“Well, what I'm positing is an ability to grapple with contradiction. So that's the paradox mindset that Wendy Smith, Maryanne Lewis, and other scholars have shown, that when we're able to sit with two conflicting things in our minds, for example that if we stick with the example in South Africa, it may be true that if I'm a student, that my parents and my grandparents participated in actively supporting apartheid and that they were also wonderful parents and grandparents, right? Those two things can be true, and being able to sit with that contradiction gives me the emotional limberness to kind of, you know, push my way through the emotional slog of this is awful. This is awful. And to sit with terrible things happened, that's the only way you can do it.”

“My other favorite thing about the confidence piece, as someone who can be very anxious and nervous, is that sometimes it's valuable not to be confident. And there is his piece in the book about how everyone would benefit if, when you're making decisions, you start off in an information gathering stage. And instead of being super confident, when you're trying to gather data, you turn down your confidence, be not confident at all, be confused, be concerned, be anxious, gather all the data from as many differing viewpoints as possible. Once you've figured out the right answer with all the humility that you could possibly have, you know,back up your confidence and then you execute. And this idea that confidence can be on a dial and there's value in not being confident sometimes is something that I was never taught. And it feels very reassuring to learn.”

“Well, I think of it like the metaphor of the ensemble in a great musical, like everybody has to know their part. Everybody has to give 2000% and everybody has to really cheer on the other people, doing their part or it just doesn't work. And the way I see the map to our soul, this astrological map, is we have free will. So we get to play it at whatever level we choose and certainly cultural influences and patriarchy and all kinds of stuff messes us up. But I firmly believe, and I've seen it over and over that if we get the help, we need to uncover our fullest expression, people are humming at their fullest best part, which then allows everyone else around them to rise up.”

“I've never really figured out how come we stop asking each other questions. You know, we always do that in the beginning of a relationship just to get to know somebody, but then once we get committed, once we get busy, we're busy, busy, then we think, okay, everything is cool over here. I don't need to put energy into it. I'll go to work. And our partners, meanwhile, and we are too, we are changing over time. We are changing with history, with politics. We are changing with our whole world as our kids get older. If we have kids as our career changes and we stop asking each other questions, you know, our days become this endless to-do list period. And the only question we ask is, did you call the plumber? Well, yes. Anything else you wanna know?”

“Sometimes you can't see the full path. And so you don't even venture into the unknown, you know, you're unhappy, you know you need to change, but you're afraid to take the next step because you can't see the whole path. And so what I learned that night in the dark on the trail in Jerusalem when I had left my first marriage and I was terrified of the unknown is that it's okay. I could see the next step. There was just enough light on the path to take one step at a time. And after I would take a step, I could see the next step. And that became a metaphor for me, for venturing, you know, breaking out of a stuck place and trusting uncertainty.”

“Where in your life where you're not saying yes, but there's a, yes that wants to be said. Where there's some desire for self expression or creativity or way of being that you're stifling because you're trying to stay in an attachment relationship rather than being yourself. So where are you still choosing attachment over authenticity? If the two are in conflict now, ideally we will form relationships with partners and spouses and families and friends where we can have both authenticity and attachment. But if that's not possible, this is the challenge for all of us. What are we gonna choose? Are we still gonna choose the attachment or we're gonna go for authenticity. And I'll tell you, health-wise, we pay a huge price. If we go for the attachment by stranding authenticity. And so, as we say in the book, the loss of authenticity inauthenticity, it may not have been a choice to the child. It's not like they had a choice in a matter, but authenticity can be a choice to the adult.”

“I think we all have these stories, you know, whether they come through bereavements or betrayals or, or whatever, we, we all have these losses…There's something about having been immersed in this bittersweet tradition and understanding the pain of separation and understanding the desire for a union and understanding that the loves that we lose, that we might lose particular loves, but that we never lose love itself. I think that's like the real thing that's really made me come to a place of peace.”

