Outworker
Stories of healing, personal development, and inner work. Founded on the idea that the relationship with oneself is the most important to develop, but the easiest to neglect, Outworker shares conversations aimed at helping you develop that relationship.
Outworker
#069 - Dr. Dan Siegel - Why The Solo Self Is A Dangerous Illusion
Dr. Dan Siegel breaks down the illusion of the solo self and explores how redefining identity as both individual and relational—what he calls a "MWe"—can unlock fulfillment, belonging, and connection. From the science behind selfhood to powerful personal stories of loss, healing, and awareness, this conversation reveals how our language, culture, and perception shape who we are and how we can expand beyond those limits into a more compassionate, integrated way of being.
Timestamps:
00:00 The Misunderstanding Of Self
14:41 Dropping Out & Going Back To Med School
21:04 Deconstruction Of Selfhood
30:38 Unwilling Breaking Of Identity
40:20 Dr. Siegel's Work On Intraconnected
49:48 Negative Consequences Of Solo Self
55:00 Stories Spark Cultural Evolution
1:00:24 Breaking The Solo Self Is A Spiritual Journey
1:11:11 Connect With Dr. Dan Siegel
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Dr. Dan Siegel breaks down the illusion of the solo self and explores how redefining identity as both individual and relational—what he calls a "MWe"—can unlock fulfillment, belonging, and connection. From the science behind selfhood to powerful personal stories of loss, healing, and awareness, this conversation reveals how our language, culture, and perception shape who we are and how we can expand beyond those limits into a more compassionate, integrated way of being.
Tim Doyle (00:06.69)
The ethos for this show is the relationship with self is the most important to develop, but the easiest to neglect. Your work has brought a lot of nuance to that phrase for me. And it's created another phrase now, which is the relationship with self is the most important to understand, but it's the most misunderstood.
Dan Siegel (00:29.568)
there you go. Okay, great.
Tim Doyle (00:30.882)
How do you see your work as bridging that gap?
Dan Siegel (00:34.472)
Well, first of all, Tim, thanks for having me on. And I'll just say that the word self is maybe a good place to start. So if we mean by self, the individual that you're told is your identity, you you're born into a body and you've got a body called Tim. I've got a body that was named Dan, you know, other people have bodies that were named whatever their body was named. You know, if that's what we mean by self.
Then we can talk about, you want to understand who you are as an individual, what your identity is, things like that. You know, I think personally in our language and use the word self can be considered like a center of experience. And if you just think of it in that broad way, then you have scientific terms like self organization can be like how a cloud regulates its own unfolding and.
So the word self there is there's a center of experience called the cloud. And as that cloud goes through the sky, maybe it hits mountains, maybe birds fly through it, maybe it hits other clouds, but that is an always unfolding, emerging process. So when I started diving into, well, how does self really get formed when you look across cultures, let's say indigenous cultures or certain even modern cultures that are
not in the United States or European countries, you find this, there's a more collectivistic view of, you know, what your identity is. This center of experiences in your family, or it's in your community, or it's in your membership with not just human beings right now, but those that are gonna come in the future, you know, your descendants and those that preceded you, your ancestors. And so in those,
cultural perspectives, the center of experience is not your body. It's this larger sense of belonging and an expanded sense of who you are. So since writing a book called Interconnected, where I spend years trying to understand what does that word self really imply, it is more complicated than you think because if you just used, let's say the United States as one culture,
Dan Siegel (03:00.566)
where you're told who you are as your body and that body should really make sure it does what it does and what it believes and all this kind of stuff, then you don't take care of other human beings, let's say, who are not looking like your body or who have opinions different from yours or beliefs different from yours or whatever. And so you see this me versus other kind of mentality, which can really lead to a huge amount of
destruction and also a sense of lack of belonging. So Sweden is a good example where Sweden used to have a more communal sense of identity and then 40 years ago it changed. And in those 40 years when individualism where self was defined as the individual began to emerge, there's a direct relationship to how suffering started arising in the form of anxiety, depression, sense of not belonging.
suicide, addiction, all these very painful aspects of mental suffering that are thought to be directly related to an individualistic view. And you see that in the United States as well. We have like more material wealth than anywhere, but we have, you know, some of the highest rates of mental suffering. And it's, I think it's directly related to the false identity is kind of a mistaken identity of self as a word, meaning just the individual. And I think that that's.
That's in the start of our conversation. know that's a lot to, pretty heavy to start with, but if we expand it, you can say, I have an inner self. You have an inner Tim, I have an inner Dan, but once we acknowledge that, we can say we also have a relational identity on who we are. And then that includes other people who can be seen as other versions of who we are, kind of like, you know, there's a forest in Utah.
called Pando populus, and that's the scientific name for the quaking aspen tree. And when you arrive at this forest, there's a grove of 48,000 quaking aspen trees that look like they're separate trees. But when you go into the forest, you find out that six inches beneath the surface of the soil, it's one root ball. And when you test the DNA and different aspects of the grove,
Dan Siegel (05:26.272)
Those trunks are all aspects of the same tree. So it's amongst the oldest and largest living organisms on earth.
Tim Doyle (05:36.684)
You're right. There is a lot to unpack there and we will dive deep into all that, especially I think within the U S culture, you would say that we're on the completely other side of things where we have this romanticized nature of selfhood, where it's like, if you don't feel like you are unique or like seeing yourself as like single, then that is a sign of weakness. Like seeing, like understanding yourself as like one.
like as a sign of weekends. I think for myself, just kind of what I was taught and what I've learned and that needs to be deconstructed. And before diving deeper into though, all those ideas, I think there's an overarching point that encapsulate your work, encapsulates your work very nicely, which is that there's a limitation on the language that we use within this space. And you've created,
a lot of new terminology to help with these conversations because it's like if we don't have the terminology then we can't converse and we can't have these types of dialogues. How do you see your work not so much as giving people the answers but it's giving them the tools to have these dialogues in these conversations whether it is with other people or internally?
