If You Want To CHANGE THE WORLD & Make A Difference In 2023, WATCH THIS! | Mark Hyman & Lynne Twist

I believe that anybody who's alive today is here to make a difference, to make a contribution. Making a commitment that's larger than yourself liberates you rather than traps you.

People listening are probably wondering to you, how do I find this in my own life? How do I, as someone listening, navigate my own life toward a committed life that is engaged in service and being in service of something greater than yourself that Brings more joy and love and healing into the world.

Well, it's really kind of going back to the quote from Howard Thurman in the beginning that you cited. It's what gives you what makes your heart sing? And what is the call of the world that's a match for you? Like, you know, what upsets you so much that you want to passionately address it? What is what strikes a chord in your heart, it doesn't just make you upset and angry, but it reaches your heart, it breaks your heart. Where is that in your life? And what have you, you know, people, I believe that anybody who is alive today is here to make a difference, to make a contribution. I mean, the times are so epic, my God, I'm so grateful I'm alive right now. There's so much, to contribute to. There's so much need, there's so much going on. So there's room, plenty of room for everybody to get. And it's an all hands on deck time anyway. It just is. So what calls to you? What makes your heart sing? What makes you feel worthy? What makes you feel useful? And go and do that. And look all the way through your life at what you've been called to do. You know, when you were a little kid on the playground, Were you somebody who defended against the bully? Maybe you're a person who's all about justice. Maybe you're one of these people who when you were in third grade and they picked teams for kickball, you always picked the person who wasn't so good because you want to include. Maybe that's your thing. So we're called to take a stand for something. Take a stand for something. Not take a position against or for, but a stand for something that's that's worth giving your life to. And it doesn't need to be big and it doesn't need to be small. You know, I say there, you don't have a big girl or small, there's just your role. And if you play it, you'll find the meaning that you've been looking for. You know, you can be a kindergarten teacher who's just going to do it for two years. But those two years, you're going to make such a difference with those little ones. You're going to have them see who they are. You're going to have them never, ever doubt that they're worthy of the world that they're living in. You know, so it doesn't need to be ending world hunger like I or, you know, healing world like you. It can be, you know, making your town a little bit greener. So I think there's just, everybody's, if you listen deeply, you're being called right now. Everybody is because it's an all hands on deck world.

Yeah.

And we all get to play our part.

That's so true. It kind of reminds me of one of the beautiful nuggets of wisdom. Then my favorite nuggets from Mother Teresa, she said, there are no acts of great love, only small acts done with great love. And I think that's exactly what you're saying. Doesn't it be ending world hunger or healing the planet or saving the rainforest? It can be just as simple as being kind to the person you see on the street or your neighbor or doing something for your community. It doesn't have to be big, but those small things add up and they change our world.

Yeah, yeah, I love Brother David Steindl-Rost, you probably know him. You know Brother David. So he's such a teacher for me and sometimes just being around him, which I've been privileged to do, he will wake up in the morning and he'll say, sometimes he used to stay with me, he'd say, Today, I'm going to be grateful for yellow. Yellow. Everything yellow. I love these yellow pads. I love the color of that house next door. I love the sunshine. I love that woman's blonde hair. I love this banana. You know, he would just find something to be grateful for for the whole day. And just being in the presence of that is life changing. So that's an example of a commitment to really make a difference with one's life. He's such a teacher for me.

So beautiful. So tell us from that context, what does it mean to have a purpose larger than yourself?

Well, I think we get a little bit bamboozled by this wanting more of everything, more, more, more, more, more. We kind of translate that into consumerism, when what we want is more fulfillment in our heart and soul. And it just doesn't get filled up by buying more stuff or having a bigger house or making more money or trying to raise your status, even though that's kind of what the culture we live in points us toward. But what we actually, you know, what Howard Thurman's quote is so great because really what we want is we want our hearts to sing. We want to feel great about ourselves. We want to be filled with joy. And that comes from making a big difference with your life. It comes from living the way you live. I mean, it comes from realizing like when you were in Haiti that this opportunity of the life we've been given, if you think about life as given to you, like a gift you received, then you want to give that life as a gift to something that's bigger than yourself. And when we do that, it's so amazing because we think that's sacrificial and giving things up. It's kind of the opposite. I found that when you make a commitment that's larger than your own life, it gets you out of this life-starring me. And the life starring me is never fulfilling. You're always worried about, Am I too young or too old or too fat or too... Am I pretty enough or am I smart enough? A life starring me is all about measuring up or trying to fit in. But when you realize that you can dedicate your life to something larger than yourself, something you probably can't even accomplish in your own lifetime, it starts to shape you into the person you need to be to fulfill that. And so an ordinary person, you know, people ask me, Gandhi was so extraordinary, probably when he was born. Mother Teresa was probably extraordinary when she was born. Jane Goodall was probably extraordinary when she was born. Mark Hyman was probably extraordinary when he was born. I can't live up to that. But the truth is, I think we're all born the way we're born with gifts and treasures and talents, of course. But what made those people, including you, extraordinary is creating a purpose larger than themselves, which reaches back into your life and shapes you into someone capable of fulfilling it. So when you were in Haiti, for example, the situation, the circumstances being so dire shaped you into someone who could move quickly and respond accurately and be of service rather than try to fix or help, but really be of service to the people that were there and use the wholeness of yourself to make a difference. So it It's incredible how it's sort of backwards from what we think, but it really works.