“There seems to be this basic idea that if you make a system, including a human life, more efficient, capable of processing, more inputs to put it in like abstract general terms. Well, if that supply of inputs is infinite, all that's gonna happen is that you attract more of them into the system and you end up busier, right? This is Parkinson's law. It's induced demand with the way when they widen freeways to ease the congestion, it makes the route more appealing to more drivers. So more cars come and fill the lane and then the congestion gets back to what it was before. There's all these different ways in which trying to get on top of something that you can't actually get on top of is futile. And technology seems to offer us that promise, and of course it does help us do lots and lots of really useful things, but it doesn't help us get to the state of peace of mind with respect to our limited natures. It's never going to break through that barrier.”

“What I know is that no one is alone. There's no sense of isolation or sadness or disconnection that I think at times we mistakenly feel here because we get very stuck in the fact that we're in these physical bodies, right? And sometimes we're physically isolated or sometimes I think some of us are so distanced from our own truths and our own inner voice, our own inner wisdom that we get very confused on our life path. And then we feel spiritually distanced from being connected to this great fabric and grid of light that's here. Right? So I think the answer is for all of us here on earth to go deep within, to access our highest path, our true purpose, the connection that's always there. And we can really call upon those on the other side to help us do that because they're still working with us and for us and so forth.”

“I tear up at the drop of a hat, but like we tell the youth, the soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears. And so whenever any of the youth tear up, or any of the adults, we take the tears and we rub it on the drum so that the tears don't go to waste. They reverberate, you know, when we hit the drum. So a lot of it's about dealing with your feelings, like Meade says, and others, if you don't deal with your wound, you will continue to wound others. So it's about them identifying how they've been wounded, but then also it's that wound that drives.”

“There are two things I think are really important. One is we all need to learn history because research shows that the more you understand the history of discrimination in the past, the more you're able to perceive it in the present. But additionally, and this is really important and related to your work on patriarchy, it's also really important that we see examples of places and times when the toxic patterns that we have today were not present, because I think this can give us the courage and the creativity to imagine, and to create a time after bias a time after prejudice.”

“I now have so much more perspective, but at the time, even I felt people who have already had so much adversity in their life. That's a big precursor to how people get behind bars. And then when they're there, I feel like that's the time to heal, but we have such a different mindset in our country, and other countries do the same, and such a punitive one. And that's not how I am organized inside. That's not what feels right in me. And so right away, I saw how things could be different, but I also saw the power of this tool in people's hands who were really starving to understand what was wrong in their lives and thinking there was something wrong with them. I think my approach to the Enneagram is that there's nothing wrong with any of us. Enneagram is a map to show us what's so right about us. And it felt like the, the most profound place to be, figuring out how to teach it.”

“The focus of adulthood has been on stability: find a job and don't leave it, find a partner and don't get divorced, have babies, you know, white picket fence. That vision of adulthood has been so wedded to stability that it was hard for me, even in writing the book and sorting this out, to pull them apart. That the understanding full stop is that the goal of adulthood is to gain stability and then midlife, we now understand people have to search for meaning because there wasn't time for that prior. I'm trying to revise that and name what I think all of us have known for a long time, which is that it just doesn't work that way. It's not that easy. And actually, if we aren't finding our own personal sense of meaning in this world, while also working to gain some sense of physical, emotional, relational stability, then there's gonna just continue to be a lot of angst and confusion and pain and, and, you know, all sorts of symptoms resulting from that.”

“So natural intelligence has this ability to bring order when we allow it to. The reason that we don't see it so often in operation in human systems is because we are constantly interrupting those patterns. So that human intervention is constantly getting in the way of and disrupting the natural order. Therefore, every time it tries to express itself or reveal itself, we come in again and we see that most clearly, you know, during the pandemic. Here, I think many places around the world, it happened here in the UK, nature was able to establish itself very, very quickly within a week of the first lockdown. You know, we were seeing dolphins in the Thames.”

