Latest / Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman / Joseph DeNicholas – Seeking Sanity

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Joseph DeNicholas – Seeking Sanity · Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman

0:04
Speaker 1: My name is Victor Furman. Some call me the Voice.
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Speaker 1: I've always been fascinated with human nature, spirituality, science and
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Speaker 1: the crossroads at which they meet. Join me now and
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Speaker 1: we will explore these topics and so much more with
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Speaker 1: fascinating guests, authors and experts who will guide us to
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Speaker 1: Destination Unlimited. You've played the game, built a life, tried
0:38
Speaker 1: the hacks, maybe even done some therapy, and still here
0:42
Speaker 1: you are stressed, anxious, frustrated, and exhausted. The truth is
0:49
Speaker 1: that everything you've tried was built on a lie that
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Speaker 1: you'll achieve peace and happiness by putting all the puzzle
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Speaker 1: pieces in place, or doing more of the same, just better.
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Speaker 1: My guest this week on Destination Unlimited, engineer turned therapist,
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Speaker 1: Joseph de Nicholas, dismantles the modern myths that have kept
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Speaker 1: you stuck and offers an honest, refreshingly practical path to
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Speaker 1: overall well being that has transformed his life and the
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Speaker 1: lives of his patients. No fluff, no empty affirmations, just
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Speaker 1: deep insight, precise practices, and the wake up call you
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Speaker 1: didn't know you needed. Joseph de Nicholas is a dynamic,
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Speaker 1: challenging licensed therapist whose work bridges science, spirituality, and healing.
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Speaker 1: With degrees in electrical engineering, business, and clinical social work,
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Speaker 1: he brings a rare interdisciplinary perspective to both clinical practice
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Speaker 1: and contemplative training. His website is unbreakableink dot com and
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Speaker 1: he joins me this week to share his path and book,
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Speaker 1: Seeking Sanity, How to Cultivate peace, happiness and well being
2:02
Speaker 1: in a World Gone Mad. Please join me in welcoming
2:07
Speaker 1: to Destination Unlimited, Joe de Nicholas. Welcome, Joe, Thank you
2:12
Speaker 1: very much. Pleasure to be here. Joe, you went from
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Speaker 1: a highly successful career as an integrated circuit design engineer
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Speaker 1: and semiconductor technologist to a licensed therapist. Please share with
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Speaker 1: us your early path and the initial scientific pursuits.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. So, you know, I kind of received
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Speaker 2: the same guidance most people get in high school, you know,
2:36
Speaker 2: trying to pick a major, and they say, well, what
2:39
Speaker 2: do you like? And I said, oh, I like science,
2:40
Speaker 2: and they said, we'll go be an engineer. And so
2:43
Speaker 2: that was about as much guidance as I received. And
2:47
Speaker 2: so I went into electrical engineering and started designing integrated
2:51
Speaker 2: circuit chips and then actually got an MBA and went
2:55
Speaker 2: into management, and that was all going very well. I've
2:59
Speaker 2: all has been a very voracious reader. I read the
3:03
Speaker 2: entire Cyclopedia as a kid. I thought that was normal,
3:06
Speaker 2: but apparently it wasn't. But I was always a very
3:12
Speaker 2: anxious person, and at some point in my journey it
3:18
Speaker 2: became time to deal with that, and I went and
3:22
Speaker 2: saw some therapists and wasn't really satisfied with the answers
3:28
Speaker 2: I heard, and so I dove into the problem of
3:32
Speaker 2: human happiness and suffering, which led to studies in Western
3:38
Speaker 2: psychology and neuroscience, and also Eastern psychology, Buddhism and Hinduism,
3:46
Speaker 2: and then became fascinated with consciousness studies and pursued that
3:53
Speaker 2: very heavily, and started meditating a lot, and actually found
3:58
Speaker 2: a good therapist who could support a path, and that
4:04
Speaker 2: finally culminated. I kind of realized that we're all kind
4:08
Speaker 2: of failing a test we've been given the answers to
4:11
Speaker 2: in terms of in terms of happiness and suffering. And
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Speaker 2: I had some very wrong ideas about about happiness and
4:19
Speaker 2: peace of mind and how they're achieved. And once I
4:22
Speaker 2: kind of unwound all of that, I decided that I'm
4:26
Speaker 2: really a caregiver inside, and I wanted to follow my
4:30
Speaker 2: heart's passion of helping others, and so it kind of
4:36
Speaker 2: all culminated to go through yet another career transition and
4:41
Speaker 2: become an author and therapist.
4:43
Speaker 1: What challenges did you face during this transformation?
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Speaker 2: Oh? Many? Yeah. The first thing is you have to
4:55
Speaker 2: really be willing to put down all the things that
5:02
Speaker 2: you use to stay afloat. What I've learned through meditation
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Speaker 2: and just the work in general, is just how much
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Speaker 2: our minds use our daily comforts and distractions to prevent
5:20
Speaker 2: ourselves from experiencing that which really bothers us. And when
5:27
Speaker 2: you when you take those things away, you're left with
5:30
Speaker 2: your mind. And what I learned early on was my
5:33
Speaker 2: mind was not a was not a very pleasant place
5:35
Speaker 2: to be. It was locked up in self absorbed rumination.
5:39
Speaker 2: And so I think the the primary challenge I faced
5:45
Speaker 2: was facing myself. And once you do that, the rest
5:50
Speaker 2: of the past gets a little bit easier. Nothing nothing's easy,
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Speaker 2: but also life changes. I got divorced. In addition to
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Speaker 2: the career of transitions, it is my social circle also
6:03
Speaker 2: changed because what I valued in life and what I
6:06
Speaker 2: like to talk about, what I don't want to talk about.
6:08
Speaker 2: I don't like to gossip anymore. It all changed, and
6:12
Speaker 2: so there are a lot of headwinds against change. And
6:17
Speaker 2: in addition, you start to live a life that goes
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Speaker 2: against what kind of society wants you to do, and
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Speaker 2: so you have to you have to establish for yourself
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Speaker 2: and realize that you're going to be operating a little
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Speaker 2: bit outside of the grind this idea of just this
6:33
Speaker 2: relentless pursuit of happiness that we seem so obsessed with
6:37
Speaker 2: in the West and America in general. You kind of
6:42
Speaker 2: give up on that, but the world doesn't really want
6:46
Speaker 2: you to give up on that, because that's the strategy
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Speaker 2: they're following, and even your family members and friends don't
6:51
Speaker 2: necessarily want you to give up on that. And so
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Speaker 2: it's just a matter of rebalancing and and I think
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Speaker 2: that's the main thing. Though there's there's a lot more
7:00
Speaker 2: changes coming than you might think at the outset in
7:04
Speaker 2: terms of a journey toward happiness and true stable peace
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Speaker 2: of mind.
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Speaker 1: What inspired you to write your book Seeking Sanity?
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Speaker 2: Good question. I write in order to organize my thoughts,
7:20
Speaker 2: and so I started noticing that I was having the
7:24
Speaker 2: same conversations in the therapy office over and over again
7:28
Speaker 2: with people, and so I started writing things down and
7:32
Speaker 2: I would hand them to new clients, and a couple
7:37
Speaker 2: people said, this is really good. Where's the rest. I
7:39
Speaker 2: actually had a client get legitimately mad at me. She said,
7:44
Speaker 2: it's like you turned me on to a great television
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Speaker 2: series and I got to the end and I'm waiting
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Speaker 2: for the next I'm waiting for the next season, and
7:53
Speaker 2: you just told me there's no next season. And so
7:57
Speaker 2: I decided to kind of formalize it, and I put
8:00
Speaker 2: together a manuscript and started started searching for a publisher.
