January 16, 2018 • 35 mins
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Dillan Digiovanni used to be a really angry activist. He believed his anger was an important driver to fuel his work to inspire change in the world. Then he had a revelation: His anger wasn't working. It was driving other people away and it was toxic to himself. Where his path led him from there has turned out to be quite an adventure. He's now an activist without the energy of anger and he now identifies as a man. This interview will inspire you to live your truth. It will inspire you to examine your own life and be better because of it. This important conversation is not only relevant to the issues of today, but it proves to be perennially relevant to how we decide to live our lives in the skin we're in.
This episode is sponsored by Health IQ. Get lower rates on life insurance if you are health conscious. Get free quote here
and by Casper
In This Interview, Dillan DiGiovanni and I Discuss...
- The Wolf Parable
- How, as an activist, his anger was driving people away
- That there's no right way to do anything
- If you're angry all of the time you're constantly looking for the threat
- His gender identity transition
- That anger can be a healthy thing
- Searching for the feeling that's underneath the anger
- The harm in being angry at people for being ignorant about an issue
- The way anger impacts your perspective on life and other people
- The harm in saying "they did this because..." when what you're working with is an assumption
- His relationship to anger now that he's awake to it
- The power of "allowing" vs "resisting"
- His story of transitioning his gender identity
- Resilience
- How to live in the world when no one person understands all of you
- The anger that arises when your expectations about how other people should behave aren't met
- The power of meeting people where they really are
- How to work with your vision about how the world should be
- The power of the serenity prayer
- What happened when he let go of his anger as an activist
- His Buddhist tradition
- Having a meditation practice
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
When you're angry all the time, all you're doing is
constantly looking for the threat. You're not looking for the opportunity.
Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
(00:20):
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
have instead of what we do. We think things that
hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
(00:41):
just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
the right direction, how they feed their good wolf Y,
(01:11):
thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Dylan di Giovanni, an interactive health coach. Dylan has a
Master of Education and Integrative Wellness, Leadership and Change in
Individuals and Cultures from Leslie University, Cambridge, mass and a
Bachelor of Science and Education secondary major in Art at
the College of New Jersey. You in New Jersey. He's
(01:32):
a member of the Speaker Bureau of International Information Programs
and International Association for Health Coaches. Our sponsor on this
episode is health i Q. To see if you qualify
and get your free health quote, go to health i
q dot com. Slash wolf or mentioned the promo code
wolf when you talk to a Health i Q agent.
And here's the interview with Dylan di Giovanni. Hi, Dylan,
(01:55):
Welcome to the show. Thanks very much for having me.
I'm excited to have you on at I mentioned to
you when we were talking before. I rarely accept unsolicited
guest requests for people that I don't really know, um,
but there was something about the way you wrote and
the topics you brought up that I thought, I want
to talk to this guy. So I'm I'm excited to
have this conversation. But let's start like we always do
(02:16):
with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking to his grandson.
He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and
he thinks about it for a second, and he looks
(02:37):
up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which
one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
So I'd like to start off by asking you what
that parable means to you in your life and in
the work that you do. Well. I first learned about
that parable, I would say, back in two thousand five,
and I remember someone shared it with me and I thought, well,
(02:58):
that's really interesting. And then over the years I just
always kept reminding myself of that, and in fact, most
recently this past June, I got the tattoo of the
two wolves, you know, one on each arm. But the
way that I gradually began to apply it more and
more was as my own wolves started to surface. I
(03:19):
started to really actively choose more and more the good
wolf as much as I could, and really focused on
that as a as a choice that I could make,
and every interaction, every thought, whether it was an interaction
live with a person or just thinking, you know, even
in my mindfulness, excellent. So your main idea when you
(03:41):
emailed me was about activism and anger. You know, you
described yourself as an angry activist and and talked about
how that's changed for you a little bit, and I'm
really interested in that subject. What I'm interested in is
that there's lots of things in the world that it's
(04:02):
easy to not like right now. And you know, I'm
sure for a lot of my listeners there there there
are challenges. But I think at any point in time,
right you could look at the world and find lots
of awful things, people that seem awful all that, and
yet the question I'm interested in is how do we
be effective in the world. How do we make a difference.
How do we do all that without either a being
(04:24):
miserable ourselves or be making everybody around us miserable because
we're so upset about it all the time. And so
that's kind of what I want to cover, you know,
with you, So if you can maybe just give us
a little background. Sure. So I identified as an activist
for a long time, and definitely as an angry activist
because that was the ideology that I was taught. I
(04:45):
would say, in my early twenties, I kind of started
hanging out with this with this group of folks who
are very politically engaged and their narrative was around anger
being the way to be effective. So I got absorbed
into that just kind of like a club, you know,
and really believed and and really invested in that. I
didn't even see it as an ideology. I just saw
(05:06):
it as truth. And we we were all about mostly,
you know, we were focused on social justice, so racial
identity politics, sexuality identity politics, you know, social justice issues.
And then when I became a health coach in Two
Hells and Nine, that ideology started to crack because I
started to see that that anger was actually working against
me because it was driving people away. And that had
(05:28):
already happened with my family because I was being so
militant in my opinions, there was no room for anyone
who had a different opinion and I and I really
alienated myself from my family or my family for me right.
And and so the health coaching, the whole foundation of
my training as an integrative health coach is there's no
(05:48):
right way to do anything. There's no right way to eat,
there's no right way to exercise, there's no right way.
And then so then I naturally had to incorporate that
into this strong activist identity that I had and it's
us started to break apart little by little where I
really started to see that this way of being angry
in the world was actually doing more harm than good
(06:08):
and it wasn't actually achieving the ends that that I
had been told would happen if we just kept being
angry about what what wasn't working. And then the more
I started practicing Buddhism, started to just see that as
more truth. And that's how it evolved over time. Yeah,
it's interesting to hear different people talk about anger, certainly
(06:28):
addressed in different Buddhist texts in different ways, and there's
a sense that anger can be used as an energy, right,
that the energy of anger can move us towards positive things,
but the emotional residue or the bitterness that it can
jeels into, can be so problematic. And that's one of
(06:49):
the things that troubles me the most today when I
look at like social justice issues, which I care about deeply,
but boy, it's like nobody is exempt from the outrage, right,
Like you could be on so body's team a dent,
but if you don't say it exactly right or you
don't understand exactly where they come from, there just seems
to be all this outrage and and I feel like
(07:09):
it keeps a lot of different communities of people not
uniting as well as they could to move issues forward,
because there is this sense like this is the way
it's got to be done. And I have a right
to my experience and you don't. And you know anger,
And again, I think anger is an important energy, but
I agree with you, I can see it can be counterproductive.
(07:30):
So besides your family and what other ways in your life,
was it counterproductive for you? I mean myself first and foremost,
because what I was doing was, you know, turning that anger.
