Meditation, Kindness, and Compassion: The Secret To Your Life and Financial Abundance

Very best kind of meditation is the one you will do.

Welcome to the Doctor's Pharmacy. This is Dr. Mark Hyman, and that's Pharmacy with an F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter. And I think you're going to believe this conversation matters a lot because it's about a topic that matters to all of us, which is our emotional intelligence. And our guest is none other than the creator and founder and author of the book, Emotional Intelligence, which has been an iconic book in the world for the last decade since he wrote it because it speaks to something that we all need more of, not more smarts, but more emotional smarts, which is what actually makes you happy and successful. And that is what Daniel Goleman has spent his life focused on. He's the author of Emotional Intelligence. He wrote a book with Richard Davidson called Altered Traits: the Science Reveals How Meditation Changes yous Mind and Brain and Body. This is a really hardcore scientific book about the power of meditation to change the structure and the function of your brain, and if nothing else, it will force you to meditate. I just recently went over to visit Daniel at his house, and he says, after I wrote this book, I got so excited about it that I started meditating all day. I spend my mornings meditating. He's got a whole meditation room room at his house is fantastic. And this is a guy who's not been new to this subject in any way. He's a frequent speaker around the world. He has examined how social and emotional competencies impact the bottom line of businesses. He's written for the Harvard Business Review. He's actually written for the New York Times for years. He's been named one of the 25 most influential business leaders by several business publications, including Time Magazine, the Wall Street Journal. He writes on topics including self-deception, creativity, transparency, meditation, social and emotional learning, eco-literacy, and the ecological crisis. Okay, he's got a book even called Ecological Intelligence, which I think is so important because it speaks to something that we don't talk about very much, which is what is the impact of all our behaviors, actions, and purchases on our planet and the world we live in? And we're going to talk about that. So, Welcome, Daniel.

Well, Mark, it's such a pleasure to be here.

So Daniel and I are friends. We've been together many years and have had great conversations about everything ranging from food and meditation to the Dalai Lama. And what most people may not know, and I want to explore this with you, is that you were a journalist, you were a student at Harvard, and you went to India and were inspired to go there with a group that met this guy named Neem Karoli Baba, who was a guru. He was Ram Dass's guru. And there were a lot of people who came out of that group that have been hugely impactful in the world. You in emotional intelligence, Larry Brilliant, who's a doctor who helped in smallpox and was the head of the Google Foundation, Krishna Das, who's inspired millions with his music and chanting and many other people sort of came out of that. And how did that experience affect you? And tell us a little bit about how you ended up there and how it maybe influenced this whole idea of emotional intelligence. Sure.

Well, so Mark, I was a graduate student in clinical psychology at Harvard and I found out that I had a traveling fellowship. It was part of my package and going to Harvard. I said, wow, because I had just met Ram Dass. Ram Dass had just come back from India. Ram Dass, by the way, had been in my program five years earlier under the name Richard Alpert and been booted out of Harvard.

Why?

Because he was giving psychedelics to undergrads. Yeah. And with Timothy Leary. He and Tim Leary were both in the program. So the echoes were still there. And here I got very interested in meditation. And the faculty thought, oh, no, Consciousness again. They really were against it. But they couldn't stop me. I had one friend on the faculty, helped me go to India. And there I met Neem Karoli Baba, who was an old yogi. He had devoted his life to meditation, to yoga, to spiritual practice. And he was different than anyone I'd ever met before in the coolest way. He was someone who was absolutely present, completely loving. He was someone who just radiated this aura of well-being. And you just love to hang out with them. In fact, in Hindi, they have a word for this. It's called Darshan, means to go to sea. It means you just hang out with these beings.

You just chill.

Because it's contagious. And then I thought about my professors at Harvard who were some of the most famous psychologists of the day. And you know, Neem Karoli Baba was someone you could see day or night. And those psychologists were people who you could see like between two and three on a Tuesday. Right. It was a very different orientation.

There was no Darshan with those professors.

I mean, this yogi was completely open-hearted and these people were very, you know, brass tacks academic. And there's such a world of difference. I thought, you know, there's something here that Western psychology needs to know about because it says that there's a larger potential for human growth and development and well-being than we have realized in those days. Clinical psychology was mostly like, well, you meet someone, what diagnostic category do they fit in? That's right. Like it's very reductionist. It's not, how could this person open their heart? How could they be someone who's equanimous? How could they be kind, clear and calm?

It was more pathological treating the disease.

Rather than creating a world- It's probably like medical school for you. Yeah, exactly. And so this was a completely different way of looking at people.

And a much better one, I thought. So how did it influence you? What did you take away from that experience? How was it informed the rest of your life?

