What if the emotions you’ve been taught to hide are actually the key to deeper connection?
In this episode, I’m joined by Sunil Joseph, mindfulness instructor, empathy coach, and former software developer. Sunil’s mission is to help us normalize all emotions so we can better process what we feel and connect more authentically with others. In our conversation, he guides me through this practice in real time, showing how naming and expressing emotions can shift everything. If you’ve ever struggled to understand or work through your feelings, this episode will give you tools to turn toward them instead of pushing them away.
Sunil Joseph is a certified GRIP Facilitator, mindfulness instructor, and Nonviolent Communication coach. In 2018, he visited a GRIP class at San Quentin and was profoundly moved by the humanity and compassion in the room, a moment that transformed his path. He joined the program, eventually training to become a certified facilitator, supporting students in their growth, healing, and transformation through restorative justice. Sunil also leads weekly online meditation classes and NVC coaching sessions. With a Master’s in Computer Science and 25 years of software development experience, he brings a unique blend of technical expertise and human-centered insight to his work.
Zack Arnold: Sunil, I wanted to start today by saying that one of my favorite things in the world is I love talking to fascinating people, and I was completely unaware of you and your background. But fortunately, I have a Podcast Producer that sees the world through a slightly different lens than I do, and brings very, very interesting people with interesting backgrounds to me, and as soon as I was introduced to you and your work, I said, this is going to be a really interesting conversation today with a very fascinating person. So I just, I wanted to lead there by showing you gratitude for you being willing to take the time and share your expertise with both me and my audience.
Sunil Joseph: Great. Thank you. Zack, I'm just really touched for that introduction. Thank you.
Zack Arnold: So where I wanted to begin is you actually have an extensive background in software development, but you're somehow a software developer turned mindfulness facilitator for incarcerated prisoners. I don't know what else to say other than Tell me more.
Sunil Joseph: So, yeah, I mean, I kind of joke that as software developers have huge hearts, they just need to be discovered, that's all. And I was really, you know, blessed because I made my way into a California self help personal growth workshop without knowing what it was back in 2002 and it was just a weekend workshop, and it was like, what's a good analogy like? I mean, I experienced nothing like that before, you know, and it just blew me open. And as that started happening, and up to that point, I was a software developer, you know, come from India, and I was working in software, and I thought, hey, this is the dream life, right? This is what everything I've worked for, I've got here, I've got the job, and, you know, I'm doing well. And coming out of that workshop, I realized I was unhappy, you know, I experienced a certain level of joy and happiness through thanks to the breakthrough experience in the workshop that made me realize the state of happiness, the state I equated to being happy was actually I was depressed, and I was holding so much in I didn't realize how unhappy I was, because that was my highest level of Happiness. The workshop broke me open, got me in touch with the pain I was holding, and the pain started releasing. And then I experienced these new levels of well being and joy. And then I realized, oh my god, I had no clue. I thought I was seeing the sky, but I wasn't. That wasn't the sky. And when I got that experience of the real sky, I was like that sky is unending, the depth we can go through in our joy, in our well being. And so I started then doing this work of, you know, the meditation, the mindfulness, the yoga classes, all of these things, and each of those things would give me a little bit of that experience of that sky again. So there was sort of the peak experience of seeing the sky, and then the clouds came back. And I was like, Okay, I have experienced that. I know it's back there, but right now my experience is I'm seeing them feeling the clouds only. And so when I did a little bit of those practices, I noticed, aha, a little bit of the taste of skies. Here I'm experiencing it again. So I kept following those breadcrumbs. And as I did that, I came across something called nonviolent communication back in 2004 and I started sitting in these groups where people are talking about their feelings. And I was like, there's a little bit of that sky when I talk about feelings, and when I listen to other people talk about their feelings, what's going on. And I had to face the challenges of my own cultural upbringing, and, you know, ideas of what it means to be a man sitting around mostly bend and talking about my feelings. It was like, There's something wrong with me. Anyway, I kept going, went deeper into this practice, and kept practicing. Bent into mindfulness. And in 2016 the spiritual director at a Buddhist center asked me to teach this communication model to her students. And as I started doing that, I started going, you know, experiencing more of the sky. So I kept following that, everything that brought me back to that place or that experience I kept doing. And then little bit later, in 2018 a couple of folks who do this prison work came to my class and said, You know what you're doing actually would be really beneficial to the guys inside. You should check it out. And I was like, Who me? Really? No way. You know, I can't do that. I'm not big, a big, tough guy. You know, my ideas of what it meant to be inside, doing this work with the guys inside. And so anyway, I went and sat in one of the classes. And this program is called guiding rage into power, or grip, for short. And I went into a two hour class, and again, it broke me open. So what happened during the class was, here's me walking into a prison, which I never been to a prison in my life before. I'm walking in with Susan Shannon, who's the facilitator, who's. Gonna leave the class. Susan Shannon was the at that time, the Buddhist Chaplain on death row at San Quentin. And so here's me walking in, and I'm like, Whoa, there's these cages and there's these big iron doors, and, you know, the whole nine yards. And the only prison experience I had was watching Netflix documentaries. But people are getting stabbed, and, you know, like, the worst of the worst, right? And so as we're walking into San Quentin, there's a point at which you have to go down a slope, a ramp, to go into the yard. And when we came down that, initially, when I walked in, I was like, Hey, I'm cool. But then once we went down that corner into the yard, there were guys exercising, running around, and I was terrified. I was like, Oh my God, what the hell am I doing here? And I was like, I was freaking out internally, trying to act cool, like I'm good, like I do this all the time, but I was freaking out,
Zack Arnold: You're not going to code your way out of this one.