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Speaker 2: And that's how But I didn't even for a long time.
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Speaker 2: For years, I didn't know I was writing a book,
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Speaker 2: and so the entire process actually took six years. But
8:14
Speaker 2: that's how it all started.
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Speaker 1: I'm curious. I've written books also, and when I've gotten
8:18
Speaker 1: into writing a book, in that process, I don't think
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Speaker 1: if it as writing a book. I think if it
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Speaker 1: is collecting my thoughts and then organizing them to something
8:27
Speaker 1: that might benefit someone else, is that your process.
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Speaker 2: Also exactly exactly? And although I did have to, I
8:35
Speaker 2: got a little bit of an unpleasant surprise after I
8:39
Speaker 2: had selected a publisher and they reviewed my initial manuscript.
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Speaker 2: They kind of said, you know too much, too much
8:47
Speaker 2: for most people, Joe, you gotta tone this back. And
8:52
Speaker 2: so I actually rewrote the whole thing in a matter
8:54
Speaker 2: of four months, getting up at four o'clock in the
8:57
Speaker 2: morning every day for those four months. And but I
9:01
Speaker 2: already knew kind of what I wanted to say and
9:03
Speaker 2: how I wanted to say it. But they took me
9:05
Speaker 2: through a very interesting process where they said, imagine you
9:09
Speaker 2: have it. You don't have an existing manuscript, and just write,
9:13
Speaker 2: you know, after you kind of understand who your who
9:15
Speaker 2: your target reader is and what they're looking for. They said,
9:19
Speaker 2: put together an outline as if you're starting from scratch.
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Speaker 2: And about five minutes into that exercise, I realized that
9:26
Speaker 2: the outline I was writing was not what I had
9:29
Speaker 2: in the manuscript, and it was like uh uh oh.
9:32
Speaker 2: And so they kind of held my hand through the process,
9:36
Speaker 2: like don't don't freak out, but you are going to
9:38
Speaker 2: rewrite this book and and and the next version is
9:41
Speaker 2: going to be much better. And it was. It was
9:43
Speaker 2: much much better. And because they said the original manuscript
9:47
Speaker 2: is probably three and maybe even four books, and so
9:52
Speaker 2: those are kind of now just kind of sitting in
9:54
Speaker 2: the on the sidelines, waiting to see if I'm crazy
9:57
Speaker 2: enough to do that whole process again someday, but for me,
10:01
Speaker 2: But for now, I'm just relaxing and letting the world
10:05
Speaker 2: kind of absorb the first one.
10:08
Speaker 1: The subtitle of your book is how to Cultivate Peace,
10:12
Speaker 1: Happiness and well Being in a World Gone Mad? How
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Speaker 1: do you define a world gone mad?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a world that has has gotten to the
10:28
Speaker 2: point where we've really lost touch. In my view, we've
10:33
Speaker 2: really lost touch with our inner stability. And I think
10:39
Speaker 2: the world used to be a little bit more stable.
10:42
Speaker 2: You know, people would work at the same company for decades,
10:45
Speaker 2: if not their entire career, and that is clearly over
10:50
Speaker 2: and layoffs, especially coming from the tech industry. Layoffs are
10:55
Speaker 2: just a part of life, and you realize you better
10:59
Speaker 2: save your mind because your turn is coming. And we
11:02
Speaker 2: have fifty five percent of the country here in the
11:05
Speaker 2: United States living paycheck to paycheck, which is a very
11:08
Speaker 2: stressful way to live. And so I think and everyone
11:14
Speaker 2: knows what's going on politically and socially with social media
11:20
Speaker 2: and the advent of the internet, and now we have
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Speaker 2: AI and so I think we were getting away with
11:26
Speaker 2: it for a long time. And what's the it we
11:28
Speaker 2: were getting away with. We weren't spending much time cultivating
11:31
Speaker 2: our internal conditions. And that's the first thing I realized
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Speaker 2: is that peace and happiness are internal conditions that require cultivation.
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Speaker 2: They are not necessarily a set of circumstances. And I
11:45
Speaker 2: realized that because on paper, my life was very good.
11:49
Speaker 2: I was a successful engineer and business person, and I
11:52
Speaker 2: was making plenty of money. I had a wife, a
11:54
Speaker 2: nice house up on a hill, two point five kids,
11:58
Speaker 2: nice vacation, and yet I wasn't happy, and a lot
12:01
Speaker 2: of people around me, I didn't really know anybody. And
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Speaker 2: I often ask that of clients, who do you know
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Speaker 2: that has really achieved stable peace and happiness and enjoys
12:13
Speaker 2: great relationships? And for most people, the shocking answer is
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Speaker 2: no one. And that's an increasingly frequent answer that I hear.
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Speaker 2: And so it's really around relaxing this obsession that circumstances
12:32
Speaker 2: are going to be the thing that make me happy.
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Speaker 2: But as an engineer, I know that problems need to
12:38
Speaker 2: be solved at their root, and so when we have
12:42
Speaker 2: internal conditions that are unstable and we don't know where
12:46
Speaker 2: to find our own internal peace and happiness. We seek
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Speaker 2: it outside of ourselves, and that's very problematic. I sometimes
12:53
Speaker 2: ask clients or say to them, you know, show me
12:55
Speaker 2: what you're relying on for your peace and happiness, and
12:58
Speaker 2: I'll show you why you're suffering, because what you're relying
13:01
Speaker 2: on is not stable and reliable. And I think that's
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Speaker 2: a fundamental issue, and it's not you know, a lot
13:09
Speaker 2: of times people will hear me say this, and they'll say, so,
13:12
Speaker 2: I guess I just have to give up and become
13:15
Speaker 2: a wandering mendicant or go meditate in the cave. And
13:19
Speaker 2: you know, obviously that's not what I'm suggesting anyone do.
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Speaker 2: I encourage people to always try to improve your circumstances,
13:27
Speaker 2: make as much money as you can, try and find
13:29
Speaker 2: some fulfilling work. Don't do something you hate for too long,
13:33
Speaker 2: and try to improve your relationships. But also spend some
13:37
Speaker 2: portion of the day, even if that's only ten or
13:39
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes, cultivating internal conditions and see what that takes
13:44
Speaker 2: you over the years, and you'll find that that work
13:46
Speaker 2: is much more rewarding and stable than anything you're going
13:49
Speaker 2: to do outside of yourself.
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Speaker 1: Those flawed definitions of peace and happiness. Is that something
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Speaker 1: that's generational?