Yeah. So I felt I had a mission. And the mission was to be a translator and to bring the news of this other way of seeing human potential to Western psychology and to help people who were going into psychology or who were interested in well-being to follow this track instead of one that I thought just didn't really lead anywhere helpful.

Yeah, and people seem to have different kinds of experiences than you'd get when you go to a psychologist, right?

I would say completely different.

Well, in what way?

Yeah, well, this now gets into the book I just finished on the science of meditation. So I came back to Harvard and I thought, I thought, you know, I want to do my dissertation on meditation and show that this actually does something beneficial. Because nobody believed it at Harvard in those days. And there were only like three published articles that I could find that were about meditation in any way. It was like, it was desert. So I did my dissertation on it. And my fellow graduate student, Richard Davidson, did his on it. And now, you know, many decades later, we've come back to it. There's more than 6,000 peer review articles on meditation, and they show that it alters being. It is very profound in ways that I had guessed at, but I couldn't prove.

Yeah.

But now the proof is there. It's like, it makes you calm, and it helps with manage what's called the amygdala. The amygdala is the emotional center's trigger and radar for threat. It's the fight or flight center.

Exactly.

Yeah, and it pitches you into anger or fear or whatever in a second. And meditation helps you manage that very powerfully. It also, it's a direct- so it's.

Great if you're in a relationship with somebody so you don't react and freak out and yell.

Something happens during an amygdala hijack that you need to know about in a relationship. And that is this little known, but cognitive science says memory hierarchies reshuffle and what is salient or relevant to what you think is the threat. And remember, this is your loved one, is what you remember most easily. So my advice is do not try to answer the question, why am I with this person at that moment? Because it'll be harder. So my friend John Gottman, who studies marital fights, says what you should do when you're both in the heat, peak of the heat, separate 20 minutes. That's the amygdala calm down, then come.

Back and do a meditation.

Well, or at least do whatever is going to help you calm down.

Yeah.

Anyway, so one of the big benefits is calm. Another one is you get very focused in this day of digital distractedness. Lord knows we need the ability to focus where we want, when we want, more than ever. and it's very clear from the data that meditation, which is basically an exercise in attention, helps strengthen the circuitry for paying attention. Wait, wait, wait.

I just want to emphasize what you just said there because strengthen the circuitry for attention. So in other words, your brain is like a muscle that if you exercise in the right way, you can train it to be better at things.

It's called neuroplasticity.

Yeah.

And science now tells us that the more you practice and work out a brain circuit like a muscle, the stronger the connections get, the better it works. So the basic move in meditation, if you say mindfulness, very popular these days, mindfulness starts with watching your breath. You put your mind on your breath. You watch the inhalation, the exhalation, and you know what? Your mind's going to wander. Wanders 50 of the time. Harvard research tells us. and you notice it wandered and you bring it back. That's the rep. The basic rep is noticing that it wandered and bringing it back. It's just like going to the gym. Every time you lift a weight, you make that muscle that much stronger. Every time you notice your mind wandered and you bring it back, you make the circuitry for paying attention that much stronger.

That's right. So that is a powerful idea that you can actually train your brain, like you can train your muscles. You can condition your brain like you can condition your body.

And this is one of the big, differences I saw with the psychology that I knew at the time was that nobody thought you could change the brain. It was just a given. You worked within those parameters. You took the limits that you had as how you'll always be. And these Eastern psychologies said, hey, no, this is just a starting point. But if you practice, it's interesting they call meditation practice, practice. Yeah. Because you're practicing.

Yeah.

You're practicing. You're getting used to making your mind more flexible, more focused, more calm. The. The bonus is, if you do loving kindness meditation, it works out a different set of circuits, like working out different muscles.

Yeah.

And it makes the. The male mammalian caretaking circuitry, which is a parent's love for a child, stronger. So people who do that kind of meditation actually become kinder. They actually are more generous, more altruistic. so it depends what you do as it does, you know, when you go to the gym, whatever you work out is, is what you can improve. And same with meditation, whatever kind of meditation you do, that's where the benefits will be.

Yeah. And it's interesting because most people think, oh, meditation is a waste of time. What am I doing? I'm just sitting there, staring at my navel. But it actually has this powerful effect on so many different.

Yeah.

The aspects of life. You wrote this book, altered traits, where you actually talk about how it changes. who you are in a positive way.

Exactly. So the naive notion that working out mentally is a waste of time just doesn't understand what the benefits are. Like I said, you get more calm, you get more clear and focused, you get kinder, calm, clear, kind. That's actually a better year. It makes you happier. It's all about well-being, Mark.

