Sharon Salzberg: The Process Of Mindful Change

Sharon Salzberg talks about how mindfulness helps us gain clarity on what we want to change and other aspects of the process of mindful change. Sharon Salzberg is a pioneer in the field of meditation, a world-renowned teacher and New York Times bestselling author. She has played a pivotal role in bringing meditation and mindfulness into mainstream American culture since 1974.
Interviewer: Serge Prengel has been exploring creative ways to live with an embodied sense of meaning and purpose.

Transcript

Hi Sharon.

So we're going to be talking about the process of mindful change.

And that's obviously something that you've given a lot of thought about and you have a lot of experience in.

Do you mean change that is born from a deepening of mindfulness?

Is that how you're using the term?

Yeah,

I think that's actually I very much appreciate that way of rephrasing it.

Yes,

Yes.

So,

You know,

The general question would be,

You know,

Say somebody wants to change something in themselves,

In the world.

And how is it that sitting and practicing certain techniques and becoming more mindful will actually make it happen?

You know,

As opposed to efforting about,

You know,

Working this without mindfulness.

Well,

I think it helps in a bunch of different levels.

I mean,

For one thing,

Having clarity about what we'd like to change,

You know,

That's a very classical description of looking within and beginning to understand that certain habits or ways of acting that we thought were just fine,

You know,

That maybe even making us happy when we really take a more careful,

Mindful look within.

Oh,

Look at that.

There's a residue there that's very unfortunate.

That really caused a kind of anxiety that I didn't pick up just on the surface.

But as I look deeper,

It's like,

Oh,

Look at that.

So,

You know,

There may be things that we wish to let go of that we only discover through the force of mindfulness,

Greater mindfulness.

And then there are other things that maybe we've been taught are not that desirable.

Like many people say this to me about compassion.

For example,

I was taught my whole life that compassion made you kind of weak and people take advantage of you and you have to be strong in other ways and resistant to other people's situations.

And then I really looked at what it was like when I was feeling compassion and I thought,

No,

There's strength in there.

It's different than I ever was taught.

And so it's becoming more mindful that we even have clarity about what we want to give up and what we want to strengthen.

And then there's a kind of clarity about layers and layers of feeling.

You know,

Sometimes we think we're acting out of desire,

For example.

But when we really look at our situation and our body,

Our mind,

And we're more mindful,

We realize,

Oh,

There was a lot of loneliness in there that was having me go out and do that thing that had those unfortunate consequences or whatever.

And you think,

Oh,

What I really need to address is the loneliness,

Not the desire.

The desire is just like a side effect or a more superficial level of the same problem.

And so there's a lot of understanding and insight that comes from being mindful.

And then the change,

In a way,

It's more meaningful because it's on the right level.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

So you're talking about mindfulness allowing us to notice what it is that we really want and need to change as opposed to what we thought we wanted to.

That's right.

Yeah.

And you also mentioned earlier,

Something about,

I would summarize as having a different relationship to ourselves about it.

Yeah,

I mean,

I think that's kind of one of the hidden virtues or hidden qualities in mindfulness practice is a kind of self-compassion.

And to many people's surprise,

It turns out that the best way to make a change or to learn something new or to make progress in something in a sustained way is actually the quality of self-compassion.

It's those times when we inevitably fall down on the job.

We don't fulfill the aspiration we set out.

We lose sight of our goal or we make a mistake or whatever it is.

How do we have resilience?

How do we begin again?

How do we come back and sort of pick it up and go forward?

And self-compassion,

Many people think of as kind of laziness or being self-indulgent.

But actually,

It's proven to be the most powerful way to actually get something done because we will always make mistakes and there will always be times of falling down and not being perfect on our way to fulfilling some goal of change.

And we have to know how to deal with that.

It turns out that a harsh kind of punitive reaction to those times might spike our performance,

But briefly.

And then we kind of crash,

You know,

So the key word is sustained.

You know,

How do we make a sustained effort toward change?

Yeah,

Yeah.

Of any kind and that proves to be self-compassion.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So by definition,

Change is we're trying to change something that's difficult.

And so it's going to if it works,

It's going to work only if it's sustainable.

And then you're going to the idea that in order for it to be sustainable,

It has to be realistic and gentle.

Yeah,

Yeah.

