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To respond to the challenging times we are living through, physician, humanitarian and social justice advocate Dr. Paul Zeitz has identified “Revolutionary Optimism” as a new cure for hopelessness, despair, and cynicism. Revolutionary Optimism is itself an infectious, contagious, self-created way of living and connecting with others on the path of love. Once you commit yourself as a Revolutionary Optimist, you can bravely unleash your personal power, #unify with others, and accelerate action for our collective repair, justice, and peace, always keeping love at the center.
Paul - 00:00:00:
Hey Kris, thanks so much for joining the podcast. It's a great honor to have you here today. Thank you. How you doing?
Kristine - 00:00:07:
Oh my gosh. I'm great. Thanks, Paul. Thank you so much for having me on. What a wonderful podcast you are doing with just bringing some amazing ideas that are so needed to our world today. Thank you so much.
Paul - 00:00:22:
So I wanted to ask you, since we met six months ago, and I've been in community with you and other folks who are working on books and have big ideas, you always started every session with a guided meditation. And I wanted to ask you if you're willing to start this episode of the podcast with bringing in the golden light.
Kristine - 00:00:42:
Oh, absolutely, no, thank you so much for asking. It actually helps me get really grounded and centered to do so. So, all right, so everyone who's listening, hello, and thank you for being here, and please, if you can, just close your eyes. If you can't, you're listening, doing an activity, just use this as a deep breathing exercise to stay really present in what you're doing. But if you can, sit comfortably, close your eyes, and place your palms open on your lap. And let's just begin to breathe together, shall we? Breathing in through your nose, allowing your chest and your belly to fully expand, taking in the fullness of your breath. And on the exhale, just relax, release, and let go of any tension you feel. And breathing in pure golden sunlight to the tips of your fingers and your toes and the top of your head. On the exhale, just let go of what doesn't serve you well. Breathing in pure golden sunlight through your core, through your heart, through your mind. On the exhale, just release and sink into your breath, into your body. And breathing in pure golden sunlight to every cell of your being, place your hand on your heart, activating your heart, opening your heart, and spend a moment thinking of one thing you feel grateful for. And as you fill your entire being, every cell of your being with pure golden gratitude, just continue to exhale and release and let go. Breathing in pure golden gratitude to the top of your head, to the tips of your fingers and your toes. Exhale and release any fear you feel in your body. And breathing in pure golden gratitude to every cell of your being. On the exhale, allow that gratitude to wash over you like a cascading waterfall of pure joy. And breathing in pure golden gratitude through your core, through your heart, through your mind. On the exhale, allow it to wash over you again, like a cascading waterfall of pure joy. And taking one last deep breath in filling your entire being every cell of your being with golden gratitude and light. On the exhale. Go ahead and open your eyes.
Paul - 00:03:30:
I could stay there all day, but thank you so much for that. It's always an honor to. To be starting any connection with others and with presencing ourselves. And your meditation is a powerful one. And I really appreciate it. Your guided sweetness.
Kristine - 00:03:46:
Thank you.
Paul - 00:03:47:
So Kris, there's so much we could talk about. I see you as a person that is a leader in what I think you and I discussed as the leader in the happiness movement. You know, I'm a movement builder. We're building a movement of revolutionary optimists. We want to recreate our country and our world. We want to put love at the center. And I think people get challenged by this idea that we could be happy while doing that because there's so much suffering in the world or so much suffering within ourselves, so much woundedness and trauma and healing that we have the opportunity to do. And then our collective suffering, how can you be happy in all that? So can you share with us your journey about living life happily? You've had really tough stuff happen. And why don't we go from there?