Dan Siegel (06:59.882)
Yeah. Well, I mean, there's a couple of journeys that the most recent one and related to your question of self, you know, is I went, I went time. I was giving a workshop called, you know, me to we, you know, like, and I thought that sounded nice. It was kind of rhyming and everything. And one of my students in the workshop came up to me during the break, the first break. And she said, you really get me mad. said, what gets you mad? She said, you're a hypocrite. I said, okay, well,
tell me what makes you feel I'm a hypocrite. She said, you you look at the name of your workshop, me to we implies getting rid of me and only going to we, me to we. I said, my God, you're right. goes, but that's not what you're teaching. Cause you've taught us that, you know, being aware of what the feelings in your body are important, knowing how to care for the body, know, exercise it, feed it well, sleep it well.
enjoy your body, you all those things are about the individual. said, yeah. She goes, well, though, if you're saying those are important, me to we implies get rid of me and only go to week. So I looked at her, I said, well, what should I do? She goes, come up with something else. I said, well, how about this? Not only me, but also we, she goes, that's too clunky. I said, well, if the fundamental principle is something called integration, where you take elements and you.
honor their differences, but then link them together, but you maintain the essence of the difference. So it's not like blending them together. It's like more like a fruit salad than a smoothie, you know? So, so I said, well, if you're integrating me and we, guess it would be like me, E and we, W E. Well, they both share an E. How about Mwe? And she goes, that's it. That's it. So as a, a word for English anyway, but other languages seem to like this three letter word too.
Mui helps you have a languaging for how you can be both within and between, you know, in the me and the we at once in one lifetime. In your identity, you can be a Mui. And then what that relaxes is this pressure that happens in an individualistic culture that, you know, people say, well, what's the master narrative? You know, what's the story in my culture? The story is,
Dan Siegel (09:21.236)
You as an individual, Tim, need to be a unique person, make your unique mark, get all your unique toys, collect a lot of stuff, and you'll be happy. So then let's say you try that. You try to be unique, you try to collect stuff, you know, all these kinds of things. And people generally find that meaningless. And so then they think, I don't feel fulfilled. I probably haven't done it well enough. Let me do it more.
Tim Doyle (09:47.958)
Mmm. Yeah.
Dan Siegel (09:50.028)
So then you uptick that more and more and more. You get more stuff. Try to be more unique. Do all sorts of things on social media this way, that way. All the ways you can imagine people do it now more than ever before. And you still feel terrible, so you realize you're just not doing it well enough. So do it better, do it better. So you do it more and more and more. And you just spin out of control, not just you, but people are spinning out of control until there comes an awakening.
where they go, wait a second, maybe the story I'm being told and sold is actually wrong. And so what I do in the book, Interconnect, is I say, maybe the story starts as early as what people think yourself is. Because if you think yourself is just in your body, everything's done. You're gonna be on this, what's called hedonic treadmill.
racing, racing, racing and never feeling fulfilled. If you realize that fulfillment comes from being both an internal me and a relational we, where when you're kind and caring to people who are not born in the body you were born into and are of service with love and compassion, that's what all the research shows fulfillment comes from. And you know, there's a beautiful song by Bob Sima, S-I-M-A.
I'm not a singer, but for the first time in my life, I actually sang it in a workshop. It was an amazing experience. And Bob and I are actually going to do a thing together soon. We're all sing with him, I hope. But in the song, there's a line that goes, know, tell me what is the measure of a life well done? And then it goes on. And one of the lines is, you know, about coming to the end of life and, you know,
when you have no longer the ability to receive or give, your hands are empty. So it's when your hands are empty, but you have a smile on your face and you can smile on your very last day, there's nothing you need to measure, nothing you need to say. There's nothing to take with you, but what you've given away. And when people realize the truth of that, that when we give to this extended self,
Dan Siegel (12:16.032)
You know, so it's not just like, I'm doing that for my resume. It's like, you realize, you know, when I'm thinking about my neighbors, I'm looking at the fence here, you know, and I do things just because they're like an extension of my larger body. If I'm taking care of the neighbor's dogs or the living beings in this city I live in, you know, you start expanding your sense of self. And when you can be supporting the wellbeing of this larger self.
You know, that's where fulfillment deeply comes from. And then actually when you face death, as Bob Simon's beautiful song talks about, you know, it allows you to go into the end of this life, realizing that though this body only got whatever my mom just passed a few months ago, and she was 95 and a half, you know, you get about a hundred years to live, you're lucky, but that's it. So then instead of being in despair, my mom had a smile on her face.
And she was surrounded by people who loved her and she loved them. And her last words were, you're also one.
Tim Doyle (13:25.55)
Hmm.
Dan Siegel (13:25.868)
And then she left this bodily life, you know?
Tim Doyle (13:30.902)
And I think that all stems back to the language. Like when we have the language to be able to think and talk in this way, then it allows for things to naturally unfold thereafter. And just reflecting on your work, I was like, we have so much language on the opposite end of the spectrum. I, you know, I kept thinking like, you know, lone wolf, the black sheep, the 1%.
Dan Siegel (13:45.429)
Exactly.
Tim Doyle (14:00.494)
I'm like, it's all just so isolating. And there's another term that I want to talk to you about that you created Mindsight. But before we get into that term, I'm interested in the personal backstory behind how that came to be. So you created that term back in 1980 when you went back to med school. And I'm just curious to know, what was the reasoning behind why you did?
Dan Siegel (14:00.78)
Mm-hmm.
Dan Siegel (14:04.157)
Exactly. Yeah.
Tim Doyle (14:30.018)
drop out of med school and then wanting to go back.
Dan Siegel (14:33.612)
You know, Tim, it's so interesting. You're asking that at this moment because for some reason I had a dream about my girlfriend at the time when I decided to drop out and I hadn't seen her in years. You know, we were with each other as boyfriend and girlfriend 45 years ago, you know. And anyway, so I called her up and I was just with her two nights ago and her husband and we were just laughing about
that time and it's kind of a, it's a funny story. I'll tell you the details of that later, independent of her and our relationship, you know, I was in medical school, I was in my, I guess second year. So in the first two years, you're doing a lot of classroom work and starting to work in the hospital. And in my experiences in the hospital, I just found
something very disturbing about the interactions I had with my professors. And I started noticing my classmates started seeming like less caring and more, I don't know, removed and more objective. in our, you know, fourth semester, so there's the end of our second year, you know, I remember being in the locker room and my classmates who before would be really humane, thoughtful people.
They'd come and say, I saw this incredible liver today. And I go, you mean you saw a person with a liver disease? And I go, shut up. You know, you're from California. I don't need to think about those things. This is in Massachusetts. and, you know, I just, I don't know. I just, I used to dance a lot. and, I just lost my interest in dancing and just, my body was basically telling me something's really wrong. So I ended up going to the Dean and saying, I don't want to become like the doctors I see here. I don't.
