[00:00:00] Cold Open

[00:00:00] Heather Schenck: Then when I realized I just mindlessly had a piece of cheese, I thought, "I failed. I just ate cheese without thinking! I'm done trying." I just gave up.

[00:00:11] Welcome

[00:00:11] Daniel Greening: Welcome to the Mindful Agility podcast. I'm your host, Dan Greening. My co-host is Mirela Petalli. We're joined today by neonatal intensive care nurse, Heather Schenck. 

Today we're discussing goals, interdependence and compassion. 

[00:00:30] Daniel Greening: The mindful agility podcast helps you tackle challenging projects. If you want to get useful stuff done faster, this podcast is for you. 

Mindfulness and agility are two of the most helpful perspectives in leading more fulfilled lives. Mindfulness practices help us gain greater insight and clarity, while agile practices help us forge new paths. Each episode is an agile experiment. We hypothesize this episode will help you gain more insight and build more value. The journey is half the fun. We hope you'll stick with us. Your likes, shares, subscribes, and feedback. Tell us if we're on the right track. In a podcast app, please give us a rating. 

[00:01:19] Daniel Greening: In the last episode we heard from our friend, Dr. Heather. In this episode we're about to hear from another friend, Nurse Heather. 

[00:01:27] Introduction

[00:01:27] Daniel Greening: Nurse Heather faced a challenge that the rest of us encounter. She had a goal that seemed incompatible with her family and environment. 

Our goals and our social environment often conflict. In our personal lives, if we want to stop smoking, focus more on studying, or lose weight, our family and friends can present big challenges. In our work lives, too, if we want to meet with teammates daily, get feedback weekly, or honestly experiment- i.e., when failure is possible- our colleagues, customers and bosses can present big challenges. 

Compassion, the ability to adopt the perspective of others, is an important mindfulness skill. Highly compassionate people are often great negotiators and compassion can help us persist through many challenges. 

As you listen to Nurse Heather tell her story, try to think from a compassion perspective. How is Nurse Heather feeling? What about her friend, her husband, her children? 

Here we go. 

[00:02:36] Nurse Heather: Take 1

[00:02:36] Heather Schenck: I wanted to switch to a plant-based diet for a long time, but never had a solid plan and then decided to do it overnight. 

I felt hungry the whole two weeks it lasted. 

I also felt guilty at the dinner table. I never realized how much emotion was in food. When I would say, "I am vegan and my family is not," it made me feel like I was growing apart from my family.

During this first attempt, I was very strict with myself. "Vegans don't touch cheese." I had this idea in my head of what a good vegan was.

Then when I realized I just mindlessly had a piece of cheese, I thought, "I failed. I just ate cheese without thinking! I'm done trying." I just gave up.

[00:03:20] Daniel Greening: Yeah, you should give up meditation too, because, you know,

[00:03:23] Heather Schenck: Yeah. If I skip a few days, then I might as well give up forever, right? 

[00:03:27] Daniel Greening: Right! There was a second attempt. How did that happen?

[00:03:31] Nurse Heather: Take 2

[00:03:31] Heather Schenck: Two things really made me consider trying again. First, a friend had actually come to visit, so it was like a celebration. "Sure. Let's have ice cream and burgers and fries and popcorn, every day." And when she left, I literally felt physically ill. 

Second, during my friend's visit, we decided to take my kids fishing.

My four year old Jack he's in preschool, and they often play with sticks in the river. He'll come home and tell me how he was fishing at school today. I thought he understood what "fishing" meant. So we took them to the fishery where they stock a lake with a ton of fish. It's basically designed for children to easily catch fish.

 Jack threw his line out, and within a couple of minutes had a bite. We taught them how to reel it in. He was jumping for joy. We took it off the hook, and put it in his bucket of water. Jack looked down and noticed that his fish was swimming a little sideways. He handed his fish to the butcher.

 I looked at my husband and said, "should we let him see this?" He said, "Well, this is what happens, so I guess it's fine." There were other kids there too, watching their fish be fileted. I could only see the back of my son's head, while he was looking over the counter, watching this man filet his fish, cut his head off, and wrap him up. I thought, "Oh, I guess he's fine." 