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Speaker 2: I think so. I think so because you know, we
14:03
Speaker 2: know a lot from Western psychology about attachment theory and
14:08
Speaker 2: and how children learn to define themselves, and we learn
14:14
Speaker 2: from our parents and society in general kind of who
14:18
Speaker 2: am I? What am I? What is the world? How
14:21
Speaker 2: do I interact with it? And so I think, you know,
14:25
Speaker 2: for a lot of us, we're just following following the
14:28
Speaker 2: script that we were given, and unfortunately that ends up
14:34
Speaker 2: with an awful lot of people falling into something Western
14:37
Speaker 2: psychology refers to as contingent self worth. Because we don't
14:43
Speaker 2: know the internal source of well being and our inner value,
14:46
Speaker 2: our innate value, we end up seeking it outside of ourselves,
14:51
Speaker 2: and our school system does that, our parents do that,
14:57
Speaker 2: and so we have just inner generation. We're walking around
15:01
Speaker 2: with a very broken idea of what peace and happiness is,
15:05
Speaker 2: and we've also lost some of the some of the
15:10
Speaker 2: other avenues of joy, you know, really great relationships. I
15:15
Speaker 2: think social media is probably doing more harm than good
15:19
Speaker 2: in that area in terms of how we relate to
15:21
Speaker 2: each other, In terms of how I watch my kids
15:24
Speaker 2: relate to their friends, and the difficulty they have having
15:28
Speaker 2: difficult conversations and dealing with human humans difficult emotions. And
15:34
Speaker 2: so I think that it starts early on that we
15:38
Speaker 2: just have a broken model of what this is. And
15:41
Speaker 2: other sources of joy, like a sense of awe, a
15:45
Speaker 2: sense of interconnectedness and interdependence. We're really losing that, and
15:50
Speaker 2: we're we're all striving to become into so independent, fiercely
15:53
Speaker 2: independent of each other. That's even a goal for many people.
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Speaker 2: And uh, and so a lot of these forces is
16:00
Speaker 2: just drive us in the opposite direction of where we
16:02
Speaker 2: need to go.
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Speaker 1: I grew up in a generation where cell phones did
16:06
Speaker 1: not exist. We had wired phones extensions, right, and any
16:11
Speaker 1: communication that we had to have was either by a
16:14
Speaker 1: regular phone call or meeting someone face to face. How
16:17
Speaker 1: has that type of media changed everything.
16:21
Speaker 2: Well, we've actually studied that quite a bit. We a
16:24
Speaker 2: recent studies asked people who commute on either a commuter
16:29
Speaker 2: train or a busy. In the control group, they let
16:33
Speaker 2: them keep their phones and said don't talk to anyone.
16:36
Speaker 2: And in the experimental group they said, don't don't look
16:39
Speaker 2: at your phone. Make sure you talk to someone every day,
16:43
Speaker 2: just a stranger. Ask them how they're doing, how their
16:45
Speaker 2: days going, and in the experimental group that put their
16:49
Speaker 2: phone away, turns out their baseline level of happiness and
16:53
Speaker 2: peace of mind increased, and that did not happen in
16:55
Speaker 2: the group staring at their phone. And so this idea
17:00
Speaker 2: that I can be happy while those around me suffer,
17:05
Speaker 2: or I can be happy while being disconnected from society,
17:08
Speaker 2: being disconnected from the people around me, it is an
17:12
Speaker 2: abject failure and that is becoming increasingly obvious to us.
17:16
Speaker 1: And then you add to it the separation that was
17:19
Speaker 1: forced by the pandemic.
17:22
Speaker 2: Oh right, just jet fuel, jet fuel on the fire
17:25
Speaker 2: that had already been started by social media. And you know,
17:28
Speaker 2: social media is it's it's putting the worst part of
17:32
Speaker 2: ourselves in contact with the worst parts of others. And
17:35
Speaker 2: it's almost like being it's like almost being in a car.
17:38
Speaker 2: You know, we all know there's road rage and a
17:41
Speaker 2: lot of aggression on the road, and that's because people
17:45
Speaker 2: feel disconnected from each other. We're all in our steel,
17:48
Speaker 2: our three thousand pounds steel cage, and we don't have
17:51
Speaker 2: to face the other person. And that's what's happening. You know,
17:55
Speaker 2: when we receive feedback from another person through their intonation
17:59
Speaker 2: and their facial expressions. We adapt to them, and we
18:03
Speaker 2: don't want to cause each other problems. It's unnatural for
18:06
Speaker 2: us to do that. But these technologies allow us to
18:09
Speaker 2: get away with that and not see and deal with
18:12
Speaker 2: the person in front of us, and it's bad for
18:15
Speaker 2: us and bad for them and bad for society, I think.
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Speaker 1: And the other aspect. I grew up in a family
18:21
Speaker 1: where kindness and the extension of kindness to others was
18:25
Speaker 1: key to our life. We were taught to be kind,
18:28
Speaker 1: we were taught to be grateful. We were taught to
18:31
Speaker 1: approach people by their name if we knew their name,
18:34
Speaker 1: or ask their name if we didn't know it, and
18:36
Speaker 1: give them a compliment if a compliment was an order.
18:39
Speaker 1: And that seems to have disappeared.
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Speaker 2: It really has. And I think the key thing that
18:44
Speaker 2: I see there is that it sounds like, at the
18:49
Speaker 2: superficial level, that you would be doing those things for
18:52
Speaker 2: the other person. Yeah, right, But I disagree with that
18:57
Speaker 2: quite vehemently. I think that that benefits you even more
19:03
Speaker 2: than the other person, because you're acting in alignment with
19:06
Speaker 2: your own good heart and mind, which is in there.
19:09
Speaker 2: I really do believe that, and I don't think that
19:12
Speaker 2: that's a religious or spiritual statement. I mean what everybody
19:16
Speaker 2: finds when they sit down to meditate and you spend
19:20
Speaker 2: a few thousand hours of quiet time with yourself, most
19:24
Speaker 2: people find that we really do love each other, and
19:26
Speaker 2: we want everyone to be well, and we have a
19:29
Speaker 2: good heart that is trying to shine through, but it's
19:34
Speaker 2: often obscured by fear and hurt and anger and jealousy.
19:40
Speaker 2: And so acting in concert with our good heart benefits
19:46
Speaker 2: us immensely and obviously benefits the other person as well.
19:50
Speaker 2: From another perspective. One definition of suffering that I mentioned
19:55
Speaker 2: in the book is suffering represents a selfish desire or
20:02
Speaker 2: demand that reality be different than it is. And so
20:06
Speaker 2: there's kind of an immutable law of the universe that
20:08
Speaker 2: I've concluded exists that the more you care about yourself,
20:13
Speaker 2: the more miserable you will be. The more because your
20:16
Speaker 2: demands for how you want things to be go up,
20:20
Speaker 2: the more self absorption goes up. And so you know,
20:24
Speaker 2: that's kind of a primary mistake a lot of people
20:28
Speaker 2: make when they start meditating, is I'm going to meditate
20:30
Speaker 2: to be happy myself. That's actually not the objective. The
20:34
Speaker 2: objective is to get the focus off of you, and
20:37
Speaker 2: what happens is the mind will become happier and more
20:41
Speaker 2: peaceful the more it focuses on others. It's a bit paradoxical,
20:45
Speaker 2: but that is what we find, and that seems to
20:47
Speaker 2: be a universal finding, regardless of the tradition within which
20:52
Speaker 2: you might start your exploration of yourself and your own
20:54
Speaker 2: mind and heart. And so that's part of this whole
20:57
Speaker 2: idea that we've really lost with what happiness and how
21:02
Speaker 2: joy arises in the mind and heart and how it's cultivated.
21:06
Speaker 1: There's a line from an old Moody Blues song from
21:09
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy that says, when you stop and think about it,
21:13
Speaker 1: you won't believe it's true that all the love that
21:16
Speaker 1: you've been giving has all been meant for you.
21:20
Speaker 2: Oh, that's wonderful. I actually saw the Moody Blues and
21:23
Speaker 2: Concert a number of years ago, but I never heard that.
21:27
Speaker 2: I never heard that line. Wow, that's a magical line.
21:30
Speaker 1: That's exactly that's an the wrong question from the album
21:34
Speaker 1: Question of Balance.