I'm dropping out of school. And I ended up, you know, leaving and I thought I'd become a dancer or a salmon fisherman or choreographer or something. so in the course of, you know, that journey, I went across Canada and all this stuff. You know, it was a time when John Lennon was assassinated and the person who killed Lennon, this was December 1980, the person who killed him
Dan Siegel (17:02.326)
thought he himself was the true John Lennon and had to go to New York to kill what he thought was the imposter so he could assume his proper place as the real Lennon. So clearly he had a mental disturbance and his mind, the experience of his mind was incredibly important. It was a matter of life and death. So I started from that moment forward, I think it was like December 9th or something like that. From that moment forward, I just thought, well, what is this thing called the mind?
And, you know, my girlfriend was a dancer and she was recording all the dance performances. And what was a dancer feeling, you know, when they're doing it and her partner who ended up being her husband later on, but then he was with somebody else. Anyway, they he was making films on people's kind of emotional lives and emotional experiences. So I was just thinking about the mind. So when I decided to go back to school and she and I broke up our relationship, I I thought I cannot survive.
going back into that socialization of medical school, unless I have some kind of protective concept or which I need a word for like, you know, mind, you see it, you have, you have this not just eyesight, but you have this kind of other perceptual ability to see people's feelings and what had meaning to them and the stories of their lives. The things that were missing when I was interacting with my professors.
So I made up this word, mindsight, because at the time, you know, I wasn't aware of any terms. Around that same time, a phrase in science called theory of mind was just being developed. I was already in medical school, so I wasn't aware of it, but it around the same year. I think that was 1979 when that word came out. They're roughly the same, but mindsight has three elements. It has insight into your own inner life, empathy that lets you see inside the see inside someone else.
And then a process of integration where basically you're honoring differences, but promoting linkages. when you see that visible, it's kindness and compassion. So it isn't like you use your insight and your empathy to hurt people that would not be mind sightful. It's where you're actually developing this kind regard for your inner life and the inner life of other beings, including other living beings besides humans. So that's where my insight comes from.
Dan Siegel (19:30.476)
the work and the concept. since 1980, when that first emerged,
Dan Siegel (19:39.38)
I've used it kind of as a compass, as a therapist, and when I was trained in psychiatry, initially pediatrics and then over to psychiatry, I've always used that as like a fundamental aspect of wellbeing.
Tim Doyle (19:54.452)
interesting. I feel like it's important to obviously build this new foundation and learn this new terminology. But I feel like you can't just build that on top of the the solo self construction that we have. I feel like that is step one, like you need to deconstruct that first and then build this new foundation. And that can be easier said than done at times. But you have another really interesting
personal experience and personal story that I think goes to that two step process of, all right, let's deconstruct first and then construct. Talk to me about the horse accident that happened and the greater importance of that and all this work here on selfhood and identity.
Dan Siegel (20:35.91)
Yeah.
Dan Siegel (20:43.916)
Yeah, well, Tim, it's so interesting. Now we're kind of winding the clock even further back, you know, and in a book called Mind, people a while ago, you know, used to ask these kinds of questions of me, like, where do these ideas come from? And so the horse accident story, I'll just tell you when when this Mindsight stuff was, you know, becoming a part of a whole approach to therapy, the whole world of mindfulness.
Tim Doyle (20:48.45)
Yeah.
Dan Siegel (21:13.248)
and it's, you know, as it's being applied from ancient contemplative practices to modern healing approaches like psychotherapy, and spiritual journeys people were on started coming forward. And I was asked to, teach at a conference with a fellow I didn't know. but who was the one who people say is responsible for bringing mindfulness practices to the United States. And his name is Jack cornfield. So Jack takes me to lunch.
And he says, how do you learn about mindfulness? You know, and because we've been talking about mind, sight, and they're different. And I said, well, I don't know anything about mindfulness. He goes, oh, no, no, you know. And so I said, well, and then for some reason, I hadn't thought about it for probably decades at that time. This horse accident happened when I was 20 and I met Jack when I was in my early 50s. So, you know, at least 30 years later. So I said, well, I don't know why I'm going to bring this up, but, know, I was.
working in college for the World Health Organization and I was studying, folk healers and I was given the assignment to go up with a colleague of mine from the United Nations up to study the, queen of the mushrooms, in Wautla in part of Oaxaca. I was in the state of Veracruz and, and then in the course of getting on our horses and I love riding horses, but I had forgotten or someone forgot to tell me that,
you know, when you get on a horse and ride for a little while, then you stop, get off and tighten up the saddle more because they bloat their bellies because they don't like the saddle to be so tight. So to full gallop, the horse was going like the other horses fast and the horse went, the saddle went to the horse's belly. And then, you know, I was dragged because my feet stayed in the stirrups upside down with my face kind of being destroyed.
Um, you know, uh, like the a hundred yards, like a football field length on the rocks, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And more than all the damage to the bones and teeth, you know, my face, I, um, I didn't have an identity for about 24 hours, but I was wide awake. So I was full of awareness. Um, but I had no words and I.
Dan Siegel (23:37.618)
No idea. And then when my, my words came back, I would say things like, you know, who am I or whatever, you know, and I, and slowly, you know, my brain's, you know, getting all roughed up by that being knocked around. it came back, it's brain's ability to have this idea of a self. But after that horse accident, I, I had kind of a different feeling about when people would call me Dan, because I knew.
from those 24 hours, what it was like. And even though I had all, you know, broken teeth and everything, even though I had these damages, I, you know, it was kind of amusing. Things were funny. I mean, if they gave me a glass of water, the light would go through the glass and I'd be like laughing. And I, you know, it was almost like pure awareness had this joy to it and this sense of freedom.
from previously established, you know, things you learned that became like filters that constricted what you saw. And in a way I saw more because I knew less. And so when you talk about deconstructing self, think, you know, Jack and I had lunch and we separated and was going to, actually I was writing the book Mindset at the time. And.
Tim Doyle (24:53.742)
Hmm.
Dan Siegel (25:06.314)
He calls me up in my cabin where I was riding it and he goes, I can't stop thinking about what you said. And I said, what? He goes, the horse ax. And I said, what about it? He goes, do you realize that people will meditate for decades to get what you just fell into by accident? I go, why would someone want to break their nose, lose their teeth? And he goes, he's laughing, laughing. He goes, no, no, that's not what I'm talking about. He goes, lose your identity. I said, why would someone want to do that?
And he's laughing and laughing and we started talking about it. And the more he talked about the loosening the grip of the individual identity, which I never had a conversation with someone up to that point about this topic, let alone how it might relate to the horse accident. I started feeling this incredible sense of belonging to Jack. And now he's like one of my closest friends. you know, and so then I just said, Jack, I don't know what's going on, but I just feel so much connection with you.