What I what I can see now is that that
all that anger inside was I was also turning it
against myself. I was turning it against myself first and
then from there turning it against other people and more
(07:54):
and more. I just saw that that as a way
of being, in a way of thinking, in in being
in the world, was bringing about no happiness and no satisfaction,
because when you're angry all the time, all you're doing
is constantly looking for the threat. You're not looking for
the opportunity. What else was instrumental in transforming that identity
(08:16):
um or that alignment you had with that ideology. So
I became a coach in two thousand nine, and there
was still a conflict. There was still an internal conflict
because I had been in that community for so long.
I was do I want to use the word brainwashed, maybe,
you know, but it was it was It was a
real you know, my brain was really wired that way,
and but it was starting, you know, starting to to fray.
(08:37):
And then in two thousand twelve, I began the process
of transitioning my gender identity in my mid thirties, and
what happened is that was actually the thing that kind
of cracked the rest of the process because the response
that people had to my transition ranged. It was everywhere
(08:58):
from people rejecting me out rightly, like my family the
relationship I was in similar kind of thing um, But
then there were other people who were embracing me, but
kind of treating me like an other, like like this
alien species, when people had never treated me like that
for thirty or four years of my life. And that
(09:18):
plunged me into some real deep anger because for the
first time I could no longer intellectualize prejudice and discrimination.
I was experiencing it outright. So you got plunged into
this deep anger during that period. And I'm sure that
there were a ton of things going on in that period,
(09:39):
and I'd like to explore that a little bit because
it's just not something we've talked about on the show
at all. But let's stay with the anger theme for
right now. Sure, And I started to see that the anger,
because I agree with you, anger is I think a
healthy thing to have. It tells us something that something's
wrong right. It's a symptom that says something's not right here.
But what I learned from my therapist, who was an
(10:01):
amazing person and just recently passed in June, was that
it's telling us that there's a feeling that we need
to address or pay attention to. So with his help,
I started to get underneath, like what is the feeling
that's underneath the anger, And the feeling was um fear,
fear of being abandoned more or you know, stigmatized for
(10:23):
the rest of my life. Fear of not being able
to control how people spoke to me or how they
saw me or how they treated me, resentment, all the
bad wolf feelings. That's when I was like, wow, I
really understand this parable now, Um, at it, or I
said I should say, at a deeper level disappointment, regret
all of those feelings. You know, should I have done this?
(10:44):
Maybe I never should have made this decision um of
just the full range. And one night, when I could
really sit with those feelings, I really started to understand
that being angry at people for how they were treating
me or speaking to me, or we're curious, you know,
the endless questions. Being angry about that was not serving them.
(11:06):
It wasn't going to help them. It was definitely not
going to help me, and it was never going to
change the world for the better. I think that's a
big part of you know, people talk about forgiveness or
getting over anger, and I think for me that was
the fundamental thing that I think turned me into a
person who's pretty easy to forgive, pretty slow to anger.
Was when I've really, at a at a fundamental level,
(11:28):
understood what it was doing to me. You can chalk
that up to being selfish, which it is to some extent,
but I just really realized, like, oh boy, like this
is awful. I am really suffering and the other person
is not. This doesn't make any sense, and it just
made me less effective in every way totally. Here here
I was, you know, making people feel ashamed and embarrassed
(11:52):
for being ignorant, and ignorant at face value is just
lack of awareness. Right here are these people not trying
to be delicious, not trying to hurt me, but just
doing things from a place of curiosity and ignorance, And
I was making them feel horrible about it, right, Yeah,
I mean I think there is there. You know, obviously
we could talk about different types of ignorance, but one
(12:12):
type of ignorance is just very much like you said,
it's just I just don't know. And and you know,
you and I had a conversation before the show a
little bit where I was like, all right, I want
to make sure I'm going to get my terms right
because I don't want to offend anybody in any way.
I want to treat people the way that they want
to be treated. And yet it's sort of like, well,
I'm not quite sure, and so you know, I think
(12:33):
in a lot of cases it it comes, like you said,
it comes from a place of of concern or care.
But if you're so angry all the time, you can't
tell them apart almost totally, I agree and and the
way to use all those words or terms, right, that's
essentially another whole language, is what I realized. Whereas when
I was in the activist community, I think a lot
of you I'm speaking, I'm totally generalizing, but I think
(12:55):
a lot of activists forget that they've nurtured a culture
that's exclusive and it has its own rules and language,
and and a lot of their anger is how could
I speak for myself? A lot of my anger was
forgetting that I was making assumptions about what people knew
and didn't know. And when you step back and you say, well, actually,
(13:16):
it's a whole different language, which is like a different culture,
and you know, I wouldn't expect a person from a
different country to come over and just automatically be able
to know, Um, it really changed. It was a whole
different frame. Yeah, it's one of the most fundamental lessons
I think. But when we stop assuming we understand people's
motivation were so much better off. You know, like you
(13:37):
can look at the action and go, Okay, well they
said this or they did that, and you can like
that or not like that, right, and you can address that.
But the minute we go into they did it, because boy,
I get my you know, I used to get myself
into trouble. I still do get myself into trouble with
that all of the time. And it's also very much
sort of a self absorbed mindset because it means like
I just assume everybody thinks like I do. So if
(13:59):
I did this here what it would mean me. But
it's totally different for someone else, or can be completely
(14:34):
And now back to the interview with Dylan di Giovanni.
Let's stay with the anger theme for a little bit longer.
So talk to me about your relationship to anger now. Mm, well,
I'm awake to it in a way that I wasn't.
I think the anger was just in the driver's seat,
and it just compelled me for definitely, you know, years
(14:55):
before my transition, but then definitely in the transition early on.
And then I just started to realize, like, this is
a self created prison, Dylan, and you signed up for
this for the rest of however many decades you have
on this plan, and you either walk through the world
really annoyed or frustrated or whatever, or you get to
choose how you're going to respond, you know. And if
(15:17):
I'm being completely honest, with you, because why not. I mean,
it's really a day to day practice, just like I
think it is for everybody. But it really is a
day to day practice for me. And I will say
it definitely gets easier with time when you come when
I come from that place that I don't have to
be perfect. I'm allowed to get frustrated with people sometimes.
As soon as I allow that, then you know, as
(15:40):
as it works right as I allow it for myself,
then I can create that space for other people. Yeah,
that is a mysterious way things work, is that you know,
when you allow something or don't resist something. It's very
easy for me to recognize that in an exterior sort
of way, like well, I shouldn't resist that I have
to go to work, or I shouldn't resist that it's
cold outside, or I shouldn't resist something else. It's a
(16:02):
lot harder for me to recognize it with a personality
trait what in a twelve step program we might call
a character defect. Right, it's a whole lot harder for
me to be like, all right, I'm just gonna let
that be there. I'm gonna let myself be that way,
and it works, it works, But boy, it's non intuitive
and hard for me to do because there's a fear like, well,
(16:23):
if I just let it be there, it's always gonna
be there. Like I can't act like that, I can't
be like that. You're talking about a work in progress.
That's what I'm still definitely working my way through. Is
I'm like, well, some of these things that I've tried
to get rid of for how many years aren't going anywhere.