21:35
Speaker 2: Question Wonderful. I'm going to go check that out. It's perfect.
21:39
Speaker 2: I mean, that's just transcendental wisdom right there. It's coming
21:43
Speaker 2: right at us.
21:44
Speaker 1: How has your study of Buddhist psychology influenced your therapeutic model?
21:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I so I don't. I don't present myself
21:55
Speaker 2: or even fashion myself as a Buddhist teacher or even
21:58
Speaker 2: a Buddhist therapist. At the same time, I think it's
22:02
Speaker 2: a mistake to close one's mind off to any source
22:06
Speaker 2: of wisdom on this planet. And so I often don't
22:09
Speaker 2: even like to refer to myself as a Buddhist. I mean,
22:12
Speaker 2: certainly it's a tradition and its practices really resonate with me.
22:16
Speaker 2: But what I found, you know, people show up wanting
22:22
Speaker 2: to alleviate some form of suffering that they're experiencing. But
22:27
Speaker 2: most people don't want superficial coping skills. Right, Coping is good,
22:36
Speaker 2: and coping in healthy ways is better than coping in
22:39
Speaker 2: unhealthy ways like drugs and alcohol and porn and gambling
22:42
Speaker 2: and all that kind of stuff. But there's no one
22:46
Speaker 2: wants to see their life is something they have to
22:48
Speaker 2: get through. They want answers, what is what they want?
22:53
Speaker 2: Stability of peace and happiness. And that's where I really
22:59
Speaker 2: understood and I think resonated with Buddhist psychology because it
23:04
Speaker 2: takes a very pragmatic and even engineering type of approach.
23:07
Speaker 2: There's a problem human suffering. That problem has a cause
23:11
Speaker 2: that can be known, and that problem has a solution
23:13
Speaker 2: that can also be implemented. And that's kind of in
23:18
Speaker 2: my kind of consultation or interview process. Before I agree
23:21
Speaker 2: to see a client, we talk about that and I say,
23:24
Speaker 2: you know, if you're looking for a quick fix, I'm
23:27
Speaker 2: not it. I like to get into My sessions are
23:31
Speaker 2: actually an hour and a half instead of the typical
23:33
Speaker 2: forty five or fifty five minutes, and I let people
23:36
Speaker 2: know we're going to get into it. We're going to
23:38
Speaker 2: get down to the actual root cause, and we are
23:40
Speaker 2: going to resolve things. So most of my clients end
23:43
Speaker 2: up staying with me for a minimum of six to
23:47
Speaker 2: nine months, if not longer. And I've had the pleasure
23:52
Speaker 2: enjoy of watching people really transform how they understand themselves
23:57
Speaker 2: and their place in this world, and how they interact
23:59
Speaker 2: with others, and how how that affects their relationships and
24:04
Speaker 2: how they approach their career path. And so I think
24:08
Speaker 2: that's where, you know, even as I read neuroscience, it's
24:12
Speaker 2: clear that this this Western you know, for lack of
24:18
Speaker 2: a better word, arrogance is not yet integrating enough wisdom
24:25
Speaker 2: from the East. We have been thinking about consciousness and
24:28
Speaker 2: happiness and suffering for as long as we've been thinking
24:31
Speaker 2: about pretty much anything. Even in ancient like Mesopotamia and
24:37
Speaker 2: ancient Egypt, we can find people writing and thinking about
24:40
Speaker 2: the mind and and what is it? And what is consciousness?
24:43
Speaker 2: And what is happiness? And and so sometimes I read
24:48
Speaker 2: neuroscience papers from very very smart people, but they say
24:52
Speaker 2: things that are are quite outdated. They they haven't received yet.
24:58
Speaker 2: There's there's wisdom there. It's twenty five hundred years old,
25:01
Speaker 2: if not longer, a longer ago. And so that's really
25:07
Speaker 2: how it's helped me a lot. Is I really do
25:09
Speaker 2: understand how the mind creates suffering and how it comes
25:13
Speaker 2: to an end, and I bring that into my practice
25:15
Speaker 2: every single day.
25:17
Speaker 1: My guest is Joe Denicholas. His book is called Seeking Sanity,
25:21
Speaker 1: How to Cultivate Peace, happiness and well Being in a
25:25
Speaker 1: World Gone Mad. Joe, please share with our listeners where
25:28
Speaker 1: they can find out more about you and where they
25:30
Speaker 1: can get your books.
25:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. My website is called Unbreakable Ink like
25:37
Speaker 2: Unbreakable Incorporated, so Unbreakable Ink Dot com and that's where
25:41
Speaker 2: you can find the book and therapy. And I also
25:46
Speaker 2: put on workshops. And the workshops are really fun because
25:50
Speaker 2: they're in person and kind of take people through the
25:53
Speaker 2: book and really implement some of the practices and get
25:57
Speaker 2: people's questions answered. Because and I started those workshops because
26:03
Speaker 2: there's a lot of folks out there who are in
26:05
Speaker 2: a category I call not yet clinical but not currently well,
26:11
Speaker 2: you know, they're not mentally ill. I don't even like
26:14
Speaker 2: to think about people in that way anymore, because most
26:17
Speaker 2: people are not sick, even if they do meet the
26:19
Speaker 2: criteria for a mental disorder in the DSM five for example.
26:24
Speaker 2: And a lot of people don't have the time and
26:26
Speaker 2: money to spend in therapy, nor do they really need therapy.
26:31
Speaker 2: They don't need something that intense. At the same time,
26:33
Speaker 2: they know that their relationships could be better, they know
26:36
Speaker 2: that they could be less stressed out, and so the
26:39
Speaker 2: workshop is really to help people understand, like what can
26:42
Speaker 2: I do on a daily basis, And so that's primarily
26:47
Speaker 2: a great resource to get in touch with me in
26:48
Speaker 2: the work. I'm also on LinkedIn and I have an
26:52
Speaker 2: Instagram page Unbreakable dot well Being, and those are the
26:57
Speaker 2: primary locations. You can find me.
26:59
Speaker 1: And Joe after these words on the own Times Radio.
27:04
Speaker 3: Network, the Cutting Edge of Conscious Radio ome Times Radio IOMFM.
27:09
Speaker 3: Ome Times Magazine is one of the leading online content
27:13
Speaker 3: providers of positivity, wellness and personal empowerment. A philanthropic organization,
27:18
Speaker 3: their net proceeds are finaled to support worldwide charity initiatives
27:22
Speaker 3: via Humanity Healing International. Through their commitment to creating community
27:27
Speaker 3: and providing conscious content, they aspire to uplift humanity on
27:30
Speaker 3: a global scale. Home Times co creating a more conscious lifestyle.
27:36
Speaker 1: Back on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week Joe de
27:39
Speaker 1: Nicholas his book Seeking Sanity, How to Cultivate Peace, Happiness
27:45
Speaker 1: and well Being in a World Gone Mad. Joe, in
27:50
Speaker 1: contrast with many others in the genre, your book is
27:53
Speaker 1: a bit more confrontational. Why did you take that approach?
27:58
Speaker 2: Well? As a technology I am an innovator. I refuse
28:03
Speaker 2: to do the same thing over again, and so I think, actually,
28:07
Speaker 2: I just looked this up the other day. In twenty
28:10
Speaker 2: twenty five, there were fifteen thousand self help books published
28:17
Speaker 2: just in twenty twenty five, and so I didn't want
28:21
Speaker 2: to just do the same thing or recycle what other
28:24
Speaker 2: people were saying, and I write like I practice and
28:31
Speaker 2: like I live. I am a very My wife likes
28:34
Speaker 2: to remind me that I'm a hard nosed Midwesterner from Chicago.