I don't know why even, and he just goes, welcome to the family. And so that made me realize at that moment, he and I've taught a lot together, we hang around with each other as friends, but also we teach professionally. But the family idea was that when you let go of the cultural message that you get from school, from the larger culture, from your parents even, that who you are is this individual only.
So we're not getting rid of an inner self. There is an inner self and it's really important, you know? But when you loosen that up and expand it, so if you think of the acronym SPA, which means Subjective Experience S, Perspective P, and Agency A, what you act on behalf of, you can have a spa that's inside your body, but you also have a spa that's in your relationships with other people you know.
You can have a spa for all of humanity. You can have a spa for all living beings. So when I look out here at the trees growing outside my window, those are just like my arms. And that's actually how I feel. so then with Jack, what I learned was that in contemplative practices, including Buddhism, but not limited to Buddhism, there's this practice to try to relax, I think.
Dan Siegel (27:27.99)
This is my interpretation, the human brain's vulnerability to think that identity as a separate self is actually the limit of who you are. So I know in some circles they'll say, there's no such thing as a self. And I just think that that's not true. I think there's no such thing as a separate self. That's true. But you have an inner spa and you have a relational spa that's with people and a relational spa with all of nature.
So the idea is think about it like a lens on a camera. You can learn the skill of adjusting this, even just going out in nature can give you that sense of awe that the wonderful researcher, Dacher Keltner writes about, you know, and you can even do a practice like Dacher and I were once teaching at a workshop. We did this wheel awareness practice that I developed and we tested people for their degree of mysticism, just doing a 25 minute meditation and they got the same
expanded sense of self as if they were on psychedelics, you know, that Michael Pollan writes about. So, so it's a very exciting time to actually realize you don't have to do psychedelics to let yourself have the awe experience of dropping out of this lie of a separate self and expanding and saying, I do have a body. And if I didn't have a body, wouldn't even be thinking these things probably, but I do have a body.
Tim Doyle (28:30.093)
Wow.
Dan Siegel (28:53.59)
but who I am is much bigger than this body. And that in many ways resonated with what I'd been working on already, which is thinking of the mind as much more than just brain activity. And that we can talk about that next maybe, but that's where it was very natural to then say if the mind is broader than the brain and bigger than the body, then self from which a sense of identity comes from your mind,
is also going to be bigger than your body. So it's kind of a natural thing to really think in those ways.
Tim Doyle (29:30.412)
The most interesting takeaway from that though, and the part that I resonate with most, and it goes to what Jack Kornfield was telling you as well, is like, that happened though, against your will though. Or like you, you like, didn't, you did not consciously do that. And I feel like I've had a similar experience within my own life. Like I dealt with,
Dan Siegel (29:46.388)
That was against my will for sure.
Dan Siegel (29:57.034)
Yeah, tell me what happened.
Tim Doyle (29:59.36)
I dealt with a lot of bad chronic pain for months on end. And obviously I didn't want to go through that pain, but I feel like that pain was that breaking of the solo self. Like that is what came out on the other side. And that is what kind of a lot of the conversations I have with people as well who have that sort of similar experience where something unwillingly happened to them.
Dan Siegel (30:07.372)
Mm-hmm.
Dan Siegel (30:15.007)
wow.
Dan Siegel (30:18.678)
it
Tim Doyle (30:29.08)
But that was the launching pad for that breaking of that shell, so to speak.
Dan Siegel (30:33.836)
Maybe all the people in your community know it already. I don't know that story, Tim. So can you share with me what that was about?
Tim Doyle (30:42.166)
My own personal. Yeah. So I dealt with a lot of bad chronic back pain from herniated discs, just debilitating pain for months on end, no conventional treatments were helping me. and then a mind body approach, is what helped me heal. where it was basically like, pretty much became my own healer and kind of rewired my mind. so it was all
Dan Siegel (30:43.306)
Yeah.
Tim Doyle (31:10.516)
internal, I would say self work, rather than actual external treatments. And so I didn't just heal my pain, but it kind of just completely changed my whole perception of who I am as a person.
Dan Siegel (31:16.224)
Mm-hmm.
Dan Siegel (31:28.672)
Wow. And how has that stayed with you since then?
Tim Doyle (31:36.404)
It's kind of like I had the realization of like, that person who I was before the pain is gone. Like there's, there's no going back to that person because that's all the terminology that, I'd been told when I was, you know, like, like, you know, I'm trying to recover. I'm trying to return to who I was. And then within the mind body approach, you know, what I learned, like the
Dan Siegel (31:48.395)
Wow.
Tim Doyle (32:03.074)
the term recovery was rarely used. It was always about healing and I've created my own, obviously healing and recovery are, you know, words that we understand, but I was like, what are the definitions behind these words actually that resonate with me the most and recovery I understood was like a return to who I was and healing is like an introduction of who I'm supposed to become. So I saw that healing component as like,
Dan Siegel (32:07.008)
Mm-hmm.
Dan Siegel (32:29.153)
Wow.
Tim Doyle (32:32.866)
what we're talking about here, the deconstruction of that solo cell.
Dan Siegel (32:38.454)
That's so beautiful, so beautifully said. Yeah, and it's amazing, know, because you weren't aiming to do that, neither was I. Although I must say, the bigger effect was when it could be named for me, which I didn't have anyone to talk to about or even understand it. So it wasn't really much later, I think, that it really... Well, maybe, I'll have to think about that more, when it really took effect.
Tim Doyle (32:47.947)
Exactly.
Dan Siegel (33:07.884)
But it sounds like for you, was there a community of people you could talk to about this new sense of who you were?
Tim Doyle (33:20.13)
I think going back to the language thing, it was tough for me to even put it into words in the first place. It was just something that I felt on a deep internal level of just like, I don't even know how to begin to describe this.
Dan Siegel (33:26.997)
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Siegel (33:35.648)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's a line in Bob Simon's song, The Measure, that I was talking about earlier that goes something like...
Dan Siegel (33:49.734)
Is it, was it your, let me get this line right. Was it your good taste, your good name, your everlasting image in a picture frame? Or is it nothing you can hold onto and everything that flows through you? And that line is everything that flows through you. Did it feel like you became more like a verb than a noun like kind of solid separate entity?
Tim Doyle (34:21.058)
that would really get deep into this. So I had a very spiritual moment, like right at the end of this entire experience. I'm Catholic, so I was in mass and.
Dan Siegel (34:32.726)
Mm-hmm.