Kristine - 00:04:35:
Yeah, well, I guess like the place to start is always with my personal story so that people know a little bit about the journey that I've been on. As you might have noted in the introduction that I am the co-author with my late husband, Dr. Richard Carlson of the Don'ts with the Small Stuff Books. Our journey in the happiness movement really was Richard leading as a pioneer in the happiness movement. He is very much considered a pioneer in the field of positive psychology. Well, he's not noted that by positive psychology. He was one of the very first people to ever write a book with the word happy in the titles, book, you can be happy no matter what the five principles of happiness. And, you know, he wrote Don'ts With The Small Stuff was his 10th book. And prior to that, he'd written Shortcut Through Therapy, Stop Thinking, Start Living, You Can Be Happy No Matter What, You Can Feel Good Again, all these other books. And don’t sweat the small stuff came at a time that really took off in the world when the, when technology was rising. And you know, here we were with all this technology rising with email and all these new things, the internet, and yet people thought that technology was going to give us more time, but what it did was it gave us more overwhelmed than ever. And so Don't Sweat the Small Stuff really took off during that time and became this global phenomenon. Well fast forward 10 years later, Richard and I were standing in the kitchen at the 10th anniversary and he said to me, he said, you know, Kris, what's really cool about our book series is about every 10 years, there's going to be a whole new group of people that are sweating the small stuff, a whole new generation of people. And because it's written with such relevancy, it's always going to be timeless. And about a week later, Richard got on a flight to New York and on the descent of that flight, died suddenly from a pulmonary embolism. And we were both in our mid-40s. I was 43, he was 45 years old or young, I should say, and our kids were in high school. It really was a shocking, really shocking moment for everyone, especially myself and my girls and Richard's parents who are both still alive, his sister, everyone, his fans. Richard was such a vibrant man. So the fact that he could just get on a plane and die from a pulmonary embolism was just mind blowing. And yet it happened. And it sent me, I can speak for my own journey and my kids on a new trajectory of life. One that was totally different and full of a lot of grief and a lot of loss and and taught me how to reclaim joy, taught me how to heal, taught me how to love again, and moreover, really allowed me to discover my true authenticity and my authentic expression. And I like to say that One of the only benefits of going through that kind of heartbreaking, heartbroken, open loss, for me, was the awakening aspect of it. That I didn't realize how much I was living with more of a wall around my heart than I wouldn't have even known because it didn't look like I was living that way or that I was living somewhat asleep to my own personal mission or my own personal contribution to the world. But my role at the time was to be Richard's wife and mother to my kids. And I was the one who was the crystal in our moving family clock. I was the one that kept the whole thing going. And so I saw that as my great contribution was holding him up in the world. Well, suddenly with his death, I wasn't holding up the perfect life anymore for anyone. Our life was shattered. But in that there was this new found freedom and wisdom that grew in me and was awakened in me as I started to witness myself recovering from loss. And it was a long journey. I'm not saying it was shortened by the fact that I had wisdom, that I had tools. I mean, the journey of recovery from loss is about releasing an old dream, an old idea of what your future is and stepping into a new life and a new beginning. And that's just, that's not easy to do for anyone when they lose a spouse or partner that they really truly love and cherish. That was more than just a spouse or partner was all relationships to them. So it was a difficult time in mine and my daughter's lives, but it taught me so much. And it really taught me that I could stand at the pivot turn of what could be a bitter experience of the rest of my life or a better experience. And I chose to live better. I chose to feel better. I chose to rediscover a path of joy. And I did return to joy. And I like to say that grief and loss doesn't last forever. It lasts as long as it lasts until you accept. What's happened to your life until you are able to move forward carrying that love with you. And it's just spawned so many different directions, Paul, for me, as you know, I've just found my purpose just in so many small gems of things that I'm doing now. And I love every minute of it.
Paul - 00:10:21:
Yeah, thanks Kris for sharing all that. And also the way that you share it in the books that you're writing. I've read several of them at this point since we met six months ago, and I appreciate your wisdom that you're now sharing with everyone. And as part of this podcast, the idea is to like acknowledge people for making those choices. Like you chose, you made choices to transform yourself with happiness and joy. And one of my spiritual mentors talks about, you know, love and grief are the opposite sides of the same coin. You know, as much as you love someone is how deeply you grieve.
