Elisha Goldstein is cofounder of The Center for Mindful Living in Los Angeles. He is author of several books including Uncovering Happiness, The Now Effect, Mindfulness Meditations for the Anxious Traveler and co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn. His website is http://elishagoldstein.com/
I’ve known and worked with Elisha for many years. He is an expert in helping people heal from depression and find joy in our lives. So many of us are suffering from depression, anxiety, and stress these days, I wanted to interview Elisha and share his ideas with you.
Jed: I believe that all those who work in the field of healing have some key personal experiences that underlie their interests and passion for the work. Could you share some of those experiences in your own life.
Elisha: Like many in the field I entered into this work out of my desire to understand my own personal suffering and find healing. In Uncovering Happiness I talk directly about my deepest and darkest hour in life when I was in San Francisco working in the corporate world. I was working hard and playing far harder, partying in a highly abusive way with drugs and alcohol.
One night I found myself staring into the eyes of a man who was barely a shadow of himself, wasted away and I saw this was me. I woke up for a moment and set the intention to change. I went away on a retreat and discovered that life was short and being present to it allowed me to be grateful for the good and learn how to be graceful during the more difficult moments.
That started my journey into learning about the natural anti-depressants that we have within each of us, two primary ones being mindfulness and compassion.
Jed: What made you decide to write this book?
Elisha: I’ve long been interested in what makes us resilient and happy on a deep level. I’ve worked with many people and am also keenly interested the neuroscience of it. As I discover things for myself, with the people I work with and in the science I want to get it out there so it’s accessible to all people.
I’ve been teaching groups on mindfulness and depression for the last 8 years and what I’ve noticed is that while mindfulness can help us break out depressive loops, on its own its often times not enough. As I began looking deeper into the neuroscience behind depression, I saw that it’s very similar to the neuroscience behind chronic stress. There are key areas of the brain that are impacted and there are also specific mindsets we can develop that counter those neural tendencies that go beyond mindfulness.
Mindfulness gives us awareness to have perspective and make choices, then comes the important part about taking wise actions to further enhance resiliency and a deeper core happiness. Things that I found like compassion, having a sense of purpose, learning how to play and developing confidence are key natural anti-depressants that we all have and we only need to learn how to access them. That’s what Uncovering Happiness is all about.
Jed: You begin with a quote from Maya Angelou: “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” I love that. Tell us why you chose it and what it means in the context of your book.
Elisha: A common driver behind emotional imbalance, besides our genetics, is this misconception that we can try and control the things that happen to us in life. We can only really do two things in life, prepare and respond. While there are some things we can control in life, there are many things we can’t – getting bad news, being broken up with, not getting that promotion, or someone dying. Or on the flipside, we can’t control winning the lottery, not getting that parking ticket even though the meter had run out, or having a healthy baby.
When bad things happen, our first reaction is often to blame other people or blame ourselves. Both of these reactions are toxic to our happiness. With awareness, we can see these “mind traps” and make a choice to have perspective and respond in a way that is more in line with our health and well-being. This takes a lot of practice, but there’s little more important in life than nurturing our wisdom. It’s central to our sense of strength and confidence.
Jed: If there were three, bottom-line, “takeaways” from the book that you feel would be most helpful for people to know, what would they be?
Elisha: The #1 takeaway from this book is that when we think of anti-depressants we often times think of a pill, but we now know that these are not the only anti-depressants. We’re discovering through neuroscience that our brains can release its own natural anti-depressants, the possibility is within each and every one of us and that is what is inside Uncovering Happiness.
Another takeaway is that the key mindset in all of this is to see it all as a learning experience. We grow up in a culture that prizes performance to our detriment. We don’t want to see Uncovering Happiness this way. As we start along the path of discovering and putting our natural anti-depressants in action we will inevitably stray off the path. Our bad habits will get the best of us.
That’s okay, what we want to do is congratulate ourselves for waking up when we do. Then investigate the obstacle with a learning lens…be curious about how you strayed off the path, what got in the way, what is resistance all about anyway? Then, now that you’re present, invite yourself to begin again. I call this “Forgive, investigate, and invite.”
Jed: “Depression” and “happiness” are two terms that are talked about a lot. One is seen as “bad,” the other as “good.” Tell us a bit about your view of depression and happiness and how they relate to each other.
Elisha: There are all kinds of negative associations with depression in our culture, especially for men. We’re seen as weak and incapable and that’s the anti-thesis of what our culture says we “should” be. This is why depression is so shrouded in shame, which inevitably only fuels it more, it’s a vicious cycle.
Ultimately depression isn’t good or bad, it can be incredibly unpleasant and at times torturous, but for some can be a wake-up call to changing their lives. Maybe part of what’s fueling the depression is the fact that we’re overworked, we’re not eating well, not exercising, we have no form of play in our lives, or we’re in a toxic relationship. Or maybe it spurs us to get support to uncover our natural anti-depressants and create a more enduring resiliency going forward.
We never know when something is good or bad, because the reality we don’t know what’s going to come out of it (not that anyone would wish depression on themselves).
Happiness is seen as good, but then we have to look at what someone means by happiness. The kind of happiness I’m referring to is what the Greeks call eudaimonic happiness, this is, a deeper, more meaningful type of happiness than, let’s say, the happiness you experience when you have a positive emotion after winning a pot of money. You might get swept up with the mental and emotional waves from time to time, but underneath it is this core sense of self-love and confidence in knowing that you can handle it and things are going to be okay.
It’s interesting; research shows that people who have a high level of hedonic well-being – simply, positive emotions – have a much higher pro-inflammatory gene expression than people with that core sense of eudaimonic well-being. Depression is associated with cellular inflammation.
So if we’re going to uncover happiness, we want it to be the meaningful and purposeful type.
Jed: I understand you have a special offer for our readers. Please tell us about it and how my readers can take advantage of it.
Elisha: Thank you Jed, for a limited time during the pre-order period, after you buy your book from any online retailer (Amazon, B&N, etc…), just go to http://elishagoldstein.com/uncovering-happiness-promo/, put in your name, email and the confirmation number and you’ll get a 90-minute Video that will take you through Uncovering Happiness, 10 Interviews with leaders about Optimal Living and a few audio practices to get you started. This will only be available for short time longer.
At the end, please thank yourself for taking the time to engage in this work for your own learning, health and well-being.
Jed: Thanks Elisha. For those who want more information about Elisha and his work you can reach him through his website: http://elishagoldstein.com/. I’ll continue my interview with Elisha and post in the future.
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