And so,

You know,

As the attitude of of mindfulness,

That attitude of meditation,

You know,

In how do you does it translate from,

Say,

The practice of meditating to actually developing that attitude?

Well,

I think it's like training,

You know,

It's like muscle training.

I'm a great believer in formal meditation practice.

Not everybody is and everybody kind of sees that it's essential.

I really do believe it's pretty essential because there are many,

Many ways and possibilities of being mindful.

And we can.

So our goal certainly is to bring it into our lives,

Our everyday activity,

You know,

When we're washing dishes or eating a meal or having a conversation or going to work or whatever it might be.

But I just think that's a hard thing to do without a little training period every day.

You know,

That's just devoted to deepening qualities like awareness and self-compassion and compassion for others,

For example.

Even 10 minutes a day will help in those in the rest of the day,

Because it's not hard to be mindful.

It's awfully hard to remember to be mindful.

Yeah.

If someone is ringing and you're in conflict,

You know,

There's a million things going on,

Just going to remember to breathe,

You know,

Or have a pause before you react to something.

But if you sat for 10 minutes that morning,

You'll more likely remember.

Yeah,

But so maybe I want to repeat what you said that sense it's not as it's not as difficult to be mindful as it is to remember to be mindful.

So the same way as,

You know,

Say they do fire drills in building to help people deal with the emergency situation,

You know,

That practice of mindfulness is a way to help us kind of get it into our system.

That's right.

Yeah.

And so there's a whole attitude about training so that,

You know,

Embedded in it is the notion that,

You know,

We're not,

You know,

Rigid.

And we have that possibility for change,

But it takes it takes working at it in order for it to happen.

Yeah,

I mean,

I'm old enough so that when I was in school,

We were taught there was no theory say of neuroplasticity.

In fact,

The opposite was true.

We were taught that your brain by the time you're I don't know it's like 24 to 26 years old,

Something like that.

Your brain has finished developing,

And it there won't be changes towards the good ever.

There can be,

You know,

Desperate terrible things that happen accidents and all kinds of things so that your brain function will decline.

But there was no notion that you could actually improve say connectivity in the brain or or something like that.

And now,

Of course,

It's completely the opposite.

There is this theory of neuroplasticity and everything seems to affect our brains until the day we die.

And meditation practice is one of the things that's being studied because it's available.

It's portable.

You know,

People people can undertake it as a kind of training exercise and it can be tested in terms of whether there is some effect on our brains.

And so,

Lo and behold,

You know,

It seems to be true that the brain is plastic until the day we die and that we can continue to improve.

And so to speak,

Even the architecture of our brains and but it takes doing and that,

Of course,

Can be very hard for us.

I find that culturally very often people have a kind of conditioning that if we can appreciate something in the abstract and understand it intellectually,

We have a feeling we've mastered it.

But that is very different than doing it.

And so it's the actual doing of it that is the training.

So that's a major point that our definition of understanding is being able to to pin it into a concept or maybe to make a sentence that explains it.

And then we feel like job is done.

But obviously,

In order to make a change,

It's not the talking about the change.

It's actually doing it.

There's a world of difference between the two.

Yeah.

And it's also humbling to do it,

You know,

Because it's nobody's kind of fitting their image of perfection.

The first time it's like learning how to play the piano or something like that.

You know,

You have to practice and practice is kind of awkward seeming exercises.

And it's not beautiful music right away,

But it's really important.

That's how it happens.

That's how it all works.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

And so so there's there is on the one hand,

Kind of a built in denial that we have to think,

Well,

I,

You know,

Don't realize that I don't know.

But I think I know.

On the other hand,

There is also something that it since it takes effort,

It probably takes some kind of a combination of faith in the outcome and desperation about being where we are in order to push it beyond our comfort zone to keep doing what we're doing instead of trying that that thing.

I think that's generally true,

Actually,

Although I do meet people who are motivated a little differently.

You know,

It might be simply that you have a big sense of adventure and it's it's this particular undertaking.

And certainly there are things around community support.

I've seen groups of friends,

For example,

Say,

OK,

For the next month,

We collectively will spend three minutes a night doing a gratitude exercise,

Remembering the things we have to be grateful for and we'll share that.

And then it becomes a sense of responsibility to the other members of that group.

You know,

It's like,

Oh,

You know,

I didn't get mine in yet.

You know,

There are lots of ways in which we can arrange a structure that will actually support our efforts.

