How To Unsubscribe From The Negative Stories You Tell About Yourself And Others | Anu Gupta

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- How your blindspots hurt your decision-making— and how to fix it. Anu Gupta https://www.anuguptany.com/ is an educator, lawyer, scientist, and the founder and CEO of BE MORE with Anu https://www.bemorewithanu.com/, an education technology benefit corporation that trains professionals across corporate, nonprofit, and government sectors to advance DEIB and wellness by breaking bias. His work has reached 300+ organizations training more than 80,000 professionals impacting over 30 million lives. Gupta holds a JD from NYU Law, MPhil in Development Studies from Cambridge University, and BA in International Relations and Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies from NYU. As a gay immigrant of color, he came to the work of breaking bias after almost ending his life due to lifelong experiences with racism, homophobia, and Islamophobia. The realization that bias can be unlearned helped lead him out of that dark point and inspired a lifelong mission to build a global movement for social healing based on principles of mindfulness and compassion. A peer-reviewed author, he has written and spoken extensively, including on the TED stage, the Oprah Conversation, Fast Company, Newsweek, and Vogue Business. He is the author of Breaking Bias: Where Stereotypes and Prejudices Come From—and the Science-Backed Method to Unravel Them. In this episode we talk about: The 5 causes of bias The dis-utility of shame What has – and hasn't – been working in DEI trainings Contemplative practices, on and off the cushion, for breaking bias And his response to skeptics Related Episodes: Why You're Not Seeing the World Clearly— and How to Fix It | Jessica Nordell https://happierapp.com/podcast/tph/jessica-nordell-rerun The Self-Interested Case for Examining Your Biases | John Biewen https://www.happierapp.com/podcast/tph/john-biewen-333 Dolly Chugh, How Good People Fight Bias https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dolly-chugh-how-good-people-fight-bias/id1087147821?i=1000468718792 Rhonda Magee, Law Professor Using Mindfulness to Defeat Bias https://www.danharris.com/p/rhonda-magee-law-professor-using-39f How to Call People In (Instead of Calling Them Out) | Loretta Ross https://happierapp.com/podcast/tph/loretta-ross-316 Sign up for Dan's newsletter here http://www.danharris.com Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Ten Percent Happier online bookstore https://bit.ly/46TZglY Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Our favorite playlists on: Anxiety https://spoti.fi/3Qa8kMT, Sleep https://spoti.fi/3MjtMxF, Relationships https://spoti.fi/3QvyA5J, Most Popular Episodes https://spoti.fi/3QxZASc Full Shownotes: https://happierapp.com/podcast/tph/anu-gupta-877

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:19Dan Harris?

  Hello, everybody. How we doing? One of the more excruciating aspects of being alive is that we all walk around with these noxious, negative, and self-limiting stories about ourselves. At the same time, we're also walking around with all kinds of stories about other people, often based solely on how they look. One term for this phenomenon is bias, internalized and externalized bias. And my guest today argues that this kind of bias can actually be broken. I want to acknowledge upfront, and you will hear my guest acknowledge this as well, that many, if not most of us, have attended DEI sessions that truly suck. And I just want to assure you, that is not what you are in for today.

• 1:04Dan Harris?

  Anu Gupta's approach is devoid of shame, or guilt, or blame. Instead, it's kind of playful, and it's also based deeply in the Dharma, meaning mindfulness and compassion. Also, and crucially, it's not just focused on how you treat other people, but also on how you talk to yourself. Again, the key idea here is that everybody, all of us, we're all suffering because of our learned ideas, learned from our family, from the larger culture, et cetera, about who we are and about who other people are. But we can unlearn these stories. Moreover, this process does not have to be a death march. It can be fun and interesting, and in the end, it can make you happier. A little bit more about my guest before we dive in here.

• 1:46Dan Harris?

  Anu Gupta is an educator, lawyer, scientist, and the founder and CEO of a company called Be More with Anu, a company that trains people on how to break bias. His new book is called Breaking Bias. The subtitle is Where Stereotypes and Prejudices Come From, and the Science-Backed Method to Unravel Them. In this conversation, we talk about the five causes of bias, the disutility of shame, what has and has not been working in the DEI trainings that many of us have attended, contemplative practices both on and off the cushion for breaking bias, and his response to skeptics. We will get started with Anu Gupta right after this.

