• What Big T Truth is – and why it’s the type of truth we tend to lie about. (3:04)
  
  
• How being able to speak our present moment truth creates connection and moments of juicy possibility in our relationships. (5:39)
  
  
• What Big T truths require from us (and why it’s worth it!) (6:18)
  
  
• What Brene Brown’s quote about oversharing tells us about why it’s not appropriate to speak Big T truths ALL the time. (7:43)
  
  
• Mitch’s R.A.Z.R. method for knowing when to move into Big T truth (and when not to.) (9:31) 
  
  
• How opening to a situation with curiosity supports mindful, healthy communications. (13:27)
  
  
• A powerful question to ask yourself while you W.A.I.T. to speak. (15:17)
  
  
• What Mitch learned about healthy communications from playing the trombone as a kid. (15:57)
  
  
• The difference between a mindful rest between pieces of conversation and what is actually “nexting” for control. (17:14) 
  
  
• Why it’s so hard for humans not to lie. (19:13)
  
  
• How our world makes it too easy to “duck and cover” vs. speaking truth. (21:06)
  
  
• How our unconscious habits can get the way of us having good communication and connection with others – and how to free ourselves from them. (23:16)
  
  
• How to practice mindful communication techniques that really work to create connection. (25:38)
  
  
• Why self-compassion is such an important element of owning our mistakes and having honest communication around them. (38:37)
  
  
• Why the world needs more Big T Truth telling right now. (39:18)
  
  
• What you already know to be true about mindfulness. (41:24)

Michelle [00:00:02]

Hi, I’m Michelle Becker. I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist, an international compassion teacher. And you’re listening to the Well Connected Relationships podcast. Together, we’ll explore how compassion changes the way you relate to yourself and others. And we’ll give you the tools to change your relationships for good. 

Hi, everyone. I’m Michelle Becker, and you’re listening to the Well Connected Relationships Podcast. In today’s episode, I’ll be talking with Dr. Mitch Ablett about mindful communication, why and how we lie and why it’s important to practice telling what Mitch calls Big T truth. We’ll also touch on how mindfulness can help us with Big T truth and healthy communication. 

Dr. Mitch Ablett is a licensed psychologist, author, consultant and international speaker. He’s authored several books, including The Five Hurdles to Happiness and the Mindful Path to Overcoming Them. And his latest book, For parents, educators and helping professionals “Prizeworthy How to Meaningfully Connect, Build Character and Unlock the Potential of Every Child.” He’s also released card decks, including the Self-compassion deck and his latest card deck for children, “Train Your Mind Like a Ninja 30 Secret Skills for Fun, Focus and Resilience.” Mitch’s work has been featured in numerous online and print media, including Psychology Today, Mindful magazine, The New York Times, Newsweek, Tricycle Magazine, and USA Today. He also hosts a podcast in which he covers a variety of topics in his quest to help people authentically, compassionately and courageously connect with the true prizes in one another. A clinical psychologist in the Boston area, he works with teens, parents, families and career professionals and organizations not only to find solutions to painful problems, but also to help people connect with the true prizes of present moment, meeting of needs and attainment of growth potential in themselves and others. He’s worked in the field for over 20 years in a variety of settings, including as clinical director of a therapeutic school for adolescents facing emotional, behavioral and learning difficulties, and is past executive director for the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy. Welcome, Mitch. Thank you for joining us.

Mitch [00:02:16]

Yes, thank you for having me. This is great.

Michelle [00:02:19]

You know, I get a little tired just reading your bio. You must be tired.

Mitch [00:02:24]

Yeah, I do get tired. That is true. Then I’m a parent, so then I get really tired.

Michelle [00:02:31]

Tired and little space to rest up. Yeah. Yes.

Mitch [00:02:34]

Absolutely.

Michelle [00:02:35]

I remember those days anyway. Well, I really appreciate having you with us today, Mitch. And two of the blogs on your website that I particularly loved were the how to have a mindful communication blog and the Five Obstacles to Happiness blogs.

Mitch [00:02:51]

Yes. Yes.

Michelle [00:02:53]

So and I definitely recommend that our listeners check you out and and read the blogs. But I think where I’d like to start is I love what you wrote about honesty and Big T truth. Could you say a little more about what that means to you?

