Oprah & Daniel Goleman Discuss Emotional Intelligence | Super Soul Sunday S7E2 | Full Episode | OWN

What do you really want in your life? Do you think everybody has a calling? We are all looking for the same thing. What inspires you? Can we heal from everything? How do we live an awakened life? Why do you think we're here as human beings? To say yes to life, you gotta start saying yes to life experiences. Emotional intelligence. Compassion.

Being in the flow.

How are you again?

Wonderful to see you.

Wonderful to see you. We explore these groundbreaking concepts with pioneering journalist, best-selling author, and psychologist Dr. Daniel Goleman.

Your IQ stays the same more or less through life. Emotional intelligence is learned and learnable.

I've known Daniel Goleman for over 20 years. He opened our eyes to a new way of thinking about the difference between IQ and EQ, our emotional intelligence. Daniel Goleman unraveled the mystery of the relationship between our brain, our emotions, and what he calls the scientific case for spirituality. And later, in this week's Super Soul original short by filmmaker John Chester, we head back to Appletot Lane Farms. So this book, "Emotional Intelligence," it was landmark. It was a landmark. It was revolutionary. And I, uh, later have since read that the Harvard Business Review actually called it a paradigm-shattering idea, one of the most influential books of the last two decades, Emotional Intelligence. And I had a big aha moment reading this book because it was the first time I suddenly got one of the reasons why I'd been able to be so successful in life, because there were so many people always who were smarter than I, who had higher IQs than I, who, you know, were more intellectual than I. And then suddenly I thought, "But I got 'em on the EQ." You sure do.

I got 'em on the EQ. That was the big aha for me. Because I grew up— both my parents were, like, college teachers. And I grew up with this kind of myth— it's the lie we all get in school that how well you do in school is gonna be how well you do in life. Actually, you get in life, not true. It's how you manage yourself, how you handle your relationships. I mean, Sweetie, I have to say, your empathy is like Olympic level. And I think that's one of the secrets of your success.

I didn't know that until I read this. And I thought, "Oh, that's what it is." My empathy— it's my ability to feel what other people are feeling, have compassion for what other people are going through. And not only feel that, but like internalize it.

And know what really matters to people.

Yes.

You know, I mean, I don't care if you're a valedictorian. It doesn't help you one bit toward understanding other people, sensing what they feel, knowing what matters to them, knowing how to put it. I mean, that's what you've done so beautifully.

Well, thank you for that. It's been over 2 decades since Daniel Goleman was working as a New York Times science reporter and uncovered a little-known theory, the idea that our success is not solely tied to genetics or to IQ, but also largely determined by factors such as empathy, compassion, and other emotional quotients, or EQ. His exhaustive research on how our brains regulate emotions culminated in his groundbreaking book, "Emotional Intelligence." It became a phenomenon, spending over a year and a half on the New York Times bestseller list, shifting the way we define what it means to be really smart. It's interesting because you, you share in the book why a lot of people with 160 IQs are working for people with 100 IQs or less. That's right. I mean, so the smartest people are often not the best leaders and certainly not the best bosses.

I once was giving a talk to a room full of CEOs, and I said, "How many of you were valedictorians, like, smartest kid in your class?" 200, 300 people, 3 hands went up in the room. It's not related. This is the big, I think, myth that the book shatters and that was an eye-opener for me to me is that your IQ, your academic abilities, your cognitive brilliance is not what's gonna matter the most. Actually, that's kind of threshold, gets you in the game.

Yeah.

But once you're in the game, it's how you get along with other people, how you handle yourself.

So your IQ can tell you what you can do, but it can't tell you how to do it.

And it's not gonna tell you if you're gonna emerge as a team leader, as a star. It's not gonna tell you how good a parent you're gonna be, how good a spouse you're gonna be.

What is the difference? Because we do a lot of— talk on this show about the spiritual— the spirit within things. So what's the difference between emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence? Because the essence of emotional intelligence is a sense of self-awareness, a sense of empathy and compassion. And to me, that's what your spirituality is also about.

I totally agree. I think they're on the same spectrum, but In this, you know, when I talk about it to educators, to business people—

'Cause you're a scientist first.

And I'm a science journalist. I talk about the science, and I talk about self-awareness in an everyday way. Do you know what you're feeling? Why are you feeling it? Do you know how to manage those feelings? Do you know what someone else is feeling? Can you put it together and have a good interaction and good relationship? That's everyday. Take all those up a notch.

