others to approve of me or like me or think I’m smart because that’s inauthentic. For me, authenticity is I wear no masks. I am comfortable being who I am and you’re free to see me any way you choose. Of course, we live in a culture in which authenticity is probably not valued. It certainly isn’t taught. It’s genuine self-esteem. We teach what I call other esteem, which is that people are trained to elicit approval or avoid disapproval, that is contrary to authenticity. That’s why people who are authentic stand out, they shine. Do you mean anything different or would you like to add something to my description of authenticity?

CATHRYN: No, I think your description is spot on, Mel. That’s what authenticity is. One of the ways I think I illustrated that when I was running my group is that I would share mistakes that I did in doing therapy or even because my team would go out in the field and visit homes and work in a wraparound program with foster care kids. We often talk about safety. I shared a story how when I was once doing child abuse investigations, I really did everything wrong that you’re not supposed to do. I ended up getting assaulted, actually, by somebody in the home. I sat opposite the door. I just did everything you weren’t supposed to do. The mother was intoxicated. I tried to engage with her. I just did everything wrong. The whole group was laughing as I’m telling this story. I used it to illustrate how they can protect themselves and be in the future when they go out in the field and don’t do what I did. I think they really appreciated that, that I was able to share things that I did wrong and made mistakes. One of the things they said to me yesterday that by me telling those stories, they felt that it really freed them up to share with me and the group their mistakes. Our group was often that where someone would start sharing and saying, okay, I really think I screwed up yesterday, and here’s why. We were all very accepting of that individual and just supported them and helped foster that growth and let them know that it’s okay. They always felt real comfortable. They always said I was real approachable. I think it’s because I was always my authentic self with them. That’s why I think it’s so important. Embracing our vulnerable side allows authenticity.

MEL: As you told that story, I recall a story that I can share. I was rather new in practicing psychotherapy. One of the first groups that I taught was called Surviving the Divorce, Before, During, and After. I had recently been going through a rather horrendous divorce. I was working out of a home office. As I was facilitating my group on surviving the divorce, my ex-wife barged into the house, walked into the room, and harangued the group, casting horrendous dispersions at me, talking horribly about me. So I called the police and had them get her out of the house. And then calm settled down. And I walked back into the room, and I looked at everyone. I said, well, I couldn’t have arranged that any better. This is an example of how to handle a situation that’s out of control going through the divorce process. Now, I chose not to be embarrassed. I chose not to worry about what will they think of me. The same motif that you’re talking about, which is step into it. To really lead, we have to step in and not defend and not act with fear and trepidation. We have to allow ourselves to be our genuine self. And that to me is the principal pillar or a core foundation of leadership. And no doubt, that’s what you’re employing in your role.

CATHRYN: Yes, exactly. And I think in your situation too, you set a very fine example for them that these kinds of things happen, especially in a contentious divorce. And like you said, you step into it, you handle it, and you did. And you role modeled that for them perfectly. And you weren’t embarrassed. And this is life. These things happen, and we need to embrace those things and not run away or shy away from it or feel bad about it.

MEL: The other quality that I just wanted to introduce, which we’re touching on, but just to give it a word or a term, is that I think that genuine leadership requires a participatory element. In other words, it’s not directional. It’s not the proverbial school teacher standing up in front of the class and directing what to do. It’s not the military person leading the troops into warfare. It’s not even the typical CEO telling the executives underneath them what they have to do. Genuine authentic leadership requires a participatory spirit and emotional intelligence whereby we are attuning to the people around us. We’re checking in. We’re not just operating in a transactional way, delivering cognitive pieces of material, but we’re tuning into those around us, making sure that our words have the same meaning for each of us and for all of us, and tending to the feelings as well as the thoughts. Emotional intelligence, in my opinion, is absolutely necessary for effective leadership.

CATHRYN: Yes, I would agree. I really like the term that you just used, participatory spirit. I think that’s what I did in my group supervisions. One of the things they wrote on my chart in describing me is they wrote the word hierarchy and then they crossed it out. I said, what does that mean? They go, you did not take a step up above us. You were not firm in that boundary. You were real collaborative. You allowed us to all be on the same page, but you would lead and step in when necessary, but we never felt that you were above us. I think that’s what we had in that group, was that participatory spirit.

MEL: That’s great. You’re introducing no hierarchy, but collaborative or an equivalence, but nevertheless a leader. A picture just came to mind if you look overhead and watch a flock of birds flying in alignment. There may be a leader, but the leader doesn’t stand out from the group. A leader is simply part. It’s participating with the group and in a much more subtle way is leading. Well, thank you so much for this conversation, Catherine. By the way, if anyone’s listening, would you like to share how people who are interested in your work can get in touch with you?

