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Hi everybody. Thanks for joining me today. There is a lot of division and tension and discord and disagreement in US society right now. I see it also in Brazil. There's a lot of political polarization. People aren't speaking with each other as much as arguing or even becoming violent. And this can lead to a lot of anxiety. How can we navigate this situation that we're in right now?

Well, this is really an emotional problem. This is a problem that we're facing because of emotions that people are experiencing. We've talked over and over again about how our emotions are really organized by the story that our brain tells about how this situation is going to affect our concerns, and that if we want to work on our emotions, that we need to work on that story. So there's two reframes that I think can really help us here. But I'm gonna introduce them to you by telling you a story, which I think is a really good illustration of how this is done. This is a book that my mom used to read to me when I was little. It's called The King with Six Friends.

So in this story, there was a young king who had lost his kingdom. Another king had come in with his armies and taken over, and so he had lost everything. He was basically wandering the world seeking for his fortune. As he's wandering along, he comes across six different creatures that are in distress. The first one is an ax that is crying for help. He realizes that the voice is coming from the ax. He pulls the ax out of this stump that it's stuck in, and the ax turns into a man and says, thank you so much. I had been chopping some wood for my fire. But my, my ax got stuck in a knot and I couldn't get it out, and I've been stuck there for days. So the axman, this shape shifter that can shift between being an ax or a man asks the king about his story. The king tells about what happened to him, and the axman is so grateful that he says, well, I'll come with you and I'll help you to seek your fortune. A few days later on their journey, they come across an elephant, which is backed up against a rock. It's terrified. It is bellowing. There is a little tiny mouse running by its feet, and the king perceives that the elephant is afraid of the mouse. So he scoops up the mouse in his hat and he carries it away and the elephant is relieved and turns into a man. And the man says, thank you so much. I was paralyzed with fear of that little tiny mouse. So anyway, he hears the king story and he also says, well, I'll join you on your journey. Next, they come upon a fire, which is struggling because it is sprinkling. There's rain that is making this fire smoke and sputter, and there's a voice coming from the fire saying, help me help me, please! And the king gets his cloak and spreads it out over the fire. The fire blazes up more brightly and then turns into a man, and the man says, thank you so much for helping me. The king ends up telling the fire shape shifting man about his quest, and the fireman says, well, I'll come with you too. Next they come upon a great big snake, which is all tied up in a terrible knot, and the snake is hissing in a lot of distress. The king perceives what the problem is. He steps forward to try and help the snake. One of the other companion says, you better, not that snake might bite you, but the king had a really soft heart. He ends up untying the snake out of its knot and the snake turns into a man, and the man says, thank you so much. I had tied that knot in my tail out of pride just to see if it could be done, and then I couldn't undo it. So they get talking. The king tells him about his story, and the snake man says, let me join you on your quest too. So they end up coming across two more creatures. One is a giant tree. They walk by it and they hear this voice saying, oh, glum and woe some woe. And the king says, well, if some, is someone in trouble? And the tree says, look up in my branches, there's four nests of baby birds and they scream and cry all day and night, and I can never get any rest. If only I could be free of them. And then the young king climbs the tree carefully, takes the nests and puts them in four separate trees around this big tree, and the tree turns into a man. And says, thank you so much for helping me out. He hears the king's story. He ends up wanting to join him on his quest as well. The final creature that they come across is an angry swarm of bees that is buzzing around this bear that is trying to to steal its honey. And the bees are obviously in a lot of distress. The king decides to come to the rescue, gets out his sword and chases the bear away, and the bees turn into a man and he says, thank you so much for helping me out. Anyway, he hears the king's story and he decides to join him on his quest as well.
So now the king is going along with his six strange friends on his quest. He comes to a kingdom and learns from an innkeeper that the king of that country has a daughter that he would like to find a husband for, but the king's very picky. He needs the husband to be a king. He won't let it be anyone else less than a king. The problem is that all the kings in the neighboring countries are already married. So the young king thinks, oh, here's my chance. He goes to see the old king tells him, Hey, look, I'm a king. I, I could marry your daughter, and then I'd have a kingdom and everything would be fine. But the old king says, well, you're not really a king 'cause you don't have a kingdom. If you can pass all of these tests that I give to you, then I will have determined that you really are a king at heart. If you pass them, then you can marry my daughter. The young King says, yes, I, I will do these tests, but on one condition, will you let me have my friends come along and help me. So the old king agrees.

The first test is that they are led into a banquet hall with an enormous banquet, spread out with enough food to feed a whole town, and the steward tells them that their test is that they have to eat this feast, which is fit for a king, and they have to have everything gone in one hour or else they will have failed the test.
So when the steward leaves, they all start kind of despairing. How are they gonna ever eat all of this food? But the king has an idea. He says to the fireman, you turn into a fire and he says to the elephant man, you turn into an elephant. And the fireman burns up all of the food on the table, consumes it. And the elephant man drinks up all of the wine from the banquet. And so they're able to consume all of this food and drink within the time allotted, and they were able to pass that first test. The steward tells them then that their next test is they have to get a golden egg from an eagle up on the top of this mountain. So they start up the path on the mountain and they come to an enormous chasm, which they cannot possibly get across. But the king has an idea and he says to the snake man, become a snake. And the snake man coils his tail around a tree on one side of the chasm, and the king throws his head over to the other side of the chasm. He grabs onto a tree on that side with his teeth, and then all the friends walk across the serpent as a bridge across the chasm. And it's all going fine until they come to a cliff, which is a straight wall. There's no way to to climb it. It's as smooth as glass. What are they going to do now? But the king says to the tree man, to turn into a tree. He turns into a tree and the king climbs up the tree and is able to get the chest that's at the top of the peak of that cliff. In this chest is the golden egg, but the chest doesn't have a lid. It doesn't have a key. It doesn't have a keyhole. He asks the axeman to turn into an axe and he's able to open the chest and they're able to get the golden egg and they take it back to the steward. They pass that test. And the old king says, okay, great, you passed those two tests, but there's one more thing. You were driven from your own kingdom. You lost it. You need to prove that you can defend yourself now. And from all four corners of the room there enters this swarm of soldiers that starts attacking the king and his six friends. The king yells out for the beeman to turn into the swarm of bees, and these bees start attacking the faces and the eyes and the mouths of the soldiers who start yelling in anguish, screaming in pain, jumping from the windows, diving into the royal moat. And the battle is over. So the king is able to pass all of the tests and the old king consents to let him marry his daughter.