Yeah, I mean, it's true. I studied Buddhism when I was in college. to these 10-day Zen meditation retreats. You'd come out of there feeling you just took LSD, everything was crystal clear, it was just everything just seemed magic and beautiful. And then I kind of went through having medical school and becoming a parent and I kind of fell off it. And a number of years ago, I picked it back up again in a way that is really profoundly impacted me. And I noticed that I don't get upset or triggered or angry. Well, there was one time my wife said I got angry. That was when we checked in a hotel. We were first kind of getting together and there were two double beds and it was, I was super tired and I lost it. But other than that, I don't think I was meditating that much. I know I was, but I was like, I was sort of over the limit. But I usually notice that I'm not triggered even by stressful events.

That's another thing. the changes are subtle. All of a sudden you notice, I'm not getting angry. Well, you have to notice harder to notice you're not getting angry. Yeah. But, you know, things that would trigger you in the past don't trigger you as much or as often or as strongly. Or if they do, you recover more quickly. Yeah. Which is the technical definition of resilience is how long it takes you to recover from peak of arousal to getting back to calm. And the studies that we looked at in altered traits make it very clear that this happens. And there's a dose response relationship. The more you do it, the stronger the benefits.

Yeah, what is interesting is in your book, you looked at different kinds of meditators. So there's the beginners. And there's a lot of benefit you get from just doing it.

We were surprised right away, like the first 10 hours, a practice, you get benefits that are measurable.

You don't have to be in a cave for nine years, right?

No.

And the benefits accrue very fast. But then there's the kind of Olympic meditators, right? The guys have been meditating literally nine years in a cave every day all day, and you put those people in brain scans and you look at their brain waves and you found some amazing stuff.

Their brains are different in good ways. One of them is, I really like, something called the gamma wave. We all get gamma like when you have a great idea or when you picture very vividly like biting into a peach and it's so crunchy and the smell and the sound and the taste. When that comes together, you get a gamma for about a quarter second. These yogis.

That's why I eat peaches a lot.

These yogis have gamma all the time.

Unbelievable.

It's never been seen before. When, if you, a couple of remarkable things about them. Another is, I was in the lab when the first yogi was run, and for statistical analytic reasons, this isn't in an fMRI. An fMRI is like a human cigar case, you know, you just put in this giant magnet that whirs around you. Some people are so frightened of the MRI, they have to go in a practice MRI to get rid of the fMRI. Oh, it's scary.

I meditate when I go in there because I don't freak out.

So this first guy, yogi who goes in, these yogis were flown over one by one. So the first one goes in and they say, okay, we want you to do four different kinds of meditation. And do the meditation for 60 seconds, then you'll hear a buzzer, then nothing for 30, and then 60 again, and then buzzer, nothing 30, like four times for each meditation. I don't know about you, but if you or anyone listening to this meditates, it takes my mind a little while to settle down.

Yeah.

But these yogis could do it instantly.

Wow.

And the readout showed that each of those four meditations, there was visualization, concentration, open presence, whatever it was, they could do it immediately. And there was a unique profile for each. So in other words, their brains are really flexible and they have them under just unbelievable mastery. And then there are things like, and.

Structurally they're different too, right?

What happens, this is really encouraging for someone in my age group, the brain ages more slowly the more you meditate. And there was this one of the 14 yogis who was like the superstar, like when he did compassion, his circuits for happiness, interestingly, talked about well-being, activated like 700 to 800%. 70-800% has never been seen. It's not thought to be possible.

Like somebody lifting 2,000 pounds of weight.

But think about this, the moment he thought of being compassionate, he got happy. Yeah. Like big time.

Well, that's an interesting point because what we know is that altruism, and in a sense that's compassion, triggers the same pleasure centers in the brain as heroin. or cocaine, and it's much safer.

It's a little trick. So the Dalai Lama has always said, the first person to benefit from compassion is the one who feels it.

Yes, that's right.

That's very well put.

Yeah, it's so true. And you know what's fascinating is, I was listening to Michael Pollan, who's going to be on our podcast, talk about the effect of psychedelic drugs and the research going on around how they affect the brain. And he says they suppress something called the default mode network, which is a new area of the brain that was recently discovered that it seems to be where the ego lives, where the sense of separation from- Our thoughts of our.

Self, my worries, what's wrong in my relationships, all of that is default.

-Right, it's the I, the little I of the little self, which is all about the threat to the ego, which is protective and defensive and fearful, and it's what we want to protect and control things with. And when that area gets suppressed with psychedelics, it allows you to feel one with the world and connection to everybody and love and your little self gives way to the big self. And the same thing happens with meditation.

Well, there's a difference. Fascinating. It's a very big difference. We call our book Altered Traits, not altered states. Because Michael is talking about an altered state. The minute that drug leaves your body, I'm sorry, that self comes back. So meditation changes the brain in a lasting way. That is the altered trait. And it is a very important difference.

And that is what causes suffering, right? According to the Buddhist philosophy, suffering is your attachment to things being a certain way, which is usually drawn by your ego.