CATHRYN: Oh yes, they can go to my website, which is www.catherineleflmft.com.

MEL: Where was your practice, Cathryn?

CATHRYN: It’s in Temecula, California. I also do online therapy as well in the state of California.

MEL: That’s great. Well, thank you so much for participating in today’s show.

CATHRYN: Thank you for having me, Mel. I really appreciate it. It’s been great.

MEL: So today we’ve begun to scratch at the surface around the art of leadership, this inner pathway of leadership. And doing this helps you in all walks of your life. It provides a safe, calm, inner authority where you can summon your intuitive, deeper wisdom. I was not born with the capabilities and skills of leadership, but one day I found myself in front of a large crowd of people, moved on, spurred on by my passion. I was in college during the Vietnam War, and I surprisingly to myself found myself leading a protest. And during those moments, some of the qualities of leadership became evident to me. Over the years, I learned to craft them personally.

MEL: And in my therapy practice, I’m devoted to helping people develop an intuitive ability to find that inner voice of wisdom, that inner voice of personal authority, of feeling safe within yourself and emotionally communicative with others. And so I encourage you to pursue the path of finding your inner leadership and doing whatever you choose with it as it may benefit you and others in your life.

MEL: I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Possibility Podcast. I welcome your feedback on this and any episode. Please send me an email at mel at melschwartz.com or leave a comment in the show notes for this episode at melschwartz.com. If you like what you’re hearing, please take a moment to rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your reviews really help boost the visibility for the show and it’s a great way for you to show your support. Finally, please make sure to subscribe to the Possibility Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and that way you’ll never miss an episode. Thanks again and please remember to always welcome uncertainty into your life and embrace new possibilities.

The post #122 The Inner Path of Leadership first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW.

(This special episode of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz is also cross-posted as an article on my blog! You can listen to the companion podcast episode through the player above.)

Typically, the personal and lifestyle advantages of great affluence are conspicuously evident. What often flies beneath the radar is how uber-wealth may negatively impact relationship prosperity.

The unintended consequences of great wealth often distract individuals, couples and families from the deeper and more authentic gratification derived from emotional, verbal, and physical intimacy. This runs the gamut from the profound sharing of one’s deeper feelings that enable relationships to thrive, as well as enjoying romantic and sexual intimacy.

What informs my claim? Insights gleaned from working with a great many very high net worth families. Here’s what I often find.

Wealth affords enormous homes. The larger the home, the greater the distance between the family members. Everyone certainly has their own bedroom, if not their own wing. Unlike yesteryear, when the family convened in the family room to watch television together– in my youth it was called the TV room–it’s more likely now that everyone is in their own room attached to their own devices. When houses range up to and beyond 10,000 square feet, you might no longer call out to each other, but resort to intercoms.

This great distancing, made even worse by our addiction to the cell phone, can desecrate familiarity, the essence of intimate familial bonding. Physical distancing often results in emotional distancing.

The unscripted adventures of two children sharing a bedroom often leads to a bond of incalculable value. With wealth, and even with middle income families this opportunity vanishes with each child having their own room. Privacy often precludes bonding. This prompts the question as to which room must the parent visit first for the proverbial tucking in or bedtime story?

As well, it can be an all-consuming, full-time job trying to assure the very best education for your children. With wealth, expectations for your children’s achievement may increase proportionally, and sadly, most parents struggle to maintain balance. Your aspirations and goals, although sensible at first, may remove you from being truly present in the moment. As John Lennon sang, paraphrasing writer Alan Sanders, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Let’s turn our attention to the couple. As with most marriages, what begins initially as a romantic connection tends to devolve into a utilitarian, pragmatic relationship. We turn our attention to life’s demands, as we must. But wealth can exacerbate this loss of passion. Attention is likely no longer on just one home and decorating it, but the enormous endeavor of purchasing, decorating, landscaping, and staffing multiple homes. Another reward for financial abundance is travel, as it should be. But be wary of how much time is spent in the planning of these getaways. The strategizing and planning around financial matters can often take center stage, also ignoring the heart of the relationship.

Excessively busy and demanding lives tend to go hand in hand with affluence, often distracting from the core relationship. As a psychotherapist and marriage counselor I’ve often seen how the gift of wealth may unsuspectingly lead to such great distraction that neither person is tending to the energy of the relationship. Just as you must stoke the logs in the fireplace to keep the fire going, when emotional and sexual intimacy become an afterthought, the flame of the relationship withers.

