PNTV: The Places that Scare You by Pema Chodron (#44)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today as always, great book. Today we've got Pema Chodron's the Places that Scare you. Great book. 6 page PDF with about 10 of my favorite big ideas. Pema Chodron is a wonderful Buddhist monster monk who wrote this book. The subtitle is A guide to fearlessness in Difficult Times. The book is packed with wisdom, super short and simple, lots of goodness. And in this note we've got a lot of big ideas. I'm going to cover a few of my favorites right now and I hope you dig it. So the first one is this idea Pema has of compassionately interrupting our habits. She basically says, look, we have habits. We have the fear habit, the anger habit, the self pity habit, all these other habits that we have. What we need to do is we need to start observing when we fall into those habits, that habitual behavior, we want to compassionately interrupt those habits. And there are a few different steps we want to pay attention to. The first step is we need to be aware. We need to be aware of when we're falling into that habit of. Most of us just mindlessly go into the fear habit, the anger habit, the self pity habit. We have no awareness. So the first step is just to simply notice when we're falling into one of those habits. Step number one, step number two, once we've noticed and we look at that, I should say, as a positive event. In a few of these other notes, we talk about positive negativity. It's a positive thing to see yourself doing something negative. We don't need to get upset with ourselves about doing it. That's why we compassionately interrupt our habits, right? It's a very, very, very good thing to notice when we're off course and then once we've noticed that, to take the next step, which is to interrupt that habit, to interrupt that habitual behavioral pattern. What we want to do is anything that interrupts it. So when you notice that you're going down the anger habit or the fear habit, see what you can do, anything to interrupt it, right? Go out and sing and dance or go for a run up your block, go on a hike, jump on your rebounder if you've got one, like I do right over there. Whatever you can do to interrupt that habit. The issue here is that usually when we get into that, even if we notice it, we notice that we're doing this habitual thing we don't want to change. It takes an incredible amount of, of perspective and really power, personal power. Willpower to actually step out and do something different, right? Because we're so used to doing that old habit. Really big idea. The third step. You notice it, you interrupt the pattern. Then the third step to remember is do it again and again and again and again. This isn't a once in a while thing, it's a lifetime thing. It becomes our practice to observe when we're going into this habit, to interrupt the habit and then to do so consistently again, diligently, patiently, persistently, playfully. That's the way we create a new way of being. Really big idea. Compassionately interrupting habits. Speaking about that, Pema has an awesome story about the Dalai Lama and Mousetraps. So one of the things they talk about in the book is this idea that we're seduced by challenges in life or by things that bring us into these old bad habits. And. And it's kind of like cheese on a mouse trap, right? So we do these things and we know that if we eat that cheese, it's going to lead to an event that we don't like suffering, right? And the Dalai Lama tells a story that when he was a little boy in Tibet, he would like to kind of capture. He wanted to try to capture mice, not to kill them, but just to kind of have fun and play with them, right? Now, what he noticed was that for some reason, the mice in his monastery in Tibet seemed to be smarter than other mice. They wouldn't go for his cheese, or maybe they just didn't like the cheese, but they wouldn't go for the cheese. He'd set out the cheese and he'd try to catch them and they wouldn't take the cheese. And it was almost like they were enlightened mice, right? They knew better than to take the cheese because they knew there was a consequence on the other side of that. And so the Dalai Lama and Pema used that as a story for us, being enlightened mice, if you will, of being able to see what cheeses in our lives have a trap on the other side of them. So in the note, I talk about that, what are the five cheeses in your life, the things that you do even though you know there's a consequence on the other side that you don't enjoy, right? There's a trap that comes down on you on the other side. For me, things include eating a whole bag of popcorn when I watch a movie. I just don't feel great when I do that. But for whatever reason, that gets me, right? So that would be a cheese, you know, spending too Much time online would be another one, not going to bed when I say I'm going to, so I can get up and feel fresh when I get up early. Those are some of my cheeses. What are some of your cheeses? The behaviors that you do that have negative consequences on the other side of them. They have traps on the other side of them. Think about that. And then as you approach that cheese, look at it and say, look, I know there are consequences on the other side of this that I don't want to deal with. And step back, step away from the cheese. That's a really big idea. And we talk about it a little bit more in the note and. And then another really big one on the rodent theme. We've got enlightened mice. And then she says, when you hold a grudge, right, if you're angry with someone and you think that holding a grudge is somehow going to get back at them, she says, that's about as smart as eating rat poisoning. Eating rat poisoning, thinking it's going to harm your friend or the person who betrayed your trust or whatever. It makes no sense. It's stupid. Holding a grudge is poisoning us, right? So quit holding the grudge. And remember, the next time you feel angry towards someone, you just can't let it go. Let it go. And imagine that not letting it go is like eating rat poisoning. Thinking we're somehow getting back at the person that upset us. Doesn't make any sense. So there you go, enlightened mice, rat poisoning. We've got rodents going on here. Another big idea is the idea of practicing rejoicing in our good fortune. So too often we don't pay attention to all the amazing things that are going on in our lives, right? And she says we need to make that a disciplined practice. We need to make it an actual practice for us to notice the things that are wonderful in our lives, right? We talk about this in Happy for no Reason, Marci Schaimoff's great book, where she says, we need to incline our minds to joy. We've got to make it a habit to look for wonderful things. And in the note, I talk about the fact that we have a little thing at the base of our brain stem called your reticular activating system, the RAS for short. And what that does is it filters all the stimuli that come into our consciousness. Right now we're literally being bombarded by countless stimuli, right? So right now, you don't think about the cloth on your leg for your pants or your shorts or your dress Whatever it is you're wearing, until I mentioned that. Then all of a sudden you bring your attention there and you can feel it. But we're consciously and constantly unconsciously filtering what is bombarding us in our environment, right? So we're filtering that with our reticular activating system. It explains why when you want to buy a new car and you want to buy. We bought a Toyota Prius, right, A silver Prius. Now all of a sudden we see that Prius, that silver Prius everywhere. Those cars were always there. But until we said it was important to us, our reticular activating system didn't filter that car and bring it into our awareness. It's a fascinating thing. The number of cars didn't change. But our conscious commitment to making that important, all of a sudden we saw it into our lives. I'm sure that's happened to you in one way or another. Now, the same thing happens when we incline our minds to joy, when we start practicing seeing all the things we appreciate in our lives, all of a sudden we start filtering things that are coming into our experience and to see the wonderful, beautiful things rather than the things that are frustrating us. Now, the opposite holds true, too. If we constantly criticize, complain, blame, gossip, do all the negative things we can imagine, we have a habitual way of doing that, and our consciousness is literally going to filter things and we're going to see all the different things that could piss us off. It's a fascinating thing. And she says in the Next Big Idea, we talk about you kind of like the difference between planting a garden, creating a garden and planting seeds, beautiful things, appreciation and love and joy, and seeing all the wonderful abundance we have in our lives in every sense, and focusing on that consistently. It's kind of like planting good seeds, beautiful seeds in a garden that will come to fruition. On the other hand, if we think about all the things that aren't going right in our lives all the time, what we're doing is essentially pouring concrete over that beautiful garden. There's no way that beauty and love and appreciation and abundance is going to flourish in that garden. That's got concrete laid over it. Really powerful idea. So we want to incline our minds to joy. Start today thinking about all the things that you can appreciate and do that all the time throughout the day. Really cool. Really big idea. Hope you dig that one. We've got some other big ideas in the note we're not going to have time to get to, but check it out. Check out the book. Hope you enjoyed it. If you and look forward to sharing more with you soon. All right, See you.