You know, they may not be as as grievous as
they once were, but they're still there. And so maybe
(16:44):
the approach needs to be like, all right, you know,
just sort of like I see you in the same
way that you know. I talked with people a lot
in the Coach and I'm sure you do, and we
talked about on the show around relating to thoughts and
feelings in that way, get some distance and just see them.
You don't have to change them, you don't have to
make them go away. There's different approaches, but learning to
do that with my own personal sort of flaws, I
(17:07):
guess it is more challenging. Yep. So let's talk about
the transition. So I would just be curious, like, for
how long did you know that you that you did
not identify with your your given gender. Was that something
you've known a long time or did you grow into
that awareness or Thanks for asking the question, because I'm
really always excited to share my experience because it's pretty
(17:30):
different from the common narrative that's out there of what
people think and what other what other folks associate. UM.
I grew up not really having that internal conflict. I
was more identified as like a tomboy, right. It was
kind of more of an androgynous tomboy, which was an
acceptable identity. And because there was no visibility of transgender
(17:52):
people when I was growing up in the media. Yeah,
and then when I moved to Boston in two thousand
six from New Jersey where I'm from, UM I started
hanging out with transgender people, I started becoming exposed to
them as as a as an as an existence. And
but it took, I would say, another well, from like
(18:13):
two thousand three to two thousand twelve for me to
actually start to explore that for myself, like is this
true for me? And here's the honest truth. I came
to the conclusion after exploring that that I couldn't really
answer the question because I lived as a person for
thirty four years, and I couldn't imagine into a completely
(18:35):
different reality. So I ultimately just made the decision to
try it. And so that's a fairly significant trying it
is this isn't then again, You're right. The narrative that
that I've heard or understand is that people lived in
this unbearable confinement for all this time and then eventually
(18:56):
summoned all their courage two to make a change. And
it sounds like it's very different in your case, totally totally,
because I I always lived self expressed and completely comfortable,
you know, except for a few occasions where I had
to wear like the required clothing of of you know,
you know, for graduation ceremonies or whatever. I mostly wore
(19:19):
whatever I wanted to wear, and had been doing that
for many years. So the gender expression of ambiguity or
androgyny wasn't you know. I'd already been doing it for
so many years. So then it was the next step
of like changing other things. And then it was at
that point that just became like a conscious decision, honestly,
And I think when I tell people, like, they're like,
(19:40):
that's wild, you know, and I was like, yeah, it is.
But there must have been enough of a thought that
that could be the case that you maybe were unable
to say like absolutely yes or absolutely no. But there
was a pull in that direction. Obviously. It wasn't like
one day you were like, I'm going to wake up
and you know, throw my whole life into chaos to
(20:03):
a certain extent, just on a whim. Right, Yeah, definitely
wasn't a whim. It's not like I woke up and
was like, hey, this would be fun. It was after,
you know, after careful discernment, where I did ultimately make
the decision that it wouldn't necessarily be fun, but it
would be an adventure that I was ready to take on.
I felt like I had lived a certain way and
(20:25):
had lived as a certain identity for thirty or four years,
and at some point my body would give out and
I had enough of an inkling that I thought, well,
this would be a really wild adventure. And that's exactly
what it's become. I am a person inside and out
that I never would have been if I if I
hadn't done it. And it's pretty awesome. That's wonderful. It's
(20:46):
so great to hear like that. You know, on the
other side of it. It feels good. So you refer
to it as a transition as in past tense, and
again here comes my lack of real knowledge of it.
So is it is that something? And it is like
a point you hit where you're like, all right, done,
Like I transitioned and I am done. Now the transition
(21:06):
is over and now I am established in this gender.
Every person makes that decision at different points. So for
me right now, I'm satisfied with with any adjustments to
myself you know, physically, mentally, emotionally, but also mindful that
(21:27):
I'm of working progress until I leave the planet. So
it's always going to be, you know, and maybe in
five years I'll make a different decision or something like that.
But every person um makes that decision of at different points.
But for me, I'm content. So that process of transition
can go on for either much longer or shorter time,
and that it's totally each person's sort of decision. But
(21:49):
from your perspective, you feel like at least that part
of the journey is kind of you know, at a
at a stand still point, You've got lots of other
growth and opportunities you're working on. Yeah, definitely one of
the things I've seen you talk about in your blog
and in different places is the idea of resilience, and
I'd be interested in as you went through this transition,
(22:11):
which was enormously challenging. You mentioned your family abandoned you,
people that you thought would really understand sort of treated
you strangely, and where did you turn to for the
strength to continue that process through and get to the
other side myself ultimately, Which is why I really wanted
to share this story with you, because that parable of
(22:34):
who we ultimately decide to become for ourselves is really
the most fundamental decision that we can make, because in
a moment like that where you're really in despair, you know,
if I have moments in of despair or regret or
feeling so abandoned, feeling so alone, feeling like, um, I
really don't belong anywhere or with anyone, like these real
(22:57):
deep feelings of isolation, in the blink of an I
or in you know, in a second, I can make
a different decision and feed that other wolf and say
that I'm fine the way I am. I'm finding my
own company, like I can become my own best friend.
Because of that parable. You know that that's like we
(23:18):
could go down one tunnel, or we can decide to
go around back and go down the different tunnel. And
I can say that they were people along the way
who would support me and encourage me. But what I
found is with the transition, there were increasingly fewer people
who understood. You know, so first I distanced myself from
the activist community, and then I transition, so that's like
(23:39):
this whole other layer of a different lens of living life,
and then I'm really intense Buddhist. There were fewer and
fewer people who would understand all the different things I
was understanding and seeing, and so I finally was like,
you know, I I have to be that source for myself. Yeah,
what you just said, uh interested me. It triggered something
in me, which was you are mentioning like people who
(24:01):
understood all those different aspects. You know, I'm no longer
an activist, and I am transitioning, and I'm a Buddhist.
And and it's interesting because I used to think of
mentors and in twelve step programs there's the idea of
a sponsor, and the sponsor is you know, they always say, well,
you know, ask the person that you want to be,
you know, like that you look at them and you're like, well,
that's where I want to be, and I could never
(24:23):
do it. I would always look at them and be like, well,
like I like that and that, but they don't have this,
or they don't have that, or they're not going to
understand this part of me. And it took me a
long time to realize, like, I'm not going to find
that person. I'm not going to find the person who's
me five years from now, because that's what I want.
I want the me in five years to lead me along.
(24:44):
And I finally hit a point where I was like,
it's not gonna happen. There is no other me in
five years. I can go to certain people for this
type of helper advice and other people for this type
of helper advice, but thinking that I'm going to roll
them all into one uber person who's going to be
like my my true guide and savior was misguided. And
(25:06):
I think it cut me off for a long time
from getting help from people in particular areas because I
was like, well, they don't understand all of me. I
completely identify with that. I think I look at them
the major thought leaders today and there's nobody who's living
my experience that I would want to emulate or you
know that that I even feel like understands the world
the way I understand it. They have certain identities and
(25:28):
they've lived certain experiences, but there's no one who has
this extra piece that you know, and even like I said,
I referenced my therapist, he had a lot. But then
there were moments where I would say, you know, you
know what I mean, and he'd look at me and
he'd say, quite honestly, I don't know what you mean.