Emotional intimacy is the bedrock of thriving relationships. Wealth doesn’t bring happiness, resilient relationships do. The goal is to see wealth as the icing on the cake, but not the cake itself. I counsel my clients to navigate a balance from which their relationship remains their priority, lest they get swept away in the torrent of wealth-distracting matters. Attaining great wealth is a gift, but it can become a Trojan horse when we lose sight of what brought the couple together and how to secure the immense rewards of wonderful coupling and familial bonds.

Let me know what you think! Be sure to leave a comment!

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Help others when Mel helps you: Contact Mel and find out how you can be a caller on the show and ask Mel a question. He’ll put the Possibility Principle to work for you, and your conversation will be recorded for use in a future episode of the podcast so other listeners can benefit.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Possibility Podcast. I’m your host Mel Schwartz. I practice psychotherapy, marriage counseling, and I am the author of the book The Possibility Principle, the companion to this podcast. I hope to be your thought provocateur and I’ll be introducing you to new ways of thinking and a new game plan for life.

In my practice, I have the opportunity to work with any number of uber wealthy individuals and families and it’s occurred to me that wealth for all of its benefits can have a negative impact on relationships, familiar relationships, intimate relationships between couples. It’s something beneath the surface that’s not typically seen. Now, many of the principles and challenges I’m going to talk about apply to many upwardly mobile families, not only the uber wealthy. So listen in.

Uber wealthy families obviously enjoy all the benefits, lifestyle, material, travel, all the benefits that derive from their financial prosperity. They either inherited their wealth or they worked hard to achieve it. And typically the personal lifestyle advantages of great affluence are conspicuously evident. But what often lies beneath the radar is how wealth can negatively impact relationship prosperity. In other words, financial prosperity does not equal relationship prosperity. And at times there’s an inverse correlation.

These unintended consequences of great wealth often distract individuals, couples, and families from the deeper and more authentic gratification that’s derived by intimacy. Now by intimacy, I’m referring to emotional, verbal, physical intimacy. This runs the continuum from the profound sharing of your deeper feelings in healthy and beneficial ways, emotional intelligence, which we can all use some greater increase in and this enables relationships to thrive and to enjoy romantic and sexual intimacy is just as important or nearly as important.

So how do I come to this belief? Well I’ve gleaned these insights from working with significant numbers of very high net worth families. Here’s what I often find, wealth can afford large homes, enormously large homes.

The larger the home, the greater the distance between the family members. These houses can be 10,000 square feet and more. Everyone certainly has their own bedroom if not their own wing. Now this applies to people who are not particularly wealthy as well, just simply well off. You know, when I was a kid, the family convened in the family room if there were one to watch TV together. Frankly, in my childhood, we called it the TV room. It was a small den off the kitchen. Now it’s more likely that everyone is in their own room attached to their own devices. With these mega sized houses, you may no longer actually call out to one another but resort to the intercom system.

This great distancing, made worse by our addiction to cell phones, it can desecrate familiarity, the essence of family bonding. Physical distancing often results in emotional distancing. It doesn’t have to, but there is a correlation.

You know, when I was a kid, I shared a bedroom with my brother, even though there was a spare bedroom which we called the guest bedroom. The unscripted adventures of two children sharing a bedroom often leads to an incalculable bond and adventure. Well, very often, wealth denies this opportunity as it ensures that everyone has their privacy. But which room does the parent visit first for that proverbial bedtime tucking in or story? And that compartmentalizing, that divide and conquer has its consequences.

Now let’s look at education. You don’t need to be uber wealthy to want the best education for your children and navigating the path to get them into the very best colleges. This is an all consuming full time job unto itself. And it doesn’t necessarily have a correlate to how much wealth you have. However, with great wealth, your expectations for your children’s achievement may increase proportionally and sadly, you lose balance. Frankly, the overwhelming epidemic of anxiety amongst school aged children is due to the pressure that they feel about this level of achievement. But I’m not going to go off onto that tangent now. If you’re interested in that subject, I did an episode called Unintended Child Abuse. Listen into that.

So getting back to education, the aspirations and goals of the uber wealthy, although sensible at first, may remove them from being truly present in the moment. You know, as John Lennon sang, life is what’s happening while you’re busy making other plans. Wow. Just think about that. Everything becomes future oriented and we’re not present.

Now let’s turn our attention to the couple. As with most marriages, what begins initially as a romantic engagement tends to devolve into a utilitarian, pragmatic approach to the relationship. There are many, many reasons why romance withers. I’ve spoken about that in other episodes. The need to maintain a level of uncertainty, how predictability becomes the death knell of relationship. But with uber wealthy people, this may even be more the case. We all turn our attention to life’s demands as we have to, but wealth again can exacerbate this loss of passion and connection. You see, attention may no longer be just on one home and decorating it, but the enormous task of purchasing, decorating, landscaping and staffing multiple homes. Another reward for financial abundance is travel, as it ought to be. But be wary of how much time is spent in the planning of these getaways. Maybe the getaway is organized through a travel agent, your own personal travel agent, but it still requires time and attention, another distraction. This strategizing and planning around financial matters can take center stage and that is a job unto itself.