And and that can be very helpful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So,

You know,

I know that the trope that say in in a war,

Soldiers get motivated more by loyalty to their comrades than by some big ideals.

And that's why they stay.

And that's why they endure all these difficulties.

So creating a structure of support and having that common endeavor is going to to really be much more practical than than having some lofty ideas about goals.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah,

I think that's really correct.

So so so you know,

People who do that and you have organized challenges,

Group challenges and things of that nature to so you so you've seen it work.

Yeah,

Very much so.

I mean,

I've seen it work and with small groups of people,

You know,

Two people find each other and say,

We're going to do this exchange of gratitude or we're each going to practice some minutes a day.

You don't even have to disclose how much and then we're going to send an email to the other four people in the group saying,

I practice today.

And it also works with larger groups if you do as we've done in my community,

Like an online challenge.

You know,

We do one every February for 28 days because it's a 28 day challenge and it works with February.

And thousands of people might join and they get some help,

Some support,

Either from reading other people's accounts or sharing their own or just knowing that there are other people doing the same thing.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Yeah.

So so if you have difficulty,

In other words,

You know,

Find a way to make it a shared endeavor.

And as you said before,

Something that's an adventure,

Something that's a journey of discovery.

So engaging curiosity as opposed to grim discipline that's going to be me and by God,

I have to do it.

That's right.

You want to talk a little bit about curiosity.

Yeah,

I think it's a sort of undervalued quality because in a way curiosity.

Well,

We might call it interest.

It's it's sometimes recorded in like ancient Eastern texts,

You know,

As an antidote to anger,

Like when we're just angry at someone,

We want to push them away or angry at a situation.

We just want to push it away.

But if we're taking an interest in it,

That's a whole other energetic relationship to hang in there with it,

You know,

And pay attention.

And there is that sense of discovery and in effect,

It's curiosity.

I find that an interesting reflection the way it,

You know,

There's so many things in our life where we just get frustrated and get impatient.

We just want them to go away.

And what would it be like at some of those times to replace that particular energetic relationship with one of taking an interest in it and just to observe,

You know,

Observe everything that happens in your body with that with that shift.

What happens in your mind?

What do you discover?

Sometimes,

You know,

We're in such a hurry and we're having a conversation with somebody we already decided three months ago who they are and what they're capable of.

And we're not listening anymore.

Maybe we realize that and we take an interest and we listen and the big surprises,

You know,

About this person and just the same with ourselves.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

So that sense of opening up and and you mentioned that the default mode is really more of,

You know,

In anger is to want it to go away or to go away.

So the contrast between the two seems to be an underlying sense of safety versus threat.

And so so we tend to go away or want to think to go away means there's fear.

Okay.

And obviously,

Nobody has ever been able to overcome fear through sheer willpower.

So how is it that we actually shift from that kind of underlying fear to enough safety to feel to to to prod the beginning of interest?

Well,

I mean,

I think that's a deeper process.

I think that before we can accomplish that,

We can actually just notice the kind of distractedness we get engaged in,

You know,

And learn to gather our energy.

That's almost like that's the fundamental ground of meditation practice is learning how to gather our energy to realize we've been distracted.

We're looking the other way.

We're thinking about something else.

We're not really paying attention and just to come back.

And even if we do that,

I think we find a sense of connection that wasn't there before.

And then in terms of a deeper question of being able to replace the fear,

So to speak,

It's it all begins with being able to pay attention to it,

You know,

To hang in there and and be aware of it in a different way so that it still may be coming up.

But we're not we're neither so enmeshed in it each time it arises nor pushing it away and freaking out over it being there.

Yeah,

You know,

And so that that's its own training,

But it's certainly doable.

Yeah.

So so the fear is something that drives you away,

That pushes you away.

But the practice of meditation is that habit of shifting from being driven away to coming back.

And and so there is a very clear relationship between the two.

And then you can see the training effect that can happen.

Yeah.

So so again,

I'm as we talk this way,

I'm I keep coming back to that sense of feeling maybe a sense of gratitude for how we are built to have that ability to train to change and to train and to,

You know,

To to kind of intervene in our way of functioning in order to to progressively change how we function.

Yeah,

It's pretty amazing,

Isn't it,

For all the trouble we can get into.

That there is that potential always is pretty remarkable.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So,

In lots of ways,

The practices you describe are a way of making peace with what it's like to be human.