Tim Doyle (34:36.362)
In that moment, I was kneeling down and I was in a fair amount of pain and like the work that had helped me like get out of pain, really wasn't helping. And there's a point in mass where we say, Lord, I'm not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed. And I'm kneeling. And as I said those words, especially as I said the word healed, I could literally feel like just
Dan Siegel (34:55.841)
Mmm.
Tim Doyle (35:04.992)
sensations, you know, go from my head through my feet and like go into that fluidity. It just kind of felt like a melting.
Dan Siegel (35:11.296)
Mmm.
Dan Siegel (35:14.624)
Wow. Wow. Yeah. Well, you know, I don't know if you know, but I used to teach with a wonderful former Catholic priest named John O'Donoghue and the Irish mystic. Exactly. Exactly. And John would have loved to have been here with us, Tim, because I think his relationship with Catholicism and with Irish mysticism, you know, was more about this verb like aspect of things, you know.
Tim Doyle (35:26.274)
The Irish Mystic.
Tim Doyle (35:43.576)
Yeah.
Dan Siegel (35:44.611)
and
He would just talk about I mean he would say a mystic was someone to believe in the reality of the invisible but in that invisibility You're not everything that you think is there is there but you got to realize most of what's real is in that Space you can't see with your eyes. So literally by definition is invisible part of that is letting go of the noun like visible world's illusion that you have a body I have a body
So it has a structure that we think has a noun, but like there's an artist named Rashid and her quote on the Brooklyn Public Library foyer says something like, having discovered the flimsy fantasy of certainty, I decided to wander. And that idea of a flimsy fantasy of certainty, I think is we're born into these bodies.
And there is an understandable tendency. You want things to be certain in a very uncertain world. Cause when they're certain, they have a feeling that you can predict and then you can protect and you'll be safe at a minimum. You know, I think that's underneath it all. So with, you know, the deep mystical aspect of Catholicism and certainly John and I would teach just about mysticism in general. And we taught together, there's
There's a way of dropping out of that flimsy fantasy of certainty and in many ways embracing uncertainty. And I think it was Thoreau said, someone, someone said, maybe it wasn't Thoreau, but someone said, all who wander are not lost. We should find out who exactly said that. so when, when, when Rashid says, I decided to wander, doesn't mean you decide to be lost. I think what it would, in this discussion, what it means is you let go of the noun like
Dan Siegel (37:41.238)
fantasy of certainty you get from saying, I'm this individual, I know the rules, get a lot of stuff and I'll be happy. And that's the meaning of life. but it's not. you know, another wonderful Catholic writer is Maria Shriver, you know, and Maria, just put out a book called I am Maria. And if you read the poems and she, she recites them herself, herself in the audio book, it's just a beautiful example of exactly what we're talking about.
finding a deeper truth through embracing the uncertainty of life, which means allowing yourself to let go of the flimsy fantasy of being a noun and realizing as Bob Simon's song says, it's just everything that flows verb like through you, you know, and then you don't own it. You're just like a conduit of it. And I think that for me, when I hear what happened when you were kneeling down in church, you'd allow you, you kind of.
Tim Doyle (38:29.975)
Yeah.
Dan Siegel (38:39.294)
allowed yourself to become a conduit rather than thinking you were the constructor of everything.
Tim Doyle (38:45.782)
Yeah, there definitely has been that separation between identity and consciousness for me now. And it's funny, I think somebody listening to our conversation, especially the last 10 to 15 minutes, they're probably thinking like, OK, so bad stuff needs to happen to me for me to be released from my solo self. That's just my own personal experience. And I sort of like preach that that can be one of the benefits. But obviously, I think
Dan Siegel (38:52.896)
Mm-hmm.
Dan Siegel (39:04.735)
Yeah, no, no.
Dan Siegel (39:10.422)
Yeah.
Tim Doyle (39:14.806)
your work, especially your book, interconnected shows like, no, it doesn't have to be the case. Like somebody can willingly and consciously go about this process as well. Where did the vision for that book come from?
Dan Siegel (39:28.076)
For Interconnected, that book? Yeah, you know, well, I had written at that point a textbook for the mental health field called The Developing Mind. And in that, you know, I was reviewing all the science and it was really, you know, a very rigorous textbook for graduate school, you know, looking at why the mind should be thought of as more than just activity in your brain.
And in the course of that, were so many things, this was before COVID hit, but there were so many things happening in the world that felt like they had a common, I'll use the word cause very gently, cause like poverty in the world or wars that were going on or racism or climate destruction. And even when COVID hit, COVID.
And that was that the word self was being equated with the individual. And so I just kind of became obsessed with how are people using that word self? And what if the way they're defining this very important, what seemed to be center of experience is the simplest way to define self. If you limit yourself to saying the center of experience for you, whatever quote you.
is only your skin and case body. What would the implications of that be? So I started writing about it and there were lots of different versions of that book. had a collection of people I was working with supporting me. It was kind of like a inverse book club. said, let's have a club as if you had read a book that hasn't been written yet. I want to hear your feelings about it. So I had all the chapters outlined. And then I got people discussing what they
would hope would be in that chapter. So I started writing them. They came out in some very odd ways. mean, one version of it was just like this weird, nonstop rhyming, like narrative of what happened to this person named Sam. Anyway, and you see Sam born and growing up and then dying. And anyway, that didn't really make it to the public eye, but the group loved it. But then I changed it to more like a regular book. Then I changed it again. It went through lots of iterations.
Dan Siegel (41:53.716)
And the final one I was really happy with was, you know, it was a deep dive from a developmental point of view into how does a baby start learning from the baby's experience, what their center of experience is. And I'm an attachment researcher, so I could, you know, readily address that.
But then there was the larger issue what do you learn when you're in school from your teachers? What do you start learning when you start being exposed to media, including social media? And then I decided to make it like a developmental dive into how does the self get shaped so that in modern culture, in individualistic cultures, you get this message that who you are is your body. Only.
And then that's where the book came from. it was, you know, it was, it was really powerful to write it and have it come out. The book I wrote after that was like nine different ways inspired by the Enneagram of personality, nine ways that we kind of get lost in a separate self view. And then these are nine kind of ways you can open up and find your way to realize in the more verb like nature of who you are.
So that's a book called Personality and Wholeness in Therapy that I wrote with four other wonderful colleagues. So anyway, so those were just, they're sort of getting at the same thing, just sort of slightly different angles. But to your question of how can people get there, we have this practice called the Wheel of Awareness that I mentioned I did with Dacher Keltner in a workshop. And now we've had like a lot of people do it. And there is the experience of expanding
your sense of identity with that. it can be done intentionally. You don't have to fall off a horse or have back injuries. you can, you can do the, or going in nature brings you a sense of awe. That's the research shows that awe, you know, in other ways you can actually intentionally invite an opening up of, of who you are. Yeah.