Mm-hmm.

Self-awareness, that's deep reflection. You know, it's journaling, it's meditation, it's tuning into the spiritual within you.

Yeah, it's— self-awareness is having enough time or making enough time to spend alone so that you can be with yourself and have a sense of awareness.

And you have to make time to have that reflection. Once you have that, then you can handle yourself in a way that aligns with your own sense of purpose, meaning—

And values.

And values, exactly.

And values.

Yeah, and that's something that we need to work at a little too, I think.

Yeah, so that's the key to self-awareness, managing your emotions, Well, then after that, it's what I was saying, it's empathy.

Tuning into that other person, knowing how they're feeling. And you know, there are 3 kinds of empathy. This really opened my eyes.

I didn't know until I read it here. 3 kinds of empathy.

Yeah. One is cognitive empathy. That means I understand how you see things, what your perspective is. You know that old saying, "Walk a mile in the other person's shoe." Technically, it means I know what mental models you have. I know what language to use so you'll understand me. So that's one complete set, and it operates in one part of the brain.

And almost impossible to be truly successful in the world without some of that.

Exactly. You got to have that. You got to have that.

And lots of people have bosses who are not.

Absolutely.

Or managers who are not.

Yeah, or spouses who are not.

Or spouses who are not, which makes for poor connection and bad relationships.

And poor communication and, you know, a lot of problems, like, at work. The second kind is— it's a different part of the brain. It's the— social brain, we call it. And that's sensing in yourself immediately what the other person is feeling. That means rapport. And, you know, you're only gonna have rapport if you pay full attention to the other person. You're gonna have chemistry if both of you are paying attention. And if you're not, you're distracted, "Oh, I'm checking my thing." Not gonna happen. So there's this emotional empathy. The third kind is very important, and it's underrated. It's called empathic concern. It means If I have someone in my life who's in distress, I'm not just gonna feel it, I'm gonna wanna help them 'cause I love them. It draws on a third part of the brain, which is the— we call it the ancient mammalian system for parenting.

Yeah.

It's like a parent's love for a child. If you have that love for someone, then you're gonna be there for them. And that's a different kind. It's different than cognitive, different than emotional.

And so, The self-awareness, the ability to manage your emotions, having empathy also leads to the next thing, and that is having great relationships. I mean, automatically—

You put it all together.

Yeah, if you do those three things, you're going to have a better relationship.

Think about it. If you're out of control, you can't manage yourself, you're going to have a terrible relationship. If you don't tune in, you don't know what's going on with the person, you're going to be off. So you need to have all of those three. To have a good interaction.

So in a sense, that is a spiritual intelligence also.

Well, yeah, and that last one, empathic concern, is a basis for compassion.

Yes.

It's another way of talking about compassion, actually.

Yeah. So I built a school in South Africa, opened in 2007. Now those girls are in college. And I have 190 kids in college. And 20 of them are in the United States. 21, exactly. And I learned so much from your book in the '90s about flow and being in flow with your life. Literally, our expression in our family is about whether or not you are in or out of flow. So when things are going wrong, my kids will call and say, "Hey, Momo, I'm out of flow." Oh, is that right?

I'm having a bad time.

Yes, it means I'm having a bad time. I'm out of flow. I go, well, what are you going to have to do to get back in flow?

Oh, that's interesting.

Because your whole life is about that. Daniel Goleman was one of the first to popularize the idea of flow, or being in the zone. He described it in Emotional Intelligence as a state in which people become utterly absorbed in what they're doing, their awareness merged with their actions.

Well, the things we love doing are the things that get us in flow.

Yes.

That's the point. And so if you're in school, if you're a student, you want to be in flow while you're studying. You want to be in flow in the classroom.

Yes.

You want to love learning. If you're, you know, working in a job, you want to find a way to make that your flow.

If you—

but really, the things we do by choice, the things we do in our free time, are the things that help us get in flow. And it might be some hobby. It might be a sport.

Right.

It might be being with your kids. It could be anything. It's different for different people, but the mark of flow is always the same, and that is things are going really well and I feel really good.

Yeah.

That's when you know you're in flow.

It means you are in alignment with your life, doesn't it?

It does. It means that everything— as you put it, everything's lined up.

Everything's lined up. Coming up, you don't bring it to the table.

Thank you very much.