Kristine - 00:11:05:
Absolutely.
Paul - 00:11:06:
It's about like living a path of love. The other thing that your wisdom shares is that, you know, you have to choose joy too, you know? And I would add, and maybe I would like to ask you, what would, you know, what you think of this is that, you know, the idea that I'm living in is this idea that you can face the truth of all the suffering that is ongoing within myself and in my midst, in my family, my community, my world, and at the same time hold the happiness and joy experiences of my life and the blessings and the privilege actually. And it's all held in a broader joy field. So the broader joy field allows us to, you know, face the suffering and enjoy happiness like you're teaching.
Kristine - 00:11:55:
I love the quote by Kahlil Gibran, and it is that your greatest joy is your sorrow unmasked. And that spoke to me so profoundly and still does. And I was speaking to somebody the other day and he was crying, he was in grief, and he was apologizing for crying. And I was like, don't ever apologize for crying because you're in grief, you know? This is like how you heal. He's like, well, I've just always been told I'm too sensitive. And I said, well, better be too sensitive than not sensitive at all. I said, because your joy is going to be so great when you're through this time. And all crying and all sadness and suffering ever does, if we allow it to, is carve out a greater place for the heart to expand in joy. And certainly that's been my experience, is that if you make that choice, that your heart is open, then you will expand and you'll actually be able to hold more love than you could have ever imagined.
Paul - 00:13:02:
Yeah, I want to segue from that point to this book that, this is one of the books that you wrote, and it's called An Hour to Live and An Hour to Love. You and I have talked about death awareness or mortality awareness, and I think when you have a shocking loss like you experience, that heightens that kind of mortality awareness. As a physician, I was like, I developed that practice, having studied Stephen Levine, and a year to live and all that kind of stuff. About the idea that I don't know when my last day is going to be. So I actually live that way. That's why I put out some emails sometimes in case the plane goes down, you know, or in case I'm not there to send the next email. I want my latest thoughts to be shared so that they're alive as part of my, you know, if I happen to have passed. So this book, though, I shared with my wife, Mindy. We were with a group of people and we shared it around. Everyone is so touched and moved by these 60 pages or so, the deep wisdom. Can you explain just a bit about this book? An hour to live and an hour to love? Because I think it's worth reading for everyone listening.
Kristine - 00:14:13:
Yeah, it was a letter that Richard wrote to me on our 18th wedding anniversary about three years before he died. He was sitting in his office one day and he was also a Steven Levine fan and loved Steven as a human. And he was reading his book, A Year to Live, and Richard decided that he didn't want to wait to answer that question. If you had an hour to live and could make one phone call, who would it be to? What would you say and why are you waiting? And so he decided to sit down and write his answer. And he just wrote this incredibly beautiful love letter, really to me and my girls. It was mostly to me, but it was also to our girls. It was just incredible. And what was more incredible about it was that he did it three years before he died. He had the foresight. To put down on paper all the things that he would say to us in his last hour of life. And what was even more incredible for me was that letter became so much solace in my grief. I ended up publishing it back to Richard as a tribute. And in essence, he wrote his own tribute. I wrote my response. To him in that letter where I was sitting right at the very, you know, very beginning of my loss. It was just, you know, it's just a really beautiful piece of our love story. But I think the way it touches people the most is, you know, don't wait to say the things that you love. Don't wait to live for this moment because this moment really, really, really could be the last moment. And it certainly, you know, proved to be that way for him.