It's totally true. And I think, you know, we all come to who we are in different ways. And you share a story about how when you were 14, the night before your 14th birthday, actually, your father died of a heart attack in the middle of the night. And when that death happened, it was like something stopped in your life. The music stopped. and you thought your life was over. But in a sense, it catalyzed something in you. It changed the way you viewed your life. And how did it inform the rest of your life? What did it do to inspire you to live differently than you would have as a normal 14-year-old kid just being a teenager?

Well, the circumstances of my dad's death, first of all, he died very suddenly with no warning. So he died in his sleep with a heart attack, but he was age 50, so he was really young. and he was a musician and he was a bandleader and our life was filled with music. He had an orchestra of 36 pieces, 36 men and a girl singer and it was in the big band days. And when my dad died, my mother, there are four of us, four children, she was overwhelmed because she was 46, there was no warning, suddenly her 50 year old husband was dead with four kids. She had press and she didn't know where the insurance papers were and she didn't know where the trust was and the safety box, you know, she was just completely overwhelmed. So she couldn't really do a lot of caring for us because she was overwhelmed with the public persona of my dad. And so I turned to my Sunday school teacher, a nun named Sister Benjamin. And it was so incredible because she was like a container for me to realize that I could go within that I had an inner life. Because at age 14, young girls are often kind of in love with their dad. I mean, you know, that's when you're starting to, you know, feel those, those changes in your body and your dad is your, is your be all end all. And it was like my, my world ended. And I was also coming into high school and I was a, you know, popular kid. I was a cheerleader. I was, you know, I was on the, all the different teams and stuff. So I had a Very rich and kind of visible outer life, but very little inner life. And when my father died, I kind of thought it was my fault, as children do often when a parent dies. So I went into a kind of, I was, at that time we were Catholic, so I would call it, I thought it was religious. I thought it was being religious, which maybe I was, that was the context I lived in. But I think what I was doing was developing my inner life, my inner strengths, my inner self, my inner knowing my soul. And that has served me so well that I, you know, as much as I love my father and the loss of him was this huge trauma in my life, the outcome, the way that breakdown turned into what I'll call a breakthrough was I became aware of the inner life. I became aware of the deepest part of who I was. And In that way it was a gift. And then I wanted to succeed in his name almost. It was almost in tribute to him. So it gave me a kind of a motivation, a catalytic moment that I don't know if I would have had. It ignited me. Where high school sometimes can take you off into all kinds of directions. I was really in high school, I was, I continued to be, you know, I was homecoming queen. I was president of everything. I was that kind of a kid. But at the same time, I wasn't doing it It wasn't about me, it was about earning the right to have a life that was worthy of my dad. And so I make a difference that impacts all humanity and that's when it really kicked in for me. I'm going to make a difference with my life. And then the kind of key thing that happened next is that I was instrumental in introducing Buckminster Fuller to Werner Erhard, who was the founder of EST and the Landmark Movement. and when these two characters met, I knew a miracle would occur and it did. That was the founding of the Hunger Project, a commitment to end world hunger. And then I got totally engaged and involved in that. So that's kind of the background story.

Amazing, amazing, amazing. And you also work with Mother Teresa. How did that happen?

Well, when you work on hunger and poverty and you end up in India and I spent a lot of time, 25 years, going back and forth to Sub-Saharan Africa and India, Bangladesh, places like that. And when I was first in India in 1981, a long time ago, I remember thinking, my God, I'm in India. And as a race as a Catholic, I wasn't Catholic anymore, exactly. But, you know, that kind of deep Catholic upbringing, I'd always really admired her and loved her like anybody. You know, she was so extraordinary. I thought to myself, I'm working on hunger. I'm in India. Maybe I'll meet Mother Teresa. And I mentioned to a friend, her name is Indira Coitry. I owe her so much. And I mentioned that to her and she said, oh, I know Mother Teresa. I said, you do? My God, you know Mother Teresa. She said, I'd love to introduce you. She'd love to meet you. I thought, you,'re kidding. And then it was two years before I was back in Delhi where that conversation took place. And I called in Dehra and said, I'm back in Delhi. I was working in other parts of the country at the time. And she said, Perfect, Mother Teresa is here at her orphanage in Delhi. And so I was immediately, I went to confession. I practically bathed myself in holy water. I had been to church in like 20 years. I thought, I'm gonna see Mother Teresa, my God. So I had to recover my Catholicism, at least for the moment. Cancelled everything and got myself ready and went to see her. And it was an extraordinary first meeting. I'll never ever, ever, ever forget it. And I cried the whole time. I had no agenda. It was just to be in her presence, which was life-changing for me. And then I became engaged with her. I went to visit her whenever I could. I went with her to the leprosy center. I would accompany her to Kalighat, where it's the home of the death and dying. I just couldn't get enough of her. And she was everything you would want her to be. She was a humble servant of God and she never talked about herself and she didn't talk much. But she was her work and that really, really impacted my life. I'm so privileged to have known her.

And how is your life different afterwards? What are the things that you changed about how you live and how you thought about the world and yourself?