Yes. And liking or disliking this or that, and worrying about this thing and that person and all of that. The ego is the source of suffering. And that is one thing that we found is that the part of the brain where the ego lives, so to speak, gets smaller. It reduces in meditators, in yogis, in long-term meditators.

That's fascinating. So was there any other wisdom that came out of that altered traits book and things that people should really know?

Well, I think the bottom line is that meditation changes you in beneficial ways. and the very best kind of meditation is the one you will do. I don't recommend any brand. It's whatever you can stick with because they all seem to have the same general benefits.

And you don't have to be in a meditation hall in the Himalayas, you.

Know, wearing a... You can do it on the subway. Don't do it while you're driving, please. But if you're a passenger, you're free to do it. you can do it anywhere that you can put aside everything else.

Yeah.

And make a space for yourself, which it's in itself is a luxury these days. A time and a place where you're just there for yourself.

I've even meditated in lectures sometimes. I'm like, that's boring. I just closed my eyes.

Wherever you can do it.

I put on my Bose headphones on the plane.

Nobody's gonna bother you. Yeah, that's the only thing. It has to be, 'cause you don't wanna have to pay attention to other stuff. That's the point.

Yeah, and just to touch back on what we said, you don't have to be an Olympic meditator to get the benefits. We know even in people who are beginners, who have done it for weeks or days actually start to see benefit, and it seems to improve the immune system, increase stem cells, increase brain connections, increase neurogenesis, which is new brain cells, It helps to regulate inflammation in the body. It's pretty extraordinary.

And it's free.

And it's free. Meditation is medicine, just like food is medicine. I think it's so powerful. Now, you also, aside from all this work you've done in meditation, you came out all this work around emotional intelligence through understanding some of these concepts. And the emotional intelligence work was a pretty new idea at the time.

You know, emotional intelligence actually was not my idea. Everybody thinks it was. No, I thought it was. No. Peter Salovey, who's now the president at Yale, wrote an article in a very obscure journal called Emotional Intelligence. I was a science journalist at the New York Times. Oh, so you wrote about it. I just made it famous because that journal doesn't exist anymore. It would have gone into oblivion if I hadn't rescued it. But I thought, what a great idea, how counterintuitive. It's an oxymoron. You don't put emotions together with intelligence, but actually it's about being intelligent about emotion. So I think the fact that I had immersed myself in meditation and in an Eastern framework made me more open to seeing that this could be a very powerful idea. I particularly argued that we should be teaching kids the skills of emotion. The skills are fourfold: self-awareness, Self-regulation, empathy and relationship skills. These are the life skills.

And empathy is kind of like compassion.

Empathy is the root of compassion. There are three kinds of empathy. This is important to understand. There's cognitive empathy. I know how you think. I know the terms you put things in. I know your mental models. It makes me a very good communicator with you. I know how to put things so you'll understand it. However, the second kind is emotional empathy. I feel what you feel. These are operated. They operate in different parts of the brain. The third kind, I think, is the most important. It's called empathic concern, and it uses same circuits as mammalian caretaking. It's a parent's love for a child. And this means not only do I know how you think and how you feel, I care about you because you can use the first two for manipulation. Yeah, there's a. A book now saying, you know, empathy is. There's a dark side to empathy. That is the dark side. That you can use your ability to understand how the other person is thinking and feeling to make them do what you want if you don't have the third kind. The third kind is the inoculation. If you care about them, if you're concerned, you're not going to do that. You're going to become compassionate, basically.

That's incredible. So what does it actually mean when you say someone's emotionally intelligent, how do you break that down?

I would say that they have strengths in all four of those areas, that they're self-aware, they know what they're feeling, they know why they're feeling it, maybe they've done some therapy work, for example. They've looked deeply in their patterns. My wife, Tara Bennett-Goleman, wrote a wonderful book, Emotional Alchemy, about the emotional patterns that are very common, that come up particularly in close relationships, the triggers, like fear of abandonment, emotional deprivation, whatever it may be, and how mindfulness can help you begin to shift that so they don't get you so upset all the time. Anyway, the first one is self-awareness. The second is self-awareness.

Meditation helps.

Meditation is self-awareness. Think about it.

Yeah.