I haven't lived what you've lived, and I don't you
have to tell me. And that's when that's when I
had the breakthrough, like I've got to be this for myself,
(25:50):
and I think that at the same time, we'd have
to be that for ourselves. And there's places to turn
for help, right, there's people we can turn to even
if we're like, well, they know they don't understand everything
about me. Still, you know, obviously you do you do
coaching work, so that's you know, part of what you
offer to people. Sure, sure, yeah, people can make contributions
(26:10):
right and from the place that they live, and it's
as valuable. It brings value m If you're enjoying this conversation,
(26:42):
I hate to be the bearer of bad news. We
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(27:03):
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pledge to access this additional weekly content. And now back
to the interview. You've talked about anger being a work
in progress. Obviously, I think it is for all of us.
What are the sort of things that make you angry today?
(27:25):
What triggers you, what sets you off the Dylan of today? Well,
my own expectations about how other people should behave. Ultimately,
that's what I really saw, and and you and I
were speaking earlier, and that's what I see now happening
on the world stage. Is so much of the anger
that people have is they keep expecting other people to
(27:46):
be thinking and behaving the way that they either think
and behave, or that they think people should think and behave,
And they don't get that as a distinction. They don't
get that that they're doing that, and and how they're
really even in the name of something that they think
is so just and so positive, they're actually adding more
aggression to the planet with these unrealistic expectations. And I
(28:11):
say they're unrealistic because they're not dealing with how people
really are, right, Whereas if you meet people where they
really are, then you can work with them right. So
and and yeah, and you and you said that earlier,
and I really saw that for myself that so much
of what makes me angry is when I completely forget
that people are being who they're being instead of who
I think they should be being. Right. And that's a
(28:33):
tricky one, right, because this show is so much about
finding the middle ground, right, and it's so much about
balancing contradictions and paradoxes and all that. And and this
leads us right up into another big one, which is
I've got this view of the way I think the
world should be. I've got a vision of what's right
(28:54):
and what's wrong. So I've got that on one hand,
and then on the other hand, I've got this sense
of letting things be as they are and accepting people
where they are and being in the moment and and
and acceptance. And it's this sort of constant push and
pull between acceptance and change. And that's why I love
(29:14):
the Serenity prayer that was you know, mostly reference and
Twilstep programs. I would say it is perhaps it's in
the top five wisest things ever written, I think, because
that's the heart of our human condition to a large extent,
is what can I change? And what can I And
the things that I can give me the strength and
the energy and the courage to go about changing them
(29:34):
in a useful way, and the things I can't, you know,
let me accept those and the wisdom to know the
difference is obviously the tricky part. And that and that's
really what I saw, and that that was my last
kind of handhold to that angry activist identity. Was, um,
if I let go of this anger, I'll be so
passive that I will do no good in the world.
(29:57):
I will be read as being too passive, looking like
I'm just you know, who cares whatever life is a dream,
you know, and I'll lose this need to help be
a change agent. And then I realized, no, it's actually
in letting go of the anger and the need to
change people that you actually will help change things, because
when they don't feel threatened and they feel invited into transformation,
(30:21):
that's actually how I can help make a difference. And
I was like, Wow, why didn't I get this ten
years ago? You know? And that, and it was it
was great. Although I think I agree with and I
think there probably is equally a place for really angry activists,
and it's probably good we have some of them, um,
because I think I think, you know, a lot of
a lot of social change probably moves forward in that way.
(30:44):
But again, I guess the question would be, could you
use that energy and that drive and all that without
being so angry? And I don't know the answer to
that question. For some people, maybe the answer is no.
I agree, you're right, but it's one of those that like,
for me, that's not a person anality style that works
for me long term, um, either in again for my
(31:05):
own good or for the good of the people around me.
So you mentioned Buddhism multiple times. You said, you're pretty
into it. Is there a particular lineage or tradition that
you follow, a particular teacher that you have kind of
what's what's that look like for you? Yeah, Pemma Children
is the person that I really have been following since
two thousand, two thousand one probably and then definitely her teacher,
(31:27):
and I got to kind of, you know, ultimate experience,
I have to say, Like, I went up to a
couple of retreats up in Vermont and got to meet
her a couple of times, and I actually asked her
this question at the microphone in a program about you know,
how can I be a more effective activist? And she
said to me, you know, ask your peers if their
anger is actually working. So that was a major lightbulb
(31:48):
moment for me. And then I got to take a
selfie with her, which was awesome. Yeah. Yeah, she's she's great.
She is. Um So, Leonard Cohen was the number one
dream asked for me on this show that I never
got on the show never happened. Um I got at
least got his manager to communicate with me. But um shows.
(32:08):
Anne Jack Hobner, who we had on a couple of
shows ago, was a Monk with with Leonard Cohen and
I once I just said to him, I said, well,
you know what, what do you think the odds of it,
like getting Leonard Cohen on this show? I mean, do
you think you could ask him or you know, like
I don't like to, you know. And he was like, well,
I don't know, but you should know that his monk
name means great silence. So don't get your hopes up there,
(32:30):
you know that said Pema. Chodren is right in the
top five also of people that I think would be
great guests. I haven't. I tried it like when we
started and never got any response because we were virtually unknown.
We're probably still too small for her, but it what
never hurts to ask. Yeah, I never know, never know.
(32:51):
I'm here today because I reached out to you, so
you never know. Yep. She's wonderful, very remarkable teacher, very relatable. Yes.
And so then do you have a p do you
standard sitting practice or meditation practice that you do or
what's you know? Okay, I'm so undisciplined, but but I
you know, it's more just evolved into like in the moment,
just like you know, trying to constantly be conscious and mindful. Yep,
(33:16):
but I do need to sit more. I started getting
into meditation when I was twenty. That was a long
time ago, manage. A matter of fact, it was eighteen.
It's really only been in the last three years or
so that I've gotten to the point where I meditate
pretty much every day. Um. It took me a long
time to figure that one out. Um, But I finally
think I kind of cracked the code on it and
(33:36):
got to the point where I'm like, all right, I
do this every day. Some days I do it longer
than other days. Sometimes I'm better about like, Okay, my
practice is close to an hour a day. There's other
times it's over an hour. There's sometimes it's like five minutes.