Sunil Joseph: No way. You know, nothing in life prepared me for that, right. Meanwhile, you know, the guys are running by, they they're they're minding their own business. You know, it's kind of like a little dog walking around so scared of all these big dogs. And the big dogs are doing whatever they're doing. They're like, whatever. They couldn't care less. You know, it's the little dogs that freak out. So guys are going by, and they love Susan, because Susan's been working in there for years. She's devoted herself. And guys like, Hey, Susan, how you doing? And I'm like, oh shit, I hope I make it out alive. Anyway, we get into the classroom. We're sitting, it's a two hour class. We're sitting in a circle of about 35 students, and there's facilitators, some of them are some of whom are incarcerated, some of you know, Susan, and I'm sitting there, and I'm so scared of all these guys, I'm like, oh my god, what are they going to do to me? You know? And everything in me is tightening up. So again, I was trying to act cool, like, Hey, I'm a cool dude. I know what I'm doing here. I'm sure those guys could see right through me, you know, I was totally pretending. So anyway, as the class is going on, at one point, these guys we had, there were two of the guys who read their homework, and the homework was the specific exercise where they connect the dots from their childhood, what happened in their childhood, the traumas, the hurts, the wounding. So these guys come from really difficult backgrounds, right, like abuse or seeing people abused, you know, domestic violence or drug abuse, or living in neighborhoods where your choice is not which college you're going to, but which gang you're going to belong to in order to survive. So hearing those stories, you know, just broke me open. You know, there was a way in which all those in nonviolent communication, we call them enemy images. So I had enemy images of all these guys. They're all monsters. They're scary. They're going to do something to me. It started cutting through the humanity in the stories, cut through my enemy images, and it basically pierced my own heart and broke me open. And so and the pain that they were sharing touched the pain my own pain, and I did my best not to weep. Basically, in the class, I was holding back all this emotion because I was broken open, and I didn't know what I was walking into, right? So anyway, I was doing my best to keep it all bottled up inside, and my heart was breaking open. At the end of the stores, the facilitator turned to me and said, So Sunil, as a guest, you know, do you have anything to share with our, you know, our group? What was the experience and and I couldn't share because I was just full of emotion. I just wanted to cry, and I couldn't even look at them because I was ashamed, right? So my story of, oh, if I cry, I'll be seen as weak. You know, with this group of men, I'm trying to be manly enough at them. So I was looking down in my shame for having all these emotions thanks to everything I've been taught about how it is to be a man. You got to be tough, you got to be stoic. And as I was looking down, I could hear the pin drop in that room. The guys are so present. They were so right there, you know. And I'm looking down and I can hear these guys, you know, the students say, you got this man, it's all right. Let it out, you know. And I'm looking down and I could feel their support and their compassion, their acceptance, you know, and they're welcoming, actually. And I was just like, oh my god, it's okay. They're holding me, you know. And I could let some of that go. I could let it out, and I could feel them saying yes to it, in their silence, in their presence. And I was blown away. I'd never experienced a group of men who could be that vulnerable. And this is in a prison. This is we're not kidding around here, right? This isn't a real freaking prison. And I felt I was like my vulnerability was welcome. They were being vulnerable with me in their silence and their holding and their respect. I was blown away. And I said, you know, I thought I was coming in here to teach you all something. I was going to give you all something because of everything I know, and I'm realizing I need this work for myself. You know, this is I need groups like this. I need to be in a space where I can be with my pain and the facilitator without missing a beat. Turn to the guys. Said, What do you think, guys, should we have him back? And the guy's like, yeah, he's already back. And it was beautiful, yeah, so I was just adopted into the community, you know? And they said, Okay, we'll work on your clearance to get you back in here. And once I got my clearance. I was just sitting with them until they graduated. So this program is a year long program, and they're doing all this deep emotional work. The foundation is mindfulness, and they basically let just took me in, and I just kept sitting with them every Saturday for two hours until they graduated. And that was in 2019 and then fast forward to today, you know. So it was a very organic thing, you know, I've continued in that work. In 2022, I quit my software development job because I was like, You know what? I turned 50. I was like, I need to give this a try, you know, because this work was growing in me. I was growing with it. It was my life's work. And I was like, I need to. I want to give it a chance. So I'm going to stop my software development work and hold myself for one year. Let me give it one year. Okay? And then I promised myself come back and do the software job, make all the big money and all that good stuff, right? I gave myself one year, and then I was like, Okay, one more year. Cheated myself. It was granted by myself. So I did another year, and then I was like, who am I kidding? I can't go back, you know? How do I make this work? And then in the meantime, you know, it's like it just grew on me, and it's like there's other things I've done in that space, and it's been transformative for me. So I just love having walked into that space, and six years later, here I am, and the journey is not over, you know. So that's a short story. It's not a short story, but that's the long version of software development to doing prison work.
Zack Arnold: Well, I would say that it's a fascinating story, and there are at least 10 different threads that I'm ready to pull on, the first of which was just kind of a side anecdote. Boy, did you pick the right time to leave software development talk about being prescient and leaving right before the, you know, artificial intelligence apocalypse. So that worked out. Well, we won't talk so much about, you know, that side of the conversation today. But the two things that I'm really interested in digging into next of which there are many are. We do talk a lot in this community and in this program and in the Arnold academy that I run about navigating significant life and career transitions. So at some point we may come back to this transition of going from software developer and really identifying this is my true calling. I can just feel it, and going from, well, I'll give it a year to I'll give it another year to No, this is just what I do now. But I want to rewind first, because, as I often say, Ya yada yada, what could be the best part, which is, all the way back in the very beginning, you coming to this one weekend long Personal Development Conference. What I'm curious about is, what were you so unhappy about, what did you become aware of, and what was that transformation that in a single weekend was the catalyst for going in a completely different direction in your life?
Sunil Joseph: That's a great question, and you're right. There was a lot in that weekend for me. So I grew up in India, right? And it's a different culture, you know, around, especially around, again, around being a man, what it means to be a man, around our emotional intelligence, emotional health. You know, there's a lot of spirituality in India. And I grew up in a subculture in India where the focus was, you know, you go you get a job, you're either an engineer or a doctor, you make money, you have your family and, you know, it's all laid out and so, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's a good path to have. And in India in general, we're not as touchy feely as we are in California. And within California, there's also subcultures. And then you go into a subculture at these workshops. You know, I remember sitting in the workshop where I heard the facilitators say, every feeling is welcome in this room. You know, all feelings are welcome. And I just remember sitting there going, what did I it was like I'd been hit by a truck. My system couldn't compute it, because it was so antithetical to everything that had been cultivated in me. And I was just like, What did he just say? You know. So there were a lot of things. It's kind of like, you know, two substances that I've never met, or two, I don't know what the right analogy is, but it was just a shock to my whole system, and the ways that they were being and they were inviting us to see each other at a deeper level, you know, and see myself and so in that space of so much care and so much loving connection between people, that my nervous system started relaxing and opening. And in that process, I started to feel a certain pain, you know, from. My childhood. And so I started feeling into this. And I was like, What is this feeling that's in my chest? You know, that was on the last morning of the workshop, Sunday morning. And as I was waking up, I was lying in my sleeping bag, and I could send something in my heart. And I was like, What is this feeling? The more I paid attention to it. Suddenly I was like, oh shit. This comes from my childhood. This is an ache from my childhood. It just intuitively came to me. And I had not done no spiritual work or psychological work before that. It just was like, Oh my God. And that really was like, again, being hit by another truck, where I was like, I had no idea I was in pain. And so then sitting with that, and the more I sat with it, the more it opened, and the more it opened, the more the pain came forward, you know. And then I went home that night, I ended up that creating the space for the pain to just come. And then I realized how much pain and hurt I'd been holding for my childhood, you know. And you know, the the image that came to me back then was like, you know, when we have physical wounds, we can at least see those wounds and tend to them, these emotional wounds from childhood that have accumulated. And in childhood we don't have, we don't even know we are hurt, you know, but we're accumulating them, and then hopefully at some point in our lives, you know, we have the opportunity, like I was blessed with, to start waking up to them, and the resources and the means to actually work with them, you know. Yeah, so
Zack Arnold: This reminds me of a quote or a parable or a phrase. I can't attribute it to anybody, because I've heard it from multiple directions, but it's the idea that the mind forgets, but the body does not, and the body and they're, they're, I'm not, certainly not the expert on this at all. And I'd love to talk to more people that are the experts, but I know that there's now definitive scientific research that shows that cells have memories, and those memories are actually holding those experiences. And I'd love to dig a little bit more into what I think is a very scary word for a lot of people on this call, myself included, which is feelings. I'd like to dig a little bit more into your experience in teaching mindfulness, and specifically, I want to build a little bit of a foundation for what NVC, or nonviolent communication, is, to help us get more in touch with what those feelings are that are trapped in the body, but the mind is telling us that's not there. I'm pushing it down. Or, you know, being a like for myself, like being a white male that looks like me, you would never assume that I have feelings, right? You just assume that I had this impenetrable armor. But I've talked and been very open about this, especially lately. I'm a very highly sensitive person. So a lot of this was just designed to protect kind of that, that that inner, soft core, right? Yeah. So I just, I'd love to talk a little bit more about your experience with helping people get in touch with feelings that we know are there but they don't know are there. What that process looks like, specifically through nonviolent communication,
Sunil Joseph: Beautiful, yeah, this is a real big topic. And we could go on for I could talk for hours because, like, I was saying, you know, when I first started doing novel and communication, I was in these groups, mostly of women, talking about their feelings and and, you know, I was like, What's wrong with me? I'm a guy. I shouldn't be sitting here talking about my feelings. And so I just want to acknowledge this culture we all grew up in, whether you grew up in India or you grew up in the West, as we men are taught that we basically don't feel and the only feelings that are valid are maybe anger, rage and avoid any form of vulnerability, then you'll be a real man, you know. And so I want to just really speak to how as kids, especially as young boys, we are looking to what is it to be a man? You know? What is it to be as somebody who will be respected by men and women and every everyone in between, everyone on the spectrum right and trying to make sense of it. And so there is this Jesuit priest, Richard Rohr, Father Richard Rohr, who talks about the first half of life and the second half of life. He says, the first step of life is when we build a container that will help us survive, that will help us do all the things we need to do in order to be a functioning human being, make a living, and all those things. So that's the container we built. So I feel like we look around us and we figure out, what is the man, what is a woman? Maybe we look at our parents, or we look at movies, or wherever we draw those sources in and we start animating and figuring out what's my identity. Am I the funny 1am? I The smart 1am? I The sporty guy? You know, all of these things and, oh shit, I'm just a fuck up or whatever, right? Where we end up in our identity forming all of that. And Richard father, Richard rose, says that at some point that identity fails, right? Because it's not the real deal anyway, but it helps us, get us and it's important, right? When that identity fails, then we go into a crisis. And I've heard this on your newsletters too, like where we hit the bottom, or we wake up to like, oh shit, this is not working, and then we go, and it's not an easy process. From there we have. Have to go. We have to let go of that identity into what is more authentically who we are, and find that life. And so when I hear you say that, like, you know, I used to be this way with my armoring, and you woke up to your armoring, and that is mindfulness, right? You woke up to your armor and you've done enough work, and you went, oh shit. This is this is not who I really am. This is something I put on to survive. And now and then you took the next step. You had the courage to take the next step, to go out of the safe zone that you were in. It's uncomfortable to do that for all of us and find out, Oh my god, I'm a highly sensitive person, and that's way more vulnerable. And this is the work that my my students, or guys who come to my classes, are doing inside too. They are shifting. They want to change. They've had enough of that structure of being tough and all this stuff, you know. And they're going, I'm tired. I want to do. I want I need to make a change. Maybe it's for my family, maybe it's for my partner, make it. Maybe it's for themselves, you know. And so I feel like this is sort of our universal human journey, and then specifically around feelings. Right with the bullshit? Am I allowed to say that here?