• 2:27Dan Harris?

  Real progress starts with action. As the executive director of the Honold Foundation, Emily Kitesworth works to expand access to solar energy in communities around the world, supporting locally-led projects that bring reliable power, greater independence, and opportunity where it is needed most. On the podcast Planet Visionaries, professional climber and Honold Foundation founder, Alex Honold, goes beyond the headlines with Emily to explore practical solutions for a more equitable future. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

• 3:04Speaker 01

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• 3:34Speaker 02

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• 4:13Dan Harris?

  Anu Gupta, welcome to the show.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  Thanks so much for having me. I'm really thrilled for this conversation.

• 4:17Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. So let me ask you the question that we were talking about before we started rolling here, which is, to put it very crassly, like, what's in it for me? Why would I want to do the work of breaking bias? How do my biases hurt me? And why should I turn the volume down on them?

• 4:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. So I'll just start with my story, because I came to this work because I was hurting, right? I came to this work because I was suffering tons and tons of duca. Because of the body I found myself in, you know, I'm a gay immigrant of color in the United States. I moved here when I was 10 years old. And suddenly I became kind of the object of attack, particularly from young people in my middle school, my elementary school, because I was different, right? So they were not seeing me, but they were seeing ideas of me, terrorist, or the F-word, or you name it, right? The way I smelled, the way I walked, what I ate. So these were some of the things, the stories that were percolating that for me weren't really about me, but as a young person, I believed them.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  When I, basically, what I started to do was try to assimilate, try to be what others wanted me to be. I streamed out my accent, I washed the way I walked, so I wouldn't be perceived as feminine. I, little things, became hypervigilant. And this kind of continued on throughout my young adulthood, into college, into grad school, into working abroad, to of course, then returning to law school 15 years ago. And whenever I would bring up this idea of bias, because I'd been studying it, right? Particularly from a global lens, I worked in Myanmar, I worked in Taiwan, in South Asia, and I saw bias operating in so many different contexts. But I would just acknowledge it in the classroom that, hey, like, something I've experienced too. At that point, there wasn't an understanding of it, or a widespread acceptance of it. So I'd just be gaslit.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  And then I started to believe that, oh, maybe what I'm feeling is wrong, because no one around me believes me. And they're just asking me to move on, or what I'm feeling is wrong, right? I'm feeling bad because of my various identities. So I found myself on the ledge of my 18th floor window, about to jump off, you know, right before my second year of law school was going to begin. And in that moment, when I was on the ledge, I started noticing all the ideas I'd been really shrunk to, right? Fatty faggot, big-nosed idiot, terrorist. And that's when I began to see, you know, I'd been a mindfulness practitioner, a Dharma practitioner for a long time, that these were ideas. These ideas that somehow I started identifying with. And they weren't really me.

• 6:45Speaker 03

  Now, what happened afterwards, I can't explain. A moment of grace, that's really what I've been calling it. Instead of falling forward, I fell back into my apartment. Immediately, I sensed the gravity of what I was about to do. I called a friend who lived maybe like three or four miles away, but happened to be walking on my block. She showed up within two minutes. We talked the whole night. And the next morning, I began my breaking bias journey. So for me, this is really personal to all of us because there's so many ideas that we believe about ourselves because of our various identities, what we look like, how much we earn, what roles and functions we play, what we may have experienced in our lives. And unless we become intimate with those ideas, they then begin to affect how we feel about ourselves,

• 7:30Speaker 03

  affects our mental health, our physical health, and of course, kind of translates into a whole host of addictive coping mechanisms. But for me, that's where the journey really began. And it's really important for me to really work with this idea of bias, particularly internalized bias, with mindfulness and compassion. Compassion is really key to breaking bias.

• 7:53Dan Harris?

  Well, first of all, I'm very sorry that happened to you.

• 7:55Speaker 03

  Oh, thank you. Yes, it did suck. And 15 years later, I'm like, it was a gift because it kind of brought me on this path. And I've been able to share my story with thousands and thousands of people. And I've gotten such feedback that I'm not alone. And this is so common in our society, particularly among people who I wouldn't think I have very much in common with across political divides, across religious divides, or across sexuality, race, you name it. And that's when I was like, wow, we're all suffering in this human soup together. And this is why I felt so passionate about writing this book.