What happened to the heart of the relationship? It dissipates. Excessively busy and demanding lives tend to go hand in hand with great affluence. This distances the couple from the core relationship. As a psychotherapist and a marriage counselor, I’ve come to see how the gift of wealth may unsuspectingly set up kind of an attention deficit. You know, you need to stoke the energy of a relationship just like you have to tend to the fire in the fireplace to keep it going. But when emotional and sexual intimacy becomes an afterthought, the relationship begins to dry up and wither.

Emotional intimacy is the bedrock of relationships. Wealth doesn’t bring happiness. Resilient relationships bring happiness. We need to see wealth as the icing on the cake, but not the cake itself. I counsel my clients to navigate a balance, a balance from which their relationships with one another remain their priority so they don’t get swept away in the torrent of all these wealth-distracting matters. Attaining great wealth is a gift. Attaining moderate wealth is a gift. But this gift can become a Trojan horse when we lose sight of what brought the couple together initially and expanded into the family. And how to secure these immense rewards of wonderful coupling and family bonds, this is the key. Wealth needs to be seen as a wonderful addition to the prosperity of emotionally healthy and thriving relationships.

In conclusion and in summation, many of the things I talked about are pertinent without great wealth. But there are even more of the case with wealth. Don’t allow wealth to drive your focus and your attention. Simply use it as a supplement, a wonderful supplement, which enhances an already wonderful life.

Well, until next time, be well, embrace your uncertainty, and I’ll speak with you again in a week. Bye for now.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Possibility Podcast. I welcome your feedback on this and any episode. Please send me an email at Mel at MelSchwartz.com or leave a comment in the show notes for this episode at MelSchwartz.com. If you like what you’re hearing, please take a moment to rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your reviews really help boost the visibility for the show. And it’s a great way for you to show your support. Finally, please make sure to subscribe to the Possibility Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. And that way you’ll never miss an episode. Thanks again. And please remember to always welcome uncertainty into your life and embrace new possibilities.

The post #121 How Wealth Can Negatively Impact Relationships first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW.

I’m pleased to present episode 120 of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, in which I speak to a very special guest: Ilene Smith.

What makes Ilene special? She was featured in the book that is the companion to this podcast: The Possibility Principle: How Quantum Physics Can Improve the Way You Think, Live and Love as “Helen.” Long time listeners will also recognize her story as one I’ve told on the podcast, too.

In this episode, we follow up with Ilene to learn more about her journey to becoming a highly regarded counselor specializing in trauma recovery. Reach out to Ilene via email at [email protected].

Listen, and let me know what you think! Be sure to leave a comment!

Subscribe to The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz

Don’t miss a single Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz! Subscribe for free in iTunes / Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or, simply copy / paste the RSS link directly into the podcast app of your choice!

If you enjoy The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, please take a moment to rate and review the show in iTunes / Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. It only takes a few minutes, and adding your review is as easy as clicking this link.

Your rating and review helps raise the visibility of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz, especially on iTunes / Apple Podcasts, which is one of the biggest podcasting platforms today. More visibility for the show means more listeners… and that growth means the show reaches — and helps — more people like you.

Thank you!

Help others when Mel helps you: Contact Mel and find out how you can be a caller on the show and ask Mel a question. He’ll put the Possibility Principle to work for you, and your conversation will be recorded for use in a future episode of the podcast so other listeners can benefit.

MEL: Hello everybody and welcome to the Possibility Podcast. I’m your host Mel Schwartz. I practice psychotherapy, marriage counseling, and I am the author of the book The Possibility Principle, the companion to this podcast. I hope to be your thought provocateur and I’ll be introducing you to new ways of thinking and a new game plan for life.

MEL: Hi everyone. It’s my great pleasure to bring on a very formidable guest. Formidable is a word I’m using to speak to how I have known her and engaged her over the years through her own formidability. And I’m using that word because she has embraced her vulnerability. And you see the paradox there that I’m always teaching. When someone embraces their vulnerability, they become formidable. They become self-empowered. So I’m going to introduce to you today, Ilene.

MEL: Ilene is a mindfulness and positive psychology coach. She has a resume that is far too long and too wide for me to recount, but I’ll ask her to share with you all of those details. And I met Ilene, how many years ago would you say Ilene we met?