Zack Arnold: We have the explicit label. You may say, whatever you'd like,
Sunil Joseph: Excellent. So the bullshit we took me men are taught, and then women are given their own version of it, and that crap which we take in and then we build ourselves out of, you know, and especially for men to start owning their feelings is a really powerful thing to do, and it's counter cultural. And so I'm really passionate about it. And, gosh, that so in NVC, nonviolent communication was created by Marshall Rosenberg. You know, he as a kid, what he noticed was there were some people who seemed to really enjoy causing harm to others. So he grew up in Detroit when the race riots were going on, and he saw people hurting each other, and he went, wow, why are these people? Seem? Why do these people seem to enjoy hurting each other, whereas he saw his uncle take care of his grandmother, and he was like, my uncle seems to really enjoy contributing to my grandmother, you know. And he was really struck by this difference as he watched different people harm and other people positively contribute to other human beings. So he held that question, which led him to studying psychology to figure out, what is it about us that seems to this dichotomy? He didn't find the answer in psychology. He went on and studied spirituality and religions, and what he came up with was that human beings, we are basically compassionate on a nature we enjoy contributing to each other, and there are things that we're taught, certain ways of relating and where we put our attention, ways of thinking that cut cuts us off from that compassionate nature, and that causes us to arm each other. And so for me, this so it's a certain kind of a consciousness who we really are and what we're born with. You know, in the prison work, we call it the authentic self. And like, kind of what Richard Rohr is talking about, the authentic self gets covered over as we get the hurts and woundings of childhood, and we don't want to get hurt again, so we build these armors and layers around us and ways of being so we'll be safe. And what we call that in the prison work is the wounded self, or the hurt self, or the protect itself, or the defend itself. And that self can helps us get to a certain point, and then we realize the Self is not going to take us far enough, and that the destruction of the self is what allows us to find more of the authentic self and be in pursuit of ever deepening into the authentic self. Ceilings are an important part of that journey in my at least in my experience. I'm not the expert. I cannot speak for all experiences. Ceilings are a core way of getting more to the authentic self in NVC. So what Marshall came up with was that consciousness where we are feeling compassionate and we enjoy giving to each other, right? So with your loved ones, I imagine with our loved ones, I imagine all of us feel the reward of giving to somebody we love doesn't feel like giving. It feels like also receiving, because there's an inner reward for that. So it's kind of like a child, you know, we've all seen children who will see another child crying, you know, take their toy and go and give it to that other child. That is that compassionate nature, the original compassionate nature we're born with before we are, you know, enculturated out of it, or, you know, our experiences stay here. So it's not about going back and regressing into childhood, but it's about finding the place in us that we see other humans and we feel our shared humanity. You know, the way compassion and empathy are available. And it's kind of like when I shared that prison story, where, for me, initially, when I sat in that classroom, all these guys were monsters, they were evil dudes, they were scary people, but as I heard their stories, you know, it cut through those enemy images, and what I felt was our shared humanity. I was like, You're not different than I am. You're a human being who's. Gone through stuff that I've not gone through. You're a human being who didn't have the resources I had. And in NBC, the first the core, there are four things we put our attention on, what happened? What are my feelings about it? What are my needs in that situation? And what requests can I make? So I have a lot of stuff. I can talk about feelings, you know, including in prison, how powerful just the use of feelings are. And I want to check in and see where you want me to go with this,
Zack Arnold: Where I would like to go next. And as you alluded to, there are so many threads that I want to pull on so many directions we could go, or we could end up going for three, four or five hours. Something tells me. But there's a phrase that you brought up a couple of times that I think is going to be really important that'll be kind of like a nice portal into digging a little bit deeper into feelings. And it's this idea of shared humanity. And I would say the right now shared humanity, boy, is that in short supply at the moment, just across political spectrums, across, you know, geography, politics, like there's so little shared humanity. And I don't think that it's a coincidence. I would say there's a very high correlation between all of the anxiety, all of the conflict, and the lack of shared humanity. So I wanted to talk a little bit more about how we can start to develop some of that shared humanity through what I think are going to be two of the core areas that I want to dig into, especially for those that might be similar to myself, that are both highly creative and highly empathetic, which are empathy and vulnerability. I think that these are really, really two. These are two very important words and concepts that I think most people can maybe kind of sort of define but they don't really understand how powerful they can be and how they work together. So let's just talk a little bit more about how non violent communication, and also another topic you brought up, non violent thinking, can help us start to find some form of shared humanity in a world that is completely devoid of it right now.