Mitch [00:03:10]

Sure. Sure. So, you know, I, I, you know, as you said in the intro, I’ve worked with kids and families for a long time. And, you know, all of us as professionals working with kids, whether we’re talking about clinicians or teachers and certainly as parents, you know, we, you know, deeply value teaching honesty to kids. It’s kind of a you know, it’s, you know, in the old fables, right, the Grimm’s fairy tales, you know, the, you know, aspects of the stories pointing to the importance of honesty.

Michelle [00:03:42]

Absolutely.

Mitch [00:03:43]

Yeah, it’s crucial. And, you know, I as I was thinking about my work over time and, you know, as I was, you know, writing, I can’t remember which book it was I was working on. And I was thinking about this concept of of honesty. And then I was thinking about it from a mindfulness perspective. You know, there’s the honesty that we want our kids to learn and live from in terms of the facts of their lives, like what did or didn’t happen. And don’t lie about that. Tell the truth about what you did and you know what happened. Mm hmm. Kind of a journalistic honesty. And I consider that, you know, though, it’s very important. Little T truth. 

Big T truth is what we all, in my opinion, lie about on a fairly consistent basis, you know? You know, that’s the truth of what is happening in the present moment, in our experience. You know, so what is happening in our body? What’s happening in our emotions? What thoughts are there in our mind? And we tend to out of habit, self protect, often and not speak what I call the big T truth. You know, our undeniable truth of what is happening in our experience in the present moment. 

We we fear, you know, creating hurt for others. We fear consequences of if we spoke, what we’re actually thinking, what we’re actually feeling, that there will be pain on the horizon for us. Mm hmm. And so we hedge and we hide and we deflect and we tell stories, but we don’t necessarily speak our present moment truth. And, you know, I think not only for kids is that crucial. In my work as a therapist, you know, when a patient is able adult patient is able to speak from their present moment experience, that’s when powerful things happen. You know, when a parent is able to speak of their present moment, truth to a kid, their child, and like, I’m over here and I’m struggling too. yeah, I think we can feel the authenticity, the honesty there. And I think it it connects us and a kind of common humanity sense.

Michelle [00:06:15]

Absolutely. And and we can’t really know each other without without that, without that big T truth, without being able to communicate our present moment experiences. But that takes a lot of vulnerability, right? It puts us into this kind of vulnerable place, you know, telling this big T truth.

Mitch [00:06:35]

Yes. Yeah, it. Yeah, it’s vulnerable. It’s scary and. And it’s powerful. You know, if I when I teach on this or when I talk to, you know, coaching clients or therapy patients about this, it would be a little odd in our matrix of the social world to walk around speaking present moment truth at all times. You know, people would be like, what the heck is going on with that dude?

Michelle [00:07:06]

Exactly.

Mitch [00:07:07]

And yet when you know, when it’s ripe, when it really I like the word resonance these days, when it really resonates with the moment, with the situation, you know, And we’re willing to take that leap and say, I’m over here and this is what is happening for me. And I’m curious what’s happening for you. That carves out a carves out a moment and it makes it’s got a lot of juicy possibility to it if we’re willing to do it.

Michelle [00:07:42]

Yeah. And how do we you know, I like what you’re saying about it would be a little odd if we did this all the time. Right. So, you know, how do we know when to move into the big T truth and when not to? Brené Brown talks a little bit about sometimes trying to hotwire connection through oversharing. Right. So not everybody with a grocery the checker at the grocery store when she says, how are you? She probably doesn’t really want to know.

Mitch [00:08:10]

Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle [00:08:12]

All of the details. Any guidance for us on, you know, how do we know, how do we know when that resonance is there? How do we know when it this is a situation that really actually calls for the big T truth, not the ordinary way of going through the day?

Mitch [00:08:28]

Yeah, no, I think that’s the crucial question and it’s the crucial practice and I’ve given it lots of different frames over time. There’s the way in which you would write about it in that blog article, my Prizeworthy book, I, I talked about the prize model. You know, I’ve, I love acronyms. I’m an acronym fiend. You know, it’s all the same thing. It’s all the same method and just different angles. My current way of teaching it is, you know, we need to carve out these moments and because that’s all we have, but we miss most of them because we’re not paying attention, right? We’re we’re in our we’re lost in our narratives, in our mind. And we’re we’re what I call “nexting” into the next moment. But to really carve out that moment, it’s a it’s a flow of practices. And so, you know, my current way of teaching it is that we need the the razor r a z r and that first R is resonance, you know. 

