How to Get Unstuck in Life — Lessons on Love from Sharon Salzberg, Meditation Pioneer

Michael Gervais (0:00)

Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. One of the core ideas we come back to again and again here is alignment, bringing the right people into the right roles at the right time, so your culture can grow with clarity. And if you've ever hired for your business, you know how challenging it is to find someone who's not only skilled, but also the right fit. That's why I'm excited about what LinkedIn Jobs is doing right now. Their new AI assistant is designed to help you hire with more confidence. Surfacing strong candidates, you might not find anywhere else. And the best part? Those great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30% more likely to stay for at least one year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. That's a big deal when every hire matters. And we can speak from experience here. At Finding Mastery, LinkedIn Jobs has helped us hire several incredible teammates, including our project managers, Janelle and Taylor, and of course, our lead producer, Emma. Hiring the right people has shaped our culture and helped our business grow with intention. What we appreciate most is LinkedIn's AI Assistant. It takes the complexity out of hiring. It filters through applicants based on what you're looking for and then brings forward the best matches so that you're not spending hours sorting through endless resumes. Hiring doesn't have to be overwhelming. With the right tools, you can hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com/findingmastery.

Then promote it using LinkedIn Jobs' new AI Assistant. That's linkedin.com/findingmastery to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. What if the greatest gift you could offer this season isn't something you buy, rather the way you choose to meet yourself and others with kindness? Welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist. The idea behind these conversations is simple. It's to sit with the extraordinaries and to learn, to really learn how they work from the inside out. This is not about hacks or shortcuts. It's about what they're searching for, how they organize their inner life, and the skills they've used to shape their craft and themselves. As we pause new releases over the holidays, the Finding Mastery team were taking time to rest and reflect and to be with our loved ones. We believe that relationships are part of the practice of mastery itself. So today, we are re-releasing a powerful episode from the Finding Mastery Vault, a conversation with THE Sharon Salzberg, one of the world's leading teachers of wisdom, mindfulness, and loving-kindness meditation. Her lessons are as relevant now as they were when we first shared this conversation. Maybe even more so in a world that could use a lot more gentleness right now. So happy holidays from all of us here at Finding Mastery. With that, let's jump right into this week's conversation from THE Vault with Sharon Salzberg.

Sharon, I am so excited to have you back on the podcast. Our previous conversation is an audience favorite. And when people ask me, what is one of your favorite conversations, I definitely point to yours. And it was episode 101 And so I'm so excited to be back with you today. And before we dive in, I'd just love to check in. How are you?

Sharon Salzberg (3:33)

I'm really well, thank you. I've spent the last four years fairly isolated, actually, because of various health issues. And I'm sort of in an emerging process. It's very interesting.

Michael Gervais (3:48)

Yeah, there you go. Okay. So it's been over six years since we last spoke.

Sharon Salzberg (3:55)

Wow. I was gonna ask, what episode number are you up to now?

Michael Gervais (3:58)

Yeah, it's like we're in the 400s. I know six years just flew by. So in our last conversation, we talked about being present. We talked about letting go.

You went pretty deep on compassion. And a lot has happened since then. You know, the world is now wrestling with very different challenges in some respects. What are you feeling? What are you experiencing when it comes to the state of the world right now?

Sharon Salzberg (4:29)

That's a complex question.

Well, in March of 2020, I came up here to Barry, Massachusetts, where I am now. I spent February just traveling around, teaching as I usually did. I went back to New York City where I was also living part time. And the city was just in a very distressing state. People were getting sick. People's parents were getting sick. Anxiety was through the roof. And I had the thought, you know, I'll go up to Barry where I have a house and a retreat center for a couple of weeks, and I'll ride it out, and then it'll all be over. And I can just pick up my life as it had been. And some time later, I realized that was not going to happen. The retreat center had to close down, and I was very strictly isolated and teaching only online. And everything was different. Expectations had been shattered and plans were changed. And the fundamental question I kept asking myself was, what's still true? Like, what am I counting on? What in the midst of all of this change and disruption, what do I still trust? What do I believe is kind of an underlying truth? And I really looked deeply at that question. And part of my answer was, of course, my meditation practice, which I'm sure we'll get into. And also my belief, the way the Buddha said it, you know, later echoed by Martin Luther King Jr. and many sage people was hatred will never cease by hatred. Hatred will only cease by love. This is an eternal law. And in terms of the Buddha, I always thought, well, that's kind of weird, because he talked so much about impermanence and change and like, this is an eternal law. And not that I find that easy to access in every situation, but I really, really fundamentally believe it's true. And so as I look at the world now, where hatred seems to be on the rise and there's so much division and distrust and people feeling so alone and all of that, I keep coming back to that, that maybe it's more love, even though it sounds stupid in a way. It's not meant to be saccharine or covering over difficulty, but maybe that's really a path that needs to be followed.