Sunil Joseph: Yeah, I'm going to share a little experience in the prison where that really touches on this. So there was this one time, you know our class, we go in and teach one Saturday a month for a whole year. And so that's 13 Saturdays to graduation. So this one Saturday, we were starting the group, and we started this check in. So there's about 35 guys sitting in the big circle, guys, trans women and non binary people all sitting together in this big circle. And then there's also facilitators, myself, another facilitator who comes in from the outside, and we have a team of five inside facilitators were incarcerated, so it's a team of us who hold this group. And so as we're starting this check in, we're going around and guys are checking how you're feeling today. That comes to me, and it goes to the next guy, and the next guy says, I don't want to check in. I don't belong here. You know, I'm not wanted here. Oh, shit. What do we do now, you know, because getting the warm and fuzzy is getting the day going. And this guy just like, literally threw a dead fish in the whole thing, you know, and and so it keeps going, right? It goes around. And we finished the thing. And I said, you know, after I'd finished the check, and I was like, Can I ask the other facilitators, can I take a few minutes to work with this guy? You know? They were like, cool. And I asked him, you know, hey, do you mind if I ask you some questions, you know? And, and he was just upset. He was upset about something. He was mad. He didn't want to be there. And that whole energy was going around. And everyone is impacted by it, right? And so, in order for the day, this is the start of the day, and if this is not handled well, the rest of the day is going to go to crap, right? And so I asked him if I could work with him. And what I did was ask the group to open the we have a manual that we use, and in the manual there's lists of feelings. And I said, Can you all open to the list of feeling words? And then I asked him, can you share a little bit about what happened? And he shared a little bit about what happened. And I said, Okay, now what I want the group to do? And he was open to it is, follow the feeling words you see in that list that you imagine he's feeling right now, that's it. Of course, there were guys who wanted to go into solutions, who wanted to go into, Oh, what happened, and how do we fix it? And this? And that was like, No, we're not going there right now. I said, Let's just focus on the feelings. What is this? What is this guy feeling right now? And he was willing. So as the guys called out the feeling words, I just wrote them on the whiteboard, right? This is a basic NVC practice, you know, is connecting with our feelings. Our feelings are the feelings of another person, and this is the empathy practice and nonviolent communication. And so as the guys are shouting out feeling words, I'm writing them on the whiteboard, so the whiteboard starts getting filled with all these feeling words hurt you. Angry, upset, irritated, frustrated, vulnerable. You know, it's beautiful to see all this, right? And as I'm writing it, I'm looking at his face, you know? And at one point I see his face, and I'm like, you can see this face. There's emotion coming to his face now, because, as the guys are shouting out these words. They're not just words being shouted out. They're landing in his being. For someone to express that in a group like that, they must have been really hurt. So there's the anger, there's the stuff. On the surface, I'm frustrated, I'm angry. I don't want to be here, you know. But underneath that, as guys shouted out words like vulnerable, hurt, sad, lonely, it starts dropping in vulnerability underneath that external layer, and it lands in his heart. And his pain is being seen. His pain is being felt in the room. And even as I'm speaking that with you, you know you can feel the difference. Now he's being received, his vulnerability, his hurt, is being received by the group. And you could see the emotion coming to his face. And I was like, Hey, are you feeling something? He's like, Yeah. And then the tear comes down his face. His face is kind of red, and a tear comes down. And I was like, Okay, let's all breathe together. This is it. This is the work, the work. And these guys are amazing. They do this work of let's just sit together in this vulnerability. And we can all feel, feel as partake. Can all feel as sadness. We know this. We're human beings, right? Even if we can't put words to it, we can feel it. And so we sit in that space, and I offer some breath, simple breathing, and I tell them, this is there's nothing to do, because we're so taught to go do something. No, let's stay, stay and feel together. Let's make space for this person's suffering, and in that holding, healing happens, you don't need to do anything. He is being held by all of us, going back to how I was held when I walked into prison the first time, that respectful silence, right? So empathy is a respectful, non judgmental understanding of what someone is feeling. And then can we stay with that? You know? And that's something we build capacity. That's why I love this work. It keeps building capacity to be with, to allow something to be there, to be with, just be with. Just be with another human being where they are. Let's not fix them. Let's not help them. Let's not change them. Can I be with them. So here's all of us being with this gentleman in this pain and the tears come, you know. And and as his tears come, the room changes. You can feel the compassion and the care and the room for him, you know. And everyone else is touched by his suffering. Now we are together. We are no longer in I'm mad you guys are all out there, you know, good and bad, who's right and wrong. We shifted out of the right and wrong to Wow, I feel your pain, and I know my pain, and with you, that's it. That's it. Human connection, empathy, compassion, healing. And as he was tearing up. I could, I looked at him and went, I imagine this is not just about what happened right now. It goes into your past. And so for many of us, you know that original hurt from childhood that is actually what is getting activated by what happened right now. But we don't see that. But if you have people who can be with us in the pain that makes it safe for us to be there and support it, we can actually find the original pain and heal that too, so that the next time something like this happens, that button gets pushed, it is not as painful and we are more resilient, you know? And, yeah, it was beautiful. And then, you know, once we did that process, we took the time we came to this place, and that's our common humanity right there, the reason why we could all feel this person in this pain because of our common humanity, even if you're not in touch with it. When we go to a place where we feel our common humanity, we recognize it right away. We feel it. We know it, and we, you know, went through the process. I closed it out. And these guys, going back to what Marshall said, you know, our genuine nature is we want to contribute to others. And out of that place of our common humanity, guys, other guys, started telling him, hey, man, you're welcome. You know, he wasn't invited to a certain group. He said, different guys said, you're always welcome to come to our group and the care in the group, because people are like, Hey, you belong with us. Come. And then after we finish it, we took a break, and guys are going over and thanking him, you know, because their hearts were touched. So how many. Humanity, empathy, feelings as a doorway into connection.
Zack Arnold: This is a conversation that I have quite often with my students, certainly not at the level or the kind of environment that you're in. But I always try to share with them that when they want to reach out and they want to either build new relationships with quote, unquote strangers, or they want to strengthen existing relationships. I always talk to them about something that I call the empathy factor, that if you're just a little vulnerable, you're not sharing your life story and all of your traumas and all of your issues. But if it's rather than, here's why I'm awesome and why you should consider me for this opportunity, or why you should do me this favor, or x, y, z, it's instead I have goals, but there are things that are stopping me from getting there, and I'm a little vulnerable that's mirrored directly, literally at the neural level, that's mirrored with empathy. Oh, I see your struggle. I'd like to be able to help you through it. So I see that happening all the time, and all everybody thinks is, well, I can't be vulnerable like I'm supposed to look like I have it all figured out, and I feel like that's where so much of the discourse is happening, whether it's in, you know, all the just things that are kind of burning down, both metaphorically and literally, in multiple industries and politics, Geo, geopolitically, across the entire globe, it's this inability to be just a little bit vulnerable and allow empathy in, and realize that, again, we All have the shared humanity, and we have shared goals. And you had talked about this idea, another conversation that I listened to, where ultimately, we all want the same things and we all need the same things. We're not in disagreement on that. What we're in disagreement is about how to get it and who should get it. So I want to talk a little bit deeper about wants and needs and how when they're not met, that's what causes a lot of these feelings, and a lot of this discourse.
Sunil Joseph: Is a perfect segue. So in nonviolent communication, what Marshall teaches is that our feelings come from our own needs. And so what you're taught in general is, Oh, how I feel is because of what you do or say, right? Let's say is, I can see you if you say the wrong thing, then I'm hurt or I'm upset or I'm happy, whatever it is, you're responsible for my feelings. Right? In NVC, what Marshall teaches is, our feelings are, you know, the product of our own needs in a situation. So for instance, when a if a friend doesn't show up on time to a coffee date or whatever, I could feel really upset and hurt and be like, it's your fault I'm feeling this way and be mad at them right. On a different day, I may actually be relieved that they're late, and the only difference is actually because of my needs on those two different days, being different on the first day, I may be in a rush and really want them to show up so I can go to the next thing on the second day, when I'm actually happy that they're late, it's because my need was to have a little bit of space. So our needs are really what, of course, what people do affects us, right? They do affect us, and our needs are really a big factor in our feelings in relation to the situation. So Marshall calls it emotional slavery when we are like you're responsible for my feelings. And what he asked us to do in this practice is take responsibility for our feelings by figuring out what needs are being met or not met. And the word need in nonviolent communication has very specific meaning, so you asked about wants and needs. So a need in nonviolent communication, you won't have things, objects, people. So for instance, to say that I need an iPhone, an iPhone is not a need. It's a strategy to meet some needs. So an iPhone may need certain needs for you and different needs for me. So you know, say for me it means a need for communication. It needs a need, for intimacy, for ease, for comfort. For you, it may be a different set of needs. So needs, you know, there's a big practice in NVC, which is to distinguish between, okay, I really want a cup of coffee. I really want to go on a go see a movie with a friend. Is that the need no going to a movie with a friend, with that particular friend is a strategy to meet certain needs. If I get hung up on that strategy and identify it as a need, I will suffer, because I'll be like, it's your fault you're not meeting my need. So what needs would not would be met. You know, if I could go to that movie with that friend, closeness, friendship, support. Is there a different strategy to meet that same need? It may not be going to a movie with that particular friend. It may be something else, but when I can open up to seeing the needs behind my actions, it frees me up to meet my needs in a much bigger universe of possibilities.