Tim Doyle (44:13.774)
Yeah, that's really interesting. And what I like about the Wheel of Awareness, actually, I don't know exactly when this was, but you went to Baltimore to put a group of people. The congressman, I'm blanking on his name now, yeah, Elijah Cummings invited you to Baltimore to do the Wheel of Awareness and huge success. And he tells you afterwards, like, what did you do? And you were like, I didn't do anything.
Dan Siegel (44:25.899)
Yeah.
Elijah Cummings, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Tim Doyle (44:41.804)
And I think that's like the most powerful component of that type of work, especially with the wheel of awareness, where it's like individuals are the ones who creating that spark for themselves.
Dan Siegel (44:52.978)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a, there's a wonderful term I learned from Arthur Zions, who was a quantum physics professor called pervasive leadership, which, you know, what you're talking about, Tim is every human being can be a leader. Sometimes there needs to be a teacher that offers them something where they find the leadership within themselves. And that's what I said to Elijah, cause you know, people got into this more expansive sense of who they were and we were dealing with a lot of racial tensions.
so they could see beneath their biases about race and history and everything and start really communicating to each other from a place of humanity, you know, and see their common ground. And it was beautiful. It was really beautiful. And that's where I think the journey of going from noun to verb, when you start living more like a verb, more like this open spacious conduit of something, you know, love is actually what is your fuel.
And so you don't own the experience. So when Elijah says to me, what'd do? I could have said, you know, I've been developing the wheel of awareness for many years and thank you for inviting me. It was my practice. No, it was like all that practice does is taps into what's inside of every human being. And I felt very grateful. I mean, I felt just really so it was just a deeply rewarding feeling to be there with him and to have this experience.
You know, I wish we could have done it with all of the U.S. congressmen that he was working with. But yeah, you know, I have done it in Parliament. So I'll just give you one example. I was asked to go to another country and there was a lot of tension in a parliament. anyway, so they had me spend the day with the parliamentarians. And, know, we did the wheel of awareness. And during the break, one of the very vocal parliamentarians who said nothing during the discussion period takes me aside during the snack time and he goes,
Tim Doyle (46:27.918)
Ha
Dan Siegel (46:54.016)
You know, I didn't say anything during the discussion period. said, yeah, I noticed that. He goes, do you want to know why I didn't say anything? I said, why? He goes, you know that part of that wheel practice when you bend the spoke of attention around into the hub of awareness? And I go, yeah, I know that part. And then he slows down. His eyes get filled with tears and he goes, I have never felt so connected to everyone and everything.
I have never felt so much love before in my life. And now he's full on crying. And there's this silence between the two of us. And I said, well, could I ask you a question? He goes, yeah. I said, you didn't want to share that with your colleagues? And he goes, no, no, no, no. If I said love, they would think I was weak. And there's this silence. So said, can I ask you another question? He goes, okay. I said,
So when you're making federal policy, when you're setting up national law, are you leaving love out of the reasoning? And his eyes got really, really big. He started wagging his finger at me and he ran over to his colleagues. I left him alone. I don't know what he said, but I would just hope that the experience, not by falling off a horse or getting back injury, but just this 25 minute wheel practice, not some guy giving him a lecture on it, because I don't think that would do anything, but he could feel it.
And hopefully it will activate his pervasive leadership so he can now be a leader to say, we're going to lead this country with love, kindness, compassion, civic compassion is the basis of moving forward as a human family.
Tim Doyle (48:42.168)
For the ones who, you know, wouldn't be buying into this, so to speak, I guess, or like, what's all this new terminology with interconnected and we and why it's a positive to deconstruct the solo self. I think it is also beneficial to look at it from the opposite angle because obviously that's what we know. We know the solo self. That's what people just kind of take as fact. What are, and we've talked about it a little here, but to like explicitly frame it out.
Dan Siegel (48:55.905)
Yeah.
Tim Doyle (49:12.342)
What are the negative consequences of this perception of the solo self of how we have?
Dan Siegel (49:18.24)
Yeah, I mean, the former attorney general has an entire book addressing that beautiful question you're asking Tim. it's, you know, I think it's called, is it called Belonging or Alone? Vivek Murphy, what's it called? It's a beautiful book, but I'm just, I'm not clear. know exactly the title of it. But the issue that's clear from the research is that when you live,
Tim Doyle (49:33.496)
Yep.
Dan Siegel (49:46.22)
a sense of individualistic identity, then the things that you place as important in your life are all about acquisition of stuff and status and how you compare it other people. And all the research shows on that, those three things, getting stuff, being worried excessively about, you know, what other people think of you.
you know, and making sure your status is above other people's. All those things lead to misery and an endless sense of I'm not fulfilled. I didn't do it enough like we talked about earlier. So what that leads to is depression, anxiety, addiction. Some people have written even that the opposite of addiction is connection, right? And so what makes you prone
to addiction is, you know, disconnection, which happens with a solo cell. A simple example, not to compare ourselves to rats, but you know, if you put a rat in a cage and give them a choice of water or cocaine, they choose the cocaine, right? And everyone quotes that study, cocaine's so bad, which it can be. But if you put a bunch of rats together with toys and a very enriched environment and a social life that they have, and you give them a choice of water or cocaine, they pick the water.
Tim Doyle (51:12.654)
Hmm, interesting. Yeah.
Dan Siegel (51:13.974)
Yeah, because they're fulfilled. They're their rat life, right? So, you know, basically the solo self creates a cage where we're living in isolation and we don't have a sense of belonging and it creates mental suffering. I think ultimately it creates all these negative things that we're seeing in the world because, you know, if you're in the bit
business of acquiring, acquiring, acquiring stuff, then you want to manufacture stuff, make sure that people buy your stuff. And that system can work out okay. If it has underneath it an ethics of how we are fundamentally a part of a natural world. But when it doesn't have that, when it goes really wild, and I'm a physician and I'll tell you, when a cell of the body stops behaving as a part of a larger
community of systems, we call it cancer.
call it an autoimmune disease. so realizing we're part of a community is what this larger self is all about. And, you know, I am a physician, but I'm also a psychiatrist and, you know, looking deeply at how the mind creates an identity as a separate self, you know, self equals individual. You know, I think it's the cancer of our modern times and no one's recognizing it. So we have to be very careful. even
with dear colleagues of mine who have a beautiful, beautiful set of research studies and clinical applications on something called self-compassion. I have urged them publicly, you know, to change the name. Call it inner compassion. No big deal. Just call it inner. And that will make, yeah, that's right. Because when I have compassion for you, Tim, you're just another version of me.