Well, can I tell you a story about that? Yeah.

Yeah, of course.

Well, when I first went to see her, I oh, God, probably cry here. So I went to her orphanage in Delhi, which was a home for girls under two. And in India at that time, many, many girls, baby girls were given up just because they were girls. But often if they had a missing finger or they were blind or there's something wrong with them, they were for sure given up. And when I arrived at the orphanage in Old Delhi, I was walking up the steps to the door and there was a crumpled newspaper paper on the step and I picked it up, you know, because I'm a sort of a trash picker upper. And when I picked it up to throw it away, there was a baby inside. And the baby was a little girl, the size, this is the size of my hand. She was so, so small. She was like a puppy. She was so tiny. She was very, very premature. And she was alive and breathing. And so I wrapped her up in a shawl and knocked on the door and a nun opened the door and I presented this little being and they took her right away and I said she was on the doorstep and I said, I'm here for my appointment with Mother Teresa. And the woman who answered the door, she said, well, Mother Teresa is not here. She's at the jail bailing out prostitutes because we need so much help here. We have so many children. And so she said, Can you help us while you're waiting? And so I said, okay. So they put me to work. I put on an apron. There were 39 little girls under two little babies and they put me to work in a series of sinks bathing, deformed little girls, blind little girls, little babies. And I don't remember, I know this is impossible to believe, but I do not remember anybody crying, any child crying, and that's impossible. But it was so beautiful. And I remember thinking, this is my meeting with Mother Teresa. If she never comes back, this is it. I was in absolute bliss with these little babies and the nuns and the and the scene and the love. And then someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, She's here. And I went and met with her in a dark little hall, a wooden table and two chairs, and I cried all the way through. But here's the thing I want to tell you. In a certain moment in the meeting, there was a scuffle behind me and a loud series of voices, sort of angry, loud, demanding voices, and a strong aroma And then this huge, I mean huge Indian couple arrived in our hallway in our meeting. The woman was very large, very tall and also very, very wide and she had a very opulent sari and lots of bangles and a diamond in her nose and diamonds that went all the way to her ear. They were extremely opulent looking and kind of over the top people and over perfumed, over made up, overweight, over everything. And her husband was even bigger, he was this giant Sikh, and he had a big topaz on his, his, what do you call those things? Turban. He had, he had rings on every finger, including his thumb. And they came bursting in and they said to Mother Teresa, we didn't get a picture. We didn't get the picture. And I, I didn't understand what they were doing, but she stood up and they handed me an Instamatic camera, if you remember those little instamatic cameras.

Sure, yeah, yeah.

And they stood on the other side of the wall and they put her in the middle. and demanded in a kind of boisterous and bullyish way, take the picture, take the picture. So I took a picture and then the woman did, they were huge. So this man over here and this one over here and little Mother Teresa in the middle of the room, she had osteoporosis, she was all bent over. Then the woman did this, what I thought was unforgivable thing. She went like this, Mother Teresa, put your chin up and she went and pulled up her chin and held it up for the picture. And then she demanded I take another picture. Oh my God. And I did. And then they grabbed the camera and they left. They didn't thank us, they didn't kiss her, they didn't do anything. They just left and they were awful, rich, ugly, entitled people. And I sat down again, and Mother Teresa sat down, we continued our meeting, but my blood was boiling. I hated these people. How could they treat her that way? How could they interrupt my meeting? But I tried to calm myself down. And Mother Teresa was totally fine, but I was not. We completed our meeting, and then I rode back to my hotel in Delhi, which took 45 minutes. And during the time, I realized, oh my God, I felt the most profound love I've ever felt in my life sitting with her. And then this enormous surge of hate for these wealthy entitled people. boisterous, rude people. And she was fine. I was not fine.

Yeah.

So when I got back to the hotel, I wrote a letter to her, thanking her for this profound teaching. And here's what she told me. And this is what changed my life. She wrote me back and she said, you will, you are, will always be drawn. You will always be drawn, Lynn, to the underprivileged, the less fortunate, the people who are or marginalized and need your support and your love. But you need to expand your circle of love and compassion to include the rich, the entitled, the wealthy, the... Everybody's suffering. The righteous. And she said this incredible thing. She said the vicious cycle of wealth can be as intractable and as painful as the vicious cycle of poverty.

Yeah.

And your karma is to open your heart to the wealthy and expand your circle of compassion to include them. And after that, I, I really, my fundraising, which I was doing anyway, became completely transformed. And I started to see people caught in the climbing of the ladder, the trying to accumulate more, another plane, another helicopter, another island, as people that were part of what my dharma was, my karma was. And it has been incredible ever since then. That's really how I could write the book, the Soul of Money. Because I started to see we're all suffering, and many of us in our relationship with money, whether we have it or we don't have it, We, it's a place where we're not ourselves all often, where we become somebody we don't want to be, where we become greedy, where we become entitled, where we become righteous, where we become victims. And so that's when I really started to work with people and money, and that was that meeting with Mother Teresa. So that's the essence of the story. That's an incredible story.