It's not allowed at the table. In our house, it's not allowed at the table. Why Daniel Goleman says our emotional intelligence is under siege. And later, in this week's Super Soul Coming up on "Super Soul Short," a visit to Apricot Lane, one of my favorite places. Apricot Lane Farms and John Chester's 5-year dream to bring his beloved barnyard into flow. "Super Soul Sunday," we'll be right back.

I was talking to a friend of mine, a Tibetan Lama, and he said, you know, I'm Compassion can be very subtle. It can be just being very positive toward a person, very kind, paying attention to the person. There's a spectrum of compassion. We're all in a situation in every interaction to be compassionate.

So, uh, you had this wonderful talk about compassion, about why aren't we more compassionate. Why do you think we are not? More compassion.

This feeds right into what we're talking about. You know, if someone is in need in your life, or on the street, or whatever it may be, and you're self-absorbed, you're thinking about your to-do list or you're on your cell phone, whatever, you don't have the attentional bandwidth to even notice them, let alone empathize, let alone tune in, let alone see what's going on, which can lead you to helping. So the road to compassion starts with pure attention. If our attention is being robbed, there was a saying a cognitive scientist said long ago. He said, "What information consumes is attention. A wealth of information means a poverty of attention." Interesting. And we get 5 times more information a day than we did 5 years ago.

Right, so you're not really focusing on anything.

Exactly.

So there's no sense of mindfulness about anything.

And I'm glad you brought up mindfulness, 'cause that's the antidote. The antidote is getting intentional about your attention. And that means being mindful, noticing where you're noticing, noticing what you're doing. Is it aligned with what you intended to do?

Mm-hmm.

Mindfulness means keeping that alignment.

So, can we all improve our emotional quotient?

Absolutely. And that's one of my strong, uh, points about emotional intelligence is it's not a fixed thing. It's not like your IQ. Your IQ stays the same more or less through life. Emotional intelligence is learned and learnable. We start learning it in childhood, and if we need to get better at something, like I worry too much, we can do that. The mind is still what we call plastic. The brain is plastic. Changes through life. And if you take a systematic approach, like with worry, with anxiety, you can— purposely learn a way to relax and use mindfulness to notice when you're spinning out and then apply that. And that changes your pattern.

And you believe that we should start fostering that emotional IQ in the cradle, actually.

Well, I think that parents— you know, good parenting really means helping a child feel that they're cared about, tuned into, empathized with. And any good parent does that. Mm-hmm. But if you have that base, that secure base, then you can— care about other people, then you can manage yourself better. So I think that parents are the first tutor in emotional intelligence.

So we can teach ourselves and we can teach our children to have a higher emotional quotient.

Absolutely. And in schools, this is called social emotional learning. There's a lot of it going on. They're hoping to make it national, part of the national standard.

It should be national.

I think it should be international.

I think it should be international.

Well, you know—

I have learned at my school that that is what really matters. I started out looking for one thing. And now I know that having, uh, basically, what social-emotional learning is is developing character and a value system and what a lot of educators now call grit, that thing that allows you to keep going and have resilience in the face of failure. And to— self-awareness, to know who you are. All of those things. Far more important actually, or certainly equally as important to how well you do in math and science.

Another word for grit is technical, it's cognitive control. I was in a school, second grade classroom in Spanish Harlem. These are kids who live in the projects next to the school. Terrible, you know, the drug dealers are the most successful people.

All the worst conditions, yes.

Worst conditions you can imagine. Every day, they go, each kid goes to their cubby, gets a little stuffed animal, finds a place to lie down on the rug, puts that animal on their tummy, and watches it rise on the in-breath and fall on the out-breath, count 1, 2, 3 on the in-breath, 1, 2, 3 on the out-breath. Teacher says this keeps them calm and focused all day long. And this is basically a lesson in mindfulness.

It's a mindful meditation.

And it turns out that what— from a brain point of view, what you're doing is strengthening the prefrontal cortex, which is the mind's executive center. It's the boss. It's the one that learns. It's where we plan, where we decide, and where we become mindful. And that, uh, it turns out that if you take kids 4 to 8, measure their ability in this, and then pick them up in their 30s, it predicts their financial success and their health better than IQ or the wealth of the family they grew up in.

Really?