Zack Arnold: I love the way that you frame this, and never did I think that I would be referring to this conversation. But I always randomly think about other podcasts that I've had with other fascinating humans, and what immediately came to mind was a podcast that I did years ago with a mindfulness and intuitive eating coach that was where I first started to get a better understanding. Of our needs and how one thing was to meet another. So an example being, and we'll, we'll put a link in the show notes. Her name was Melissa Costello, but one of the it was just this mind blowing thing that was so simple, but really put me in touch with understanding this. And maybe it'll do it for some others. I guarantee I don't need potato chips and I don't need ice cream, but she talked about, you're you're going after those things to meet a specific need, and they're different. So what I've learned about myself, and it doesn't mean that I eat perfectly, but I at least have a lot more awareness when I need potato chips or I need granola or I need crackers, it's because I need something to reduce the stress and the crunchiness is, like, all right, this is kind of, this is calming me down from the like, all the stress, and I've got all these ideas, and I'm just going, I'm going, I'm going, right when that happens, and I go for something really crunchy. That's one of my ways of trying to calm that stress. But then the ice cream that was more about trying to meet an emotional need that wasn't being met. And as soon as she said that, it's like my brain exploded. And all of a sudden, all of these choices and all these things I had felt suddenly made sense, and it changed the lens through which I get upset with my spouse or I get upset with my kids, and whether or not I get upset in traffic, I used to be so stressed out in traffic, and I still avoid traffic like the plague, because I just I, I can't handle it, and I built an entire livelihood around working from home because the thought of being in LA traffic for three hours a day, can't do it. I'm missing too much of life to allow that to happen. However, excuse me, I used to get really, really frustrated and agitated, and by the time I got to work at 930 in the morning, like I was already completely wound up. Then once I just started to learn how to be more aware of those feelings and more aware that maybe it's not always about me when somebody cuts me off and try to find some form of empathy, I started to play around with shifting my mindset and shifting my focus. And this is where I want to transition a little bit more into this idea of non violent thinking that what I would do. And this is now a strategy that I use, and I even had talked had given to one of my students recently. Now, when somebody gets really angry and cuts me off, my immediate thought is who that person is going through some shit right now because then it's about them, and they didn't make those choices because they're angry at me or they're trying to make my day worse, like their life is probably shit right now, and they're dealing with all the stress of politics and loss of job and loss of identity. So I want to make sure that by the end of this call, that those that are listening or those that happen to be watching have at least a couple of very practical tools to become more mindful of their thoughts and the way that they're communicating. And I really, really want to dig deeper into this idea of non violent thinking, in addition to non violent communicating.
Sunil Joseph: Absolutely, what I really learned in the prison work is, you know, these guys are navigating an intensely hostile environment where they get shitty food. You know, they're cooped up at other people, and it's intense. You know, there's mental health challenges, there's violence, and what these guys are doing is learning how to keep themselves and others safe. And you know what they practice? This is where mindfulness is really important, is to be able to know what our body's saying. And so when I start, if I'm busy going on and on and on in my usual way, I'm not tapped into the intelligence of the body, which is the early warning system. It says, ooh, something is starting to happen. Let me take care of it before it starts ramping up and gets to a place where this thing is going so fast I cannot interrupt it, you know. So I feel like that's the first level of skill that's needed is awareness of what our body is telling us. Once I know that I'm getting activated, I can, you know, NVC really helps, has helped me in building this vocabulary and this ability to name my feelings, like what's going on here, and the ability it's not just name as an intellectually but to be able to feel, you know, the capacity to feel, and to be able to tease out. So there's this term called Emotional granularity, and I think it's Lisa Feldman, who's researched emotions for over 30 years. She's done research which shows that your higher your emotional granularity, the lower your likelihood of abusing alcohol, lower instances of violence and so on. And so the ability to really granularly know what I'm feeling, to feel it, and to be like, Oh, wow. This is frustration. This is this. And then we see the beautiful thing is, what am I needing right now, you know, wow, I'm needing ease, I'm needing safety, and I'm needing self care. That already starts me on a path going towards what I want, rather than focusing on what we are taught is get rid of what I don't want. You know, it's a very small. Thing, but it's really powerful, like focusing on, what do I want and need here? Oh, it's self care. It's this great I don't need to engage with this person who's having a horrible day. Let me go where I can take care of myself, you know. And in the prison work, we, of course, do that work, which is, you know, the guys often come in and say how they were activated by something, and we are teaching them skills on how to let you know. One of the tools we use inside is q tip, but taking it personally, right? And it doesn't matter if you're in a prison or you're outside. In fact, there's this book called we're all doing time. Some of us are in physical prisons. Some of us are in the prisons between our years, right? And we're all suffering. How do we find our way home, home, being our authentic selves, this place of freedom, which is not out there? And so I think we're all like, loaded up with our own pain from how we grew up, and all these buttons we have all around us that people can easily push as they're going about their life. How do I first discover these buttons, deactivate them, and not engage with people who are having a horrible day, you know? And that is, I think, a life's work, you know. And in NVC, the particular approach is to be like to again, go back to what are my needs in the situation, and if I'm tapped in. So that's one piece of the equation. The other piece of the equation is, what is the other person's needs in the situation? So that person is having a bad day, you know, to do the mental exercise of going, damn, this guy's being rude to me, and I'm feeling hurt right now. I'm upset, and I need, I'd like some respect, some self care. I can now extend myself to look at what is that person needing today, and just, it's a thought exercise, you know, because I think by default, the mind goes into, they're doing it to be rude to me. It's about me. They're, you know, it's personal, so there is a default thought process actually already happening, and what this does is interrupt it and replace it with what is this human being needing? If they are human, just like me, maybe they're having a bad day, maybe they're needing a little bit of a break or some space, maybe they needed more sleep, who knows, but now I'm already shifting out of the default you You're hurting me. You're bad, you know, I'm going to come back at you. So, in fact, this morning, I was at a coffee shop, and I was just looking around at different people and doing a little mental exercise. And you know, your viewers could do this, which is if you sit somewhere in public and you see different people, you know, just look at them and go, can you imagine what they're feeling and what they're needing right now? You know, maybe it's the person behind the counter who's working there, you know, look at them and go, can you imagine if they need a break or to put their feet up right now? You know, to breathe, to relax a little bit, maybe a moment of joy or love, and feel into it, right? It's not just a thought exercise. So you can have empathy at a more intellectual level. And there's a place where that's important, you know, like in professional settings, intellectual empathy is good, but when you get down to that emotional resonance, you know, feeling what the person is needing, that really starts changing things, and then the response can be different to that person, and when they feel the difference, they're going to respond differently. This is a lifelong practice. It's easy to say this, but this is like going to the gym and lifting weights. You got to do the practice to deepen that skill.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, mindfulness, like you said, just like anything else, is about putting in the reps. And I love this very, very simple mindset shift to Well, maybe it's not about me and it's instead about them. So I want to be curious, not judgmental, just to quote Ted lasso, for a second, I will be curious and not judgmental about what they might be feeling, what they might be going through. And I'm certainly far from perfect in my own mindfulness practices or my interactions with other humans, but I always try to remind myself that everybody's going through something and pre pandemic, everybody was going through something. Post pandemic, and our current political landscape and our industrial landscape and our technological landscape, I think you'd be hard pressed to find anybody that's not going through something. The richest man in the world right now is going through some stuff. All of us are going through things right? And I think it's our ability to just slow down and be aware and recognize that. And what's so helpful for me is, and I constantly knew this reminder we are incredibly selfish, narcissistic creatures. Everything is always about us, but when you realize that to the other person. It's about them too well, then it's not about us, and it doesn't make it easier to accept a lot of the injustices or the things that we disagree with. But once we're once, at least, I'm reminded, like they don't give a shit about me, this isn't about me at all. Then I'm reminded, and I know that this is something that you're passionate about as well. Is this idea that comes. From Victor Frankel's book, Man's Search for Meaning. I've always said that if somebody were to ask the quintessential question, who would you have for a dinner party, alive or dead? If I were to repurpose it for who's the one person you would have as a podcast guest? I want to have a podcast interview with Viktor Frankl. For those that are unaware of Viktor Frankl, talk just the tiniest bit about his story, just kind of paraphrase in a couple of minutes, but specifically, let's talk about this idea about the gap between stimulus and response, and how everything we're talking about with mindfulness fits into this.