So it's it's inconsistent in that regard. But I've taken
the whether I do it or not inconsistency out of
the picture. So you inspired me, I'll start tomorrow. Well,
(33:59):
So what I did was I just I would read books,
you know, I'd read Pama Choder and I read Jack
Cornfield or all this, and I'd be like, yes, I
got to meditate. I see why it's so important. And
they'd be like, sit down for fifteen minutes or twenty
minutes or thirty minutes, and I hated it, like I
just couldn't. It just was really difficult. And so I
started this round with like, all right, i'm gonna do
two minutes, but I'm gonna do two minutes every day
(34:21):
no matter what. And then I was able to build
up to three minutes and then five minutes, and I
could slowly layer on. So it was really this small
step approach and then just giving up any expectation of
what meditation would be like. While I did it, I
would get so frustrated because everybody else would be like,
I love to meditate, It's so nice, and I was like,
that is not how I feel. Right, I'm meditating and
(34:43):
I feel crazy. Um. And so when I finally just
went like, well, okay, that's maybe that's just the way
meditation is for me. I'm still gonna do it, it
got a lot easier. Excellent. Well, Dylan, thank you so
much for taking the time to come on. Thanks so
much for reaching out to me, and let's keep in touch. Definitely,
thanks again for having me. Okay, bye bye bye. If
(35:23):
what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider
making a donation to The One You Feed podcast head
over to one you Feed dot net slash support. The
One You Feed Podcast would like to sincerely thank our
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When you're angry all the time, all you're doing is
constantly looking for the threat. You're not looking for the opportunity.
Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
(00:20):
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
have instead of what we do. We think things that
hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
(00:41):
just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
the right direction, how they feed their good wolf Y,
(01:11):
thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Dylan di Giovanni, an interactive health coach. Dylan has a
Master of Education and Integrative Wellness, Leadership and Change in
Individuals and Cultures from Leslie University, Cambridge, mass and a
Bachelor of Science and Education secondary major in Art at
the College of New Jersey. You in New Jersey. He's
(01:32):
a member of the Speaker Bureau of International Information Programs
and International Association for Health Coaches. Our sponsor on this
episode is health i Q. To see if you qualify
and get your free health quote, go to health i
q dot com. Slash wolf or mentioned the promo code
wolf when you talk to a Health i Q agent.
And here's the interview with Dylan di Giovanni. Hi, Dylan,
(01:55):
Welcome to the show. Thanks very much for having me.
I'm excited to have you on at I mentioned to
you when we were talking before. I rarely accept unsolicited
guest requests for people that I don't really know, um,
but there was something about the way you wrote and
the topics you brought up that I thought, I want
to talk to this guy. So I'm I'm excited to
have this conversation. But let's start like we always do
(02:16):
with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking to his grandson.
He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and
he thinks about it for a second, and he looks
(02:37):
up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which
one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
So I'd like to start off by asking you what
that parable means to you in your life and in
the work that you do. Well. I first learned about
that parable, I would say, back in two thousand five,
and I remember someone shared it with me and I thought, well,
(02:58):
that's really interesting. And then over the years I just
always kept reminding myself of that, and in fact, most
recently this past June, I got the tattoo of the
two wolves, you know, one on each arm. But the
way that I gradually began to apply it more and
more was as my own wolves started to surface. I
(03:19):
started to really actively choose more and more the good
wolf as much as I could, and really focused on
that as a as a choice that I could make,
and every interaction, every thought, whether it was an interaction
live with a person or just thinking, you know, even
in my mindfulness, excellent. So your main idea when you
(03:41):
emailed me was about activism and anger. You know, you
described yourself as an angry activist and and talked about
how that's changed for you a little bit, and I'm
really interested in that subject. What I'm interested in is
that there's lots of things in the world that it's
(04:02):
easy to not like right now. And you know, I'm
sure for a lot of my listeners there there there
are challenges. But I think at any point in time,
right you could look at the world and find lots
of awful things, people that seem awful all that, and
yet the question I'm interested in is how do we
be effective in the world. How do we make a difference.
How do we do all that without either a being
(04:24):
miserable ourselves or be making everybody around us miserable because
we're so upset about it all the time. And so
that's kind of what I want to cover, you know,
with you, So if you can maybe just give us
a little background. Sure. So I identified as an activist
for a long time, and definitely as an angry activist
because that was the ideology that I was taught. I
(04:45):
would say, in my early twenties, I kind of started
hanging out with this with this group of folks who
are very politically engaged and their narrative was around anger
being the way to be effective. So I got absorbed
into that just kind of like a club, you know,
and really believed and and really invested in that. I
didn't even see it as an ideology. I just saw
(05:06):
it as truth. And we we were all about mostly,
you know, we were focused on social justice, so racial
identity politics, sexuality identity politics, you know, social justice issues.
And then when I became a health coach in Two
Hells and Nine, that ideology started to crack because I
started to see that that anger was actually working against
me because it was driving people away. And that had
(05:28):
already happened with my family because I was being so
militant in my opinions, there was no room for anyone
who had a different opinion and I and I really
alienated myself from my family or my family for me right.
And and so the health coaching, the whole foundation of
my training as an integrative health coach is there's no
(05:48):
right way to do anything. There's no right way to eat,
there's no right way to exercise, there's no right way.
And then so then I naturally had to incorporate that
into this strong activist identity that I had and it's
us started to break apart little by little where I
really started to see that this way of being angry
in the world was actually doing more harm than good
(06:08):
and it wasn't actually achieving the ends that that I
had been told would happen if we just kept being
angry about what what wasn't working. And then the more
I started practicing Buddhism, started to just see that as
more truth. And that's how it evolved over time. Yeah,
it's interesting to hear different people talk about anger, certainly
(06:28):
addressed in different Buddhist texts in different ways, and there's
a sense that anger can be used as an energy, right,
that the energy of anger can move us towards positive things,
but the emotional residue or the bitterness that it can
jeels into, can be so problematic. And that's one of
(06:49):
the things that troubles me the most today when I
look at like social justice issues, which I care about deeply,
but boy, it's like nobody is exempt from the outrage, right,
Like you could be on so body's team a dent,
but if you don't say it exactly right or you
don't understand exactly where they come from, there just seems
to be all this outrage and and I feel like
(07:09):
it keeps a lot of different communities of people not
uniting as well as they could to move issues forward,
because there is this sense like this is the way
it's got to be done. And I have a right
to my experience and you don't. And you know anger,
And again, I think anger is an important energy, but
I agree with you, I can see it can be counterproductive.
(07:30):
So besides your family and what other ways in your life,
was it counterproductive for you? I mean myself first and foremost,
because what I was doing was, you know, turning that anger.
What I what I can see now is that that
all that anger inside was I was also turning it
against myself. I was turning it against myself first and
then from there turning it against other people and more
(07:54):
and more. I just saw that that as a way
of being, in a way of thinking, in in being
in the world, was bringing about no happiness and no satisfaction,
because when you're angry all the time, all you're doing
is constantly looking for the threat. You're not looking for
the opportunity. What else was instrumental in transforming that identity
(08:16):
um or that alignment you had with that ideology. So
I became a coach in two thousand nine, and there
was still a conflict. There was still an internal conflict
because I had been in that community for so long.
I was do I want to use the word brainwashed, maybe,
you know, but it was it was It was a
real you know, my brain was really wired that way,
and but it was starting, you know, starting to to fray.
(08:37):
And then in two thousand twelve, I began the process
of transitioning my gender identity in my mid thirties, and
what happened is that was actually the thing that kind
of cracked the rest of the process because the response
that people had to my transition ranged. It was everywhere
(08:58):
from people rejecting me out rightly, like my family the
relationship I was in similar kind of thing um, But
then there were other people who were embracing me, but
kind of treating me like an other, like like this
alien species, when people had never treated me like that
for thirty or four years of my life. And that
(09:18):
plunged me into some real deep anger because for the
first time I could no longer intellectualize prejudice and discrimination.