So how do you practice resonance? You you learn to through lots of practice to drop in to what your body is doing. Mm hmm. When I when I coach people, either as a clinician or as a coach, you know, I you know, there’s what I call micro minding skill, which is what most people consider mindfulness practice. Like what’s happening with your breath kind of microscope in on that And really. Stay with that and ride that. Right. What’s happening in that other emotional reaction that you’re having really laser in on that microscope in on that? Mm hmm. You know, that’s part of resonating because that’s part of what is. But then to really resonate in communication, you can’t just go in with a microscope into your body reactions or your emotion or your thought. You have to go satellite, You have to macro mind out and zoom out into orbit and see all of it. You know, so this is this is true mindfulness. You know what all is in this moment. You know what what is happening in all senses, What’s happening in mind? What’s what’s happening in the body, you know, and what might be behind the surface for this person, Might what might they be feeling, what might be painful for them? Just being curious about that. That’s part of going up in like this mindfulness. You know, my my frame these days, as I call it, all like moment ology. I being a moment ologist is studying these moments. Right. And, you know, going up into orbit and like what what really matters for this person. And when you just start asking, you train yourself to ask some of those questions, different questions, different situations, you start to get data, you start to get a sense that, you know, there’s more than what my knee jerk thoughts told me. And, you know, there might be a pain point there for them. They may be playing defense. I could easily have missed that. 

So you resonate with all of that and you ask those questions as the A, you know, like, what am I missing? What might be there for them? 

And then you drop into the Z, which is what I call the zero point. You know, I drop I train myself to drop agenda of controlling what’s going to happen in that unfolding next.

Michelle [00:12:05]

Mm hmm.

Mitch [00:12:06]

You know, I’m just in this. I’m watching this and observing this, yet I’m in it and I’m curious and I’m zeroing out control. I like a radical acceptance move. 

And now I’m going to R render from this, you know, I’m going to speak that undeniable big T truth. I’m going to be silent. I’m going to just allow this to be you know, I think that’s a rendering. That’s a doing to just stay silent. Mm hmm. So it is this space that you carve out where you’re resonating, you’re asking of the moment, you know, which can include what fits right now, what action really fits?

Michelle [00:12:52]

Right.

Mitch [00:12:53]

You know what you know. And then if I let go of control, I zero out. Am I willing to render? Even though it may be hard, even though there may be a sense of like this is this is uncomfortable. Mm hmm. So then you go around and around with that. And I just think that that’s how you carve out moments in communication.

Michelle [00:13:15]

Great. I love that. And, you know, in the beginning of you’re talking about, you know, what I would call concentrative awareness or open monitoring. Right. So going from the concentrated to the open monitoring what’s here right now. What’s here for me?

Mitch [00:13:29]

Yes.

Michelle [00:13:30]

But also one of the things that you talk about that I think is so important is then having a curiosity about what’s here for the other person. And you say, you know, what might they be thinking, feeling, experiencing? And that’s also informed by this sort of open monitoring just by looking at the expression on their face, their body. Yes. Listening to the tone of their voice. Right. There are all of these cues. When we really open with curiosity, there are all these cues about what may be happening. And that part of that, I think, is informs us about is this a good time to have a conversation with this person? Is this how deep of a conversation should we have with this person right now?

Mitch [00:14:14]

Yes.

Michelle [00:14:15]

Is this a big T moment? Is this not a big T moment?

Mitch [00:14:18]

I love that. That that’s just it. I think there’s a I think a lot of people have a misconception around mindfulness practice in general or compassion based practices that it’s rainbows and unicorns and it’s passive and that there’s no assertiveness. There’s no, you know, people will walk on you. I mean, I you know, I grew up in rural Ohio. It was rough and tumble. You know, when I was a Boy Scout, you know, there was you know, I’ve worked with emotionally, behaviorally disordered kids for 20 some years. Mm hmm. You can’t you can be in settings like this and just be all Kumbaya, you know, like, hey, you know, whatever you feel is great. 