ILENE: I would say in dog years or human. About 20.

MEL: At least 20 years ago. At least 20. She’s probably being kind. And I want everybody to know that Ilene goes under the pseudonym of Helen in my book, The Possibility Principle. I shared an anecdote about Helen and at that time I was protecting her confidentiality. But at this point, I think it’s clear that that’s no longer necessary. So Helen’s real name is Ilene.

MEL: So let me share the anecdote from the book and then we will move in and invite Ilene to speak more about what was happening then in her life and now and very fundamentally how she has engaged her change process. So the anecdote I share in my book about Ilene was that I had given her an introduction to a colleague in common. She had some professional interests that I thought this colleague could help her with. His name is Bud. And I arranged for them or gave them an introduction to meet at a conference that Bud was attending.

MEL: Ilene went and attended that conference. Before the conference began, she noticed or recognized Bud who was speaking with any number of people. And Ilene stood by waiting for Bud to turn and pay attention to her and greet her. And at that point, Ilene, as you would say, you were feeling ignored or not noticed, correct?

ILENE: Absolutely.

MEL: Okay. So as time went by, the conference started and Bud was no longer talking to that group surrounding him. And Ilene, known as Helen in my book, decided her words were to me, I guess I just wasn’t that important. Bud left without looking to find her or look to her. And she concluded, I guess I just wasn’t that important.

MEL: So I do what I do. I challenged her. How do you know that to be a fact? Now I knew at that time that Ilene was carrying around this very core belief about herself, a self-esteem matter, that she felt she wasn’t that important. We explored how she came to that belief. And she shared with me that in her childhood, she and her mother had a role reversal. She waited hand and foot on her mother. Their roles were reversed. She was there to serve her mother and the experiences of childhood weren’t available for her. She wasn’t primary. She wasn’t the important one as a child. Her mom was. So she had a wave collapse. Remember wave collapses, those experiences in childhood, which can be chronic or acute, which inform our primary beliefs about ourself. And out of those primary beliefs, we have countless thoughts. Her thought was, I guess I’m not that important. Coming from the belief she carried from her childhood. So I pointed out those wave collapses to Ilene, and we went to work on helping her learn to see her belief and see her thought and not become that thought. Well, we’ve been at a touch for quite a number of years and recently reconnected. I have no idea where Ilene’s going to go with this story or our conversation, but I’m inviting her in and saying, welcome aboard. And please tell us what progress or lack of do you think you have made over these last 15 years in terms of breaking through that limiting belief of, I guess I’m just not that important.

ILENE: It’s very strange to hear you tell that story. And I remember it vividly. Clearly from listening to that and where I am, I’ve had a long journey, which I suppose explains why my feet hurt so much. And I was very lucky to come into your office at a time in which my marriage was unraveling after 25 years. But more fundamentally than my marriage unraveling, it was the fabric that I believe wove me together in terms of how I saw myself in the world and how I saw myself internally. And it was a very challenging time. You of course are an extremely challenging therapist to work with, which I needed. I didn’t need somebody who would hold my hand, although I can say I wouldn’t have liked that some days, but you challenged me to dig in. I would say there were days it felt like I was on an archaeological dig to find that hidden strength that I really had, but had stopped accessing it. So the nature of who I am is I’m a contemplative and I’m an academic. So during the process and time in which we work together, I went at this change process, both from a contemplative process, going back into many decades of meditating, as well as an academic process. And I started to ask myself, what were the three fundamental issues that my marriage unraveling had sort of catalyzed and had come to the foreground? And I came up with three things that haunted me. What did I do wrong? Why am I not enough? And of course, the third question is, what do I do now?

ILENE: So I think the what do I do now was less common than it might have been. I think a lot of people, especially women after divorce, go and want to get a makeover, change their hair, lose 20 pounds. It isn’t that that didn’t have some appeal to me, but my inner knowing was really that what I needed to change was not the color of my hair or the size of the heel I wore, but really what was it inside of me that was dictating how I felt. And certainly that what am I doing that’s not enough? Why am I not enough propelled me forward. At that time, luckily, there was a man named Nathaniel Brandon who was creating a world about research about self-esteem. And I’d read about him. I was doing workshops with teachers and superintendents about the importance of raising a child’s self-esteem so that they couldn’t just think they could, but that we gave them the skills along with that to do that. So I went to Omega for a three-day conference.