Dan Siegel (53:13.844)
So I don't want to say I'm othering by saying, it's other directed compassion, otherwise it's self-compassion. No, I can have inner compassion and I can have inter compassion. And if I have compassion all around, maybe call it intra compassion. But that's why that word interconnected also became important is that, you know, it isn't just that we're connected to each other and we're interconnected, the betweenness, there's a wholeness to the whole thing that we can live into like the Pando populus forest. You know, the way trees live,
And now all the research shows this is they're in community with each other. It's not just one isolated tree just going, it's all about me, me, me. You know, the forest would die if that were the case.
Tim Doyle (53:53.974)
Yeah. And the question then becomes, okay, so how do we create that shift? How do we create that seismic shift? And there's a quote that I, there's something that I heard you say on another podcast that I think is a beautiful, I guess you could say answer or start of an answer to that question. And I just want to read that out. We're storytelling creatures.
And part of the story of not just genetic evolution, but cultural evolution is that through story and through the way we communicate with each other, you can actually start shifting cultural evolution in a different direction than it's going in terms of being business as usual. And storytelling and that quote in particular is something that resonates with me on a deep level. So I would love to just hear more of your deeper thoughts on that.
Dan Siegel (54:46.152)
Yeah, no, exactly, exactly. You know, the wonderful teacher, dear friend of mine, Joanna Macy, talks about a great turning and stories would be absolutely a part of that. The great turning would be realizing that, you know, the way I would say it is, you know, we've had a case of mistaken identity. You know, whoops, we thought the center of experience was only your individuality and that was a mistake.
I mean, a big lethal mistake actually, but we can course correct through stories, through being in nature and feeling into our connection. So it's not just a thought, it's a feeling, but the stories guide us. They're doing practices like the wheel of awareness practice, you know, all these things, even having words like Mui or intra connected people go, why, why, why do have to have intra connected instead of interconnected? Well, because you are not just
I'm here, you're there, we're interconnected. You know, that keeps the separate self there. That word doesn't actually take us where we need to go. So that's why the interconnected word is useful. Mui is another example. We don't want to just lose the inner importance of our experience through just being a we, you know? And so Mui helps you with a single three-letter word that I've been trying to get in other languages. It doesn't quite work as...
symmetrically, whatever, as it does in English. So a lot of people, I was just in Norway and Sweden and other places where even where English isn't their first language, they like Mui as a word. So just as a simple three-letter word for our human family, you say, look, and I did this in a school I used to consult to in New York City, the Blue School, where we said to the kids, who you are is a Mui. And when the graduating class graduated, was
one of the most beautiful things. I would get notes from the parents saying the kids are texting them to each other. Eighth graders are now out in the world, know, in New York saying, Mui wants to go, you know, to get some ice cream. Okay, we will see you there, you know. But it was really beautiful because if you feel into just the word, even just a simple linguistic term, you know, and that's what stories do, they go back.
Tim Doyle (57:07.374)
Yeah.
Dan Siegel (57:08.572)
into the structures that filter reality, you go, I'm a me and a we, I am both. And that's the story we need to tell. And that's how cultural evolution happens, you know? it's, listen, people always quote Margaret Mead in the beautiful quote when she says, don't think that a small group of people that say telling the new story of this larger sense of self, you know, of me or whatever words we're gonna use,
Don't ever think that they can't change the world because indeed it's the only thing that ever has. So, you know, there are groups, Inter Development Goals is one for people who don't know it. Just check out what we do from Sweden, interdevelopmentgoals.org, you know, where you can develop a hub of like-minded people, whatever city you're in, but there's, now have almost a thousand hubs where you...
This is a movement to try to realize we can work with the inner aspect of the mind. That's where inner comes from of inner development goals. But ultimately when you go inward, you realize it's inter and then you realize, that's the whole shebang, the intro, you know? So what I'm trying to push them is to change the name of the organization to, you know, three IDG. So the inner, the inter and the intro development goals. I don't know if they'll go for that.
But I think it's a fun term. Just put a three, the number three in front of it, three IDG. But there's a lot of, know, even if you look at a related group related to IDG in Sweden is starting something called Lakefront. So just look up lakefront.org or something in Sweden where we're getting some people to live together, change makers, to tell the story just like you're talking about, Tim.
and to start thinking, you know, this can be a way where we wake up our human family to the deeply interconnected lives that we all share.
Tim Doyle (59:18.39)
I have one last question for you and it has to do with two more personal stories of yours. You've described busting through the solo self as a spiritual journey and there are two stories and personal experiences of yours that I think show that evolution of your journey. And I think you could almost even say bookend it and it shows the duality of life and death.
So that first story you shared at a talk when you were talking to a crowd and you said that when your son was an infant and he would start crying, when you would console him, you would feel a lot of compassion for him and he would continue to cry and you would continue to feel compassion. But then he would continue to cry some more and then you would get irritated and agitated and that agitation
would then go on to your son as well and he would become agitated. And you trace this back to your pediatric intern days and you reflected back on how you were almost programmed in a way to become numb to suffering. And now this was playing out years later when your son had just entered into the world. So that's the first story. That's the first bookend. And then the second bookend to that
Dan Siegel (01:00:25.42)
Yeah
Dan Siegel (01:00:40.651)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Tim Doyle (01:00:46.296)
to go on to the death side of things and leaving this world. So when your dad was about to die, he asked you a question and he said, where am I going when I die? And the way that you answered him made him feel completely relaxed. And your dad said, that makes me so that makes me feel so peaceful. So in this process of sharing your work and
Dan Siegel (01:01:09.963)
Yeah.
Tim Doyle (01:01:16.14)
you know, putting these ideas out there and this new terminology out there and the wheel of awareness to really help people in the world as a whole and create this new story. How has it allowed you, you know, coming back to yourself, how has it allowed you to develop your own relationship with someone?