And then meditation helps you with the other aspects which are managing your emotions, particularly the upsetting ones. You don't want to squelch your passions and pleasures, but it's the ones that trigger you that you want to get a handle on. And also being adaptable, being able to flow with changing demands, being able to achieve your goals. Turns out that achieving goals means that you are able to activate what it will feel like and look like when you get there. That keeps you going despite setbacks and obstacles. Turns out the same part of the brain gets stronger with meditation. So those are the self-mastery parts of emotional tones. Then there's empathy in relationship. Empathy is tuning into the other person. People never tell us in words what they feel. They tell us in tone of voice, facial expression, all kinds of other ways. Can you pick it up or not? And then what do you do with it? Can you use that in a good way? Can you use it to benefit? Can you work well with that other person, for example? In school, it means can you get along with other kids? Can you settle arguments without having a fight? Can you work things out? So it's very important. So I argued every kid should have this education. Why should we only give it particularly, it turns out that when businesses do studies themselves of what makes someone outstanding, It's emotional intelligence. It's not IQ. IQ gets you in the door. You need an IQ about a standard deviation greater than the norm, about 114-15 to get an advanced degree. But then you get a job with other engineers or accountants, they all have that. So there's what's called a floor effect. It doesn't matter. It's not going to make you outstanding. What makes you different is that you can manage yourself well. you can achieve your goals, you're not getting triggered all the time, you empathize with other people, you can work well on a team. So if you look at what businesses want, it's emotional intelligence. So why aren't we teaching this to kids in schools? This is what's gonna help them be better spouses, better parents, better community citizens, and also not only better workers, probably leaders.

Yeah, right. So you do teach leaders how to do this, right?

Oh yeah. Harvard Business Review has had me write several articles on leadership and emotional intelligence. In fact, the first one I wrote, what Makes a Leader, was their most requested reprint ever for quite a long time. It may be number two now, but it came out years and years ago.

Wow, that's amazing. What did you say about that?

What I said was that think of the leaders you love and the leaders you hate. that you've known, the best boss and worst boss. And if you list the characteristics of the best boss, ask anybody, any group, they'll come up with emotional intelligence. And the worst boss is someone who lacks it. You don't want to work for someone who doesn't have emotional intelligence.

Yeah, they make your life miserable.

You want to quit that job.

Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting how you brought these concepts into workplaces, into schools, into your coaching program, into your teaching and lectures. And you always go back to the well. You know, 30 years ago, you met the Dalai Lama. You came to Amherst, which is your alma mater, and you formed a really deep and lasting friendship. You've worked with him on all sorts of projects and books. And you have these extended dialogues with him discussing neuroscience, ecology, compassion, empathy, you part of the Mind and Life Institute. I actually was reading the book that you wrote about the ecology, ethics and environment. Fascinating.

Which was from a dialogue with him.

Yeah, from a dialogue with him.

Yeah.

So, what are the sort of main things that you've taken from those conversations that have changed the way you think, feel, that has informed your way of being, living? What are the nuggets from the Dalai Lama that you've brought with you over the years?

Well, you know, I think the bottom line from the Dalai Lama is kindness. I mean, the technical term is bodhicitta, but being kind to yourself, there are three kinds of kindness.

Yeah.

Yeah, kindness to yourself. Fostering well-being is kindness for yourself.

Which most people don't know how to do.

Well, that's why we have this podcast. And the second kind is kindness for the people around you, tuning into other people, caring about them, helping them if you can. And then the third is the greater kindness, kindness for the world at large. And I think that's where the environment comes in. For example, I feel that there's a great blind spot in how we operate today, in that even though we love our children, we act as though we didn't care, and we do it inadvertently. And it has to do with the choices we're given and not given. The things we buy, the things we use, are degrading the environment in a way that is going to impact our children's lives and their children's lives terribly.

That's a beautiful kindness for yourself, which is a big hurdle for a lot of people because there's a lot of people who don't have great self-esteem, who have self-loathing, who criticize themselves. I mean, if most people said to their friends what they say to themselves about themselves, they wouldn't have any friends. That's right.

You know, I remember early on in these dialogues with the Dalai Lama, he said, English is lacking a word. Compassion in English just means for other people, you need self-compassion. He's talking about kindness for yourself.

Yeah, and then kindness to others, and then kindness for the world we live in. It's a really radical way of thinking. We think of it as maybe not protecting ourselves or not taking care of our own, or it becomes this very narrow world we live in. It's very limited and you see this divisiveness that's going on in the world right now and it's the furthest thing from kindness.

He said, whenever you make an important decision, ask yourself three questions. Who benefits? Is it only you or a group? Only your group or everyone? And only for now or for the future?

Great questions. That's like the Maimonides quote, which is, if I'm not for myself, then who.

Will be for me?

Who am I? And if I'm only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?

Exactly. I don't know who cribbed it from whom.

Somebody stole it. Maybe the Buddha.

Wisdom of the universe.

Somebody. But it's an important idea, which is, you know, yes, you have to consider.

The implications of what you do.

Yeah. It's so powerful. What else does the Dalai Lama share with you that you want to maybe share with us?