It's a They're totally independent. So what you're doing with your kids, with your students, with your children, when you help them delay gratification, focus where you need to focus— and focusing, by the way, is a muscle. Attention is a flabby muscle in this culture. That's why we get seduced by our tech devices all the time. But these kids are in the mental gym. And it's literal. Every time you bring your attention back from being distracted, like, oh yeah, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, you're strengthening the circuitry for focusing, for paying attention. And that's a key to success in life.

Being able to focus.

Being able to focus where you want to, when you want to.

Yeah. 'Cause doesn't focus also determine flow?

You know, that's interesting you say. The trick to getting into flow, there are two. One is to balance your skill level with a challenge. That's the classical way. The shortcut is to pay full attention to whatever you're doing right now. Mindfulness gets you right into flow.

Right into flow.

Right into flow.

Right into flow.

Yeah.

You say that today our attention is literally under siege. I love that expression, under siege. Tell me what you mean by that.

Well, here's what I mean. I mean, we could be— let's say we're out to dinner, Oprah.

Right?

Mm-hmm. And the question is, what do we do with our smartphone?

You don't bring it to the table.

Thank you very much.

It's not allowed at the table. In our house, it's not allowed at the table.

So you go— I've gone to— over and over, my wife and I are out at a restaurant, we put our phone aside. But you look around, you know, candlelit room, nice tablecloths, and the couple is looking at their smartphones, not into each other's eyes. It's like— It's stealing life is what it's doing. Life is with people. Life is in those moments when we connect, and it's continually interrupting. I'm worried about kids. I'll tell you why.

No, you said it's continually— I love the line that you used. It's continually seducing us and selling us. That's why we're under siege, because we've been seduced and a lot of people now officially addicted.

Well, I think that the culture is addicted. Yeah. Yeah, it's very pervasive. And I'm very concerned, particularly about kids, because the brain was not designed for this. The brain is designed to learn these skills we're talking about, social and emotional skills, face-to-face.

That start when you're little, right?

It starts from the day you're born. You start to pick up this stuff, and the brain is shaping itself by what it observes. And I've seen this, you know, 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds playing a game. Absorbed in this screen, ignoring everything around them, I'm worried about what's happening to the developing brain. I'm wondering, are they really gonna learn the emotional and social skills they need? This is a— for me, another argument for putting this in schools to be sure every kid learns these skills. Otherwise, it's an unprecedented experiment with an entire generation of the human race. This is happening globally. We don't know what the consequence will be in 20 years.

Because the truth of the matter is, when you're 2 years old and you are consistently on a little machine or device, that is affecting the way your brain forms.

And you're missing out on some crucial lessons, whatever they may be. You know, when a mom talks to an infant who doesn't understand language, the kid is already learning how you interact. That's really important. When a kid is playing some goofball game football, you know, 2-year-old, 3-year-old video game, the brain is not getting what it needs. It's malnutrition.

I love the Bloomberg study that recently revealed people with a smartphone or tablet spend an average of nearly 3 hours a day looking at them, and that's about 45 days a year when you add up all those hours spent on our mobile devices. Isn't that incredible?

That's stunning.

Yes.

So it's invaded our lives for better or for worse.

Yeah.

I think that there— I mean, listen, the technology cow is out of the barn, and this is where we are as a society. I think the conversations that we're having and the conversations that parents should be having with their children is how are we now going to manage it.

Exactly. It's a conversation every parent should have with a kid. But then you have to be it yourself to have that conversation.

That's right. That's right.

It takes some self-awareness.

It's difficult to have that conversation with your children when you're always on— when you're on the phone having the conversation.

Mom, they'll say, you do it yourself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Coming up— I love this story. Can you tell this story about God walking down the street with the devil? Super Soul Sunday, we will be coming right back. Bestselling author and psychologist Daniel Goleman has spent years researching the dangers of power-seeking spiritual leaders and the perils of groupthink. Is there a difference between spirituality and religion? I love the story. Can you tell— I know you know there is a difference. Can you tell this story about God walking down the street with the devil?

So God and Satan are walking down the street. And God bends down and she picks something up and it's translucent and glowing in her hand. And Satan says, "Hey, what's that?" God says, "This is the truth." Satan says, "Let me have it. I'll organize it for you." And I really believe that. That I think that truth, I think that finding your real connection with a higher force is very personal. I don't think we need organizations to manage it for us.

Do some people need organizations?

I think organizations can help, for sure. You know, I start this book, Emotional Intelligence, with the story of a man who was a bus driver in Manhattan who, you know, I got on the bus on a very hot, humid day in August. It was awful, and I didn't want to talk to anybody. Didn't, you know, no interaction, like everybody else in the city. And I get on the bus, he looks at me, he says, "How's your day been?" He really looked at me. That kind of shook me up.