But what you can do is learn to slow down your cadence, you know, one beat, two beats and just, you know, again, that a, you know, like, whose agenda is this? I love, again, an acronym, right? Whose agenda is this what I’m about to say or do? If this is about me just getting control or being right now, how is that going to play out? How’s that played out before?

Michelle [00:15:33]

You know, it’s interesting. You use the acronym WAIT, and I haven’t heard it that way before. I usually hear wait as why am I talking?

Mitch [00:15:41]

Yes, I heard that one when I heard that one. I like that.

Michelle [00:15:44]

Yeah. So I like this. Whose agenda is this? This? That’s a great use of it as well.

Mitch [00:15:50]

Yeah. Any anything that somebody can do in these beats, you know, I, you know, I’m not a I played trombone growing up and I’m not a really awesome skilled musician, but I think there’s a lyrical quality to communication. Mm hmm. You know, you could write a score of it. And some people in my field have tried to, like, structurally analyze moment to moment of, you know, interactions. As a grad student in a research lab, I did some of that kind of coding of interactions and studied what what we call it in that aspect of the field, the therapeutic alliance between the therapist and the patient. Mm hmm. Which, you know, by the way, is the best predictor of outcome in psychotherapy more than technique or years or experience or any of that.

Michelle [00:16:36]

Exactly.

Mitch [00:16:37]

You know, that beat, you know, when you really, you know, slow down a bit and get very, you know, momentologist with it, I really observe and still participate. You can feel you could feel the beats of it.

Michelle [00:16:52]

Mm hmm.

Mitch [00:16:53]

And that’s where like Roshi Joan Halifax talk. So I read an article by her and others around Compassionate silence.

Michelle [00:17:02]

Yeah.

Mitch [00:17:03]

And how, you know, in the business world, you know, other people are always looking for hacks, Right? What’s the latest hack to get an edge? Yeah. And, you know, some people have grabbed on to using silence. And yet without the you know, history the felt visceral history of practicing mindfulness, I would argue you don’t know how to rest in those gaps of not talking without it being nexting forcing of control. Yes and and so the other person can feel that and they can feel that rush to beat even though you’re not saying anything. And then they’re going to they’re going to play defense to it versus someone who’s just resting and they’re warm and they’re still communicating, you know, talking.

Michelle [00:17:54]

Yeah. And actually, I love this, you know, talk about the beat. And what I find is when without that resting, the tempo tends to speed up, speed up, speed up. Right. So it it it doesn’t just stay at an increased pace. It you know, we play off each other and. It’s to go faster and faster and then really spins out of control. Yes. So that slowing down is so important. You know, I’m also interested in when you talk you talked about the big T truth, which is great. And but I’m also interested in you meant you in your blogs. You mentioned a little bit about how we lie and why we lie. And I just found that fascinating. Would you say a little bit more about that?

Mitch [00:18:38]

Yeah, I know that. What? I don’t know if I put it in a blog, but one treatise or you know, it’s a short book written by one of my favorite writers. And I love his app and podcasts. Sam Harris, a neuroscientist.

Michelle [00:18:52]

Oh, yeah. Mm hmm.

Mitch [00:18:54]

You know, I’m sure a number of your listeners are familiar with Sam’s work, but, you know, he wrote this treatise called Lying. And, you know, he’s a neuroscientist who has a very scientific perspective. And, you know, but he also talked about himself and how hard it is for us as human beings to just not lie. You know, that there are you know, it’s so hard. You know, he didn’t really focus on habit loops and whatnot as much in that that piece. But in my analysis of why it’s so hard and why we lie is that where we have so much conditioning and we we’ve forgotten the truth, talking big T truth talking that we’re much more able to do when we were very, very young. Mm hmm. Kind of, you know, beginner’s mind where we would just speak what we were thinking. We would express how we were feeling. And, you know, and we’ve we’ve clouded all of that with all of this conditioning. And it’s not that that’s all bad to have, you know, a sense of propriety and politeness and, you know, some of these social rules. 

And, you know, our divorce rate is out of control and mental health rates are going through the roof particularly. And we’re all bracing to see what the data from COVID is going to show in terms of the rates that were already bad. Yeah. And, you know, I just think we struggle to speak pain to one another.

Michelle [00:20:29]

Yes, we do struggle to speak pain to each other. Do you have a sense of why that is?