“If you don't know how to say no, your body will eventually say no for you. I think there is so much depth to that. And that's why it's so important that we help people begin asking, is there a message that my body is trying to give me about this illness many times. There's different ways to language this for different situations, but, is there a way in which a person is spending so much time taking care of others or responding to the perceived needs of others instead of taking up space in the world, doing the things that put a light in your own eyes, the things that create authentic wellbeing. It took me years to begin understanding the deeper sense of what's true here. But I think the truth is sometimes the illness is really a message that this inauthentic self that we have become—that needs to die. And if we can let that death occur, which can be messy and painful and scary, but if we can let that occur and let a more authentic version of who we really are be born, well, I'll tell you sometimes that's astonishing, sometimes what then becomes possible.”

“I think I find great comfort in this idea that when you form that bond, when you fall in love, your neurons are actually changed. The way that the electrical firing patterns happen in your brain, the way that proteins are folded are changed, because of this one and only person that you have spent time with. And from that perspective, when my dad died, he is still here literally right in my physical brain. He's physically in my brain. Now. That's not, I mean, that's data on the one hand, but I also find it comforting on the other hand that he is still with me. And because it's with the brain that I perceive the whole world, he's also in a sense with me as I experience everything.”

“As a therapist, I started to discover that when people need boundaries, they start to have issues around anxiety in their relationships, some depression, because they're not able to really stand up or they feel hopeless about improving certain scenarios. Burn out when people start to say, oh my gosh, I hate work. I have to work on weekends. Oh, this person keeps talking to me about this thing. So burn out, frustration, sometimes moodiness, when we get really mad at other people for asking us stuff, that could be a sign that we need some boundaries around maybe saying no and not giving them the freedom to constantly use us as a resource. Our feelings are really huge indicators on where we need boundaries. When we're feeling upset, frustrated, anxious, confused, angry, those are all huge indicators that boundaries are very likely needed.”

“As scientists, we often look at one thing and we say, oh, that's the one thing, it's competing for light. That's what people did. You know, the science, the experiments were simple, looking at one resource and not at the whole ecosystem. And so you miss all these other ways they're interacting. And if we could look at the whole thing all at once, we would make completely different decisions about how to manage that ecosystem. But because people were so focused that Birch is competing for light and not just Birch, but Aspen and all kinds of like Red Alder, all kinds of other species. And that led to the wholesale herbicide of these native plant communities to get rid of these so-called competitors. And if we'd just known ahead that they were also collaborating at the same time, any thinking person would never have gone in and poisoned these other plants. Because they create balance in the ecosystem.”

“There are 12 questions that enable every person who's willing to answer them, to reevaluate their life and their legacy. Because what I have found, with my father's death, is I miss not a single material thing about my father. I mean, I have his hat on the shelf behind me and I have a couple of his old tools, but that's it, what I really cherish, the inheritance I really cherish are the values, the laughter, the music, the food, my love of nature. That's his legacy, his powerful bullshit meter, his powerful moral compass, his love of peoplehood. And that's what we wanna be sure we bequeath to our loved ones when we're gone. But it's more than just a bequest because when you ask yourself questions, like what is love? What makes me happy? What has been my greatest failure? What do I regret? What do I want my epitaph to be? What would I say at my own funeral as a final blessing to my loved ones? These are the kinds of questions that enable us to ask whether or not we are living the life we say, we believe in and the life we say matters.”

“I didn't wanna be still, I had to be still, but I wanted more than anything to continue being a human doing. And the universe was insisting that I became a human being and it's profound. I mean, it's the greatest transformation of my life. You know, I went from being extremely supported on a business perspective to having to go buy stamps. And it takes me all day to mail a letter. You know, I'm really, I'm only able to do what I can do in a day and I love it. I really love it because as I often said, I can do bad all by myself. I don't need somebody else confirming a reservation and rubbing somebody the wrong way so that when I get there, the energy is weird. It's like now off I get somewhere and the energy's weird it's because of me.”