And,

And to,

You know,

To travel our journey that way.

And is that your sense of how the historical Buddha came to to develop what he did?

I mean,

In some ways,

Yes.

I mean,

I think he had.

I think languaging is difficult because when we say making peace to a lot of people,

It sounds like resignation.

And it's also it's not meant to be that way.

And I'm sure you didn't mean it that way either.

But that's the conventional misunderstanding that happens.

And so we talk a lot about things like human flourishing.

You know,

It's taking those innate capacities for wisdom and compassion and helping them get nurtured and grow and get dominant,

You know,

In this world.

And so there's a way in which we work that has to do with human nature and a different view of human nature and accepting that that we have potential.

We have we have capacity for all these things.

That's not part of most people's idea of what being a human being is,

You know.

And so I would say,

Yes,

The Buddha had he was always he's always described as a human being himself.

And it's not like a supernatural being.

And he had some very profound questions about the nature of life and happiness.

You know,

Like,

What does it mean to be born in this human body and to be so helpless as an infant and subject to the actions of those around you and then to grow up and to grow old and to die,

Whether you want to or not.

Is there a kind of happiness we can have that isn't going to get undone,

You know,

By changes that the body will make?

And what does it mean to have a human mind where emotionally we're constantly going through changes in one hour upon waking up?

We can be full of fear and then joy and then sadness and then doubt and then faith.

And is there a kind of happiness that we can have despite these kind of changes in the mind?

And of course,

He would say yes.

But that was after his own discoveries on journey of discovery.

And it said that anything he found or came upon,

Anything he became aware of,

We can too.

Through the power of our own mindfulness,

That's something that's available to everybody.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So when we look at the obstacles we're confronting,

The difficulties we have,

We're bound to find plenty.

If we just are sensitive to the fact that our efforts will be countered and likely to be undone,

Yes,

We'll have plenty of,

You know,

Reinforcement in observing that.

And so this is about shifting the focus to,

You know,

How it is that we can actually change.

Yeah,

I think that's right.

And so,

You know,

How does it feel to notice that,

You know,

To notice changes happening?

You know,

How do we,

You know,

Your sense of from yourself,

From other people that you've been helping,

There are varieties of ways in which,

You know,

We start to actually shift from feeling that,

You know,

It's all so difficult to how it's starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I don't know if it's a question of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,

But it's realizing,

First of all,

Those changing perspectives are natural.

And so,

You know,

Change is also,

It's exhilarating.

It's also frightening.

And it's,

You know,

There's a lot of uncertainty there.

We're stepping into the unknown.

It's almost the definition of change and doesn't always go in exactly the pattern we want to see it go.

But it's inevitable.

I mean,

We're changing all the time anyway.

And so nothing is static and nothing is rigid.

And it just feels that way.

And so we really pay attention.

We want to be impactful on that quality of change.

You know,

We want to have a sense of intentionality or motivation.

We want to be able to make choices that are reinforcing the change we'd like to see and things like that.

And so it's very empowering in the end,

I think,

To hold it in that way.

Yeah.

So what I'm hearing is that instead of having a passive attitude vis-a-vis it and saying,

Well,

You know,

Is it going to happen?

Or,

You know,

It's a sense of engaging with the process.

And the fact of engaging with the process is by itself empowering because then we are,

You know,

We're doing something and we're in it.

And it's going to be,

You know,

Sometimes scary.

But that's part of doing something that is a challenge.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that seems like a nice place to conclude.

But I want to check if you would want to add something to that.

I think that's fine.

Thank you.

That was a good summation.

Thanks,

Sharon.

Thank you so much.

Reviews

Ha. My friend was +just+ angry at herself for how she has been doing spiritual work but still has a short fuse. Self compassion can be helpful. I shared this talk with her. Thank you.

A lot said to think & act on. Will need to listen again.

I providentially "stumbled" upon this meditation by way of a friend's documented activity. My relationships need a hefty dose of awareness renewal and -as mentioned- looking at change from a curious mindset, so as to observe and not push away from precisely what needs our attention. I took a lot of notes and am very grateful you took the time for us to listen in. (However, I agree with CJ; I wished to hear more from Sharon, perhaps doing her own talk, not an interview.)

Thank you for sharing this inspiring and empowering meditation experience 🙏 Namaste

So good to hear Sharon talk! Thank you.