Paul - 00:16:04:
Thank you so much for sharing his letter and your response and the whole tapestry of healing and loving in the face of circumstances. I really do think that your experience and the way that you share about it is universal. So really, all people experience loss. All people have trauma. There's a lot of healing opportunities that we see that are possible in our country. And this is a universal story of healing. And love from the heart. It's so heart driven. My wife and I was like, oh, I'm going to write you a letter. Like Richard wrote to Kris and it's just like, I ended up not being able to do that. We did create our recent getaway as a happiness retreat and we said we were going to practice being happy and smiling in the face of any circumstance. So we both are, you know, living into that as a new way of being. And it's really been powerful for me. And it came out of your teachings and this book. It came out of our exploration of all this and bringing it into me and my marriage. So thank you, thank you, thank you for that.
Kristine - 00:17:18:
You're welcome. Yeah, it kind of helps you have a sense of humor. If you know when you have to, like you start to play that game about flights, getting canceled, you know, I mean really the small stuff, like there is so much small stuff that happens that, you know, people get so mad at spill your coffee on your shirt. You know, people cut you off in traffic. Somebody's got more items in their grocery cart at the line than they're supposed to in the, you know, 15 item line, you know, all those, just small stuff things that, you know, can poke you with annoyance or even anger. And yet it really just takes some of your life away without having perspective about it. But if you can make it your joy to smile at those things and to say, Oh gosh, you know how innocent that person might be in that moment to be doing that, you know, or, Oh shoot, too bad. I spilled coffee on my shirt. I'm not gonna get mad about it, you know, that it helps, it helps with optimism.
Paul - 00:18:19:
Yeah, so it is part of revolutionary optimism, it turns out. And I want to share quickly, last week I was a part of a climate emergency defiance, direct action, where I was putting a sign on the White House and we had protesters. We were declaring, calling on President Biden to keep his promises and end fossil fuels. And we were calling on him to declare a climate emergency. And we were part of a movement around the world that was mobilizing. There were. At least 1,100 demonstrations around the world around that same time. And I ended up getting arrested and as part of my arrest, 22 hour detainment, I was held with a handcuff with my arms behind my back in a paddy wagon driving around DC. And I was like, okay, I have to deploy. I am happy and I am satisfied no matter what are the circumstances. I really love doing yoga and so I said, oh, I guess this is a three-hour shoulder stretch. So that I can improve my yoga posture, you know? And I just flipped the switch on it, and you know, I knew it would end. You know, I knew I'm privileged, and I knew I was gonna get out, and despite how horrible it was, I knew it would end, you know? So I was privileged in that way. But anyway, I just wanted to share that with you.
Kristine - 00:19:38:
That's a new spin. That's a really good practice, Paul. You should pat yourself on the back for that one and give yourself a hug at the same time. It's actually not new.
Paul - 00:19:49:
I mean, civil disobedience has been used by social and political movements from the civil rights movement, the Gandhian independence movement in India, throughout history. You know, throughout history, people mobilize and they risk from a love place, you know, they risk the opposing forces beating them down.
Kristine - 00:20:10:
I was speaking to the fact that you turned your handcuffed moment into a yoga posture.
Paul - 00:20:17:
Honestly, I was really proud of myself.
Kristine - 00:20:20:
Yeah, you should have been. I mean, that's what I mean. That's a whole new spin on Jones, but the small stuff.
Paul - 00:20:26:
Perfect. So now that we've transitioned a little bit from your personal story into the world, I wanted to ask you if you could share with our listeners about what you're up to. Richard wrote that book about the five principles of happiness, and you are now bringing to life some of these ideas with the challenge day. Let's start with that, and then we can move into other things that you're cooking up.