Well, I've been in several of these mind and life dialogues with the Dalai Lama. One of them was on destructive emotions. And he chose the topic. He said, make it on destructive emotions. He used that term. And it turned out that in the West, we thought of destructive emotions as an emotion that becomes harmful to yourself or to other people. He said in his framework, a destructive emotion was anything that destroyed your inner equilibrium or made you limited in how you saw things. So he's. He's had a kind of higher standard.

Yeah.

Which I thought, wow, that's interesting.

It's taking you away from what's true. And, yes.

And not only. Not only what's true, but what is kind.

What is?

Kind.

Kind, yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. My mother often tells stories of my grandmother and how she was with her when she was a kid. And she said she would come home from school and she said she made this friend or that friend. And my grandmother wouldn't say, Are they smart? Are they pretty? Are they this or they that? They say, Are they kind?

Really?

Are they kind?

She knew something.

Yeah. And she was deaf. She was uneducated. She never went to school, I think past the eighth grade. And she had this deep wisdom about the importance of kindness. And my mother taught me that. I think it's really true.

It's beautiful.

It's very beautiful.

But I think every kid should learn this. There's now curricula on compassion and kindness, K through 12. It's part of what's called social-emotional learning, which teaches the elements of emotional intelligence. Along with all the academics, it doesn't take time away.

That's true. And what you really brought from the Dalai Lama and from Neem Karoli Baba and all these ancient traditions is something which we really lacked in this world. We have this extraordinary technological revolution. I mean, we've got supercomputers in our pockets with all the knowledge of the entire world, literally at our fingertips at any second within instance.

You can know anything.

And yet we've completely ignored the technology that was developed in these ancient traditions where there was nothing except the exploration of the mind and the spirit and the emotions in the deep way that is just as deep as the exploration of our current artificial intelligence. It's extraordinary to me that we really have sort of ignored this treasure trove and think, oh, these are just old Tibetan monks or these old Gurus and it's kind of woo-woo and weird, but they weren't woo-woo. They were deeply curious about the nature of the mind and the nature of emotions.

They have very sophisticated models of the mind and they're working models that are very robust. They've been in practice for thousands of years now. And our models of the mind are not that robust.

Turns out he didn't have it all right.

And I think we have a lot to learn from the East in terms of an internal reality.

Yeah, it's pretty extraordinary. So taking that lens and refocusing it on compassion for the world, which is sort of what you're talking about. You wrote a book really with the dilemma for the dilemma called the Force for Good, which is about really bringing kindness in the world and how we can break through and be a force for good in the world. And it sort of piggybacked on another book you wrote called Ecological Intelligence. So, what is a psychologist writing about ecosystems for an ecological intelligence? Because it seems disconnected, but in a way it's very, to me it seems very relevant.

The two books are quite connected. For one, The Dalai Lama makes three points. I wrote Force for Good for his 80th birthday, kind of a birthday present. It was his vision for the world. And he said he encouraged people to do three things. One is to adopt what he called emotional hygiene. Get it together.

Wow, that's a great concept, emotional hygiene. You brush your heart, what, mental floss?

It's a kind, calm, clear. Yeah. Well-being. Yeah. Get it together yourself. Then he said, adopt an ethic of compassion, caring about other people. And then the third thing he said is act now in whatever way you can. He said, don't care if you won't live to see the fruits of your action, but start now. Each of us has a sphere of influence. Each of us is a leader in some sense. Each of us has something we can do. We have skills. We have position, whatever. And he named three or four areas. One was the gap between rich and poor. The second was us and them thinking, like they're- We don't have that.

We don't have that in this country. I don't know what you're talking about.

And the third was the environment, the planet. He said, you know, Earth is our home and our home is on fire. We need to do something now. And that tied into the book I had written on the environment, ecological intelligence, where I argued that capitalism operates on what's called transparency. You don't invest in anything without knowing all the numbers. But it's very selective transparency because we have a concept that some accountants made up called externalities. Externalities are, if you take this glass, this glass can be broken down in a methodology called life cycle assessment into 2,000 separate steps. From the time it was sand to the time you throw it away because it's broken. And each of those steps can be analyzed for impacts on air, water, soil, carbon footprint, water footprint, so on.

Human health?

Human, yes. Social impacts, health impacts. toxicity of people who are working with the materials. And you can rate a glass compared to another glass on a plastic cup.

A plastic cup.

Or a plastic cup. And if we had that information, by the way, that methodology is proprietary now, companies do it, but they don't let the public know what the answer is. Oh. So the methodology exists, the data exists or can exist, And if we had that at point of purchase when we're paying for the glass, like, oh, it costs 99 cents and it gets zero stars on environmental impact because it actually really is bad for the environment. But this other one costs 99 cents and it's got two stars. If I knew that, I'd buy the better one. But we don't have that information. If we had it, it would create a market force that I think would have a huge impact on improving how we live on the planet.

Yeah, there's a term for that called true cost accounting.

Exactly.