I was experiencing it outright. So you got plunged into
this deep anger during that period. And I'm sure that
there were a ton of things going on in that period,
(09:39):
and I'd like to explore that a little bit because
it's just not something we've talked about on the show
at all. But let's stay with the anger theme for
right now. Sure, And I started to see that the anger,
because I agree with you, anger is I think a
healthy thing to have. It tells us something that something's
wrong right. It's a symptom that says something's not right here.
But what I learned from my therapist, who was an
(10:01):
amazing person and just recently passed in June, was that
it's telling us that there's a feeling that we need
to address or pay attention to. So with his help,
I started to get underneath, like what is the feeling
that's underneath the anger, And the feeling was um fear,
fear of being abandoned more or you know, stigmatized for
(10:23):
the rest of my life. Fear of not being able
to control how people spoke to me or how they
saw me or how they treated me, resentment, all the
bad wolf feelings. That's when I was like, wow, I
really understand this parable now, Um, at it, or I
said I should say, at a deeper level disappointment, regret
all of those feelings. You know, should I have done this?
(10:44):
Maybe I never should have made this decision um of
just the full range. And one night, when I could
really sit with those feelings, I really started to understand
that being angry at people for how they were treating
me or speaking to me, or we're curious, you know,
the endless questions. Being angry about that was not serving them.
(11:06):
It wasn't going to help them. It was definitely not
going to help me, and it was never going to
change the world for the better. I think that's a
big part of you know, people talk about forgiveness or
getting over anger, and I think for me that was
the fundamental thing that I think turned me into a
person who's pretty easy to forgive, pretty slow to anger.
Was when I've really, at a at a fundamental level,
(11:28):
understood what it was doing to me. You can chalk
that up to being selfish, which it is to some extent,
but I just really realized, like, oh boy, like this
is awful. I am really suffering and the other person
is not. This doesn't make any sense, and it just
made me less effective in every way totally. Here here
I was, you know, making people feel ashamed and embarrassed
(11:52):
for being ignorant, and ignorant at face value is just
lack of awareness. Right here are these people not trying
to be delicious, not trying to hurt me, but just
doing things from a place of curiosity and ignorance, And
I was making them feel horrible about it, right, Yeah,
I mean I think there is there. You know, obviously
we could talk about different types of ignorance, but one
(12:12):
type of ignorance is just very much like you said,
it's just I just don't know. And and you know,
you and I had a conversation before the show a
little bit where I was like, all right, I want
to make sure I'm going to get my terms right
because I don't want to offend anybody in any way.
I want to treat people the way that they want
to be treated. And yet it's sort of like, well,
I'm not quite sure, and so you know, I think
(12:33):
in a lot of cases it it comes, like you said,
it comes from a place of of concern or care.
But if you're so angry all the time, you can't
tell them apart almost totally, I agree and and the
way to use all those words or terms, right, that's
essentially another whole language, is what I realized. Whereas when
I was in the activist community, I think a lot
of you I'm speaking, I'm totally generalizing, but I think
(12:55):
a lot of activists forget that they've nurtured a culture
that's exclusive and it has its own rules and language,
and and a lot of their anger is how could
I speak for myself? A lot of my anger was
forgetting that I was making assumptions about what people knew
and didn't know. And when you step back and you say, well, actually,
(13:16):
it's a whole different language, which is like a different culture,
and you know, I wouldn't expect a person from a
different country to come over and just automatically be able
to know, Um, it really changed. It was a whole
different frame. Yeah, it's one of the most fundamental lessons
I think. But when we stop assuming we understand people's
motivation were so much better off. You know, like you
(13:37):
can look at the action and go, Okay, well they
said this or they did that, and you can like
that or not like that, right, and you can address that.
But the minute we go into they did it, because boy,
I get my you know, I used to get myself
into trouble. I still do get myself into trouble with
that all of the time. And it's also very much
sort of a self absorbed mindset because it means like
I just assume everybody thinks like I do. So if
(13:59):
I did this here what it would mean me. But
it's totally different for someone else, or can be completely
(14:34):
And now back to the interview with Dylan di Giovanni.
Let's stay with the anger theme for a little bit longer.
So talk to me about your relationship to anger now. Mm, well,
I'm awake to it in a way that I wasn't.
I think the anger was just in the driver's seat,
and it just compelled me for definitely, you know, years
(14:55):
before my transition, but then definitely in the transition early on.
And then I just started to realize, like, this is
a self created prison, Dylan, and you signed up for
this for the rest of however many decades you have
on this plan, and you either walk through the world
really annoyed or frustrated or whatever, or you get to
choose how you're going to respond, you know. And if
(15:17):
I'm being completely honest, with you, because why not. I mean,
it's really a day to day practice, just like I
think it is for everybody. But it really is a
day to day practice for me. And I will say
it definitely gets easier with time when you come when
I come from that place that I don't have to
be perfect. I'm allowed to get frustrated with people sometimes.
As soon as I allow that, then you know, as
(15:40):
as it works right as I allow it for myself,
then I can create that space for other people. Yeah,
that is a mysterious way things work, is that you know,
when you allow something or don't resist something. It's very
easy for me to recognize that in an exterior sort
of way, like well, I shouldn't resist that I have
to go to work, or I shouldn't resist that it's
cold outside, or I shouldn't resist something else. It's a
(16:02):
lot harder for me to recognize it with a personality
trait what in a twelve step program we might call
a character defect. Right, it's a whole lot harder for
me to be like, all right, I'm just gonna let
that be there. I'm gonna let myself be that way,
and it works, it works, But boy, it's non intuitive
and hard for me to do because there's a fear like, well,
(16:23):
if I just let it be there, it's always gonna
be there. Like I can't act like that, I can't
be like that. You're talking about a work in progress.
That's what I'm still definitely working my way through. Is
I'm like, well, some of these things that I've tried
to get rid of for how many years aren't going anywhere.
You know, they may not be as as grievous as
they once were, but they're still there. And so maybe
(16:44):
the approach needs to be like, all right, you know,
just sort of like I see you in the same
way that you know. I talked with people a lot
in the Coach and I'm sure you do, and we
talked about on the show around relating to thoughts and
feelings in that way, get some distance and just see them.
You don't have to change them, you don't have to
make them go away. There's different approaches, but learning to
do that with my own personal sort of flaws, I
(17:07):
guess it is more challenging. Yep. So let's talk about
the transition. So I would just be curious, like, for
how long did you know that you that you did
not identify with your your given gender. Was that something
you've known a long time or did you grow into
that awareness or Thanks for asking the question, because I'm
really always excited to share my experience because it's pretty
(17:30):
different from the common narrative that's out there of what
people think and what other what other folks associate. UM.