That's a beautiful story. And I think it's true. We create judgments around people who don't fit our idea of who we should be loving or serving or be kind to. And it's created increasing divisiveness in the world and righteousness and separation and disconnection. And we're seeing it increasingly in America. We're seeing it globally. And it breaks my heart because, you know, often it's interesting. Yeah, people, I even noticed on Instagram, for example, people, when I, you know, meet with a Republican or a Democrat, I mean, whoever I'm meeting with, it's like I'm first meeting with a human being. And I'm first meeting with a person who has a soul and a heart and who underneath whatever their beliefs or ideas or ideology or pain or suffering is, there's a beautiful soul under there. And it really hurts me to see how much we've gone away from being human beings together to being our identity. And I think that's something that has to shift and change. And I think your book, your new book, is really about how do we break that down? How do we actually live a life that is not just all about our identities and our personal beliefs and needs and wants, but actually dedicated to helping each other? And that's where really the magic comes. And the teachings can be complicated and there's all these esoteric religions and ideologies and philosophies, but I think the most poignant and the simplest and the most beautiful rendition of, I think, what it is to be human and how to live a good life was Neem Karoli Baba's philosophy, which he was the guru of Ram Dass and the author of Emotional Intelligence. Daniel Goldman is a good friend and Larry Brilliant who helped in Smallpox and just all these incredible people. And Krishna Das, the musician we like to listen to. And his philosophy was really simple. Love everybody, serve everybody, feed everybody. And that's like, it's pretty much all you need to know.

Right. When it comes right down to it, it's simple. We put these labels on each other. Even the label poor and rich, I realized it's so devastating to nobody's poor. There's no such thing. People are whole and complete people living in poor circumstances. They're not poor. The circumstances are poor, but they're whole and complete people with dreams and hopes and people who are rich, live in sometimes the tyranny of wealthy circumstances.

Oh my goodness, yeah.

They're human beings. We're all kind of strong. And I really appreciate what you said because when I watch the news and it says under somebody's name that they're a Democrat or a Republican, right away I have to undo that. I don't want to know that yet. I don't want to know that ever, maybe. I just want to know, this is Mark. This is then.

Exactly.

You know, once we label people, then we can't hear them anymore. We hear only the point of views that we don't agree with or the point of view we do. And the algorithms that are now deepening and deepening and deepening and deepening our ideology by feeding us our own stuff over and over and over again in a deeper and deeper way are making it, you know, hard to get out of your own swim lane and see that there's other points of view, there's other ways to see the world. It's really, ah, yeah, pretty sure.

It's pretty sure. And America is weird because, you know, I don't know exactly the number, but it's somewhere around half or more of all Americans don't even have a passport. And so if we don't get out of our little worlds to just meet other people, see other ways of thinking and being and living, we get so locked in our worldview. And I think, you know, part of the beauty of living a life of service is you get to see things through other people's eyes, through other people's perspectives to understand their world a little bit better. and I think it makes us happier. It's kind of a trick. I think the, the, the thing that most people don't realize is that, that altruism is medicine. It actually is good for us, not just good for the people we're serving or caring for. And the biology of altruism is fascinating because it actually activates the same pleasure centers as most of the addictive drugs, like heroin or cocaine or nicotine. And so the, the dopamine we get from giving and serving. And I, it's strange to say this, Lynn, but I actually felt high when I was in Haiti. I often feel high when I'm doing the work I do because I feel like I'm doing something to just help others and make the world a better place and not focus on myself. There's something in that. I don't know what that is. I think it's, you know, I think EA Wilson wrote about it. He called it the Social Conquest of the Earth. This is a book he wrote, you know, not too long ago about the way we've evolved to help each other, whether we're ants or whether we're humans. to the whole almost world of nature and evolution, we've evolved to be in community to serve and help each other as a way of surviving. You put a human being in the woods by herself. I mean, they don't have this chance, right? So I think we forget that. So, Lynn, I know you've heard so many stories. You've been all over the world. You've heard so many wise people share about who they are and what they do. You work with incredible humans who are doing things to bring so much peace and goodness and healing and miracles to the world. So what have you learned about what makes ordinary people extraordinary? And what are the tools and teachings that help people create transformation and cause these miracles?

Well, it is this exactly the title of the book, really. living a committed life, finding freedom and fulfillment in a purpose larger than yourself. When you were in Haiti or when, you know, just your whole career, you could say. But being with, like Jane Goodall, for example. I mean, Jane, obviously everybody loves Jane Goodall. How could you not love her? She's so incredible.

Yeah.