Mitch [00:20:34]

I think I’m just guessing here. There’s the science of habit change. You know that we go on autopilot, we form these habits so that we self protect. You know, Jud Brewer’s work around habit loops and mindfulness has been really important to me and my own understanding and my own clinical and personal practice. You know, so I think that’s in there. You know, I, I don’t know. I think we are in a world that is making it so easy to duck and cover and hide. You know, we’re we’re able to do so much online and all this technology. And yet, are we understanding or are we even curious fully about the ramifications of how we’re making it harder to build the conditioning for being eye to eye and and really, you know, speaking that truth? You know, I worry about our kids just not, you know, in COVID and just in even before COVID, we really have less of, you know, fewer trials, many fewer trials of working through what it means to ride out pain, emotional pain and stay put and assert, set boundaries, be vulnerable. You know, I don’t know. I just I think there are a lot of societal factors and a lot of, you know, structural things that make it harder.

Michelle [00:22:07]

You know, I think I appreciate that. I also think that there’s some transgenerational stuff that is at play. I remember when I went back to grad school and I had to do a Genogram and I’m half Norwegian on my father’s side. And what I found is that my father’s my grandfather, my father’s father was one of about five, was one of 15 children that were born in Norway. Mm hmm. Only only about half of whom survived past age two.

Mitch [00:22:36]

Mm hmm.

Michelle [00:22:37]

So Norwegians, Scandinavians are known for stoicism, which is really kind of the opposite of what we’re talking about here with this, you know, mindfulness and big T truth. Yeah. And really, I think in that generation, it was it was definitely adaptive because who can grieve for that long that you know.

Mitch [00:22:56]

Yeah.

Michelle [00:22:57]

But in my generation, stoicism is not adaptive, you know, because it can keep me from connecting, from sharing, from seeking support and resources. Right.

Mitch [00:23:07]

Yeah.

Michelle [00:23:08]

So I think there’s another, you know, another aspect. That’s what comes up as you’re talking about it as well, that sometimes we come by. These habits really, honestly, you know, passed down. This was a survival skill that was passed down through the generations. But at some point, we have to stop and say, is this actually serving me now?

Mitch [00:23:26]

And that’s just it. And that’s the key. One of the key steps in breaking any habit loop. Mm hmm. Is to pause and map it out. Mm hmm. You know, what’s the trigger? What’s that sensory experience that pops up that’s uncomfortable? What’s the. I call it, the interaction of thinking or mental pictures, and then the outer action of a reactive behavior. And then, like you just said, what’s the result? Yeah. What’s it giving us to do that loop? And if you get curious about it, which is mindfulness in and of itself, you know that I’m getting a little bit of a sense of control or I’m a little better able to sidestep some of the discomfort, some of the more primary color, deeper fear. And and even though you still end up kind of having bad outcomes in the moment, there’s a little bit more of a comfort, you know, nugget. I agree with you. These social, you know, generational things that we come by, honestly, the intergenerational transmission of patterns within families, that’s way more than genetics.

Michelle [00:24:33]

Yeah.

Mitch [00:24:34]

These family themes around, you know, divorce or impulsivity or, you know, whatever. Right. And and, you know, can we just be in a space to get curious about this? I want to do a podcast, actually, you know, that was focused this I I’m still considering it at some point where the whole format is people sit down and they’re going to agree to really try to speak big T truth only.

Michelle [00:25:04]

There you go.

Mitch [00:25:05]

And maybe they on on little t truth or content, they have polar opposite views on something. But are they willing to sit and endeavor to speak from their moment? And I don’t know. I think that would be a) entertaining, you know, at times. But then also way more importantly, it’s a way to teach how to do that. But I don’t know. We just don’t we don’t have many opportunities where structurally that’s fostered.

Michelle [00:25:35]

Right. Right. Exactly. This whole you know, you’re talking about mindfulness as the antidote, basically, or, you know, the path to overcoming this, the path to Big T truth. And I of course, I agree with you. What could for our listeners, do you have some things you might say about what we can do to build the skills of mindfulness? In other words, how can we get better at knowing what’s happening in our bodies, our thoughts, our emotions? And you also talk about values as something that’s really important to know. What what can we do? What kinds of practices or what can we do to kind of develop that that muscle of being able to not only know it, but have the courage to turn toward the big T truth in times of difficulty when we’re distressed rather than, you know, batted away and and say, oh, I’m fine or whatever.