I grew up not really having that internal conflict. I
was more identified as like a tomboy, right. It was
kind of more of an androgynous tomboy, which was an
acceptable identity. And because there was no visibility of transgender
(17:52):
people when I was growing up in the media. Yeah,
and then when I moved to Boston in two thousand
six from New Jersey where I'm from, UM I started
hanging out with transgender people, I started becoming exposed to
them as as a as an as an existence. And
but it took, I would say, another well, from like
(18:13):
two thousand three to two thousand twelve for me to
actually start to explore that for myself, like is this
true for me? And here's the honest truth. I came
to the conclusion after exploring that that I couldn't really
answer the question because I lived as a person for
thirty four years, and I couldn't imagine into a completely
(18:35):
different reality. So I ultimately just made the decision to
try it. And so that's a fairly significant trying it
is this isn't then again, You're right. The narrative that
that I've heard or understand is that people lived in
this unbearable confinement for all this time and then eventually
(18:56):
summoned all their courage two to make a change. And
it sounds like it's very different in your case, totally totally,
because I I always lived self expressed and completely comfortable,
you know, except for a few occasions where I had
to wear like the required clothing of of you know,
you know, for graduation ceremonies or whatever. I mostly wore
(19:19):
whatever I wanted to wear, and had been doing that
for many years. So the gender expression of ambiguity or
androgyny wasn't you know. I'd already been doing it for
so many years. So then it was the next step
of like changing other things. And then it was at
that point that just became like a conscious decision, honestly,
And I think when I tell people, like, they're like,
(19:40):
that's wild, you know, and I was like, yeah, it is.
But there must have been enough of a thought that
that could be the case that you maybe were unable
to say like absolutely yes or absolutely no. But there
was a pull in that direction. Obviously. It wasn't like
one day you were like, I'm going to wake up
and you know, throw my whole life into chaos to
(20:03):
a certain extent, just on a whim. Right, Yeah, definitely
wasn't a whim. It's not like I woke up and
was like, hey, this would be fun. It was after,
you know, after careful discernment, where I did ultimately make
the decision that it wouldn't necessarily be fun, but it
would be an adventure that I was ready to take on.
I felt like I had lived a certain way and
(20:25):
had lived as a certain identity for thirty or four years,
and at some point my body would give out and
I had enough of an inkling that I thought, well,
this would be a really wild adventure. And that's exactly
what it's become. I am a person inside and out
that I never would have been if I if I
hadn't done it. And it's pretty awesome. That's wonderful. It's
(20:46):
so great to hear like that. You know, on the
other side of it. It feels good. So you refer
to it as a transition as in past tense, and
again here comes my lack of real knowledge of it.
So is it is that something? And it is like
a point you hit where you're like, all right, done,
Like I transitioned and I am done. Now the transition
(21:06):
is over and now I am established in this gender.
Every person makes that decision at different points. So for
me right now, I'm satisfied with with any adjustments to
myself you know, physically, mentally, emotionally, but also mindful that
(21:27):
I'm of working progress until I leave the planet. So
it's always going to be, you know, and maybe in
five years I'll make a different decision or something like that.
But every person um makes that decision of at different points.
But for me, I'm content. So that process of transition
can go on for either much longer or shorter time,
and that it's totally each person's sort of decision. But
(21:49):
from your perspective, you feel like at least that part
of the journey is kind of you know, at a
at a stand still point, You've got lots of other
growth and opportunities you're working on. Yeah, definitely one of
the things I've seen you talk about in your blog
and in different places is the idea of resilience, and
I'd be interested in as you went through this transition,
(22:11):
which was enormously challenging. You mentioned your family abandoned you,
people that you thought would really understand sort of treated
you strangely, and where did you turn to for the
strength to continue that process through and get to the
other side myself ultimately, Which is why I really wanted
to share this story with you, because that parable of
(22:34):
who we ultimately decide to become for ourselves is really
the most fundamental decision that we can make, because in
a moment like that where you're really in despair, you know,
if I have moments in of despair or regret or
feeling so abandoned, feeling so alone, feeling like, um, I
really don't belong anywhere or with anyone, like these real
(22:57):
deep feelings of isolation, in the blink of an I
or in you know, in a second, I can make
a different decision and feed that other wolf and say
that I'm fine the way I am. I'm finding my
own company, like I can become my own best friend.
Because of that parable. You know that that's like we
(23:18):
could go down one tunnel, or we can decide to
go around back and go down the different tunnel. And
I can say that they were people along the way
who would support me and encourage me. But what I
found is with the transition, there were increasingly fewer people
who understood. You know, so first I distanced myself from
the activist community, and then I transition, so that's like
(23:39):
this whole other layer of a different lens of living life,
and then I'm really intense Buddhist. There were fewer and
fewer people who would understand all the different things I
was understanding and seeing, and so I finally was like,
you know, I I have to be that source for myself. Yeah,
what you just said, uh interested me. It triggered something
in me, which was you are mentioning like people who
(24:01):
understood all those different aspects. You know, I'm no longer
an activist, and I am transitioning, and I'm a Buddhist.
And and it's interesting because I used to think of
mentors and in twelve step programs there's the idea of
a sponsor, and the sponsor is you know, they always say, well,
you know, ask the person that you want to be,
you know, like that you look at them and you're like, well,
that's where I want to be, and I could never
(24:23):
do it. I would always look at them and be like, well,
like I like that and that, but they don't have this,
or they don't have that, or they're not going to
understand this part of me. And it took me a
long time to realize, like, I'm not going to find
that person. I'm not going to find the person who's
me five years from now, because that's what I want.
I want the me in five years to lead me along.
(24:44):
And I finally hit a point where I was like,
it's not gonna happen. There is no other me in
five years. I can go to certain people for this
type of helper advice and other people for this type
of helper advice, but thinking that I'm going to roll
them all into one uber person who's going to be
like my my true guide and savior was misguided. And
(25:06):
I think it cut me off for a long time
from getting help from people in particular areas because I
was like, well, they don't understand all of me. I
completely identify with that. I think I look at them
the major thought leaders today and there's nobody who's living
my experience that I would want to emulate or you
know that that I even feel like understands the world
the way I understand it. They have certain identities and
(25:28):
they've lived certain experiences, but there's no one who has
this extra piece that you know, and even like I said,
I referenced my therapist, he had a lot. But then
there were moments where I would say, you know, you
know what I mean, and he'd look at me and
he'd say, quite honestly, I don't know what you mean.
I haven't lived what you've lived, and I don't you
have to tell me. And that's when that's when I
had the breakthrough, like I've got to be this for myself,
(25:50):
and I think that at the same time, we'd have
to be that for ourselves. And there's places to turn
for help, right, there's people we can turn to even
if we're like, well, they know they don't understand everything
about me. Still, you know, obviously you do you do
coaching work, so that's you know, part of what you
offer to people. Sure, sure, yeah, people can make contributions
(26:10):
right and from the place that they live, and it's
as valuable. It brings value m If you're enjoying this conversation,
(26:42):
I hate to be the bearer of bad news. We
are nearing the end of it. I wish you could
keep listening once the episode ends. Well, I've got some
good news to you can The interview continues over at
one you feed dot net slash support. There, if you
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(27:03):
conversations that have been recorded with our guests. We really
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pledge to access this additional weekly content. And now back
to the interview. You've talked about anger being a work
in progress. Obviously, I think it is for all of us.