But when the man finished wrapping his fish, my son turned around and I saw his face just dripping with tears. He looked at me with the saddest eyes and said, "Mommy, that bad man just hurt my fish." My husband and I comforted him and told him that if he didn't feel comfortable eating fish, he did not have to eat fish. 

There are three main reasons why people go vegan. It's usually, one to protect the environment; two, the morality and ethical considerations of killing an animal for our consumption; and three, for health reasons. The first two reasons are the main driving forces for me.

[00:05:24] Daniel Greening: So you tried again. What happened? 

[00:05:27] Heather Schenck: First, I needed more realistic meal plans. My son is allergic to legumes, the main protein source for vegans, so he can't eat beans or tofu. There were four recipes I already make for our family that could easily be modified for a vegan diet. For instance, we eat tacos frequently, but now mine has cauliflower and my family has ground beef. 

Second, I needed compassion for others. I needed compassion for my husband, instead of feeling angry or frustrated with him for not wanting to go vegan with me. 

Third, I needed compassion for myself. I tend to be an all or nothing person. This time, I told myself, "Okay, I am vegan, but if I'm out with my children getting ice cream and they don't have a vegan option, I can definitely take a bite of my kids' ice cream and still consider myself vegan." 

[00:06:17] Daniel Greening: I seem to know a lot of vegans, even though I'm omnivorous. Most seemed to make space for occasional non-vegan eating. A couple of vegan friends even seem to have made space for bacon, maybe once a month. 

[00:06:31] Heather Schenck: Right. If it's a choice between being happily vegan 95% of the time, or unhappily vegan 100% of the time, I choose vegan 95% of the time. 

[00:06:40] Daniel Greening: So you had a little negotiation with your husband about your intention. 

[00:06:46] Heather Schenck: Well, I felt frustrated because if he could see the benefits of being vegan on the environment and our health, why would he not join me? He also felt frustrated. He didn't want to feel forced into anything. He wanted to be respectful and supportive, but he didn't want to commit to a vegan lifestyle.

 I did some research and found this beautiful distinction between values and beliefs. It said our values are principles that guide our behavior. Usually values are bigger ideas like compassion, mindfulness, community, things like that. But a belief is acceptance that something is true. 

My husband and I shared the value of compassion for self and others, something I noticed when I first met him. We are both practicing nurses. My husband has been an ICU nurse and is now working in a surgery center. I work in the NICU, which is the neonatal intensive care unit. I have a new belief that we should not eat animal products, but making the distinction between being a belief and a value means that we still share that core value, our compassion for others.

[00:07:48] Daniel Greening: It's so much easier to find people who agree with you on values. I think.

[00:07:53] Heather Schenck: That is definitely true. I felt like this huge weight was immediately lifted off of me. I had put up this imaginary wall in between my husband and I, and then this wall dissipated. I felt closer to him again. 

I told him I needed reassurance that I wouldn't be too much of a burden. When we go out to eat a meal, we already have to ask a million questions about allergens for my son. Now I'm having to ask, "Is this vegan?" He told me he still supported me and understood why it was important to me.

[00:08:21] Daniel Greening: I think everybody faces this challenge, when they resolve to change. The environment supported the old you. Now you want to change and the environment might need some adjustment.

[00:08:34] Heather Schenck: Right. We all want people in intimate relationships with us to make the same decisions as us, but we're all unique. 

 It's been about six months since I made the switch now. It's become much easier for me. I don't really even think about it anymore. At first, when I was really hungry, I would reach for a piece of cheese, but now I reached for nuts.

It took a lot of mental energy, at first. I had to really think before I acted, now it's habitual. 

I found vegans in my community too, and they support me. I met someone who makes tempeh, another common protein source for vegans. 

[00:09:08] Daniel Greening: I love tempeh. I used to make it too, when I was a vegetarian. I'm not a vegetarian anymore, but I don't eat much meat still.

[00:09:17] Heather Schenck: My husband used to tell me I'm not trying tofu or tempeh. Now he begs me to make some vegan dishes again, because he likes them. It's become an adventure for all of us. I still make meat and cheese dishes for the family, but my husband will dive in and try the vegan dishes. 