Sunil Joseph: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm no expert, but what I know about Viktor Frankl was he was a kid in a concentration camp in Germany during the war, and he observed some people actually, I'm not sure if he's a child, if he's an adult, with point, I'll take that back. You are correct. He was an adult. He was an adult. What he observed was some people actually were able to survive it and find meaning, even in the darkest of places where other people gave up, and it's kind of like Marshall, you know, looking at different people and going, what's the difference? And so in our prison work, we often talk about Viktor Frankl. And, you know, it's amazing how these guys who are in these horrible circumstances look at Viktor Frankl and go, Wow, if he could practice in that kind of an environment. We can do it here. Because in Victor Frankl environment, you could be pulled up and taken into the gas chamber and killed. You didn't know what was going to happen, but Viktor Frankl was talking about making meaning where you are, and Man's Search for Meaning. And he created logo therapy, which was all about finding meaning and purpose in life. And so the specific thing about reaction versus response, I don't know that part of his story.
Zack Arnold: Well, the quote, as it goes, actually, I have it in front of me. The there's a paraphrase version that a lot of people use, and then there's the actual quote. So I'm going to share both, because the paraphrased one is really what most people speak to but I'm, I'm a bit of a recovering perfectionist, and that anytime shares a quote that isn't really a quote, and it's just something that's been popularized through Instagram platitudes. I'm always the nerd that's like, you realize that isn't actually the way that they said and it was actually another person that said it 73, years before. So that's kind of where I step in. So the paraphrased, colloquial version is that between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response, and in our response lies our growth and our freedom. The real words from the book are the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances and to choose one's own way. That's where I think the work that you are doing is so important is that you're giving people that are literally incarcerated in prison, you're giving them a choice.
Sunil Joseph: Yeah, and this is a big, big teaching in the prison work is so there's your circumstance, and the last human freedom is, what do you do with your circumstance? And the idea of what is your stance in response to your circumstance, you know. So there's things that happen, but your ultimate, your last choice is, you know how you respond? And so in the prison, we basically teach these guys, and this is for me too, right? When life is happening and I feel like a victim to so many bad things that are happening. What is my response to what is happening? And that is what he's meaning by that quote, is that you know that gap you can create by choosing your response, that that's your last human feeling, right there? Don't give up on that, because if you're just caught up in your reactivity, you're not using your last human freedom, and that is incredibly powerful. It's a really small thing, but it is everything you know, we get to actually have agency in our lives and respond rather than just be reacting to everything that's going on. And that changes everything
Zack Arnold: I would assume easier said than done. There's a big difference between simple versus easy. So what I wanted to do next, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna take that back. This is not something that I want to do next. This is something that I think will be very valuable to do next, which is, you had suggested actually taking me through an NBC exercise, and given my aversion to the word feelings and how only recently have I discovered that there are more than three words that describe feelings. I'm not sure I want to do this exercise, but I think it will be a really valuable exercise, both for those that are listening, but more importantly, for myself. So without further ado, you're welcome to put me on the hot seat.
Sunil Joseph: So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do is I'm going to put a link in the chat, all right, and this is a PDF with a bunch of feeling words and needs words on there. And so before you
Zack Arnold: Make sure, we'll share this as well for anybody that might be listening, I'll make sure they have a link to what I'm looking at right now.
Sunil Joseph: Yeah, that's great. So. So before you look too closely, right? Think of a situation that happened where you had some you know, it could be something really positive and affirming. It could be something that you went Ouch, and try to pick something about a three of a scale of one to 1010, being the highest. It could also be something that was awesome. You know,
Zack Arnold: I've got an ouch, and I'm assuming it's okay if it's a physical Ouch. Sure. Yeah, great. I've got an ouch.
Sunil Joseph: Okay, so if you're willing to share it in a few words, then we'll go to the exercise.
Zack Arnold: So basically, recently, I decided that I wanted to take up dead lifting, because that's, you know, just the kind of stuff that I do in my free time between sessions. And I bought some some white plates, and as I was starting to, like, stack them up and put them against the wall, one of them dropped on my foot, and I had a big, like, you know, a grapefruit sized bruise on the top of my foot. So that was an ouch, worrying, like, I didn't have to go to the emergency room, but it was enough to say some words out loud and feel it for a while.
Sunil Joseph: Great. So let's take this physical out and see what what was going on. So now, if you look through the list of feeling words on that sheet, right on the top are needs words, the bottom section has feelings. And as you're looking through those feeling words, if you have the ability to do that type in the feeling words in the chat that resonate to some extent or a lot,
Zack Arnold: But you don't want me to say them out loud.
Sunil Joseph: You can say them out loud too. Let's do that too. Yeah, let's say them out loud.
Zack Arnold: All right, so if I'm and I'm just doing this stream of consciousness, I'm going to do my best to not have my overthinking hat on one of them. Was actually mortified, because I was like, Really, how dumb Am I to drop a weight on my foot? I was annoyed. I was hurt. That's a good one. I was physically hurt. This is one that's not directly related to the pain of literally dropping a weight on your foot, but one of them was overwhelmed, because there were so many things that were going on that I lost sight of being present and just making sure that it was balanced the right way. And it was the fact that I felt overwhelmed that probably led to the white plate dropping on my foot. So overwhelmed would be one, I mean, stressed, but that's one that I don't even know what it feels like to not be stressed right now. So that one fits regardless. Yeah, that's what I've got so far from our document.
Sunil Joseph: So you know, that's great, right? So what I heard and what I'm sensing is how the overwhelmed is a surprising discovery here. You're like, Yeah, that's right. Now it makes sense. You're like, yeah, I was actually overwhelmed. But maybe you know, you're putting words to it. So now what we'll do just stick overwhelmed, right, and inquire into that, because it's not just about the thing dropping. There's a lot more to that overwhelm that includes what happened, right? So I'm imagining you're feeling the larger meanings here as you're doing this inquiry. So now if you look at the needs list and look at what needs did you have related to the overwhelmed and just being curious, you know,
Zack Arnold: And this would be needs that I feel were not being met, which caused the overwhelm. Yeah, this one is not literal, but this is one that is a that is a fear, if not logical, the one that literally says physical needs shelter and cover, because I think, like so many others, with so much uncertainty right now around our industry and our future, I don't have 100% confidence I'm going to be paying the rent in a few months just trying to figure out how to meet those basic needs. That would be one of the one of the areas the overwhelm comes from, is there's just no certainty around anything right now, which I haven't experienced for 25 years. I mean, I've been a freelancer my entire career, never once did I have any fear or apprehension about the future, given the state of the present industry and state of the world that overwhelm comes from the literal need for shelter and cover for me and my family. So that's the first one that I thought of,
Sunil Joseph: Yeah, thank you.
Zack Arnold: Oh, I've been looking for this one. This was in the in the bottom left corner. That's why I didn't see it. This is one that's a really big one for me, understanding I feel like in a lot of realms, that I am misunderstood. And I've kind of felt that way my whole life. And I feel a lot of the a lot of the behaviors that come out, whether good or bad, and actually a lot of the work that I do, including getting very, very meta with even this podcast, a lot of the work that I do is in search of just seeking some form of people understanding me and how I do things and where I come from. So it's funny how we've gone from I dropped the weight on my foot, to why doesn't the world understand me in two simple steps.
Sunil Joseph: That's right, right? And you have a deeper level of meaning here and deeper connection with yourself. I'm curious what you're feeling right now as you see this,
Zack Arnold: Can I cheat and use the sheet?
Sunil Joseph: Please? Exactly.