Yeah.

And he spoke to me. Then I noticed he's talking to everybody on the bus. "Oh, you're looking for suits? There's a great sale here. Did you hear about the movie in the cinema here? The great Matisse show on the— on a—" People get off that bus and they— he'd say, "Have a wonderful day," and they'd say, "Thank you." He was an urban saint, that man, spreading good feeling in a city that really needed it. But I later found out He was a pastor of a church on Long Island. He saw the people on his bus as his flock. He felt that he— they were his people. So he naturally reached out. He naturally connected.

He was ministering and as he was driving the bus.

And the lesson for me, and this has to do with your earlier question, what can we do? It doesn't matter what we're doing supposedly. It's how we do it. You can always use that interaction to help the other person, even if you're just helping them feel a little better. Mm. That's an act for good. There's this— one of my favorite sayings is that nobody knows enough to be pessimistic.

Interesting. Nobody knows enough to be pessimistic. All right. Explain that.

Okay. Well, something good could happen that you don't know about. For example, I'm very passionate about the impact of human behavior, human activities, the things we buy and do on the systems that support life on the planet. You know, when we buy something, if you look at its history, its whole life cycle, it degrades in some way or in many ways the systems of meth— you know, their technical systems support life. And you could say, well, you know, we're in slow-motion suicide. That's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is, you know what, we need to reinvent everything. Young people today are very creative. In the future, things can happen. We could do things differently in a way that will be compatible with nature. We didn't know the impacts when we invented, you know, this glass. Well, this glass is made with Bronze Age technology. You take some sand and add chemicals and heated at very high temperature for a long time and has huge negative impacts over its life cycle, particularly if you think of all the glasses made. However, there's— there are totally different ways to get to the same thing, a container for liquid. And let's let future generations come up with that and change the course. Instead of us being on this, you know, doom and gloom, we can be hopeful. So that's a way in which Pessimism means you just don't know what's going to happen.

Coming up, Daniel Goleman shares the lessons he's learned from his 30-year friendship with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

It's very interesting. The Dalai Lama is such an unusual person.

And later, in this week's Super Soul original short, how filmmaker and farmer Jon Chester overcame his own pessimism to bring to life his vision. Of a farm at one with nature. We'll be right back. 30 years ago, a young Daniel Goleman was teaching a class at his alma mater, Amherst College, when he had a chance encounter with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. An unlikely pair, the science-based author and the Buddhist monk, formed a deep and lasting friendship. The two meet regularly for what Daniel Goleman calls extended dialogues, discussing everything from neuroscience and ecology to compassion and empathy. I love this new book, A Force for Good: The Dalai Lama's Vision for Our World. So you wrote the book with the Dalai Lama?

Well, I wrote the book— it's very interesting. The Dalai Lama is such an unusual person that the people around him said, "Would you write this book?" It's for his 80th birthday. Because you can say things about him he would never say about himself, the Dalai Lama. I was there when he won the Nobel Prize, just by accident, and I was there at the press conference. The first question was, "How does it feel to win the Nobel Peace Prize?" And he stopped and he said, "I feel happy." He paused, then he says, "For the people who wanted me to win the prize." I happened to have had tea with him the day before with a friend who's a producer, and he talked to the producer about using media for positive messages. He never mentioned the fact that he had just gotten the call saying he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

That's an unusual human being. That's a very different algorithm emotionally.

He didn't say, "Guess what?

I just got the call that I got the—" Who wouldn't do that?

But he— and he really genuinely has— a universal compassion. He— I think he's the person I admire the most in the world today.

Wow. So, and why did you write the book then?

Why did you write the book? Uh, I wrote the book because I feel that his message is absolutely essential for the course of the world. And I felt honoured to be asked and to have the opportunity to take his vision for the future and put it in as readable a way I could so that people would be inspired.

In Chapter 2 in "A Force for Good," you talk about emotional hygiene, which I love the idea of that. What is it, and how do we practice good emotional hygiene? Well, you know, emotional hygiene, he says this.

Dalai Lama says, you know, we teach kids physical hygiene—wash your hands, brush your teeth—but we don't pay attention to emotional hygiene. Actually, he's talking about emotional intelligence. Tuning into what you're feeling, managing your distressing emotions, marshaling your positive emotions. Absolutely. And tuning into other people.