Mitch [00:26:31]

Yes. Whenever I hear that, whenever I’ve said it, I’m fine. It’s it’s you’re not fine or I’m not fine, you know. That’s a conditioned reaction. I what I always say to people these days is to notice the sense of and this goes for all mindfulness practice, all meditative methods. You know, notice that sense of should because there’s such a smorgasbord of practices out there. You know, everyone’s got a mindfulness book coming out. And we’re so saturated with it that I really get the sense that though I’m, you know, very much into this, obviously, you know, people are feeling this sense of why I should be meditating, I should be practicing, and then that ends up being a massive barrier, you know, so to to ease and just, you know, I’m going to show up very small. And this is something that, you know, like water on a stone. It’s a solvent over a period of time, a long period of time. Mm hmm. And just let me drip with this. And, you know, because that, you know, that’s ultimately what’s going to build this skill of being in these stuck moments. If you just go right to, like, some practice to help you handle the stuck moment when it doesn’t fully click and you end up doing the habit pattern anyway, you’ll see all that, you know, mindfulness, communication stuff is bunk. It doesn’t work. Yeah. 

If instead you’re like, let me every day practice different forms of mindful listening. And not necessarily focus on while in communication with people like, you know, sit and listen. And I use listen in a very broad sense to the sensation of the breath. You know, then you as that stabilizes, which is the traditional meditative technique for thousands of years, I really dial into the sensation of the breath, see if you can, you know, as that you can listen to it, you can feel it. Can you broaden out to listening to that, but then also listening to the feel of your body sitting? Mm hmm. Can you broaden out to these other sensations in your body? You’re still you’re still listening to the breath now, your whole, you know, listening to the rest of the body, you know, the touch of your body, can you start to add sound? And now we’re starting to look like the nesting dolls, right? Yeah. Starting to expand out to what you referred to earlier. 

Like, like a true like, open monitoring practice where you’re able to going to get more stable in listening to the full moment. Mm hmm. And then you start to let me get up instead of just the formal sitting practice where I’m listening to the body, listening to sound as it arrives, listening to my mind as it, you know, thoughts arrive now, opening my eyes and, you know, listening to the sites that are arriving. Let me get up and move around, see if I can still do some of that. And then as you start to really build that which you don’t have to go off on silent retreat for 30 years to be able to start to do that. Yeah, I do think the nesting dolls start to build and then you can sit opposite someone and do something that I call gap breathing. Where maybe they’re reading a book for a bit. It’s a loved one. It’s a friend. You’re hanging out for while or it’s one of your kids while they’re on their iPad, you know, whatever. And you’re you’re with them. But then you stack those dolls of the senses and then you start to dial into the gaps between their breath.

Michelle [00:30:25]

Mhm.

Mitch [00:30:26]

Their inhales and exhales. You watch their, their stomach, you know, rise and fall. You listen as they’re speaking, still able to kind of hear their words. But you know, you’re listening to the gaps between the words.

Michelle [00:30:42]

Mm hmm.

Mitch [00:30:42]

And then you, I think you just start to play with this that you can be in moments. And this is what I mean by momentology, it’s not just me trying to come up with another word. You know, I think it’s a way to frame. There’s a way to practice real time or I’m studying the now I’m really bringing like a scientist’s curiosity to the now, but there’s a warmth to it as well. And that’s how I think you really build toward being able to be in moments with people. And then when when the the proverbial stuff is hitting the fan, you can notice the charge. You can listen to the charge in your body and mind, and you can still do that macro mind, like “what might be there for them?”

Michelle [00:31:24]

Yeah. Yeah, and there’s a piece of it, you know, as you’re talking about the momentology and the tuning into the moments which really all we ever have, our lives are made up of just a series of present moments. Because if we’re in the past or we’re in the future, what do you call it nexting? I love that.

Mitch [00:31:42]

Yeah.