28:39
Speaker 2: She said, yeah, you don't mince words, do you. And
28:42
Speaker 2: I just don't believe in doing that. I don't think
28:44
Speaker 2: it's compassionate to people. And so I kind of combine
28:49
Speaker 2: an approach of being very forthright while also very compassionate,
28:53
Speaker 2: and I find that it actually resonates with people. The
28:57
Speaker 2: thing I hear, because remember the book starts as writing
29:01
Speaker 2: down the conversations I was having with people in the
29:03
Speaker 2: office in the early stages of therapy, and the number
29:07
Speaker 2: one thing I hear. For most people, I am not
29:10
Speaker 2: their first therapist, and they come in and actually say,
29:15
Speaker 2: please do anything other than just reflect my words back
29:19
Speaker 2: to me and ask me how I feel. I want
29:21
Speaker 2: to know the truth of what's going on with me
29:23
Speaker 2: and what I actually have to do to get myself
29:26
Speaker 2: out of the situation I find myself in here. And
29:29
Speaker 2: so I don't think most people that the people that
29:32
Speaker 2: I'm trying to get to are not served by platitudes.
29:38
Speaker 2: They've come to realize that insight is not enough insight alone,
29:43
Speaker 2: which I think a lot of self help books provide,
29:46
Speaker 2: and little blips and you know, you get on Instagram
29:49
Speaker 2: and you get little moments of insight from other people.
29:52
Speaker 2: But insight is not enough. And so it's time to
29:57
Speaker 2: compassionately kind of smack people a little bit and say, hey,
30:00
Speaker 2: you got it. It's time to wake up. You have
30:02
Speaker 2: to stop stop blaming the world. That's what I hear
30:06
Speaker 2: a lot of in the office is I people blaming
30:09
Speaker 2: the world, people blaming the other people in their lives.
30:12
Speaker 2: And I take the approach that says, you know, of
30:16
Speaker 2: course you try to improve your circumstances, but stop blaming
30:20
Speaker 2: them because another reaction to these circumstances is possible. It
30:25
Speaker 2: may not be possible for you yet, but I want
30:29
Speaker 2: people to look at themselves and realize that they have
30:34
Speaker 2: capacities and capabilities that they did not realize that they have.
30:39
Speaker 2: And that's where peace and happiness are actually going to
30:41
Speaker 2: be found is in identifying and becoming more familiar with
30:45
Speaker 2: and stabilizing access to those capacities. And that's not going
30:49
Speaker 2: to be that's not small work. And so I'm I'm
30:52
Speaker 2: confrontational and direct while also being compassionate and loving and kind,
30:59
Speaker 2: and so I try to soften it a bit. But
31:01
Speaker 2: I find, at least as I read through a lot
31:04
Speaker 2: of self help books, I just wasn't satisfied. It's like
31:09
Speaker 2: no one's actually saying the problem. And my approach is
31:13
Speaker 2: actually quite a bit softer than many of my Buddhist teachers.
31:19
Speaker 2: You know, Buddhist teachers, they present a very loving and
31:22
Speaker 2: compassionate front, but then the door, when the doors close
31:26
Speaker 2: with their students, it is very confrontational, and it's you know,
31:31
Speaker 2: it's really in along those same veins of stop blaming
31:35
Speaker 2: the world. It's you. You have capabilities, and it's time
31:39
Speaker 2: to grow up, grow up and really mature. I heard
31:42
Speaker 2: a psychologist the other day say the majority of adults
31:45
Speaker 2: have achieved emotional and psychological maturity of an eight to
31:48
Speaker 2: twelve year old. That's quite a shocking statement, but I
31:54
Speaker 2: think it resonates with a lot of people, and so
31:56
Speaker 2: that's kind of the approach I take, is, let's stop
31:59
Speaker 2: blaming the world, so it's time to grow up and
32:01
Speaker 2: mature your mind. The Tibetans have a word for us,
32:05
Speaker 2: a phrase called sos kiwo, which actually it sounds condescending,
32:10
Speaker 2: but it's actually said in a very compassionate, loving way.
32:13
Speaker 2: But the transliteration of that phrase is infantile minded being.
32:17
Speaker 2: And that's really the issue, is that because we don't
32:20
Speaker 2: spend a lot of time cultivating our minds, our minds
32:23
Speaker 2: are rather weak and fragile, and we're easily disturbed by
32:27
Speaker 2: small things that happen. You know, somebody cuts us off
32:30
Speaker 2: in traffic and we we kind of lose it. And
32:33
Speaker 2: so I'm very direct with people, and the overwhelming majority
32:37
Speaker 2: of my clients appreciate that approach and even come to
32:41
Speaker 2: see me because I advertise that approach.
32:44
Speaker 1: It's like when the Buddha was confronted and they said
32:47
Speaker 1: what are you? Who are you? And he said, I
32:49
Speaker 1: am awake.
32:51
Speaker 2: I'm awake, that was his answer. Yeah, that's how he
32:54
Speaker 2: got the name Buddha. And so I'm kind of following
32:59
Speaker 2: all that tradition. And but I realized, you know, that
33:03
Speaker 2: that that approach doesn't work for everybody, and and I
33:07
Speaker 2: accepted that early on. I didn't write a book for everyone.
33:10
Speaker 2: I wrote a book for people who are tired of
33:12
Speaker 2: this tired of this mess, and they want to get
33:15
Speaker 2: themselves out of it.
33:16
Speaker 1: What are three things that our listeners could do today
33:20
Speaker 1: to feel more at peace and have more fulfillment.
33:24
Speaker 2: Great question. I would say. The first thing is start
33:29
Speaker 2: off by setting your intention to for the day and
33:34
Speaker 2: really determine, like who do you want to be today?
33:39
Speaker 2: Because the mind follows whatever it intends. Intention is extremely important,
33:43
Speaker 2: and that is one of the things I see falling away.
33:45
Speaker 2: You know in our society is if you know, if
33:48
Speaker 2: I feel offended, I have been offended. But you know,
33:50
Speaker 2: if you step on my foot accidentally, then we're going
33:53
Speaker 2: to have one interaction. But if you do it intentionally,
33:56
Speaker 2: we're going to have a very different interaction now. And
33:58
Speaker 2: and so intention is extremely important. And so that's what
34:02
Speaker 2: I would say, is in the beginning of the day,
34:04
Speaker 2: just spend a minute or two in the shower. What
34:07
Speaker 2: am I likely to face today? Who do I want
34:09
Speaker 2: to be when I face that? And you'll see how
34:13
Speaker 2: magical that is. Secondly, and most importantly, learn a method
34:21
Speaker 2: that allows you to return to presence within one breath.
34:26
Speaker 2: And there are many many teachers out there, nondual meditation
34:30
Speaker 2: teachers who are providing such techniques, and then do that
34:35
Speaker 2: a bunch of times throughout the day. And and so
34:40
Speaker 2: I would again in the morning, usually in the morning
34:42
Speaker 2: as early as you can, because our center of awareness
34:46
Speaker 2: is a little bit more awake. They believe it is
34:48
Speaker 2: centered in the pineal gland. Spend some time in the
34:52
Speaker 2: morning really cultivating and getting to know. You know, the
34:58
Speaker 2: Tibetan word for meditation is gone, which transliterated means to
35:02
Speaker 2: become familiar with. And so first we have to expose
35:06
Speaker 2: this place inside us that is very beautiful and calm
35:09
Speaker 2: and present, and become ever more familiar with that. And
35:14
Speaker 2: so that's the second thing I would suggest is spend
35:17
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen minutes a day, it doesn't have to
35:19
Speaker 2: be hours, really getting to know that place inside yourself.