ILENE: And I’m not sure I had been to Omega many times at that point, but I parked, I got in there, there was a huge, big room, a really huge open room in there. And it was not what I expected. He stood up after his introduction and instead of doing a preamble or an opening monologue, he right away had us get up on our feet and do the following very challenging, very Mel Schwartz activity. He said we had to say our name three times, only we had to say our name. My name is Ilene Smith and I am enough. My first reaction is, well, that’s pretty strange. I paid for this conference. The second time, my name is Ilene Smith and I am enough. And I began to know something had shifted that there was an awareness in my body that just saying my name and this time listening to my words, listening to the sound of my proclaiming my name and I was enough started to create a shift. And on the third time, I was really aware that there was something inhabiting in my body that was unexpected. So very mind-body shift and awareness. So I thought, I lived through that. I can deal with that.

ILENE: And then the next instruction came, which was to go out and individually greet everyone in the room by going over and making eye contact, shaking their hand. Those are pre-COVID days, so we didn’t worry about that. Saying my name is Ilene Smith and I’m enough, making eye contact, heart contact, I would say, and then making a container big enough and spacious enough for the other person to say it and to feel heard. So it was a real amplification of genuine presence. And that alone is healing. When you are with somebody, it’s really with them and listening, it’s healing.

MEL: If we could just contrast that experience with the anecdote from my book, you were standing there waiting for Bud to acknowledge you. You concluded in your retreating and pulling back, I am not enough. I guess I just wasn’t that important. So that core shift of belief, I guess I’m not that important to I am enough. And as you said, I am enough, lots of thoughts came to mind. I am good enough. I am valuable enough. I am all things enough. I just haven’t known it. So there you’re resonating with your primary relationship, the relationship that impacts you far more than any other relationship is with your beliefs and your thoughts. So there was a profound defining moment shift in you with the words, I am enough.

ILENE: I think that’s a wonderful summary of exactly what happened. And there were two other things that happened, a lot of things that happened that weekend that I will forever be grateful for. But the two things that I noticed first was that it was a big room and people have, you know, there’s a sensation of people’s breath and peppermints and all the mélange of things that happen when you put a lot of people in the room. But there was a shift to the smell of fear. And I have always said about myself, I’m like a human beagle, that I perceive things on a scent level. And it influences me and informs a lot of the impressions that I get. And so the room was filled with an odd scent of fear. And sort of the way a dog knows that you are afraid of them. I looked around the room and didn’t watch anything that looked challenging. And then I realized that I must not be the only one that is having a discrepancy between my inner belief, which clearly was I’m not enough, and what it would take to take the leap from I’m not enough to I am enough. And that I think I believe to this day, created fear. And I was aware of it. And I could sense it in the room. So when I went to bed at night, I think I knew something had shifted, that proclaiming it and not pushing it away was really a shift for me. And I began to professionally think about how I could work with those three ideas. Because when things go wrong, instead of saying, okay, what do I learn from this? I think there’s a reflex, I think for women, maybe more than men, to say, what did I do wrong? Why am I not enough? And then what do I do now as a result of those?

MEL: So just for clarification, when you’re saying there was a scent of fear, In the room.

ILENE: In the room.

MEL: Two questions, how would you, given the notion of inseparability, how would you distinguish my scent of fear or the scent of others? But more importantly, are you saying that after everyone said I am enough, then following that, the scent of fear or prior to that?

ILENE: I think the moment he asked us to get on our feet and say that I am enough, I think we all came, it was a Friday night, with an expectation that the opening night he’ll say interesting things, we’ll take notes, and we’ll get on the easy street to the rest of the workshop. And I think his challenging and I would tell you confrontational style the whole weekend was more than I expected.

MEL: So you’re saying that it was the surprise, you’re not sitting there in the anonymity of the audience, but everybody was standing up. Did everyone stand up at the same time and say I am?

ILENE: No, that’s so funny that you ask that, because not only did some people not stand up, there were several people who never stood and they did not come back on Saturday.

MEL: So you may remember or you may not recall the work we used to do and what I used to teach around the to be verbs and how they limit us is, am, were, was. So when we look at the term, I am enough, let’s look at the converse, I’m not enough. In my book, your message was, I guess I wasn’t important enough. When we remove the to be verb in a negative way, then instead of I am not enough, it’s I feel like I’m not enough. And now the shift here, when you say I am enough, underneath it, what’s really shifting? It’s the feeling. I feel like I am enough because there’s no objective truth to it, but if I feel like I am enough, then indeed I am. So do you agree that it’s ultimately the perception or the feeling, the subjective feeling underneath that is the wellspring of the shift as opposed to the objective statement?

ILENE: I do. And I think after decades of working with different clients, I think part of what allows you to stay in the belief that I am enough is developing a certain capacity for distress tolerance and not having a moment of distress throw you out of that belief that I am enough. Okay, so I am enough, of course, we can go through stress, distress, anxiety, but the resilience that I can handle it. That’s the resilient quality. Life brings challenges, conflicts, heartache, stress, but I am enough allows you to feel that you can navigate it. So it’s a resource.