• 8:28Dan Harris?

  It's interesting. I mean, I realize the, I don't know if bias is the right word, or I don't love the word I'm about to use, but privilege or luck that is embedded in the way I phrase the question to you. Because you answered it from the perspective of internalized bias. So other people's biases that you then consume and believe on some level and tell yourself a shitty story about yourself that isn't true because. As other people are telling you a shitty story about yourself.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:58Dan Harris?

  And I meant it more like, obviously, the question is coming from somebody who's in every dominant group available. I meant it more like, how are my biases hurting me? Maybe I have internalized biases about other people's stories about me, but people who look like me tend not to deal with much of that.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's really interesting that you've asked that question. And this is kind of the invitation in the book that for us to break bias, we really have to get to know ourselves. And the way I look at dominant identities or subordinated identities and this idea of privilege and marginalization is once again from the somatic experience perspective. So for me, breaking bias isn't something we just do with our heads. We have to engage our bodies, we have to engage our hearts. So like the fullness of who we are, including what's neck down. The experiences of privilege or marginalization are really experiences of ease and of pain. So when we say that we're privileged around certain identity, whether it's gender or race or class, we just experience a sense of ease in society. We don't have to think about it, right? If for a wealthy person, we can go anywhere in the world, buy and purchase anything.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Whereas if we are strapped for cash, that causes us pain. So it's really from that lens that I want to enter in this conversation. And I think for people in dominant identities, this is really, really important, whether it's a white cis guy like you or anyone else, someone who's wealthy or someone who's from a dominant religious group or an ethnic group. It's really about seeing the stories we are believing about ourselves. Particularly at a really deeply unconscious level, entitlement and superiority that may accompany our being. And this is what I love about the Dharma, because it allows us to really see us for who we are. And what that really does is beneath that entitlement and superiority, and I've noticed this while I was practicing as a lawyer,

• 10:47Speaker 03

  there's a sense of inferiority. There's a sense of like wanting to be the best. And somehow, sometimes whenever that's proved wrong, we get upset, we get angry. And that's kind of the comparing mind that enters this conversation for folks who are with some dominant identities. And I think what breaking bias really helps us do is really begin to acknowledge the is-ness of our being and how we share that is-ness with every other human being, as well as every other sentient being on this planet. And that makes us feel better. And particularly, and I'll speak this for myself as a cis man, when I did this for gender, for trans people, for non-binary people, for women, for cis women.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  I began to see, wow, like, I just am, right? But then I could also begin to share empathy and compassion for people whose identity I didn't share and their struggles. And that made me feel closer to them. And it helped me address some of the fears and the worries that I had when I was around such people. I don't know if you've ever felt this, but sometimes when I'm having this conversation, I feel like I'd be walking on eggshells. And I was like so afraid to say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing and just be attacked. I was just ready for that. But I think the more I did this work to acknowledge the dominant identities that I have and but also feel the pain of the suffering that's caused by those identities.

• 12:15Speaker 03

  Sometimes when I make mistakes, it's not personal anymore. I just acknowledge that, oh, I didn't know that. Thanks for informing me. But it's helped me build bonds across difference in a way that I wouldn't see was even imaginable 10, 15 years ago.

• 12:28Dan Harris?

  Oh, you said a lot there and I want to get back to is-ness in a second. That's interesting. But I think one thing I just want to make sure I understand is you said that for people who are coming from a dominant group like me, the way in which bias can hurt us is that we carry with us a sense of superiority, which can lead to a kind of brittleness where anytime shit doesn't go our way, we freak out?

• 12:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, it can. It's a bell curve, right? Everything's a bell curve. But that's what I experienced and that's what I've seen happen with people with dominant identities.

• 13:02Dan Harris?