That's emotional hygiene. So on page 198 of "A Force for Good," you put the negativity of our daily news into perspective. I mean, I thought this was brilliant. You write that on any day of the year— y'all are gonna want to tweet this and quote this right now. On any day of the year, the denominator of kindness will be vastly greater than the numerator of cruelty. How'd you come up with that?

I think that's amazing. Well, I was at the Times for a long time, and I'm watching journalism in action. And it turns out that the news is really for the limbic system. The news, the headline news, these deaths, train wreck here, hurricane— is about threats. It's about things that scare us and that we need to be prepared for. That's a very primitive part of the brain, the limbic system between the ears. It's the emotional brain. And the news is constantly pumping out the bad stuff for that. But what is the news?

It's constantly pumping out fear. Fear. Exactly. It's set up to create fear. It's a fear machine. And it's so interesting that when I read this, I got a big another big aha, reminding myself of why I personally left the news business. Now, my friend Gayle, CBS This Morning, she loves it. She loves the news. I personally felt that it was not in flow with my spirit, 'cause I felt every day I'm going out and I'm coming up with the worst story to try to attract people to watch.

Well, actually, this is one reason I love what you do, because you're focusing on the good The kindness every day is like, you know, what a mom does for her kids. It's what people do for the people they love, who they care about, or just being considerate, being civil. And there's so much more of that going on in any given minute than the things that make the headlines. But you see, the brain receives it disproportionately because it's headline news. You know, it's what's on the 24-hour news channels.

So literally, our brain takes— our brain handles or remembers negative better than it does positive.

Yeah, and there's a survival reason for that. What is the reason for that? Because in evolution, we needed to know what was dangerous in order to survive. We need to be able to think about it.

Don't go that way again. Yeah. 'Cause there's a lion down there.

The problem is that that brain designed for, you know, 100,000 years ago now makes us— wakes us up in the middle of the night and we ruminate. We go over those worries over and over. Unnecessarily. Sometimes you can't stop it and it doesn't do us any good. And I think the news feeds that.

The news feeds that. Yeah.

And the news is a narrow slice and a carefully curated and selected piece of reality. So this is what everyone's focusing on today. Tomorrow it's going to be something. It might be, you know, someone's beheaded somewhere. Yes. You know, it's what's going to fascinate us and what scares us fascinates us. So there's a kind of a psychological trick going on there, too. The psychological trick— Is that what scares us fascinates us. Because we have to think about it. That's the way the brain is wired. And that means that we can get this disproportionate sense that the world is going out of control, when actually our lives are perfectly under control. You know, we— When you're mindful.

I know. I try not to let stuff in that I cannot control. Or affect, and if it's gonna cause me to feel negatively, then I don't.

The other way to do it is to be mindful of your reaction to the news. Mm-hmm. And that is, I think, one of the most useful things I've done in my life, is to be able to change the relationship, my own relationship to my own thoughts and feelings, and have more choice inside. Because if you just, for example, you read a scary headline and you, you know, you get agitated and then you worry about that. You take it in, and you let it control you instead of taking what you need to from it and then moving on. Mindfulness lets you let go of it and go on.

Coming up— What's the greatest lesson the Dalai Lama has taught you? We will be right back. What's the greatest lesson the Dalai Lama has taught you?

The greatest lesson he's taught me is that the world is not as bad as we think, and in fact, each one of us has a way we can make it a better place. The message that he gives all over the world, and he gives in the book, is that each of us can find a way to act now to improve The future. Yeah.

Sister Joan Chittister was just on here, and she was saying— when I was saying, "What can we do?" She said, "Do something. Everybody can do something." Exactly. And he—

you know, it's just—

It all feels so big, though. But even in here, you say the Dalai Lama says— I mean, our world problems are gargantuan. They're— you know, it feels overwhelming sometimes that one person can do anything. But in essence, what you're saying is something that Maya Angelou taught me. You plant the trees and the seeds for whose shade you may never stand. And he says the same thing.

He says, "Act now even if you won't see the fruit of the action in your lifetime." Yeah.

So how could each of us begin in our own way to be a force for good?

Every one of us has something we can do to make the world a better place. It might be as simple as— Spending time with that lonely old lady down the street, going to a soup kitchen, you know, building houses, helping build houses for homeless people, trying to change policy. Each one of us has a lever in the world or a set of levers that we can use in some way to improve things. We just have to think about it. It takes a little mindfulness.