MEL: So would you say this shift for you beyond those words in the ensuing years, the shift is that you began to trust your own resourcefulness?

ILENE: Oh, yes, for sure. And I also learned to tolerate the areas that are still challenges for me without diminishing my sense of self.

MEL: Could you speak to some of those areas that you still feel challenged by?

ILENE: Even with a GPS, I can get lost. I navigationally and technologically, I feel like Wilma Flintstone. And when I have to make a big presentation, or they put that little mic on me, the first thing I do is notice there’s a flutter. And then somebody comes and helps me. And then I go back into saying, I’m not here to be the tech expert. I’m here to bring to you some open heartedness, some willingness to be vulnerable and courageous in how we interact. And I don’t judge myself as harshly as I did.

MEL: So you feel like you’ve traveled quite a distance from back then with I am not enough to get your resourcefulness now that I am.

ILENE: I would say.

MEL: Those questions that you had asked yourself at the time of your divorce process, what did I do wrong? Interesting question, right? The propensity there was, it must be my fault. Is that kind of like a childhood reflex, which is if you attending to your mother and serving her needs, if she was upset or angry with you, it was what did I do wrong?

ILENE: Or what didn’t I do right? And the other question that popped up then, and it’s emerging even in our conversation, which is provocative and probably very meaningful for a further conversation with myself, which is I’ve shifted from why is this happening to me, which is very much disempowered to why is this happening for me with an understanding that life is going to give us completely the unexpected. And if I can get out of my own way enough to say that there is some gift in this, might not be one that shows up where I’m clear about now, but there is an advantage to having the alchemy of challenge.

MEL: By all means, it’s just such a fundamentally vital restructuring of how we see things. I’m sure you’ve experienced, it’s my belief in my own life and in the work I do with others, that we keep being presented with the same type of challenges until we learn to vault over it, grow and prosper. And then those challenges don’t recur. For example, I’ll work with people who say I’m always being taken advantage of. Why is that? I’ll ask, do you think you’re just so unfortunate that people are always looking to take advantage of you? Why doesn’t that happen to me? Because this is school. This is our education life. All these things present to us as opportunities to grow and learn. And once we do, it doesn’t happen any longer. You start to attract different kinds of people into your life, don’t you?

ILENE: I think so. Very much so.

MEL: So we are no longer asking yourself, why is this happening to me? The way I would put it sometimes would be, what is the opportunity here for me to learn that I’m not seeing? If I keep walking into the same wall, I need to turn the lights on, figuratively speaking, so I don’t walk into that wall. And that’s a whole different way of looking at life experience. And again, we’re not blaming and faulting ourselves. We’re here to learn, to evolve and to grow. At least that’s a dominant spiritual belief that this is our schooling. Could you share with the listeners a bit about your mindfulness practice and your meditation practice and how you go after helping others?

ILENE: I started doing mindfulness in my 20s, very, very early. I was extremely lucky to have had that come into my life early. And I had one experience where I volunteered in Danmore State Prison, and it was a maximum security prison. And I was a very young, innocent, I was absolutely sure I could make a difference. And when I arrived at the prison, I had met with the warden, what are you going to do? I’m five foot three, I think he was a little worried. How was I going to deal with the tattoos and the large men who were angry and stuck inside? But he assured me that he would always have two bodyguards, two guards, not bodyguards, although they felt like bodyguards in the room with me. And initially, you can imagine there was some resistance to it. But I am a believer, I’m passionate about the capacity to let your mind be full, and to be full of different options. And so I would come into the room and week by week, I would work with them on learning to pause, learning to deescalate, learning ultimately, self compassion and compassion for others. And it was the most exhilarating, sad time because a lot of these men were lifers, and Danmore is a maximum state prison. And after each meditation practice, I would have them do some form of creative experience to help them embody what the practice had included. And one day, I some of them couldn’t read, I asked them to bring to take a pen and pencil and to sketch out a cup, because I had been talking about setting an intention, and how no matter what you were doing, you had the opportunity to open your mind, start your day by setting an intention. So interestingly enough, I do practice what I preach, all of my cups have different things on them, this one happens to say, be joyful. And I intentionally in the morning, open up my cupboard and ask myself, what do I want to fill my cup with? Is it calm? Is it joy? Is it kindness? Is it self love, self worth? So I have a lot of them.