35:24
Speaker 2: And then the third thing is return there as many
35:27
Speaker 2: times a day as you can. You know, everybody, most people,
35:31
Speaker 2: especially if you work a corporate job, spending time in
35:34
Speaker 2: boring meetings. No one needs to know what you're doing
35:37
Speaker 2: with your mind. In that meeting. You can take a
35:39
Speaker 2: breath and shift into that place inside yourself that you're
35:43
Speaker 2: uncovering ever more fully in the morning, and return there
35:47
Speaker 2: and then, and once you have that, don't just go
35:50
Speaker 2: back to your mindless way of interacting with the world.
35:54
Speaker 2: Return to whatever you were doing a minute ago with
35:56
Speaker 2: a sense of presence and compassion and let your art
36:00
Speaker 2: come out and then re engage whatever you're doing from
36:03
Speaker 2: that place and the transformation that you We're talking about
36:08
Speaker 2: a total of maybe fifteen minutes a day here, and
36:12
Speaker 2: it will completely alter one's life, because you know, the
36:17
Speaker 2: key thing. We all still get bothered by things. Of course,
36:20
Speaker 2: we're still stressed out even though we're meditators. But the
36:24
Speaker 2: point is to not stay there for very long. The
36:26
Speaker 2: mind gets better at whatever it practices, even if that's
36:30
Speaker 2: anxiety and depression and stress, and so stop practicing, don't
36:35
Speaker 2: allow things to bother you for two hours, return to
36:38
Speaker 2: this place inside yourself that's present and calm, and return
36:42
Speaker 2: to your life from that place and realize that you
36:45
Speaker 2: are saying. Remind yourself that you have plenty of capacity
36:49
Speaker 2: to handle life. Everything is okay, even if it's not
36:52
Speaker 2: the way you want it to be. And manage yourself
36:56
Speaker 2: with maturity and compassion. And if people well do those
37:00
Speaker 2: three things, people would be amazed at the transformation that
37:04
Speaker 2: occurs in their life over the months and years.
37:07
Speaker 1: What do most people misunderstand about habits and discipline more
37:12
Speaker 1: generally that make change so difficult.
37:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the key thing is is learning how to change.
37:22
Speaker 2: And I think that the first the first thing I
37:27
Speaker 2: would say there is to realize that there's a lot
37:30
Speaker 2: of broken or kind of buggy software that's running in
37:34
Speaker 2: our mind. The biggest bug is that our minds are
37:37
Speaker 2: very hyper obsessed with the short term and have a
37:41
Speaker 2: real hard time caring about the long term. And so
37:46
Speaker 2: what you find is that the mind is continually when
37:50
Speaker 2: you have a bad habit, the mind is continually prioritizing
37:54
Speaker 2: the short term over the long over longer term well being.
37:58
Speaker 2: And so first get to know the mind you're in.
38:02
Speaker 2: We have been born into bodies and minds that do
38:04
Speaker 2: nothing but crave. Even when they get what they want,
38:07
Speaker 2: they want more of it, they want it to last longer,
38:10
Speaker 2: or we just kind of get sick of it. You know,
38:14
Speaker 2: everyone can run that experiment. You know, people find a
38:17
Speaker 2: song and they say, oh, this is the best song
38:19
Speaker 2: or this is the best dessert. Okay, well just listen
38:22
Speaker 2: to that song only about a thousand times in a
38:24
Speaker 2: row and tell me what happens. You'll never want to
38:26
Speaker 2: hear the song again. And so we've been born into
38:30
Speaker 2: a mind that doesn't stop craving even when it gets
38:32
Speaker 2: what it wants, and we have to learn how to
38:34
Speaker 2: deal with that. That's part of growing up and really
38:36
Speaker 2: maturing into a stable mind, and so realizing that your
38:41
Speaker 2: mind is pushing you in the wrong direction. Oftentimes on
38:44
Speaker 2: a deeper levels, it's good to realize that a lot
38:49
Speaker 2: of habit change fights against aspects of our identity. The
38:54
Speaker 2: point is not to become an overly disciplined person. It's
38:58
Speaker 2: to become the type of person that takes good care
39:00
Speaker 2: of themselves, takes good care of their mind, takes good
39:03
Speaker 2: care of their body, and takes especially good care of
39:06
Speaker 2: their heart and the hearts of those around them. And
39:10
Speaker 2: so realizing what is it about me that causes me
39:14
Speaker 2: to struggle to why do I continue acting against myself?
39:19
Speaker 2: We all know that we have an angel and a
39:21
Speaker 2: devil on our shoulders. There's a part of us that
39:24
Speaker 2: really strives to be healthier, but there's a part of
39:28
Speaker 2: us that's more short term and protective, and it doesn't
39:31
Speaker 2: care about that. It just wants a pleasure immediately. It
39:34
Speaker 2: wants immediate relief. And so realizing that, you know, I
39:39
Speaker 2: think a lot of New Year's resolutions fail and resolutions
39:42
Speaker 2: in general fail because people think, oh, I'll be happier
39:46
Speaker 2: once I do this. Well, not in the short term.
39:49
Speaker 2: Actually you won't, you know, when you take away As
39:52
Speaker 2: I said, we're all relying on these pleasures to keep
39:54
Speaker 2: us afloat, and we kind of have a scale in
39:58
Speaker 2: our mind and heart around and I suffer through stress
40:01
Speaker 2: and conflict with others, and then I pleasure chase and
40:05
Speaker 2: I keep and I try to keep the balance there.
40:08
Speaker 2: And when we take on a new habit of healthier
40:12
Speaker 2: eating or exercise, actually, in the short term, happiness is
40:16
Speaker 2: likely to drop because we've taken away some of those
40:19
Speaker 2: coping skills and replace them with things that are painful
40:22
Speaker 2: and unpleasant and uncomfortable. And you have to stick with
40:26
Speaker 2: it and realize and find that place, like the place
40:30
Speaker 2: inside yourself that's actually happy that you made a good decision,
40:34
Speaker 2: and find the joy of no longer being enslaved to
40:38
Speaker 2: your impulses. And that's kind of you know, when I
40:41
Speaker 2: talk about being a more taking a more confrontational approach,
40:45
Speaker 2: I often ask people, look at your mind, at how
40:49
Speaker 2: enslaved it is to its impulses, and how does it
40:52
Speaker 2: feel being that kind of person that doesn't have autonomy
40:55
Speaker 2: and sovereignty. And when you start to realize it, and
40:58
Speaker 2: so it's not about willpower or yourself to be a
41:01
Speaker 2: certain kind of person. Once you see what it's really
41:04
Speaker 2: doing to you that you keep acting against your good
41:08
Speaker 2: nature and your higher wishes of your higher self, the
41:12
Speaker 2: mind will naturally choose the better option. And so it's
41:16
Speaker 2: really about directing your attention to how bad it feels
41:20
Speaker 2: to be enslaved by your impulses and how good freedom
41:24
Speaker 2: actually feels to your core self. And when you get
41:27
Speaker 2: more in touch with that sense of freedom, I get
41:30
Speaker 2: to choose what I do. Nothing tells me what to do,
41:34
Speaker 2: nothing tells me what to eat, nothing tells me not
41:37
Speaker 2: to exercise, not to take good care of my mind
41:39
Speaker 2: and meditate a little bit, or to spend some quiet
41:42
Speaker 2: time journaling. And once you start to achieve that and
41:45
Speaker 2: notice how good it feels, the mind will naturally habituate
41:50
Speaker 2: those practices.