And I've known her for years and years and years. But when she went to Gombe Stream, you know, when she was a teenager, before she even was a scientist, something to her and she paid attention to it and it was larger than her life. And so she put her life in service of that. And as you say, you know, this thing about altruism, I love hearing that. I know that to be true in my own body, you know, when I'm really serving, when I'm really truly serving, you get high. I mean, it's really, it's weird to say it, but it's true. But you can't do it for that reason. That's the thing. It's sort of a trap. you can't do it to be happy. You need to do it because you really want to serve. Yeah. You know, there's a wonderful quote from Rachel Remen, who I know you know. She says, yeah. When you're helping, you're really acknowledging that someone or something is weak. When you're fixing, you're acknowledging or saying that something's broken. When you're serving, you're acknowledging and affirming that what you're serving is whole. and that's the experience of service, which is different than fixing or helping. It's really from your own wholeness to the wholeness of those that are in your path. And I feel like I've been so blessed, my God, holy moly, I can't even believe my life sometimes. And it came that I didn't even know Jane Goodall or Desmond Tutu or know you. comes from the commitments I've made, not from my personality or not from any of that that I used to think was so important. It comes from that I've made commitments larger than myself that have given me a life I could never planned or dreamed of. And now working in the Amazon with indigenous people who, you know, they. They don't need to get a passport and see the world to understand their responsibility. for the next seven generations or the next 500 years, they are living not on the earth and they're not fighting for the earth, they are of the earth. It's almost like the earth is speaking through them and through us really. And if we realize that and we surrender to that, then we become the instrument of something greater than ourselves. And it moves through us rather than we determine I'm going to end world hunger or I'm going to save the Amazon or I'm going to heal the people in Haiti. No, it comes from something other than us and we become the instruments of something and that's, there's a surrender there. There's a courage in surrendering, but there's also a relief. I mean, it's, you know, it's my commitment. I don't have to worry what I'm going to, whether I'm going to do this or that or what I'm going to wear. My commitments wake me up in the morning my commitments tell me where to go, what to do. So it's a liberation. It's strange. Making a commitment that's larger than yourself liberates you rather than traps you. It's trying to keep your options open. That traps you. You're kind of lateral. You can't move forward. But once you choose, or it chooses you, which is sometimes really what happens, you're free. Yeah, they're free. And there's a sense of enormous fulfillment and joy.

Yeah, that's true. We think that fulfillment, happiness and joy come from things that don't usually bring them. And we ignore the things that actually are available to all of us all the time. And I think your story in India with those little children, those little babies, and what an ecstatic experience that was for you and how it shaped your view, and the juxtaposition of that with sort of the rage and hatred you felt at the same time, it sort of seems like a little bit of a crucible that formed who you were.

Yeah.

And helped shape how you have lived your whole life and led you to the amazing work you've done. I think, yeah, I remember Jane Goodall, I had the privilege to meet her and I was sort of struck by her and I asked if I could have a picture with her and she said, Let's look in each other's eyes. I was like, whoa, okay. What an unusual woman, you know, just to sort of, okay, we're not just gonna look at the camera, we're gonna look at each other. And I had this beautiful photo of us just gazing at each other's eyes and she had such a deep, deep well of love and humanity. And it was really a privilege to be with her even for a short moment. Yeah. And who else have you kind of met that's kind of inspired you in that way? Maybe you could share another story.

Oh, well, I'm going to pick an indigenous man named Manari Ushigua who's not famous to you and most of the people that are listening to this, but he is very, very important to me and to many people. He's the leader of the Zapatista people in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Zapatista people are facing extinction. There's about 500 of them left. He's their leader and he's the primary shaman. When I was with him in the rainforest in the Amazon, we were hiking and, you know, in the Amazon indigenous people, they know it like you and I would know our home. And, you know, one foot away from him or 10 feet away from him, I'd be lost forever and never know my way back to anywhere. But for him, it was his home. And we were walking through this very, very thick forest and a sacred forest for him. and he had a machete and he was cutting the trail as we go. Maybe there was a trail for him, but I certainly didn't see one. And I'm walking carefully behind him and I was a little scared. He was bare chested, had a kind of a sarong like thing on. He was barefoot. You know, there was all kinds of stuff, brambles and I don't know, mud and branches and he was barefoot and had painted his face and I had every possible thing on myself, mosquito repellent, and I was covered with long sleeves to protect myself in high boots. And we're going through the forest, and I'm going behind him, and he's very silent the way he walked. Couldn't hear his footsteps, but I'm on my boots behind him. And then he stopped and he said, Can you feel them? And it was in Spanish, and I thought, well, maybe I didn't understand, so I asked him to repeat. can you feel them? Can you feel them? And I didn't know what he was talking about, but I looked around and then he said the millions and millions of souls. And suddenly everything had a soul. For me too, the caterpillars, the bugs, the leaves, the branches, the massive trees, the butterflies, the snakes, everything had a soul. For him, that was always the case, but it never occurred to me that way. Can you feel the millions and millions of souls? And for him, we were walking through a community of souls. For me, I was walking through brambles and bugs and trying to keep myself separate from them. He was absolutely connected to them. He was one of them. And from that moment on, my experience of the natural world in particular trees and branches and vines and I have such a transformed relationship with the natural world as a community of life of which I'm a part. And then I met Suzanne Simard who I think you probably have interviewed Dr. Suzanne Simard. Oh my God, you should put her on your list. She's the scientist that has been the primary scientist to discover that the trees are communicating with each other all over the world through the mycorrhizal network and the mycelium. And that there's a real communication structure and there's mothers and father trees and there's all kinds of stuff going on that has been going on for thousands of years that we're not aware of. so now my relationship with the forest outside my window, just everything, it has a soul. And that gives me a kind of reverence that I didn't know was possible for everything.

You know, it's a beautiful story because it's true. We've sort of so disconnected ourselves from nature and have lost our relationship to things that sustained us throughout most of our evolution. And I, you know, the Native Americans also have a a similar saying, it's to all my relations, right? It means to everything, to everyone, to everybody. And it's all the birds and the insects and the plants and the animals. And it's, you know, when you see everything as in relationship with, as opposed to control over, it's very, very different. And it changes your framework for how you think about your life and how you live. So it's really clear you've had some really extraordinary encounters with extraordinary people. that have left these little nuggets of wisdom that seem to have guided your life, which is so beautiful.