ILENE: And after one particularly challenging session, I had the men take a piece of paper and create their own cups. And then they could fill the cups with anything they wanted. And some of them were angry, their cups were flowing over. And some of them were one word that we later used as a mantra. And it was fascinating. And we got into this conversation about how most of us have a reductionist point of view. We think about is your cup half empty? Is it half full? That wasn’t where I wanted them or hoped they would go. And what I wanted them to realize is that what we put in our cup, what we keep in our cup is intentional. And when our cup is filled with things that are toxic and unproductive, we have the intentionality and the capacity to empty the cup. And they taught me every week, what it was like to go from feeling behind bars, behind walls, behind words, behind my beliefs, to saying, even now, I have the capacity to find some freedom. I think of my professional experiences that will always occupy a place in my heart. That was the one. And I’ve taken those gifts from those men and begun to go out in the world and work with populations that are pretty diverse. I was lucky enough, maybe I’m not going to use luck, because I do think that we are given opportunities if they’re in front of us.

ILENE: We might have to go around to find them, but I’ve had some extraordinary opportunities to be part of some national mindfulness movements. I was one of the original writers for Goldie Hawn’s, the Hawn Foundation’s curriculum, which is K through 12, called Mind Up, in which we structured a body of lessons for the kids and the teachers, teaching kids the skills of that. So instead of feeling, I’ve got nothing to do but explode, I have nothing to do but implode, that they can learn to stop, self-regulate, self-love, and then recreate something else. So every day that I went into different cities, I was a specialist in turnaround schools. You could stick me in a school because I tend to see the best, not just the worst or the stuff that was a struggle, but to work with these turnaround schools.

ILENE: And I had to give a speech at a national conference, and I talked about, I’d been at this one school in the South Bronx, which was a really hard school, for about six months. And one day I walked in and there was blood all over the floor, and there were cops, and I was there to do a whole faculty presentation on stress management and using breath work to self-regulate. And I found out that it was a fourth grader who took a big pen and had no way to see himself as enough, no way to regulate himself, no way to see options for this conflict and volcano that was inside of him. And he grabbed a pen and stuck the pen, the big pen, into the neck of his, of a fellow student. And that was how I began my day, working with the teachers about where do we go from here? What now? That was incredible. I walked out, I got in my car. I think I sat there unable to start the car because I was awash with my own emotions and everybody else’s as well.

MEL: That’s quite a story. When you were using the word mindfulness before, I became aware of my thoughts.

ILENE: Oh, tell me.

MEL: And my thought at that moment was, well, there’s the old story of the student goes to the Zen master for his lesson and the master says, would you like a cup of tea? And the student says, certainly, master, and holds out his cup. And the master starts to pour the tea until the cup overflows. And the student says, master, my cup is overflowing. And the Zen master says, I’m just reminded with all the thoughts. So I just want to share here, not so much with you, but with the listener. We always have to look at words and terms and ask, tell me what you mean by it. Because for some, mindfulness can be addressed very, very efficiently and usefully the way you’re addressing it, Ilene. And for others, mindfulness requires emptying the mind of the thoughts. So I think ultimately, it’s the quality of the thoughts running through our mind. And always remember that the moment you have a thought, that thought attaches to the accompanying feeling. Thought and feeling operate as a complex together. So if you are fearful, hateful thoughts, we know what you will be feeling and you’re caught in that tandem. But your work around mindfulness sounds extraordinary. Clearly, how it’s also assisted you over the years is just incredible.

MEL: So in the notes to this episode, I’m going to be sharing with the listeners, if anyone wants to get in touch with you or write to you or seek you out professionally, I’m going to provide your contact information and everything else for the listeners of the podcast. So I’m just going to put you on the spot for a moment. In conclusion, what’s the one thing that you want the listener to take away?

ILENE: Ask better questions.

MEL: I love that.

ILENE: I guess. And don’t judge the answers.

MEL: Ask a new question. Ask a new question. That’s when we move into constructing new realities, when we ask new questions. Beautiful. Well, thank you so much.

ILENE: You’re welcome.

MEL: Thanks for joining the show.

MEL: Well, everybody, hope you enjoyed today’s episode. And until next time, wishing you mindfulness, wishing you a mind free from stress, fear, anger. Looking forward to speaking with you again next week. Be well until then.

MEL: I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Possibility Podcast. I welcome your feedback on this and any episode. Please send me an email at Mel at MelSchwartz.com or leave a comment in the show notes for this episode at MelSchwartz.com. If you like what you’re hearing, please take a moment to rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your reviews really help boost the visibility for the show. And it’s a great way for you to show your support. Finally, please make sure to subscribe to the Possibility Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. And that way you’ll never miss an episode. Thanks again. And please remember to always welcome uncertainty into your life and embrace new possibilities.

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