41:53
Speaker 1: Is there a collective learned helplessness?
41:57
Speaker 2: I believe so. I think that's you know, I originally
42:02
Speaker 2: when I first got out of social work school, I
42:05
Speaker 2: went into social work instead of psychology because I didn't
42:08
Speaker 2: know how I wanted to contribute to the world and
42:11
Speaker 2: kind of confront suffering. And I originally went to the
42:14
Speaker 2: school system because if we can catch children at a
42:18
Speaker 2: young age before they spin up this self ruminating mind,
42:25
Speaker 2: progress can be made. And yet our school system really
42:31
Speaker 2: produces people who are good at manipulating their circumstances and
42:35
Speaker 2: achieving things in the world, but it really doesn't focus
42:40
Speaker 2: even the social emotional learning programs in schools. I had
42:44
Speaker 2: direct experience with that with my I had young children
42:47
Speaker 2: when I first was really getting into this path, and
42:49
Speaker 2: they're in all this social emotional learning it. But I
42:52
Speaker 2: would ask them, you know, what do you do with
42:54
Speaker 2: negative emotions? And they couldn't answer me. And so I
42:58
Speaker 2: went to principles and I said, you know, I understand
43:01
Speaker 2: you have social emotional learning programs, but are they effective?
43:05
Speaker 2: Are you producing stress free people? That's not what I observe.
43:09
Speaker 2: But the school system was very hard to get into.
43:12
Speaker 2: The door was kind of locked there. A lot of
43:16
Speaker 2: schools are very hesitant to even talk about basic things
43:22
Speaker 2: like meaning and fulfillment and love and compassion, and they
43:26
Speaker 2: really resist getting into anything that looks like values, even
43:31
Speaker 2: if they're secular values. And I think that our society
43:38
Speaker 2: and our school system as part of that society doesn't
43:42
Speaker 2: teach us that we have internal capabilities. And so that's
43:47
Speaker 2: the first thing I do with clients is try and
43:49
Speaker 2: help them realize you have amazing, an incredible ability to
43:57
Speaker 2: change your experience of life to the level of perception,
44:01
Speaker 2: like what do you actually see in the world and
44:04
Speaker 2: how do you interact with it? And I think that's
44:07
Speaker 2: the when I say, you know, we've kind of been
44:10
Speaker 2: failing a test. We've been given the answers to our
44:13
Speaker 2: minds are incredibly powerful, and we are not taught about
44:18
Speaker 2: or exposed experientially to those capabilities, and we fall into
44:22
Speaker 2: this learned helplessness idea where we don't even really make
44:26
Speaker 2: an effort to cultivate our internal capabilities and capacities. And
44:33
Speaker 2: that is I consider the number one mistake of modern
44:37
Speaker 2: life is not finding those capacities and capabilities and really
44:42
Speaker 2: exposing them and cultivating them for increased happiness and well being,
44:47
Speaker 2: regardless of what's happening circumstantially.
44:49
Speaker 1: My guest is Joe Denicholas. His book is entitled Seeking Santy,
44:54
Speaker 1: How to Cultivate Peace, Happiness and well Being in a
44:57
Speaker 1: World Gone Mad. We'll be back with more after these
45:00
Speaker 1: words on the Own Times Radio network.
45:04
Speaker 4: Humanity Healing International is a small nonprofit with a big dream.
45:09
Speaker 4: Since two thousand and seven, HHI has been working tirelessly
45:13
Speaker 4: to bring help to communities with little or no oh.
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Speaker 4: but they bring the reassurance then no one is alone
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Speaker 4: and that someone cares. To learn more, please visit Humanityhealing
45:29
Speaker 4: dot org. Humanity Healing is where your Heart.
45:33
Speaker 1: Is back on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week Joe
45:37
Speaker 1: de Nicholas his book Seeking Sanity, How to Cultivate Peace,
45:42
Speaker 1: happiness and well Being in a World Gone Mad. Joe,
45:48
Speaker 1: Our spirituality and scientific pursuit mutually exclusive.
45:54
Speaker 2: Not anymore. I think that's been one of the most
45:57
Speaker 2: fascinating aspects of my studies work is you know, we
46:03
Speaker 2: in physics, we have a very famous experiment called the
46:05
Speaker 2: double Slit experiment, and people can go look up and
46:09
Speaker 2: watch some YouTube videos on what that is. But it
46:12
Speaker 2: was kind of the first experiment where this separation of
46:17
Speaker 2: the mind and science kind of came to an end.
46:23
Speaker 2: We reached the end of physicalism or materialistic view or
46:27
Speaker 2: materialistic philosophy and approach, and so that kind of launched
46:35
Speaker 2: us into a scientific approach to what is the mind,
46:40
Speaker 2: and that has led to a lot of really deep
46:44
Speaker 2: understanding around how the mind suffers. The most prominent theory
46:51
Speaker 2: in neuroscience right now is called Bayesian inference, and what
46:58
Speaker 2: that means is, uh, it's kind of Thomas Bayes is
47:04
Speaker 2: a famous statistician from years ago, and he developed a
47:10
Speaker 2: mathematical approach to understanding conditional probabilities, which are kind of
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Speaker 2: what do I think is happening right now based on
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Speaker 2: the past, based on the conditions of the past. And
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Speaker 2: we've realized now that the mind is operating in a
47:25
Speaker 2: very similar way. It's living in its priors, and it
47:28
Speaker 2: gets stuck in its priors. It's actually the number one
47:31
Speaker 2: thing I fight in the therapy office is that people
47:35
Speaker 2: have we maintained very rigid views of who we who
47:39
Speaker 2: and what we are as beings and as conscious beings,
47:45
Speaker 2: and and understanding of frob that that that based understanding
47:52
Speaker 2: of who and what we are how we should live.
47:54
Speaker 2: And so it's wonderful to see now how Western science
47:59
Speaker 2: is increasingly emerging. You know, science calls it predictive priors.
48:04
Speaker 2: I think the East calls it karma, and so there's
48:07
Speaker 2: there are a lot of over there's a ton of overlap,
48:11
Speaker 2: and it's really wonderful to watch these different velocophies converge.
48:16
Speaker 2: But it's and and really helping. And we're starting to
48:19
Speaker 2: have a lot of promise coming from psychedelic therapy. And
48:24
Speaker 2: so that's where someone takes the psychedelic uh maybe psilocybin
48:29
Speaker 2: or MDMA and Zen does therapy and so and what
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Speaker 2: the psychedelic is doing is actually bringing our mind of
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Speaker 2: its priors. We're forcing a very new, powerful, spiritual type
48:43
Speaker 2: of experience on people. And then that is opening up
48:48
Speaker 2: their mind to rewiring and kind of increasing the plasticity
48:52
Speaker 2: of their brain. And that allows and then we fill
48:55
Speaker 2: that that open space that has been cultivated, we fill
48:59
Speaker 2: that with insight, insight as to who they are and
49:03
Speaker 2: what happiness and peace of mind are and how they're achieved.