[00:09:34] Daniel Greening: You have a belief that you shouldn't eat meat because of the moral and environmental consequences, but you're taking the middle way. The middle way is more moral in a way, if you think about the net effect, right? If you create an environment where your husband reduces eating meat, the benefits are high, in terms of achieving your values.

[00:09:55] Heather Schenck: Absolutely. And I think the middle way describes it perfectly. If my moral construct says I should not eat animal products, would it be better to lessen it or to just give up completely because it's too hard? The middle path has made it more palatable and more sustainable for me. 

[00:10:13] Reflecting on Nurse Heather

[00:10:13] Daniel Greening: Nurse Heather made her first attempt independently, without thinking. And then it crashed right into her interdependence with family members and her own values. She almost abandoned her goal forever. But then she focused on compassion, incorporating her family into her plans. She talked with them before her second attempt, focusing on shared values and allowing for different beliefs.

[00:10:41] Mirela Petalli: This is a perfect example of how mindfulness and compassion can help us achieve our goals. We need to take into consideration the people in our lives and how they affect and are affected by us. 

When we are compassionate towards ourselves and others we create an environment of openness and acceptance that allows for those difficult conversations to happen without reactivity, for everyone involved to feel heard and ultimately, for change to happen. 

[00:11:10] Daniel Greening: It was super successful in the end. Everyone was open to whatever happened. Her husband even joined in. I see similar stuff in business as well. When we bring compassion into the workplace, into politics, and into our social tribes, a lot of great things can occur.

[00:11:28] Mirela Petalli: What caught my attention was how Heather dealt with that first failed attempt. She put it aside, which we all do. We kind of walk away, right? We think, "Oh, we failed at this," and give up. 

But when the causes and conditions were right again, she changed her approach. She used mindfulness and compassion to better understand and plan by taking into account not only herself, but her whole family. 

I loved what Heather said about being happily vegan 95% of the time versus being unhappily vegan, a hundred percent of the time. I think this is a very mindful concept. When we approach our goals with this attitude of improvement, rather than perfection we have a better chance of succeeding. 

[00:12:14] Daniel Greening: Agile experiments generate low cost failures, all the time, like Heather's first attempt. Agile practitioners learn to expect low-cost failures, even seek them, then examine them, and mindfully adapt. Through failure, we learn and become much better, much faster. 

So many self-help and even agile guides act like we operate independently. But if we operate without compassion for our family, colleagues, even our enemies, we can sacrifice our longterm success. We are highly interdependent. In fact, mindfulness students are often asked to identify which of their actions, beliefs, and values are truly independent. A little hint. Not many. 

Agile has a problem with sustainability. Agile is fragile. When agile coaches go into organizations, sometimes they try to protect a team by putting up barriers against the outside world. They act as if a team's independence needs to be protected. But that behavior leads to conflict with the business they're working in. Of course, in a company, like a family, we are all interdependent. 

Agile coaches could educate and involve folks outside their teams. When I've done that the results have been great. 

[00:13:47] Closing

[00:13:47] Daniel Greening: Change is hard, but it's even harder when we imagine we can do it all on our own. 

Compassion is the ability to put ourselves in other people's shoes to find their motivations, to anticipate their emotions and to see how they interpret our actions. When we use the super power of compassion, we open a door for others to join our journey. And that helps them too. 

Nurse Heather used shared values to gain support from others. We can multiply our efforts and go beyond what a single person or team can do, when we work with the people around us. 

If we're exploring a new frontier, we will make mistakes. We need self-compassion to learn from mistakes and even celebrate them, so we create new skills. Nurse Heather tried again, and the second time was much better. 

[00:14:44] Call to Action

[00:14:44] Daniel Greening: All of our podcasts have transcriptions at podcast.mindfulagility.com. 

If you want support for your own projects, consider joining the Mindful Agility Community group on Facebook. It's private, but open to anyone. Every couple of weeks, we meet on Zoom. 

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More downloads mean we are helping more people, which is our mission. When you comment on share or like a Mindful Agility post in social media, more people download our episodes. Mindful Agility posts are in Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And you can just go crazy and post independently, but if you want to practice interdependence, provide a link to an episode or the Mindful Agility page. 

[00:15:43] Credits 

[00:15:43] Daniel Greening: Many thanks to our guest, nurse Heather Schenck. Our co-host and meditation guide is Mirela Petalli. Beta reviewers include Dan Dickson, Divya Maez, Ron Lussier, Matt Zimmerman and Hasan Abdurahmonov. 