Kristine - 00:20:50:
Yeah, all right, thanks. It's been a long time goal of mine to take the principles of happiness and Richard's book, Don't Spout the Small Stuff for Teens, and bring it more to kids in school. And my friends Rich and Yvonne Dutre Saint John, they founded an organization called Challenge Day, which I have always just loved so much and supported, and Richard supported when he was alive. And that's an amazing day that they bring this really cool workshop to kids that's a very deep dive. It kind of goes in the back door play, but it's a deep dive into kids, their lives, their concerns, their fears. And by the end of the day, what happens is you see the room get very connected. You see these clicks and the barriers, the social barriers start to break down, and kids start to be able to understand and see that people, all of people are more alike than they are different, and that some of their judgments about people have been wrong. It's very powerful. They have a lot of powerful exercises that they lead the kids through that have been very popularized by other workshops and so forth, but at any rate, I've just seen the power of that organization. And I felt that what would be really wonderful would be to create a kind of follow-up program, but a program that also stands on its own legs called Don't Sweat Changemaker. And that program is really about taking kids that maybe are really super turned on by the idea of connection and love and kindness and teaching them that they can all be leaders, that leadership isn't about being a captain of a football team or captain of something. Leadership is about leading by example, lead by being the change, lead by acts of change. Lead by acts of kindness and teach them how to do this and create a program that helps them facilitate some kind of major act of change in their community. So there's a lot of components to it, I feel like are really valuable for kids. The leadership aspect of really, you know, talking about how we lead with love, we lead with kindness. We aren't bystanders to injustices that occur around us. We can actually be proactive, have a voice. And we can also make change happen in our community by choosing an act of change and then seeing it through, you know, teaching them that it's just nothing more than a project that they work step by step to enroll others in and to bring a community together. It could be like something like working with their local food bank to create a special meal or do a food drive or, something that allows them to rally the support of kids in some kind of act that's a changemaker act. And yeah, and our goal is to really help these kids on an ongoing platform, a social emotional learning platform. That gives them workshops and seminars and tools, you know, the five principles of happiness, really teaching them that and doing some live stuff with them too, maybe on Saturday or in the summertime, you know, but also allowing them to get their certificate of leadership from our program, which will also help them get their volunteer hours for high school and so forth. So that's kind of, that's the vision, that's the goal, and we're just getting started. So right now, you know, we're just at the very beginning stage of funding and everything and creating the program. And we hope to launch by, you know, this spring. That's what we're,
Paul - 00:24:40:
The spring of 2024, yeah.
Kristine - 00:24:41:
Yeah, by the spring of 2014.
Paul - 00:24:42:
That is so beautiful. What a beautiful vision. Thank you so much for creating that and opening up that space and I invite my listeners to contact you. Through your website, can you just give us your URL? We're not done, but I just wanna make sure that people have that.
Kristine - 00:24:59:
Yeah, we're working on adding that to our website right now, but you can go to dontsweat.com and leave me a message there or say you're interested in finding out more, but we should have something up and running fairly shortly.
Paul - 00:25:14:
Okay, dontsweat.com it is. So. I think that is so important. We know that there's a mental health crisis in the United States. There's a technology addiction in the United States. There's a large number of children that are experiencing online sexual violence. Both from peers and from adults. It's a pandemic of injustice that's spiraling out of control. And I think you're offering a repair option or a healing, loving option as a pathway for kids to break out of those cycles that they're getting stuck in. I mean, COVID was tough and it sparked a lot of this or accelerated a lot of these trends. And of course, the broader environment that we're living in affects all of us. And I do want to ask you for you to, you know, explore with me. We're calling it a happiness movement, for lack of a term, that you're a leader in. How do you see that as playing a role in healing our divided country?