Zack Arnold: I need a cheat sheet of feeling so I have words I don't know. As soon as we soon as we started talking about this, I felt a little bit of a calm come over me, little bit of a sense of contentment come over me like it's not I don't I certainly don't feel relaxed. I haven't lost the overwhelm. I haven't lost the stress. But yeah, just in the last couple of minutes, there's just a little bit of a sense of of calm,
Sunil Joseph: Yeah. And so this is called self connection in NVC, you're dropping into yourself, and there's a there is a bigger space here, I imagine, which is where the calm comes from. So the old doesn't stop. It's not about getting rid of the feelings. And you're not just those overwhelm and the feelings themselves. You're you're a little bit bigger space, is my sense of you. And so from this place, right? I heard about basic needs around shelter and the fears about that that led to the overwhelm. I heard about really wanting to be understood, and I imagine wanting to be seen and known for who you are authentically, is that right? No, very much so and so. So these are really core needs, the the way you're speaking about them. These are really strong needs that you have, you know. And like you said, there's the weight falling on your foot, and you think that is just a physical lounge, but there's so much more here. Yeah, I just really appreciate you dropping into the space. And like you said, we, we've shifted out of the the word, the word realm, words realm, into the feeling realm here, and this is the place of our shared humanity, where I know what it's like to feel insecure about like living and like money and all of these things making your life, doing work. I love, really wanting to be seen. And I'm curious if, as you're doing this, if you're feeling some compassion for yourself,
Zack Arnold: That's a tough one. That's going to be a tough nut to crack. Debbie will tell you all about how tough that that nut is to crack. One thing actually just came up, and I actually don't see it. I don't see it on the list as far as a universal human need, and maybe it isn't a need. But the the other word that just came up for me is identity. And I know this is something that you talk a lot about as well, and this is where we kind of come back to, when we were talking about your career pivot, is that I think that for me, it's all the feelings and the needs for having an identity that has now disappeared and searching for what is that new identity, and who am I now? Which, like you said, there's there you, you have these two lives, one where you're building the container, and then all of a sudden you realize that you know that's not serving you anymore, and you go in a different direction. And that's just part of the human experience. But when you couple that human experience of give or take around midlife realizing this served me, but it isn't anymore. I don't know who I am, I don't know what I want to become. How do I find meaning and purpose? You couple that with all the chaos that's going on just in the world, all the things that are outside of our control, and I think just so much of the overwhelm and the stress and the fear comes from I need identity, and I'm not sure I have it right now.
Sunil Joseph: Yeah, beautiful. Thank you. This is another level you're dropping into, these layers of truth that you're navigating, and this is the beauty of this process, and as you're listening and sensing deeper truths are coming up, right? And so this is like so I want to make sure I'm understanding what you're saying. What I'm hearing is there is you discovered how that old identity didn't work, and now you're in the place in between where you don't know you're in the liminal space where you haven't formed a new identity. And it's really hard to stay in the space of openness and discovery, while there are also these needs to like function and do stuff. And it's really a vulnerable place to be. Am I getting you?
Zack Arnold: Not only is it a vulnerable place to be, the challenge, if you take these two ideas together, is it would be wonderful to have all the time and the space in the world to explore myself and discover my new identity and experiment with new things. But feeding two teenagers is not cheap. Putting money in a college fund not cheap. Living in Los Angeles not cheap. So a lot of again, the overwhelm and the stress is the these two things that are butting heads, which is, I really do want to explore a new identity and try new things, and there's no longer any fear of leaving the identity behind. But damn it, there's not enough time. Like I gotta be making the money now. I gotta be earning the income now. And just the those two things, really, really butt heads. And from all the work that I do with my students, I know that I'm certainly not the only one that's experiencing this right now.
Sunil Joseph: Yeah, beautifully put so that the stress of survival, meeting those needs around survival, and not knowing how to do all of that, and not having this, it all set up in a way that you can. Relax and trust that that's okay. And so I'm guessing that need for trust is really big here, wanting to trust that things will work as they have actually in the past, that you're here and that trust that you're going to be okay, your kids are going to be okay, and you can do this work that you really need to do,
Zack Arnold: And that's something that I do my best to remind myself of as often as I can. One of the things that I've been developing over the last couple of years, some in part thanks to my fellow Podcast Producer, Debbie in the introduction to mindfulness, is doing some form of a reflection and a journaling practice, and something that I have to write to myself consistently, and I even sometimes will post it on social media just so I put it out into the world. It's that I believe in my ability to figure things out. I have the evidence that I have been through really difficult things in the past, and I've gotten through them. If I rewind back to 2009 2010 during the great recession and the massive housing collapse, I literally lost my house like we we had to take our keys and leave them for the bank. It's a whole other situation where we were literally suing the bank. It wasn't because we it's I won't even get into it. The point being that I'd been through literally losing that sense of shelter and having to find a solution to that, and logically, it's really easy for me to say, Dude, you got this. You're going to figure it out. You've got the tools. You've been through this before, you'll find your way out. But that's where the connection, or disconnection is between logic and emotion, because all of the emotion is returning from those traumatic experiences. And my body is saying, I do not want to go through this again,
Sunil Joseph: Correct? And so there are parts, you know, before coming on the show, I had to sit at my own error, the parts of me that are freaked out about being on the show. And I sat with those parts. I mean, first of all, identifying because, you know that anxiety that comes. So there are parts of us that are not ready for this brave new life we want to move into, and there's other parts of us that don't want to go back to the old way. So there is a tension between stepping into the new and the unknown and the courage it takes, and the parts of us that are not ready for it, that are like no fucking way, and it takes a lot of courage to do this. And so if you sense into that trust, right, that this trust that you've been trying to build by doing the journaling practice, Can you sense that what it feels like?
Zack Arnold: I can very much sense it, and it's it's really interesting to me, and also just a little bit funny that now, whenever I feel the anxiety, what I literally do is I just write these things to myself that remind me I've been through this before. You will figure it out, and like the logical side of me, especially the grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, drive a pickup truck like that, part of me is like, this is the stupidest thing ever. But I'm now at the point where as soon as I feel the feelings, I just write that stuff on the page, and it's I literally have gone through an exercise, and I've taken my students through a similar exercise, where you essentially look, give or take about a year in the future, and you write a letter to yourself as if it's in past tense. So even though it's something that hasn't happened yet, I wrote myself a letter at the end of last year that is dated for the end of this year that says, Man, this was a really tough year. You were going through a transition with your business. There are all kinds of uncertainty, but man, did you come out of it, and things are great now, and it's again, it's the dumbest thing logically. But I read that I'm like, Well, my future self said it's going to be okay, so I guess I'll just keep I'll keep moving forward like I have a, yeah, I have a phrase that maybe I've taken it from someone else because I've listened to and read so much other information, but I can't attribute it to anybody. But I have a saying that I now use, which is, I'll quit tomorrow. It's like you said, I'm going to go back to software engineering in a year. For me, I'm going to quit tomorrow. And I've been, I've been wanting to quit tomorrow for about a decade, because when I started this podcast 10 years ago, I didn't know what I was getting into. I didn't know how to podcast. I didn't know how to build an online learning community and teach people how to navigate career transitions. And right now is the hardest that it's ever been trying to navigate it through all this uncertainty. So I literally wake up and I say, Today's gonna suck, but at the end of the day, I'll quit tomorrow, and I've been doing that for about 10 years now.