Mirela, do you think I could pass as a monk? 

[00:16:02] Mirela Petalli: I think you would be the monk with the very cool glasses. 

[00:16:05] Daniel Greening: I'm Dan Greening. See you next time. 

[00:16:09] Daniel Greening:

[00:16:10] Meditation Introduction

[00:16:10] Daniel Greening: If you're still with us, Mirela is about to guide an optional 10 minute meditation to explore how interdependence and compassion can help you achieve your goals. 

You can find this meditation and others at Mindful Agility Meditations on your favorite podcast app. These meditations seek to strengthen neural pathways around mindfulness and agile.

There's two reasons you might want to pause or skip now. First you might want to follow up on subscribing, rating, joining, sharing, all those great things that keep us going. The end of this meditation is the end of the podcast episode. We won't be reminding you. Second, you might be driving or doing something else that requires your attention. 

Here we go. 

[00:17:00] Introduction

[00:17:00] Mirela Petalli: In this meditation, we will reflect on how interdependence and compassion can help you achieve your goals. 

Before we start, let's take some time to think about a goal that you have. If you want, you can pause now and write down your goal. 

I also invite you to bring, to mind a person close to you that will affect and be affected by your goal. 

[00:17:30] Meditation

[00:17:30] Mirela Petalli: Thank you for taking this time to meditate with us today. You'll hear a bell at the beginning of the meditation and one at the end. The bell is an invitation to come back to the present moment.

 First find a comfortable position, either sitting or lying down. It can be any position where you feel comfortable, but also alert. While we maintain an intention to be still you can adjust your posture at any time if needed. You can either close your eyes or keep them slightly open, focused downward in front of you.

Let's start by taking a few deep, slow breaths. Take a deep breath in through your nose. Fill your lungs with air. Relax your belly. And then let the air out slowly through your nose. 

 See if you can release any tension, and relax your body a little bit more with each out-breath. 

There is nothing to do right now. 

 Let's take one more deep, slow breath. 

 Now allow your breath to return to normal. 

 In today's meditation, we'll use the breath as the anchor. 

Anytime that you get distracted, just notice it, and gently bring your attention back to the breath. 

Now bring your attention to your body. 

Become aware of your position, whether sitting or lying down. 

 The temperature. 

 The feeling of clothes against your. skin. The movements of your belly with each breath. 

 Try to include your whole body. In your attention. 

And notice how you feel. 

When we focus our attention on an object of meditation, whether our breath or sensations in the body, we are not looking to change anything. 

Or feel a certain way. 

We are simply observing what is happening right now. 

This way of observing helps us cultivate a sense of curiosity and wonder.

By noticing when we are distracted, and bringing our attention back to the object of meditation, we cultivate mindfulness and compassion. 

Our goal is not to get rid of distractions, but to notice them without judgment and then start again. 

 I now invite you to bring to mind the goal you thought about before we started the meditation 

 now, bring your attention to your body again. Do you notice anything different? 

There might be thoughts, sensations, emotions. 

Just notice what is happening, without judgment. 

 And gently bring your attention back to the breath. 

 And now I invite you to think of some ways how achieving your goal will affect you. 

How it will affect the people around you. 

How it will affect the close person you thought about before we started the meditation. 

Think about how does this person affect your efforts to achieve your goal. 

And how are they affected by your goal? 

Can you think of any effects on a larger scale. 

When we change everything and everyone around us is affected. 

 Same as we are affected by everything and everyone else around us. 

 As you consider these questions, see if you can notice sensations and emotions in your body, and how they change. 

If nothing comes up. That's okay. You can try this at another time. 

As many times as you need. 

 Let's take two minutes in silence to explore these questions. 

 We'll now let go of thinking about these questions And bring our attention to the belly again Notice the rising and falling With each breath

Let's take a few moments to just relax and rest 

 we will now slowly start to get out of meditation. 

Bring your attention to the room. 

Notice the sounds around you. The temperature. 

 Start moving slowly your fingers and your toes, your arms, your legs. 

 And when you were ready, you can open your eyes. 

 Thank you for taking this time to meditate with us today.