What are the sort of things that make you angry today?
(27:25):
What triggers you, what sets you off the Dylan of today? Well,
my own expectations about how other people should behave. Ultimately,
that's what I really saw, and and you and I
were speaking earlier, and that's what I see now happening
on the world stage. Is so much of the anger
that people have is they keep expecting other people to
(27:46):
be thinking and behaving the way that they either think
and behave, or that they think people should think and behave,
And they don't get that as a distinction. They don't
get that that they're doing that, and and how they're
really even in the name of something that they think
is so just and so positive, they're actually adding more
aggression to the planet with these unrealistic expectations. And I
(28:11):
say they're unrealistic because they're not dealing with how people
really are, right, Whereas if you meet people where they
really are, then you can work with them right. So
and and yeah, and you and you said that earlier,
and I really saw that for myself that so much
of what makes me angry is when I completely forget
that people are being who they're being instead of who
I think they should be being. Right. And that's a
(28:33):
tricky one, right, because this show is so much about
finding the middle ground, right, and it's so much about
balancing contradictions and paradoxes and all that. And and this
leads us right up into another big one, which is
I've got this view of the way I think the
world should be. I've got a vision of what's right
(28:54):
and what's wrong. So I've got that on one hand,
and then on the other hand, I've got this sense
of letting things be as they are and accepting people
where they are and being in the moment and and
and acceptance. And it's this sort of constant push and
pull between acceptance and change. And that's why I love
(29:14):
the Serenity prayer that was you know, mostly reference and
Twilstep programs. I would say it is perhaps it's in
the top five wisest things ever written, I think, because
that's the heart of our human condition to a large extent,
is what can I change? And what can I And
the things that I can give me the strength and
the energy and the courage to go about changing them
(29:34):
in a useful way, and the things I can't, you know,
let me accept those and the wisdom to know the
difference is obviously the tricky part. And that and that's
really what I saw, and that that was my last
kind of handhold to that angry activist identity. Was, um,
if I let go of this anger, I'll be so
passive that I will do no good in the world.
(29:57):
I will be read as being too passive, looking like
I'm just you know, who cares whatever life is a dream,
you know, and I'll lose this need to help be
a change agent. And then I realized, no, it's actually
in letting go of the anger and the need to
change people that you actually will help change things, because
when they don't feel threatened and they feel invited into transformation,
(30:21):
that's actually how I can help make a difference. And
I was like, Wow, why didn't I get this ten
years ago? You know? And that, and it was it
was great. Although I think I agree with and I
think there probably is equally a place for really angry activists,
and it's probably good we have some of them, um,
because I think I think, you know, a lot of
a lot of social change probably moves forward in that way.
(30:44):
But again, I guess the question would be, could you
use that energy and that drive and all that without
being so angry? And I don't know the answer to
that question. For some people, maybe the answer is no.
I agree, you're right, but it's one of those that like,
for me, that's not a person anality style that works
for me long term, um, either in again for my
(31:05):
own good or for the good of the people around me.
So you mentioned Buddhism multiple times. You said, you're pretty
into it. Is there a particular lineage or tradition that
you follow, a particular teacher that you have kind of
what's what's that look like for you? Yeah, Pemma Children
is the person that I really have been following since
two thousand, two thousand one probably and then definitely her teacher,
(31:27):
and I got to kind of, you know, ultimate experience,
I have to say, Like, I went up to a
couple of retreats up in Vermont and got to meet
her a couple of times, and I actually asked her
this question at the microphone in a program about you know,
how can I be a more effective activist? And she
said to me, you know, ask your peers if their
anger is actually working. So that was a major lightbulb
(31:48):
moment for me. And then I got to take a
selfie with her, which was awesome. Yeah. Yeah, she's she's great.
She is. Um So, Leonard Cohen was the number one
dream asked for me on this show that I never
got on the show never happened. Um I got at
least got his manager to communicate with me. But um shows.
(32:08):
Anne Jack Hobner, who we had on a couple of
shows ago, was a Monk with with Leonard Cohen and
I once I just said to him, I said, well,
you know what, what do you think the odds of it,
like getting Leonard Cohen on this show? I mean, do
you think you could ask him or you know, like
I don't like to, you know. And he was like, well,
I don't know, but you should know that his monk
name means great silence. So don't get your hopes up there,
(32:30):
you know that said Pema. Chodren is right in the
top five also of people that I think would be
great guests. I haven't. I tried it like when we
started and never got any response because we were virtually unknown.
We're probably still too small for her, but it what
never hurts to ask. Yeah, I never know, never know.
(32:51):
I'm here today because I reached out to you, so
you never know. Yep. She's wonderful, very remarkable teacher, very relatable. Yes.
And so then do you have a p do you
standard sitting practice or meditation practice that you do or
what's you know? Okay, I'm so undisciplined, but but I
you know, it's more just evolved into like in the moment,
just like you know, trying to constantly be conscious and mindful. Yep,
(33:16):
but I do need to sit more. I started getting
into meditation when I was twenty. That was a long
time ago, manage. A matter of fact, it was eighteen.
It's really only been in the last three years or
so that I've gotten to the point where I meditate
pretty much every day. Um. It took me a long
time to figure that one out. Um, But I finally
think I kind of cracked the code on it and
(33:36):
got to the point where I'm like, all right, I
do this every day. Some days I do it longer
than other days. Sometimes I'm better about like, Okay, my
practice is close to an hour a day. There's other
times it's over an hour. There's sometimes it's like five minutes.
So it's it's inconsistent in that regard. But I've taken
the whether I do it or not inconsistency out of
the picture. So you inspired me, I'll start tomorrow. Well,
(33:59):
So what I did was I just I would read books,
you know, I'd read Pama Choder and I read Jack
Cornfield or all this, and I'd be like, yes, I
got to meditate. I see why it's so important. And
they'd be like, sit down for fifteen minutes or twenty
minutes or thirty minutes, and I hated it, like I
just couldn't. It just was really difficult. And so I
started this round with like, all right, i'm gonna do
two minutes, but I'm gonna do two minutes every day
(34:21):
no matter what. And then I was able to build
up to three minutes and then five minutes, and I
could slowly layer on. So it was really this small
step approach and then just giving up any expectation of
what meditation would be like. While I did it, I
would get so frustrated because everybody else would be like,
I love to meditate, It's so nice, and I was like,
that is not how I feel. Right, I'm meditating and
(34:43):
I feel crazy. Um. And so when I finally just
went like, well, okay, that's maybe that's just the way
meditation is for me. I'm still gonna do it, it
got a lot easier. Excellent. Well, Dylan, thank you so
much for taking the time to come on. Thanks so
much for reaching out to me, and let's keep in touch. Definitely,
thanks again for having me. Okay, bye bye bye. If
(35:23):
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Host
Eric Zimmer
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