49:06
Speaker 2: And so it's really great to see and we're starting
49:09
Speaker 2: to develop new therapies and new approaches to mental health
49:13
Speaker 2: because of this merging of kind of secular spirituality. What
49:18
Speaker 2: is the mind, what is consciousness? And through the understanding
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Speaker 2: what those are developing a deeper secular spirituality and generating
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Speaker 2: a lot of peace and happiness and just joy in
49:32
Speaker 2: life and stability really, because that's what we're all seeking.
49:35
Speaker 2: We're seeking stability, whether we know it or not. Our
49:38
Speaker 2: thoughts are not stable, our emotions are not stable, but
49:42
Speaker 2: our awareness is stable. And it's good to get to
49:45
Speaker 2: know that awareness. And that's not new. Saint Theresa Saint
49:49
Speaker 2: Teresa d'avola in her book The Mansions, she said, the
49:53
Speaker 2: greatest mistake a human being can make is to not
49:56
Speaker 2: get to know their soul. And you know, in Christianity
49:59
Speaker 2: and other traditions they call it soul. In the East
50:03
Speaker 2: they call it awareness. And so getting learning what that
50:08
Speaker 2: is and its innate capacities is really a key component
50:13
Speaker 2: of well being because that's the only part of us
50:15
Speaker 2: that's actually stable.
50:17
Speaker 1: And extending that question, what experiences from your technical career
50:22
Speaker 1: help shape your outlook as a therapist and how you
50:24
Speaker 1: treat your clients.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I got very good, as you have to at
50:32
Speaker 2: solving problems right, and so really peeling the onion down
50:36
Speaker 2: to the root of the root of the root, and
50:40
Speaker 2: it turns out as complicated as human beings appear from
50:43
Speaker 2: the outside and even inconsistent. We're actually not that complicated.
50:49
Speaker 2: Once you really understand how to pick apart the mind
50:54
Speaker 2: and get into its depths, you can understand what's actually
50:58
Speaker 2: going on. And once you resolve that, things change. And
51:02
Speaker 2: so that's really the focus that I take with my clients,
51:05
Speaker 2: what's really going on at the core, and usually comes
51:09
Speaker 2: down to questions of identity, who do you believe who
51:13
Speaker 2: or what do you believe you are? What? And what
51:16
Speaker 2: are you doing here? I often ask that question in
51:18
Speaker 2: the therapy office, what are you or who are you?
51:21
Speaker 2: And what are you doing here? What is the purpose
51:24
Speaker 2: of this? And oftentimes people don't have an answer, and
51:29
Speaker 2: so we work through that and and that's where we
51:34
Speaker 2: find kind of the root issues that are driving stress
51:38
Speaker 2: and anxiety and depression. And I learned how to do
51:43
Speaker 2: that by developed, really cultivating and deeply developing an analytical
51:49
Speaker 2: mind that is able to there's almost a gut feel
51:53
Speaker 2: you just can you learn to feel when you're at
51:56
Speaker 2: the root cause and you're and you're developing a solution
51:59
Speaker 2: to the root cause of the issue. And that has
52:03
Speaker 2: benefited me more than almost anything really is. And the
52:08
Speaker 2: client can feel it as well, like, Wow, I've we've
52:11
Speaker 2: really reached a resolution of this underlying root cause. And wow,
52:17
Speaker 2: the change to person experiences on a moment to moment
52:19
Speaker 2: basis is quite incredible.
52:22
Speaker 1: Please tell us about the organization you founded, Unbreakable Inc.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, Unbreakable Ink is kind of the holding company for
52:30
Speaker 2: everything I do in mental health, and so that's it
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Speaker 2: kind of holds my writing, my therapy and the workshops
52:38
Speaker 2: I was speaking about, and so Unbreakable the name of
52:42
Speaker 2: it kind of came from the fact that we each
52:45
Speaker 2: of us does have this. We do enjoy having this
52:49
Speaker 2: unbreakable part of us that is not perturbed by what's
52:55
Speaker 2: going on around us. And the path to well being
52:59
Speaker 2: I help people follow is uncovering that, and so everything
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Speaker 2: I do is really about that central philosophy of uncovering
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Speaker 2: the part of us that's unbreakable and learning to rest
53:13
Speaker 2: ever more in that. And that's kind of what the
53:15
Speaker 2: organization focuses on.
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Speaker 1: And what would you like readers to take away from
53:18
Speaker 1: Seeking Sanity?
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Speaker 2: I would like them to make a fundamental change in
53:26
Speaker 2: how they're approaching life, to realize that they to really
53:30
Speaker 2: just obliterate this idea of learned helplessness. There's a lot
53:35
Speaker 2: you can do and it doesn't take hours every day.
53:40
Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be arduous, And there are small
53:46
Speaker 2: changes we can make by combining all the beautiful techniques
53:50
Speaker 2: we have from Western therapies and some of the techniques
53:54
Speaker 2: we have from Eastern traditions like meditation and self analysis.
53:58
Speaker 2: And when you combine those, you learn that you have
54:03
Speaker 2: all the power and you have all the capacity you
54:06
Speaker 2: need to handle life. And so while it's a difficult
54:09
Speaker 2: process to face oneself, it's a very hopeful and beautiful
54:14
Speaker 2: process of learning that we don't have to live lives
54:18
Speaker 2: of stress and conflict that's actually beneath us as humans.
54:24
Speaker 2: And that's what I really help people find and and
54:27
Speaker 2: I hope that's what the help. What the help that
54:30
Speaker 2: the book provides people is do you know that you
54:33
Speaker 2: have these capabilities and capacities, and here's how to start
54:37
Speaker 2: to bring them to the foe. And hopefully I've accomplished that.
54:42
Speaker 1: The wisdom of my guest Joe Denicholas his book Seeking Sanity,
54:46
Speaker 1: How to Cultivate Peace, happiness and well Being in a
54:50
Speaker 1: World Gone Mad. Joe, one more time, please share with
54:53
Speaker 1: our listeners where they can find out more about you
54:55
Speaker 1: and get your book.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the top two places are Unbreakable Inc.
54:59
Speaker 2: Dot Com and my LinkedIn. I do post quite a
55:03
Speaker 2: bit on LinkedIn, and so you can find me there
55:07
Speaker 2: just by searching my name, and you can check out
55:12
Speaker 2: what I'm thinking about these days. And I post papers
55:16
Speaker 2: that I'm reading and kind of give a layman's version
55:19
Speaker 2: of it. Of check this out. Like we've learned. We're
55:22
Speaker 2: learning such amazing things. Our study and understanding of the
55:27
Speaker 2: mind and happiness and suffering has really exploded in the
55:30
Speaker 2: last fifteen years. And so I kind of I'm in
55:32
Speaker 2: there reading all these papers and distilling it down to
55:36
Speaker 2: what people actually should spend their time on and understand
55:40
Speaker 2: about themselves and what they can do for themselves. And
55:43
Speaker 2: they'll find that on LinkedIn and on the website. There's
55:45
Speaker 2: a blog on the website and things like that. So
55:48
Speaker 2: I just invite people just dive in, dive in and
55:52
Speaker 2: see and see where it takes you, and you'll be shocked.
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Speaker 1: Joe, thank you so much for joining us and sharing
55:58
Speaker 1: this wonderful wisdom.
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Speaker 2: Thank you so much for the opportunity. It's been a pleasure, and.
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Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on Destination Unlimited. I'm Victor
56:07
Speaker 1: the Voice Furman. Have a wonderful week,