Michelle [00:31:44]

O if we’re thing, we’ve missed this particular moment and we’ve missed that this part of our lives, right? So all we really have is the present moment. But one of the things in the practices you’re talking about of tuning in to the breath and tuning into the sensations in the body, where you’re making contact with something else and tuning into sounds and sounds is an easy one or a good one, because what we the other piece that we start to experience is that things come and go. Yep. That that they arise and they go away. Even discomfort. What happens when you have an itch and you don’t scratch it? Well, eventually it does leave anyway, even though you haven’t scratched it. Right. And so that piece of it, I think, goes really well with the Gap piece of it. It’s it’s sort of like, oh, I don’t have to speed up and react and move into things because things have their own rhythm. We start to understand things have their own rhythm. They come and they go.

Mitch [00:32:43]

That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. And this has been talked about and taught for thousands of years, Right? You know, you know the you know, the impermanence. You know that that is a powerful… you somebody can be like, Oh, yeah, I know everything changes or things change. But to really have practiced that studying the now so that you know it, you know full awareness, full body mind and you know you have the experience that you know things rise up wave like and your emotions and your sensations, you know, that itch, that anger, that sadness. Yeah. And if we don’t muck around with it, with the mind, you know, as I like to say, you know, pain wants to move.

Michelle [00:33:33]

Oh, that’s great saying.

Mitch [00:33:35]

And if we don’t muck with it with the mind, it’ll, it’ll move, it’ll give us the message, it’ll give us that, you know, like hey need that is not being attended to. And then if we attend to that message sufficiently, it’ll move.

Michelle [00:33:50]

And that message I think is part of what we’re looking at, what you’re talking about. You’re talking about Big T Truth. Yes. That is the message I’m in. You know, if it happens to be a moment of pain, I’m in pain here. And what’s the nature of this pain? Oh, well, I feel angry, but actually, underneath anger. I’m feeling rejected or I’m feeling lonely or I’m feeling sad or whatever it might be.

Mitch [00:34:16]

Yeah. Yeah, I. I think it’s impossible to be curious and be really angry. Hmm. It’s impossible to be really curious and be really anxious. You know, I’m not the only one that, you know, Judge Jabouri talks about this in his work. I love that. Mm hmm. Because, you know, curiosity is like a very close cousin of mindfulness. It’s all part of the same thing. And if we just get really curious, you know, then we’re going to we’re going to gather more and we’re going to notice more. We’re talking about relationship. We’re going to see that little nuance of a flicker of pain, you know, for that person, the second before we were resenting.

Michelle [00:35:02]

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So really what you’re saying is, if we get curious about this moment, what’s happening for ourselves, what’s happening for the other person in this moment? Curious about this moment in each other. That’s the foundation of Big T truth right there.

Mitch [00:35:22]

Yes. Yeah, I. I heard a an analogy. I think it was meditation teacher Rupert Spira that said this, that, you know, we we all we have, like you said, are these moments, I would argue, and he might argue as well, we miss most of them. Mm hmm. But it’s not really a moment until it’s noticed, until it’s awareness is brought to it. And then in his analogy, then we put a pearl on a string, you know, like a necklace. Then, you know, then that that string is awareness. You know, we’ve strung together another moment versus just missing it and missing them all together. I’ve always loved that since I first heard that.

Michelle [00:36:12]

I love that, too. You know, we end up with this and a string of moments like that can end up becoming a habit, you know?

Mitch [00:36:20]

Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle [00:36:21]

A positive. Yeah. What advice do you have any advice for us? A for that we can use when we find that we’ve blown it again because, you know, we’re human and we make mistakes.

Mitch [00:36:33]

Yeah.

Michelle [00:36:34]

So what should we do there?

Mitch [00:36:36]

I so many people in the mindfulness field, are rightly so, you know, talking about self-compassion practice, you know, you know, Kristen Neff talking about both the practice and the research or the benefits of it. You know, they can say it way better. You know, You know, she and I, my friend and mentor, you know, Chris Germer, you know, they can say, you know, speak to self-compassion practice way more skillfully than I. I would say, you know, coming back to what I said earlier, it’s that that sense of should.

Michelle [00:37:14]

Yeah.

Mitch [00:37:14]

Is so thick in our society I should be able to nail this mindful communication stuff. I should be breaking this habit. Because you’re going to mess it up, you know? Yeah, I messed it up. I yelled at my kids yesterday. You know, it is. It is. There is no. You know, there is no mountain top that you just get there.

Michelle [00:37:41]

Exactly.