Which is what is the true cost of whatever it is you're buying on all these aspects that you talked about, human health, the environment, soil, air, water, workers' rights, I mean, pretty much everything.

That's right.

And what happens is that our market system doesn't account for these costs. There's a concept that was developed years ago by a British farmer called the Tragedy of the Commons, where there were common grazing fields and anybody could use them. And basically they were overrun with cows and they overgrazed and they destroyed the commons.

Because it would support 80 cows, but everybody brought 40 and there were 100 people that brought 40.

Exactly. And then it's been expanded to talk about ideas that are more relevant today, which is how we use our natural capital, our human capital, our social capital, our economic capital in ways that actually are depleting that capital that are often irreversible and we don't account for that in the price of what we're buying.

Exactly. And one reason we don't is that the brain was designed during the Pleistocene that this was even before the ice age, the human brain, and it was designed to help us survive, and the dangers that we face now in the degradation of the planetary systems that support life, we don't see. They're imperceptible. They're too macro or too micro, so we don't see them. And you know what else? The amygdala doesn't care. The brain's radar for threat shrugs because it's not going to eat us.

It's not an immediate threat.

No, but it's a terrible threat for our children and grandchildren. We need a workaround for that too.

I had this view that was little rose colored glasses of indigenous cultures and historical humans and how they lived in harmony with nature. And I just had this stupid idea. And then I read this book called Sapiens, which documented how wherever we went, we kind of raped and pillaged and destroyed the environment and we moved on to a new space. The problem is, one, we run out of space, and our ability to harm the world today is so much greater than it ever was. So, the scale of the problem is much bigger. And in a way, what you're talking about with emotional intelligence, with bodhicitta and kindness, with the kinds of empathy and thinking that the Dalai Lama talks about, those are some of the things we need to start cultivating so we can kind of reimagine our relationship to our place and reimagine our relationship to each other.

It brings an ethical dimension which changes everything actually. Because if we really cared and wanted to put our caring into effect, we would change things. And when I say we, I think it would have to be a critical mass of people, not just one or two.

Yeah. So what do we have to get like a million people meditating?

Well let's start with your listeners.

Yeah, it has an impact and we think we're powerless. we're victims, we think we have no ability to make an impact or change. It's just not true. We do. It's the little actions that create the big effects.

I think the big change will come from younger people. I think that older people are kind of set in their ways. Younger people, companies want them as lifelong customers and will listen to them more. And it turns out that they have a stronger sense of purpose and meaning in life. and has been true of previous generations. And not only that, I think they care enormously about the environment.

Yeah.

So I, my hopeful thought is that younger people will demand what we're talking about.

Yeah, I think it's right. I think the millennials are more conscious about what they're eating. They're more conscious about climate. They're more conscious about the impacts of what they're doing. This one young woman who's created this little website called Trash is for tossers. And it's how she, you know, has two years of garbage in one 16 ounce Mason jar.

Of her own garbage.

Yeah, because she.

Yeah, exactly. So it's changing your life cycle. However, that I, I compliment her, I praise her, but she is making choices within the ones we're given. And what I'm saying is we need to change to. broaden the choices we're given because they're not enough.

So what do we have to change?

Well, for one thing, we need a real cost accounting and we need it to be transparent. One of the premises of capitalism is transparency. We don't have it for environmental impacts at all. Let's get that to start with. That would make a huge difference. Then there would be a strong business case for companies to chase the consumers who who care. And younger people are going to care more and more. Yeah.

There's true, the unintended consequences. And I mean, not all companies are evil or they're not trying to do bad things. They're just doing what they do. And the structures or systems for holding individual or companies accountable for their behavior just doesn't exist. So for example, we grow corn in this country in a massive scale. And for every pound of corn that we grow, we lose a pound of soil. and we are losing our topsoil in a way that is preventing us from being able to sustain food or humans on the earth. So it's estimated in 50 years the way we're growing food now, we'll basically eradicate all the topsoil turning everything into deserts and there'll be no food for us. Or we don't account for that in the price, or we don't account for the fact that all the nitrogen that we're using to fertilize fields in the Midwest is draining to the rivers, going to the Gulf of Mexico, and killing all the seafood in there and literally we lose 212,000 metric tons a year of fish. So who's paying for those fish that we're killing that doesn't then provide food for us? I mean, that's not in the price of your high fructose corn syrup soda. Maybe it should be.

It should be. I think it definitely should be.

It should be, right?

Don't you think so?

I do and I think the transparency thing is so key. How does this actually happen? Because you and I get this, I think people listening might get this.

There are accountants who can do, there's a methodology, it's called life cycle assessment and there's a discipline that does it, industrial ecology. It's taught at MIT, it's taught at many schools. However, right now, the only people that employ someone who does life cycle assessment are companies who keep the information proprietary.