Dan Siegel (01:01:36.694)
Wow, well, first of all, Tim, thank you for being so thorough in your homework. I mean, you're not only reading all the books, but you're listening to all the podcasts and catching all these really, you know, very, very significant moments. So, you know, I think the moment you're talking about with Alex, my son, and if you want to see how the outcome ended up, he's a musician now. You can listen to his music, Alex Siegel.
music on whatever platform you listen to it on and you'll hear how that all turned out. But I had to do the inner work, you know, in terms of that first story of realizing that my interactions with him were really not helpful. And I really needed to understand why I was flipping my lid after the initial attempts to stay connected to him and
Well, you might say, come on, Dan, be easier on yourself. Every parent can do that. It's true. Every parent could do it, but every parent then should be responsible for figuring out what's going on. So, you know, it is just like you said that there was a unfortunate aspect of being a physician where you, you know, if you're, if you do get overwhelmed, like I had been in pediatrics, you, you develop this mechanism to just do the technical things you need to do.
you know, invasively in the body when you're doing certain procedures, you know, in the face of screams. And I just kind of dissociated back into being with screaming patients, you know, who are my son's age and just becoming numb to the screams and doing what I needed to do, which is not what as a father, you know, was really good for my son. you know,
I've had to work on that then when he was little. And then, you over the years, I mean, now he's in his 30s, you know, luckily, you know, we're able to talk about things and be very open about what goes on in him, what goes on in me. And, you know, I think our relationship is really beautiful now. And I mean, it has been for a long, long, long time. But that's a part of parenting, you know, to take on that journey. And as parents, I think we need to be responsible when.
Dan Siegel (01:03:57.084)
Stuff goes on inside our own inner sense of self, the inner aspect of it, so that the relational self that's in so powerful for shaping how a kid grows can be optimized so that children can flourish and thrive. And, you know, so if you listen to the lyrics of Alex's songs, you'll probably hear, wow, you know, he really learned how to be aware of what's in his inner life.
And also he's an incredible musician. It's true of his sister too. They're both very amazing at being able to explore the inner selfness of life. You know, my father was just the opposite. was...
Dan Siegel (01:04:44.236)
You know, he was a human being. died about 13 years ago now, but he was a human being without much insight. He had no empathy whatsoever. mean, literally none. And sadly, you know, in the end, you know, and now my mom just passed a few months ago and she used to ask me not to talk about this publicly because many of her friends were my students as therapists. And as she got older, she died at 95 and a half, but
She, her friends were gone. So she said, okay, now you can talk about whatever you want. So, my father was a sadist. You know, he was intentionally trying to hurt his two sons. I was one of them and his wife, my mom. And, you know, when I found out just a little bit before he died, that he was doing it on purpose and I asked him, why were you doing that? I mean, my God, you know, he had no, no insight into it whatsoever, but he, he said, yeah, I try to figure out how to hurt you and.
try to do a good job of hurting you, was like, my God. So it was like living with the enemy, you know? And that's always this uneasy feeling I had. But anyway, but I was always, as abused children, because that's in a form of emotional abuse, know, as abused children will be, you stay very clinging to even abusive parents, because you hope, hope, hope, even as an adult who's a psychiatrist writing books about this, you still hope maybe one day it'll change. So when he was at very end of his life, as you're pointing out,
and he looked pretty terrified. was clear he was getting close to dying and he was in hospice and, I, I was devoted to him, know? And, so he said, what's going to happen. And I said, you know, I don't know. And he goes, well, come, you must have some idea. And I said, well, you know, I've never had a patient come to me in all these years of being a therapist. think I probably had been a therapist 30 years at that time, you know,
who said, where was I before I was conceived? And he goes, what do you mean? I said, well, you know, people worry about where they're gonna go after they die, but no one's worried about where they, and what if it's the same place? Like, you know, there was a time when there were like trillions and trillions of sperm and billions and billions of eggs and unique combination of one and the other is like out of this infinite pool of possibilities, you know, arises one combo that's you, your unique you-ness, know, which you like that.
Dan Siegel (01:07:10.09)
And I said, and you know, so you have this actuality called the lifetime. get about a century to live. he was close to, you know, he was 89. and I said, and then that time in this actualization of all these possibilities is done and you're going to dissolve back into this. I call it a plane of possibility of this infinite plane of possibility, which is where you came from.
And he was not a religious person whatsoever. We could never talk about spiritual things or anything like that. He'd be kicked out of the house. So I was a little worried when I said that it kicked it had to be kicked out of the house again, right before he dies. So I took a chance, but then he got that peaceful look on his face, the very tranquil. And he said what you said, you know, and, and that was the last I talked to him and then he died. And yeah, I was happy to be able to offer him something so he could go.
into this transition moment with peace. same thing when my mom passed. mean, she was smiling like Bob Simon's song says. And I think that's what we can do in life is try to support each other, work on our own issues and try to be really present for each other like that. Yeah. So it is like bookends and it's always a journey of discovery.
you know, always learning new things and trying to be open to stuff and, you know, and just be in the flow of how we can connect to each other. And, you know, what you point out about cultural evolution in terms of the stories, you know, being open and vulnerable and real and, you know, I think it's so important because when we were able to be that, I think people will be inspired to let go of the clinging to the, you know,
illusion of certainty, that flimsy fantasy that Rashid talked about. And then when we can do that, think we are really capable of creating a magnificent world. You know, I really think that's possible. And it comes from the courage to care and the courage to be open and let go of the noun like illusion of certainty and open to the verb like reality, which is so filled with love.
Dan Siegel (01:09:36.284)
and connection, you know, that you just get filled with awe and gratitude. So it's kind of like, even though it's scary to do for anyone listening, it's actually a journey that when you get to the connecting side of it, when you let go of the disconnecting aspect of noun like separation, it's actually really beautiful. And even as I face my own death, as I get older, I can feel the peacefulness in it.
you know, and I'm not trying to get there sooner than it has to come, but, you know, I just feel a kind of ease that I didn't feel when I was younger.
Tim Doyle (01:10:15.086)
Dan, I think that's a beautiful place to stop. Where can people go to see more of your work and if they wanted to connect with you?
Dan Siegel (01:10:25.196)
Yeah, well, there's all sorts of ways. There's in-person things, you know, we're doing in different cities or even on a river on this middle fork of the Salmon River. If people want to hang out for a week, we have a few spots still open on that in July. You know, just come to my website and you'll see all the things on the schedule. DR for doctor and then Dan, D-A-N, Siegel, S-I-E-G-E-L dot com and see what's of interest to you. We have a school for lots of in-depth things called the Mindsight Institute. You can click through.
that on Dr. Dan Siegel, but that's where you'll get to do the Wheel of Awareness also.
Tim Doyle (01:11:00.854)
Awesome, great talking with you today.
Dan Siegel (01:11:02.772)
Thanks, Tim, a real honor. Let's keep the stories going. Thanks for your wonderful work and thanks for your presence here. Thank you.
Tim Doyle (01:11:09.902)
Thank you.