Kristine - 00:26:11:
Well, that's a really good question. You know, one of the things that I think about when I think about division is, it's just a lot of ego identification, you know? And when I talk about ego mind, I think about the part of our mind that is attached to being a certain way, and it has a highly judgmental function. It's got a highly divisive function, and it uses fear to generate this divisiveness and this separation that the ego mind separates us and is the opposite of unity. It's the opposite of love. And people always say, well, how do you get out of that? Because you know, as human beings, we've got one, we all have one. But the thing is, the practice is to stay centered in love and stay centered in the present moment. The thing about ego is it really can't exist in love, and it can't exist in the present moment. And if you look to teachers like Marianne Williamson in the Course in Miracles, you know, it talks a lot about the ego. And all the religious texts and the Hindus, the Buddhists, they all talk about ego, psychology, Freud, you know, Jung talks about the ego. And that's how I like to think of the ego mind, is it's, know, you know, some people say, well, it has a purpose. And certainly it does probably because otherwise we wouldn't have it. But I'd say that moreover, we all have a battle with it. And Some of us have practiced winning the battle more than others. Will not find a truly happy person that is stuck in their ego mind. Usually they're quite miserable. They're quite fear oriented. They react from fear. They're not very responsive and they're not very mindful. So all of these things are are sort of the antithesis of what happiness is. And if you want to be happy, you have to choose to be present. You have to choose non judgment. You have to choose a path that isn't about, you know, identifying with one group, but is about what do you identify with from your heart? You know, what does your heart tell you is right or wrong? Or is high in integrity? You know, one of the things that's really, really upsetting to me these days is just the lack of integrity that people are living with and that the denial about that that people are taking a stand for things that they're not looking at what's behind all of it and what's driving this lack of integrity. And all it is is that a bunch of people are choosing it. They're just, they're choosing it. It's winning over love.
Paul - 00:29:05:
Yeah, it's the fear-based, ego-driven mind that you're talking about.
Kristine - 00:29:08:
Yeah, this ego-driven mind is winning over love. So what's the way out of that? Well, the way out of that is to quiet down and learn all about how to subdue the ego. The more subdued the ego is, the brass band that the ego plays cannot play so loudly. And there's this quieter voice that's inside of us, which is the voice of our wisdom, the voice of our soul, the voice of our heart. And that speaks very quietly to us sometimes in a whisper. So we have to quiet the ego down so that we can attune and align with that in order to hear what is true wisdom? What is wisdom? What is love calling for right now? What is it that we can do differently that will, cohesively join our world versus be part of the separation. You know, and I think that there's this. Word of, you know, it's bigger than tolerance. It's more like compassion. It's more like understanding. If you're born in America, then, you know, for me, America has to do with what our founding fathers gave to us in our constitution. And I always go back to what is constitutional for American citizens, you know, and sure, there's probably some renovation to that. You know, certainly we're seeing it in our politics today that, you know, there are things that are happening that nobody could have ever in that time period imagined. So there isn't a lot of provision for some things. But if we are truly American, then we have to go back to the constitution and constitution. You know, a lot of it is about freedom and freedom of voice, freedom to choose, self-empowerment. You know, I think that's the way and I live with the understanding that everybody is entitled to their own beliefs, just like we're entitled to our own religion. We're entitled to live in this country with that freedom to have our own belief system. And ego says, no. You are wrong, you are bad, you are not gonna be in my family, you are not gonna be my friend, you are not gonna be somebody that I associate with if you have a different belief system than me. But your heart hurts and is broken for that. Your heart breaks by the loss of what that ego is telling you to do and react to. And so I think as a culture and as humanity, we're at a real pivot turn. And it breaks my heart to see families and friendships and people disrupting their personal lives because of their belief system. Like I don't understand it. I'm like how did we get here? And this isn't what America is. This isn't, that isn't being American. It isn't.