Coming up, one of our favorite places to go for Super Soul original short films. The founder of Apricot Lane Farms stayed true to his His intention, despite the raw reality of life on a farm. One of the wonderful things you talk about here are the stories we tell ourselves. How important are the stories we tell ourselves in affecting the way we see ourselves and move through the world?

The stories we tell ourselves give us implicit limits and possibilities. And so it's very important to have a story which lets you be the fullest you that you can be. Because if your story you tell yourself is, "Oh, I'm no good at that," or, "I'm stupid," or, you know, if it's a negative story, then you're not gonna try. If it's a hopeful story, a story that lets you risk and learn, then you'll be your best self.

Yeah, and as the Dalai Lama says, We can each start with where we are and with who we are.

That's where we each begin. And then he says, "Act to help yourself, to help other people." It's interesting. He says compassion begins with this emotional hygiene, with getting yourself in shape, and that lets you open your heart in a way that you can be really effective.

But he was also— you were also talking about it, Bhikkhu, how every single thing we do— 'cause everybody thinks that if you're gonna make change or you're gonna transform your life, it begins with big stuff. Everything we do— this is on page 215— has some effect. Even a simple act, the Dalai Lama said, although it might seem insignificant, when we multiply it by billions of others who might do the same thing, we can have an enormous impact. As simple as turning off the light when you leave a room matters. I mean, I just love the simplicity of that. When you think about yourself turning out the light, and a million other people turn off the light, look at the light, look at the electricity, we all say.

And he says, you know, we do this all in connection. We do it in unison. The force for good that he's talking about is each one of us multiplied by all the rest of us. Mm-hmm.

When you were doing the book, did you sit down with him? Did you talk to him?

Yeah, I interviewed him for several hours. But I've also known him for many years. He feels we're all the same human being. And he relates to everybody equally, and I respect that so much.

I've learned a lot from that. I've learned a lot. I want to thank you for offering the planet this idea of EQ and how powerful we can become through empathy, through self-awareness, through building relationship skills. And I think that that's really going to be one of your great legacies for all of us. Thank you.

It's very kind. And I want to thank you for being a force for good. Mm. I think that's your legacy. Thank you.

Daniel Goleman, thank you. Thank you. In this week's Super Soul original short, filmmaker John Chester's dream for Apricot Lane Farms began with a deep conviction. But sticking with that vision would take John down some of the most challenging and rewarding roads. Here we are! Apricot Lane Farms.

My wife Molly and I set out to create a farm with a biological system capable of regenerating itself.

There's Todd, the happiest dog in the world.

Unlike how it was treated in the past. The chemical sprays had killed most all of its biodiversity. No birds, bees, or butterflies. This is what we're fighting. The soil was rock hard and dead. Our hope was to rebuild this farm without the use of conventional pesticides and antibiotics. And most farmers called our mission naive. Except Allan, a farmer who would become our mentor. Our goal is the highest level of biodiversity possible. So biodiversity was our mission. Sheep, cows, chickens. Did they all make it? Looks like it. We started stocking the farm with every animal you would see in a children's book. Holy cow! Baby ducks. And a pig we would name Emma. We planted hundreds of varieties of orchard trees and vegetables. We even restored wildlife habitats. It was insane.

You have to be very patient. But exciting.

Can you go up there and see where we are? The trees were starting to grow. The animals were having babies. Our progress was impressive.

It's happening faster here than I've ever seen it happen.

But our idealistic vision was about to be tested. Allen became seriously ill and could no longer be our mentor. Our new mama pig got sick. Lambs struggled. Snails attacked our trees. There were still no ladybugs seed box to protect our crops from aphids. A drought threatened our water supply. We were in over our heads. You could feel the skeptics gloating. We began to wonder if our standards were unreasonable. The rains did eventually come. And as the soils got healthier, the birds and the insects showed up. The engine of the farm's ecosystem had been restarted. But that wasn't what turned it around for us. It was in those moments we felt embarrassed and defeated where we knew we couldn't just stop because an idle position would not have provided us with answers. So instead, we focused on the cadence of a walk. And then we arrived at a place far greater than we had imagined. So our answers were found all in the rhythm and flow of nature's forward motion.

Girl! No!

Girl!

By John Chester, be sure and check out his page on supersoul.tv. Happy Sunday, Super Soulers.