Yeah. Well, I think everybody has that, you know, they just need to listen, I think, you know. Yeah. Really, it's available everywhere.

It's true. And I kind of, I read a book during COVID which was, you know, really impacted me called the Soul of America: the Search for Our Better Angels. And, you know, in that book it talked about moments in history when we were crisis points, right? When civil war and reconstruction and women's suffrage and civil rights and all these moments in history where they were really the Cold War, where there were real threats to our survival and to our survival as a nation, to our survival as a species even. And it seems that we're in one of those moments now with the rise of autocracies, the divisiveness of our society, climate change, sort of existential threats we're facing. And, you know, the question I always ask myself is, where are we? Are we, are we really at the end, or are we another moment of inflection where we, we will find our better angels? And then you talk about how, you know, living a committed life is really crucial to our human future. And I'm very intrigued by that because, you know, in searching for the question, the answer to the question of how do we how do we imagine our future? How do we navigate our way out of the predicament we're in now? How do we get back to being connected and a world where there's deeper understanding and compassion, humanity and trust and safety? How does a committed life play a role in that? What does that mean?

Well, I'll just say, I think it gives me a perspective, a way of seeing things where I can look at a larger context than the content itself. And so, for example, the pandemic and the climate crisis are two huge things that impact every living thing, but particularly the human journey. And I started to realize the pandemic is horrible as it has been and continues to be, and the people who have died and lost loved ones and been sick, I've been sick myself. The Indigenous People of the Amazon have said to us that humanity in some primordial way has been waiting for something powerful and sacred enough to disrupt our way of living that we couldn't disrupt on our own. And help us to rethink and reimagine and renew and resource the way we're living. and that everything comes from the earth, everything. This computer I'm looking at, the ear pods I've got on, you know, everything, you and me, we all come from the earth. The virus came from the earth too. And in many ways, you know, as Paul Hawken says, things are not happening to us, they're happening for us. They're happening for us. If we hold it that way, then we receive the teaching. And I think that the pandemic and the climate crisis, if you look at it this way, it could be one way of looking at it is that the pandemic is a kind of morning sickness. And when I was, when I had morning sickness, when I was pregnant, I didn't know I was pregnant. I thought I was sick. I really did. And I was throwing up in the morning and I was, you know, tired all the time and I wanted weird things. And, and then I found I was pregnant. And then it changed completely. I had a context for my illness. And so I kind of like to think the pandemic is morning sickness for a species that is pregnant with a new kind of human being. And the pregnancy might be long and painful, and not every pregnancy produces a baby. And labor might be really, really tough. But the climate crisis is major feedback from the mother that we need to rethink. You know, it's huge feedback from the mother, the mother. that we need to recreate what we mean as what we consider being a human being. So I think we're in an epic evolutionary leap and it's painful and it hurts and some people aren't going to make it and it's there's a depth to it that's beyond what we've ever identified before I think. I think it's not just multiple crises. I think the whole thing is up for grabs. and I think that's like when, you know, you're a doctor, so I know you've treated people who've been facing end-of-life illnesses and then when they don't die, they say the cancer diagnosis changed their life and they're so grateful for it. You know, that's kind of what I think is going on and living a committed life gives you that kind of a way of holding things that are difficult, looking at them as breakdowns that have the seeds of a breakthrough in them. and looking for the seeds of the Breakthrough because you've got a commitment that's bigger than your own life. And you are always looking to reframe, recontextualize, recreate in a way that you can fulfill the destiny that you've chosen for yourself or that you've been given.

So.

Maybe we're pregnant. Maybe we're maybe really pregnant with something glorious if we're willing to be open to that.

Yeah. And sort of in your book, you said, you know, any situation of breakdown holds the seeds of a breakthrough that's greater than the breakdown itself. And if you know that you're going to look for those seeds and water them, and then life gives you exactly what you need to evolve to grow, to make the difference you want to make in the world. And it seems like we're, we're as a, as a planet, as a species, as nations, we're all in the middle of it right now. where this, maybe this breakdown is, is planning the seeds for something different. Maybe you can share something from your own life that, in a personal story, something you've seen or witnessed that was a breakdown that actually helped you break through to something else that was, you know, giving birth to something different. It was something you couldn't imagine in the darkness.

Well, I, I was one of the early leaders of the Hunger Project, which became a huge Global movement and still exists in this really a glorious organizational commitment and millions and millions of people are involved in it. And I was one of the early people. So I said over and over again, and I became sort of a, I became the leader of the volunteer network worldwide, which was millions of people. And I would say all the time, I've been here since the beginning, or I'll be here till the end of Hunger or the end of my life, whatever comes first. I'm here. You can count on me. And other people would come and go in the Hunger Project, but everybody knew Lynne Twist was going to be there till the end of Hunger or the end of her life. And then I had this whole, this is a beautiful story that I won't tell here, but I think it's in the book, about being called through a series of visions and dreams to the Amazon rainforest. And I had never been to South America. I didn't speak Spanish. It was very strange to me. But ultimately I followed that call and with John Perkins and my husband Bill went to the Ecuadorian Amazon. We started the Pachamama Alliance. But I was still in charge of this massive of 57 countries of the Hunger Project. I was responsible for fundraising and volunteer participation and operations. And I had no band and I had three kids, no bandwidth to suddenly take on preserving the Amazon rainforest. But we had started Pachamama Alliance and I was being pulled in these two directions. And then I got malaria. So this is the breakdown.