Now, it may seem like the young king didn't really do anything to pass these tests, that it was really his friends that passed the tests for him. But there are two really important things that this young King did that I think can really help us in our situation too. First of all, when he came across these different creatures in distress, he was able to perceive what it was that they actually needed. He didn't get fixated, fixated on their immature behavior or criticize their weaknesses. He just perceived what it was that they needed and reached out in compassion. So essentially, he was doing something that we talked about a couple weeks ago in the episode where we were examining how to stop absorbing other people's stress, and we talked about how it can really help to start to try and reconstruct like a detective, what that story is that's going on in the other person's head that is giving rise to their emotion. And that once we can reconstruct that story that the other person is telling, then we can understand where they're coming from and begin to perceive what it is that they actually need, what actually needs to be done in this situation, instead of us just also going into a threat response and responding in exactly the same way as they are. And the other thing that he did was that he had the attitude that the differences between him and his companions didn't diminish his possibilities, but enlarged his possibilities. The differences were not a threat. He didn't fall into that trap of thinking, well, if, if only all of those other people out there who didn't vote like me, who don't think like me, who don't understand how to solve this problem, if only they would start thinking and acting a little bit by more like me, then everything would be fine. That wasn't his attitude. Instead, he saw these differences between, between him and his companions as a resource, as something that enlarged his possibilities. And we can see that in that moment when the old King asked him if he would do these tests and the young king says, well, can I bring my friends along? I will do it if you'll let me bring my friends along. So he already knew that the differences between him and his friends would help them to be able to solve the problems better than if he were just doing it on his own.

So I just wanna offer those two perspectives to you. First of all, that we haven't really seen someone until we've seen their needs. And once we do that, then we can reach out to them in a way that gives them what they actually need in the situation and helps them to feel that we're on their side. And two, if we can see the vast differences between us and the people who don't think like us as a resource, as something that expands our ability to solve problems as a human race, as something that helps our team, our human team, to solve our problems together, then that can help us to step out of anxiety and into constructive action.
So there's a little idea for you, little Food for thought. Thanks for tuning in today. Stay tuned now for our kindness narrative, which is short and painless and it works as your gratitude practice for the week. And consider sending in your own kindness narrative because it helps you and it helps all of us.
So thanks again and we'll see you next week.

This is a kindness narrative from my own life that I'm going to share today.

When I and my husband and our kids moved from the western United States to Eastern United States, we ended up in an area that was beautiful and we loved getting to know it, but we didn't know anybody. It was a time in our lives when we were pretty stressed. We were in school, we were working, we were, we were taking care of little kids. We had a lot of pressures on us. There was a woman in our church congregation who just decided to adopt us. She didn't have any grandchildren of her own, and so she decided to adopt our family in a sense. We lived in a, an inner city area, and she lived out in a farm in a rural area, and she extended to us a permanent invitation to come out to her farm whenever we wanted to. She had a pond there that our kids could play in and swim in with a little beach. Her farm had apples and pears and peaches and blueberries, and she was always calling us up and telling us that we could come and it was time to pick the apples and we could come and pick them and take boxes and boxes home. She also had a Christmas tree farm on her land, and when it was Christmas time, she called us to come out and cut a tree for free. She told us when it was blueberry picking time and told us to come out and pick the blueberries. As many as we wanted. She also gave us a plot for us to have a garden there at her farm so that we could grow our own food if we wanted to, which was a lot of fun for our family and for the kids. When it was Christmas time, she would show up at our house with huge platters of really fancy Christmas cookies, with a huge variety of types and flavors that just made the kids absolutely delighted. It was clear that it had taken her hours and hours to make these gourmet cookies that she made for us. When it was Easter time, she would show up at our house with a cake in the shape of a lamb that she would give, give to us. She said it was a tradition in her family and she wanted to make one for us. I remember once she even, she even had someone that came and hunted deer on her property and she called us because they had killed a deer and she offered the deer to us and we were able to take the meat and eat it for the better part of a year. This woman has already passed away, but she dedicated so much time and attention to making us feel that we did have family in this area where we didn't know anybody, and in just providing opportunities for us to have fun together, to eat wonderful food, to have great experiences outside and to let us get out of the city and come and enjoy her beautiful space that she had. She was so incredibly generous to us for no particular reason at all, just because she wanted to be. And it made a huge difference for us. Our kids have so many memories of playing out on her farm, playing at the pond on hot summer days. She was just always looking for different ways to make our lives brighter and more fun and more interesting and more happy, and different things that she could share with us. And she did it nonstop until we moved away. And I will always be grateful for her generosity and kindness.