Mitch [00:37:41]

And if and if anyone claims that they have it and that they are at such a vibration that they don’t have any. They are fully enlightened. And, you know, they are selling you something, you know? You know? Yeah. You know, it just doesn’t happen in the human body mind, because their body mind does not want pain. And it wants pleasure. And so it has these habits. I think the most that we can do, and it is a lot is to realize that you’re never going to fully untie the knot. And yet you can get so playful with that knot that you can really start to create gaps in it. You can you can move some of the threads. You can start to create space in there and you know, that will make all the difference.

Michelle [00:38:36]

Yeah. And also, I love that you mentioned self-compassion. I’m pretty big into self-compassion myself, and that wasn’t where my mind went. But it is actually really important, you know, because we suffer when we may have made a mistake. Human as it is, we suffer. So to practice self-compassion, that’s a that’s a path back to equanimity, back to kind of finding our seat again, being okay again. 

The other piece that I was that was in my mind, especially in context of your big T truth, is that we go into Big T truth with the other person and we say, you know, like, I certainly blew it with my kids when I was raising them. I’m sure I blow it even today, even though they’re adults and I would never make a mistake with them on purpose. But there was something really important about my coming back to them afterward and saying, I am so sorry. You know what I did hurt you. And I can see that and I am so sorry. I apologize. And that’s a big T truth.

Mitch [00:39:37]

And it is indeed. And I’m glad that you’re referencing that. I you know, having worked with really challenging behavioral stuff in kids and, you know, with adults as well, the moments of greatest power in the work have often been after I’ve F’d up. Yeah. And missed something or said or did something. And yet I came back and said, you know what? I did that. And that impacted you. Yeah. And for that I am sorry. Yeah. Yeah. If we can learn to focus less on intent, intent really doesn’t matter. In our social conditioning, it seems all important. Our legal system, it’s all important. It’s really about impact.

Michelle [00:40:22]

Yeah.

Mitch [00:40:23]

We can apologize for impact, you know, because. Because it gets us off the hook of like. Well, I didn’t do it on purpose, right? I’m not going to apologize. I’m not going to own it. Versus, you know, if you did do it on purpose on that. But if you did and if it was a reaction, hey, I did that and that caused pain for you that impacted you. I’m sorry. And I think that owning of air piece, Oh, my God, the world needs that. You know, we know our leaders don’t know how to do that. Obviously, you know, you know, it’s you know, we can teach our kids, you know, that’s like the truth. Like, hey, you know what? I raised my voice to you. That was uncool.

Michelle [00:41:05]

Right. Or our partners, for that matter. You know, we grow up, but we still need that. You know, I love that you’re talking about intent versus impact. I think that’s so rich. And I think that’s you know, that should be a topic of another podcast. That could be a whole podcast. And intent versus impact.

Mitch [00:41:23]

I could riff about that for a while.

Michelle [00:41:26]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, it’s been great having you. Anything else that you just, you know, would like to say about the. About this topic.

Mitch [00:41:36]

I think I’ll leave people with, you know. You know, there’s that classic definition of mindfulness. You know, John KABAT-ZINN is, you know, paying attention on purpose to the present moment without judgment. Yeah, you know, I love it. You know, I think that’s a great, concise definition. You know, what I would put to people? I’d put to John, you know, it’s a bunch of words, you know. You know, mindfulness, you know, these moments, it’s the it’s what I call the knowing.

Michelle [00:42:12]

Yeah.

Mitch [00:42:12]

When you just drop in with someone and maybe there are words, maybe there aren’t. And that’s mindful communication, you know, and just know that you’ve already been there many, many times. And now it’s about setting the intention to build that build the conditions were that unfolds more and more.

Michelle [00:42:37]

Absolutely. So. Well said, Mitch. I really I really appreciate it. Well, thank you for being with us today. Mitch, it’s been a pleasure to talk with you. And if you want to know more about Mitch’s work, you can find more information, including the blogs on happiness and mindful communication on his website. Mitch Ablett, dot com, mitchablett dot com. Or check out his podcast, The Momentologist. Isn’t that a great name? You can find it on his website or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. That’s all for today’s Well Connected Relationships podcast. Thanks for being here. If you’d like to get our notes on the highlights of this episode, along with a simple practice, you can use two to grab the truth and let go of being right. Be sure to join our well connected Relationships community on the Wise Compassion website. I’ve got so much more in store for you, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.