Paul - 00:32:15:
Yeah. Thanks, Kris. I appreciate that perspective. And I do want to share with you a perspective about the constitution, which is that. Some political leaders have referred to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as having elements of a mission statement for what the United States could become. And it was flawed from the beginning. I have to say this because we know that two-thirds of the creators of all this were white men slave owners, and they were oligarchs at the time, and they wrote this to protect their own economic interests. And they also, while they were inspired and they were visionary in creating the idea of a participatory authentic democracy, unfortunately we have not fulfilled upon that. There's been a long history of moving towards a more perfect union, as some people say. Like you know, after the Civil War there were all those amendments, there was the transformation that happened under FDR, there was the civil rights movement. And we're here now in 2023, and I don't know many people that are feeling like we're happy with the way our country's going and the way the world's going. And that's why I'm working on, with you and others, on revolutionary optimism as a cure for hopelessness, despair, and cynicism. But part of that is being, like questioning, and maybe even recreating, and moving forward with a new governing framework that puts love at the center, as you said. And we have a greed-driven system that is that ego mind. And you know, we have to, and it has been institutionalized in our government and in the way our society is operating. It's the pharaoh, actually, of greed. And I think you're right, we do have an opportunity to crack through that right now, because it's collapsing, you know. People want the joy and the happiness that you are teaching is accessible. Like we can all choose it, as you said. I just think that is so exciting. I really do. I think that, and from a medical perspective, just quickly. The old brain, the reptilian brain that we have within our brain. Is that judgmental, protective, fear-based. You know, I call it the lizard brain. And we're blessed to have a neocortex. And we know we have neuroplasticity. We can create new neural pathways that default towards joy and happiness by doing the practices that you teach. That's why we started with your meditation because it's living that way of rewiring your brain with happiness. So I think that you want to roll this out to youth across the country and. I have to ask you one last question though. Can you? Share with us how you think the principles of happiness and your vision for Don't Swap Change Makers would apply to all youth of all economic levels, all races, all genders. How do you see it being applicable across the tapestry of humanity?
Kristine - 00:35:20:
Well, I see Paul that our books, Don'ts with the Small Stuff, all the Don'ts with the Small Stuff books have been popular throughout all the different cultures and they have somehow been able to bypass any sort of separation from race, religion, even age, socioeconomic status, and even the barriers of language. I just feel like these principles of happiness are generic. To humankind.
Paul - 00:35:49:
Can you give us a quick overview of the principles?
Kristine - 00:35:52:
Oh yeah, yeah. So they are thoughts, moods, feelings, separate realities, and present moment living. So it's the nature, teaching people about the nature of their thoughts. It's teaching people about that we all have moods and that life in a low mood looks very different than life in a high mood. It's teaching people that we have feelings and that feeling our feelings are very important once we get to that feeling state that we need to acknowledge our feelings, but also our feelings provide information as to what we're thinking, the content of our thinking that so much of our awareness about, you know, our human awareness has to do with being able to be aware of your train of thought and talk about neuroplasticity and how we change our neural pathways is literally by stopping a negative thought pattern and changing it and moving and jumping literally like leapfrogging over it into maybe gratitude or into some other pathway. But what happens for people, it happens for me too, is we get stuck in our own thinking and we're just thinking like we're just thinking as if we're breathing. It's just natural to us. Some of our thoughts are positive. Many of them aren't. Many of them are negative. And so, but to start to understand that all of that may be automatic, but you can still participate proactively in it. And once you see that and you start to see, well, those thoughts are making me angry. Those thoughts are taking me down a path that's destructive for me. Those thoughts, those thoughts right now are taking me from my couch to my refrigerator. You know, I don't want to go there.
Paul - 00:37:43:
Or to my device.
Kristine - 00:37:45:
Right, you can stop and you can shift your thinking and it will likely shift your mood. It will shift how you're feeling. It might shift your choices. So, and then of course, separate realities is realizing that people, we all are living life through our own lens. And even a married couple that might be so close and so in love, they're still in two different realities. It's like we're all in and experiencing life from our own worldview. And then present moment living is the most important one of all. And that is sinking into the present moment. And when I think of presence, I mean, not worried about your past and not worried about your future. Not dreaming too far into the future and not in your past. Present moment is in alignment with who you are and what you are right now in this moment. It's probably the most important thing that people could practice is bringing their attention back to the now.
Paul - 00:38:45:
Well, thanks Kris, and thanks for bringing happiness and living in the present moment and living with life awareness in the way that you do for all of our listeners. So thanks and have a great week ahead.
Kristine - 00:38:58:
And thank you, Paul, for the wonderful work you're doing. It's just invaluable. Thank you.