Sunil Joseph: And so that, that writing practice and also the trust you're feeling right now, right that we would call the core need here. And so if you can feel into the core need in your Do you feel that in your body somewhere? Oh, very much so. So set take a few moments to breathe into that internally. And one of the teachers talks about the beauty of the need. Do you feel the beauty of that need? How much it matters to you? Sensing in so this, this is the practice keep feeling it. And when you feel it, what happens is it starts opening, and I call it the bloom of the need, because we're giving it the space and our attention, and let's keep breathing into that in your body. I know it's kind of a weird thing to say, but you understand what I'm saying. You feel
Zack Arnold: Sure I've, yeah, I've been through similar processes. So yeah, this is not unusual to me. Yeah, so keep unusual to me on a live podcast. But yes, I've, definitely, I've been through,
Sunil Joseph: We're in a process space right now and and so you just what we do in this place is we listen to that, the sensations and the feelings of the need, and let it inform us, because there's information in there, and I imagine it's rearranging you. You talked about the molecules. When we listen and connect in a felt way to these needs, They rearrange us. They shift our thinking. They shift our feeling. Can you feel that? And if we went on a podcast, if you're working one on one, I would just, we'd sit and breathe together into this need and the longing for it, because, and then there's another step in NVC, which is, what are the requests I can make to myself to meet this need? And you're already doing that, a strategy you have to meet this is by writing, you know, and and we really soak in the power of the need. And the need is what allows us now to figure out, what are the actions I need to take, because this is what really matters.
Zack Arnold: What that just made me think of when you said making these requests, having been through this circumstance, I think either two, maybe even three times now, of being in the middle of a really major life transition coupled with being in the middle of a very big project where, at least in my own mind, the entire future hinges on this one project. And what I've learned about myself through a lot of these practices is that the things that I know, that I need, that I should request of myself in the past, I wouldn't do that basic needs like I should be sleeping rather than working until two o'clock in the morning. I should probably be eating a little bit better, even though my logical brain and the anxiety emotions that I have are telling me, you should be responding to all of the emails and you should be doing all of the work. Instead, I say, You know what, I'm going to take a walk for half an hour. Those are requests that I'm now much more aware of, that I'm making of myself, that I either wasn't aware of at all, or if I was, I wasn't listening to, and I would just blatantly ignore. And I think that's helping me get through this process and have more trust than I'm actually going to make it through the other side.
Sunil Joseph: Yeah, and you know, you use the word the thinking, the intellectual brain and the emotional, right? I totally relate, right? I'm like, I, you know, I don't want to be watching, uh, social media or YouTube late into the night, but when it's nighttime and I'm watching it, I'm like, No, let's do it. That's the emotional part. So, you know, it's easy to do it. I think this is a natural thing, and this process. The reason for that felt sense, the feeling is because it's working at that emotional level where the emotional level now is coming into this reality of like, oh, wow, I need this trust. And when you feel that trust, the overwhelm part relaxes, all of this freak out, stops the and it's so it's really working with that part. It's not about learning new information, which is also needed, but it's the practice. And again, it goes back to the prison work, where we are supporting these guys. We teach them concepts and stuff, but the real work is, how do we practice it, to take it into the heart and further into the feet? So we're actually walking our talk. We're not just saying nice things, all these clever things we learned. We're living it. And that's the practice, and that's a lifelong practice. You know, I really appreciate your vulnerability in sharing what you shared about your struggles. And you know, it's always a pleasure to be with the man who can be vulnerable and just be himself. Thank you.
Zack Arnold: Well, I very much appreciate you giving me the space to experiment with doing that. Before we wrap up, I have one more question that might seem like it's a bit of a deviation, but I don't think it's going to be as much of that as I might think. What I'm really curious about is talking about career transitions. What do you think about being a great software engineer has made you great at what you do now, what are the transferable skills and experience that allowed you to be doing what you're doing now, without that feeling of I have to start over.
Sunil Joseph: You know, I think in software development, I learned to think in certain ways into how to organize data, how to organize functionality, how to abstract code out into into groups and classes, and how to be efficient in what I do, because if you don't write your code efficiently, you're going to you're going to see. Right at some point it's going to come back and bite you. And so there's certain ways of organizing, thinking data, which have been really invaluable for me as I do my work. Like on Saturday, I'm going to go into this prison in Salinas, and, you know, getting everything organized for it, and making sure everyone's got everything managing, you know, information, it just comes naturally to me, because that's how I think and and so I'm glad I have that, and I have this other, the emotional capacities too, and there's no end to both. It can always get better.
Zack Arnold: So I think that that's a great way to put it in, just to put a little pin on this, because I think this is an area where I know so many of my students and followers are stuck, is this fear that I have to start over, this fear that I've got a lifetime of skills and experience and when it comes to certain software or technological shifts, sure, there's going to be some learning curves, but ultimately, I don't believe that anybody is starting over. And it sounds like for you when it comes to coding. Coding is a language and it's a form of communication, and I would say that in today's conversation and with the work that you do, you have to be a really efficient communicator. And it sounds like you learned efficient communication skills as a software engineer.
Sunil Joseph: That's true. And ultimately, whether it's you know, whatever the skill is, right, what are we serving? Right ultimately, whether it's here or here, it's the heart. If you're in this conversation, in this community, how do we use everything we've got to serve our heart or our the work that's calling us? And the more we know, the more capacities and skills, the more diverse they are, the more we can, you know, they enrich us. And ultimately, it's about what is that longing we're here to serve? What is that calling? You know, and everything comes into play.
Zack Arnold: I don't think I could have wrapped it up more efficiently or succinctly than you just did there. So having said that, I want to make sure that for those that are listening or watching and thinking to themselves, this is something that could be beneficial for me to maybe not open up Pandora's box, but just kind of peek underneath the hood and see what might be going on beneath the surface. Where can we send them to a tool or two, and then ultimately, how can we make sure that if they want to, they can connect with you as well.
Sunil Joseph: So a tool, you know, you can go to the nonviolent communication website. It's cnvc.org, and there's a lot of resources out there. The feelings and needs sheet that I shared with you, you said, to be sharing in the community, you can just download that. And this is something I used to do in the past, was sit and go through lists of feelings. I'd come home from work and I'd sit there because I wanted to develop my awareness of what I'm feeling and the vocabulary, because I just intuitively knew I needed that, I wanted that. And so I would come home and be like, not look at a specific situation, but just be like, what's happening right now? And I would go through the feeling words, and I would write down the ones that resonated kind of like what I did with you right and then look at what am I needing right now? And that would help me the calm you talked about, the place of landing in myself coming home a little bit at a time. And I found the more I did that the more I could regulate myself, and then I could actually do it with other people. And I didn't know it was going to happen. It just happened, but that'll develop your empathy, that'll develop your emotional intelligence, and you can find me at my website, myempathycoach.com
Zack Arnold: All right, myempathycoach.com that is definitely a place that I will send people, we'll have the Thank you, the feelings, documents, and any of the other resources that you shared as well. And the last thing that I'll mention very, very quickly, which I realize is not your website directly, but I admire the fact that you could spend two hours in the room doing this grip process and not break down, because in six and a half minutes of watching the video that's on the homepage of their website. I was welling up, so I'm not sure how you did it for two hours, but if anybody, especially those that create media, like the people that are listening to this, like I do, ultimately, what we want to do for a living is we want to create feelings for others and all of the things that we've talked about for an hour and a half. If you really want to feel it at a visceral level, go to that website again. We'll put the the link in the show notes. Just watch that six and a half minute video of these inmates that literally are murderers talk about their feelings. It is. It's mind blowing, like it was. It was such a compelling piece. So it's, it's, I really commend you for having chosen this is your new path, and doing this kind of work.
Sunil Joseph: It shows me, and I'm so grateful for it, and yes, I did choose it too. But, I mean, I can't believe it. I'm so blessed, you know. And I need that work too, myself, so. And those guys are amazing, like I said, they just help me, you know. And like you said, these are people who've done stuff that's, you know, caused them to be locked up in prisons and do lifes and. In this but and they are human beings doing this hard work just like we can be. So
Zack Arnold: I can't thank you enough for your your time and your expertise today. So thank you for being with us.
Sunil Joseph: Thank you, Zack, thank you so much for having me. It was great.
Edited by: Curtis Fritsch
Produced by: Debby Germino
Published by: Vim Pangantihon
Music by: Thomas Cepeda
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