I got malaria. When you were in America?

Really? Well, the malaria came from, I was still doing the Hunger Project, so I got it from, I got Vax and Ovalli at the same time. Vax, I think, from like Tana in Ethiopia and Ovalli from India. I didn't get it from the Amazon. But I got really sick and it wasn't diagnosed early on. It was diagnosed in all other ways inaccurately. So I was super sick and I couldn't do anything for anyone. And I was sick for nine months. It was a long time.

Long time.

And so I had to be in bed, you know, and before that I was traveling all over the world. Like, you know, I consider myself a pro activist, an activist for not against, but I'm definitely an activist. And so I staying home and in bed was like unthinkable for me, especially with all the responsibilities I held. But I had to because I was so sick. And by the end of that nine month period, I realized I'm not meant to continue the Hunger Project till the end, at least in that form. And I learned from my colleagues in Senegal when I went to Senegal to do a meeting with some elders. I was sitting on a dry piece of land near the ocean. It wasn't a beach, it was just like a desert. And I was with men who were 70 and 80 that were leaders of a Muslim village. And they told me they had grown up in a rainforest right where we were sitting and then they've been gone for 40 years. And I suddenly realized, oh, my God, I'm going to work in the Amazon to prevent what's happened across all of Africa that ended up with poverty and hunger and slavery and all the horrible things that have happened to that continent.

Yeah.

Really was the exploitation and the destruction of the massive rainforests that were part of the African continent. And I realized I'm going from ending world hunger in the situations I've been in in Sub-Saharan Africa and Subcontinent India, I'm going to prevent that in South America. So I made it work for myself.

Yeah, yeah.

To leave the Hunger Project and to become deeply engaged in the Pachamama Alliance. And I had to find my way through that breakdown because I had told everybody I was going to stay with Agartha forever, and I'm still there in so many ways, but now I'm working in a different way in the same context to preserve the Amazon rainforest, which is critical to the future of life. So, that's my story, too.

That's beautiful. We all have those stories. We look at those things that happen in our life that seem like they're cataclysmic events. And I had, I'd gotten very sick when I was younger in my 30s, and that's what led me to discover the value of rethinking medicine and coming upon functional medicine as a way of healing myself and healing my patients and ultimately is a way of understanding us as part of a larger ecosystem that we live in, in the earth. So it's really all connected. And that really has informed my work. And it wasn't something I chose, it was something that chose me. you know, those, those little transformational moments help, you know, direct the course of our life and, and led me to be so passionate about actually making this come to fruition, which, and to relieve suffering where it doesn't need to be. I mean, there's some things that just, you can't avoid. I mean, hurricanes and natural disasters, I mean, yes, they're maybe part of climate change, but they're, they're often unavoidable. But the things that, that can be relieved, like hunger, that's not a difficult problem to solve. There's enough food in the world for over 10 billion people. And we throw more than a third of it out. And so it's like this is a solvable problem. And I think we all have to find our, what for us actually is our North Star, the thing that keeps us going. And you talked about in your book, Living a Committed Life, it's not really about sacrifice. It's about how to live a life of service that actually leads to abundance and magic for yourself and everything and everyone in your life. So what are the kinds of lessons and teachings and things that you've accumulated through your life that are in the book?

I used to sacrifice myself for other people. I used to think that was the right thing to do. And you get completely exhausted or leave myself out of the Transformation I was trying to produce for other people and I realized that that doesn't work and it's out integrity actually. There's an arrogance actually in that. It seems so modest and humble, but there's something arrogant about it. When you're committed to transforming everything, you think you're somehow some magician rather than, you know, part of the picture is being able to include yourself in all of it. There's a quote from the, I think from the Bible, I'm not really sure where it comes from called drink as you pour. And for some reason that really got to me. I realized that I got into sacrifice, which is, you know, charity has a wonderful name and Mother Teresa really taught the world about charity in the 20th century. She was an icon for that. But I actually don't think charity is useful any longer. And I think what we need is solidarity, not charity. Something about charity is sacrifice. unhealthy, superficial in a way that's unhealthy. And it's like looking at someone as less or, I don't know, there's something about it that I realize I want to kind of reboot and talk about solidarity. That's why that quote from Rachel Remen, you know, we help, we help where we're saying something is weak, when we fix, we're saying something is broken, when we serve, we're being whole ourselves and serving the whole. and that's where you're not in sacrifice. In fact, you're fulfilled by it the way you were in Haiti. And I once was interviewed by a women's magazine called, it was the name of the magazine called Balance. And the lady who called me, who was the editor, and she said, We want to put you on the COVID and do an interview. And I said, you,'ve got the wrong person. I can't, like, I don't even want balance. I don't understand it. I don't know. how to do it. And I don't seek it, but I think it's a wonderful thing for others. And she said, well, why not? And I said, well, I seek integrity. Like, if I need to stay up all night to complete something that I promised, that that really is important to the person I promised to do, I will. Yeah.