Why do they want to know that even?

I don't even know why they want to know it. Because if they knew it, they'd be.

Liable that they knew it and didn't do anything about it. It's like Monsanto knowing about the harm of glyphosate and suppressing it.

Tobacco companies, they may be sorry that they did it, I don't know. But one day everybody should know, that's the point.

That's the point. And should this be mandated by government policy?

Well, you know, something else is happening that I've noticed, a little beneath the radar, but I mentioned that younger people are more purposeful and more meaning-oriented, have a stronger sense of ethics. Companies who want to attract and retain the most talented people are starting to think, oh, maybe we should pay attention to their ethical sense because then they feel good working for us. So it's a little bit of a Martian takeover strategy where the young people who are coming into companies may transform them too. So it might be a change that comes from within, I don't know.

Different values, yes. It's really true.

But I think that I'd like to see emotional intelligence curricula speak to this dimension. I proposed in a later book that we add to just emotional and social competencies, mindfulness and attention training and meditation, because it fosters well-being in the ways we describe. and then a emphasis on compassion and an ethic of caring and also systems thinking. So you understand the complexities you're dealing with and you can leverage them in the best ways. Dalai Lama, interestingly, is also an advocate of that. He says, if you're going to solve a problem, understand it very deeply first. before you act.

Yeah, well, you know, what you're saying is all connected because if we want to solve these problems, then we have to compassionate circle of kindness and empathy and both for self and other.

We have to widen the circle of caring to include everybody.

Yeah. And so in a way, you can start by meditating, right?

It's actually meditation that does that. Yeah. Loving kindness meditation.

Yeah, it's so powerful. Well, you've been really an icon in this culture. You've, you brought this concept of emotional intelligence to so many people. You've gotten people to think about it in companies and in families, and you've been a conduit for all this ancient wisdom through your incredible rigor and science. It's just really extraordinary. And you created a program called emotional intelligence coaching certification, where you can become an emotional intelligence certified coach, or you can actually get coaching. So tell us a little bit about that.

Well, I, I thought about what's the most powerful way for someone who wants to up their emotional intelligence to boost it, to do so. And I thought, well, a tutorial. And what's a tutorial? Coaching is a tutorial. It's a one-on-one so in our program, you start with getting a full diagnostic. It's like if you went for physical or went for functional medicine, you get a, a profile of what's strong, what needs help. And you can do that with emotional intelligence, you know, or do you need a little more like how to keep your eye on the goal or how to be empathic or how to work well with other people, whatever it is, that's where you want to work. And if you have a coach, someone who can help you improve that particular thing, then you have a faster learning curve. So we developed a program where people can get coached and also people who are coaches who who want to work in this area can get expertise. And I feel that it's just a logical addition to the school programs. It's like adult education.

Yeah. And you can get it in person, but you can also get it online.

Absolutely.

And you can go to keystepmedia.com, keystepmediaaltogether.com, and you can learn about the program, where to take it, how to find it, and actually, I think honestly, it should be mandatory for everybody in school. It should be mandatory for every CEO, everybody in every company, pretty much everybody on the planet.

Thank you, Mark.

I do, because all these issues we're talking about, we need to be able to build a culture of people who can think and be and act in different ways that is not so divisive and segregated and hateful and in the amygdala hijack, which we are, which is really unfortunate. And I think On the extremes of the political spectrum, you do see through brain imaging the ones who are the most sort of reactive are having all this amygdala hijack going on.

There's a lot of amygdala politics in these days.

Yeah, it's unfortunate. Your work has just been so inspiring to me. Your friendship is really special to me.

Likewise.

I keep learning all the time from you and I hope everybody listening enjoyed this conversation. If you did like this conversation on the Doctor's Pharmacy, please share with your friends and family on social media, Twitter, Facebook, wherever you go, sign up for this podcast, everywhere you get your podcasts, and leave a comment because we really love to hear what you think. And we'll see you next week on the Doctor's Pharmacy.

Thanks, Mark.

Hi everyone, it's Dr. Mark Hyman. So two quick things. Number one, thanks so much for listening to this week's podcast. It really means a lot to me. If you love the podcast, I'd really appreciate you sharing with your friends and family. Second, I want to tell you about a brand new newsletter I started called Mark's Picks. Every week, I'm going to send out a list of a few things that I've been using to take my own health to the next level. This could be books, podcasts, research that I found, supplement recommendations, recipes, or even gadgets. I use a few of those. And if you'd like to get access to this free weekly list, all you have to do is visit DrHyman.com/picks. That's DrHyman.com/picks. I'll only email you once a week, I promise, and I'll never send you anything else besides my own recommendations. So just go to DrHyman.com/picks. That's P-I-C-K-S to sign up free today.