Yeah.

But where I. Where I. Where I look is, do I have integrity? And when I have integrity and I feel complete, and whole, I'm healthy also. And I say to people who say they're burned out and they're, that I don't think you can get burned out unless you get disconnected from source. I think that's what burnout comes from. I know you work hard. I know you stay up late. I know you travel the world. I do that, too. But I love it. And then, you know, I do have my moments when I crash, but I don't want balance. And so I said all this stuff and they still put me on the COVID of the magazine. And, you know, it's just a different way of looking at life. But I do feel like I have learned to drink as I pour. And that has made my life so fulfilling. It's just like ridiculous how much joy I have been privy to and have been allowed to express in my life through really being a pro activist, being an activist for not against. I just want to say I know that there's stuff in between the vision I have for the world and me, but I'm not against it. I want to dismantle it with honor and respect. I often say we need to hospice the death of the old cultures and structures that don't serve us rather than attacks them. or try to kill them. They're dying and that's why they're making so much noise. And we can hospice, if we hospice them, they'll die a more dignified death and won't be so obnoxious about it. But when we hospice and when we midwife the birth of the new structures and systems that we now know will serve us, hospicing and midwifing we are so familiar with are really acts of witness and love and allowing dignity to be in the, in the, in, in the process, you know? So I don't know. That's where I am. Yeah.

You know, we've been talking about the state of the world and how we live our lives and how we kind of maybe reimagine our relationship to ourselves, to service, to our communities, to our families, to the Earth. And, and, you know, I spent a lot of time now thinking about the future. My children are, you know, gonna have children, hopefully soon, and their children. And I, and I kind of met that stage of life where I'm thinking about this and I'm wondering the future and it feels like a fraught moment. And I'm curious about how you think about it and given what you've seen with being in some of the worst suffering in the world and places where hunger is rampant and where there's just devastation and human suffering beyond what most of us ever seen or can imagine. How do you reflect on what's happening now and what do you think we most need to emerge out of this hole?

Well, I have grandchildren and I have children and grandchildren and I have the same concerns as you do and we all do. Like what kind of world are we leaving for them? What are they going to have on their plate? And at the same time, I also know that they're up to it. It's incredible. This is a Buckminster Fuller quote. One time he had dinner at our house and he wanted to eat in the kitchen with the kids. That's what he was. And the kids were six, eight and ten. And I thought, well, that's great for them. So we'll eat in the kitchen. Bucky wants to eat in the kitchen with the kids. So we did. And my daughter, who's in the middle one, she was eight. And she said one of those kind of kid things that are really profound that, you know, out of the mouth of babes come these amazing things sometimes. And Bucky turned to Bill, my husband and myself, and he said, he said, never forget your children are your elders in universe time. They've come into a more complete, more evolved universe than you can ever understand except through their eyes. And that really, that just like rearranged my molecules. I'll never forget that day. And, and now I look at the young people that I work with, the young people that I know, the, their competencies, their, their, their, deeply engaged in the environmental crisis in a good way. They're on the job, you know, they're, I can barely turn on my TV without my grandkids, you know, they understand this whole digital thing that's happening. And I, you know, I worry about that too. It seems so different than books and the way we were raised. But at the same time, I have so much trust in the universe, you know, that, The universe story, if you know that wonderful work by Thomas Berry, which really says that we're all children of the universe and the universe, the grace and guidance that has guided the universe to evolve to what it is now is still here. It's still here. And we're collaborators, yes. We're very powerful as a species, yes. And we've made terrible mistakes. but we're getting the feedback we need to Course Correct. And, you know, we are loved. We are loved by the universe. We are part of it. Maybe we made mistakes, but we're not flawed. We're part of the creation. And so we will find our way. And I feel like, you know, Joanna Macy is another mentor of mine. She's 93 and I went to see her when I was writing this book. And she said, I'm so glad to still be alive during the transition. We're in the great transition. And I'm seeing it, I'm feeling it. And then she said, Souls are waiting in line to incarnate so that they can be part of this awesome, amazing transition, this transformation, this epic evolutionary leap. Isn't it exciting? And I thought, oh yeah. It is. And so really it's all how we hold it. Everything's challenging, everything's hard. The news is just like, oh my God, can you even watch it? But at the same time, it wouldn't be here, I think, if we weren't up to it. And we say in our programs at Pachamama Alliance, the choices we make impact the future of life for 1,000 years. and that could show up like a burden, but actually what it does in another way, it ennobles your life. It ennobles the choices you make. It gives you the opportunity to stand tall and be responsible for the choices you make, realizing they're not just for you, they're for the long-term future of life. And how exciting is that? I mean, that's pretty cool. And I think young people know that, and I think they know that in a way that we didn't know it. And they do. And that's a consciousness that's really deepening.

The hope is in our children and their ability to imagine a different world and actually bring it into reality. So that's beautiful. If you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here. Compassion here is not is like you.

Say, different than empathy. It's not, oh, that's too bad. I feel sad for you. It's you feel the other person's pain as your own pain.

It's like a child when.