  No matter what your identity, I guess one case I'm surprised you haven't made yet, and maybe there's a reason for it, or maybe I just haven't given you the time. But it seems like no matter what your identity, we all have biases and we evolved to have biases, cognitive shortcuts, in essence. Many times, they misfire and hurt our ability to make, to see things clearly and make good decisions. So that seems to me to be at least one universal self-interest. Case for working on your biases because the more you have these unexamined blind spots, the dumber you are in essence.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I'll say two things. I think there are two important concepts that be, I think it would be really useful for folks listening to understand. First is the concept of bias itself. I think there is a false perception in our society that we're born with biases. We are not born with biases, particularly biases toward other humans. Like, we're not born to think that men are stronger than women or better at math than women, or white people are better leaders than people of color. These are learned habits. So all forms of biases are learned mental habits. There are conscious biases which are learned false beliefs, or unconscious biases that are learned habits of thoughts or associations. And both forms of biases distort how we perceive, reason, remember, and make decisions.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  So for me, growing up in the United States, that really meant that people weren't seeing me. I was just a new, I was just like nerdy kid who had an interesting sense of humor, but they saw other ideas of me because of those learned false beliefs and learned habits of thoughts. And there are five causes to any form of bias. We can get into that. So that's basically what bias is. And what I discovered in my research and what I write about in the book is, I had to like really blow up time and space. So I go into like 10,000 years of recorded human history, right? Whatever we have documentation for. And the idea is bias, particularly the type of biases we experience in our society, have really evolved recently, particularly on certain identities like race or even gender.

• 15:06Speaker 03

  And they've been spread around the world. We've been, our consciousness has been infected with these false beliefs and these associations. And our goal now is to unlearn these habits, these mental habits, and then learn and restore new ways of being with one another. So that's one thing about bias. The other is about identity. So I'm at the intersection of many, many subordinated identities, but also many dominant identities. And even someone like you, like, I don't know the fullness of your intersectionality that there are identities. Where you feel marginalized, whether it's your place in your childhood or where you grew up in terms of your geography, or how well traveled you are, or your profession.

• 15:49Speaker 03

  You know, there's so many different things that all of us have. And what I discovered as I was doing this research, and this was really inspired by the Dalai Lama, because I'd been listening to him as a practitioner for a very long time. And he always insisted that a first and foremost identity is being human, right, being sentient. And for me, I went into the research and I discovered that, oh, wow, like, that is really our primary identity. We are part of the same species. Ninety nine point nine percent of our genetic code, we share with people across the world. That's our primary identity at the absolute level. But then at the secondary level, this is our relative identities are the labels we give to our human form. And there are three forms, there are three buckets of secondary identities that we each have,

• 16:32Speaker 03

  biological, experiential, and social identities. So for me, to create this framework of the diversity of humanity really helped me see that, oh, wow, like, every single label we give to our body is, falls in one of those three secondary identity buckets. And it also helps us manage the complexity and the overwhelm that often accompanies this conversation. And that's what I want people to really begin to discover for themselves, the intersectionality of their humanity across those biological, social, and experiential identities. And that's what they'll begin to discover. You know, folks have survived trauma, a whole host of different types of trauma, whether it's being a survivor of war, having an accident, or survived cancer. These are identities we take on, experiential identities.

• 17:18Speaker 03

  We just went through COVID, right? Massive pandemic. So these are things that impact us at a biological level, at a psychic level, at an emotional level. And those are the things we can begin to really unearth and identify and become mindful of, and then transform the way they impact, the way we live, the way we relate to ourselves, one another, and other beings around us.

• 17:40Dan Harris?

  Pretty deep into your, your plan for transforming or breaking bias. But let's just say at a sort of high level for a second. I want to clear up some confusion and probably confusion on my part. You've very gently, I think disagreed with me when I was saying that we evolved to have biases. But I'm thinking of bias, not just in terms of interpersonal prejudice, but like the sunk cost fallacy or confirmation bias. These cognitive shortcuts that are wired into us and that do make sense on some level, but fuck us up on many other levels. And so what's the connection between those kinds of biases? And what you mean when you talk about bias?

• 18:19Speaker 03

  That's right. No, that's, this is really well said. And I think those are phenomenon of our brain, right? The shortcuts we take. For me, when I talk about bias is basically how we treat one another as human beings. And even with, you know, more than humans, animals and other lifestyle where we create hierarchies. And we assume things about people for no other reason than their being. Whereas what you're talking about confirmation bias or negativity bias. These are basically ways our brains have been wired evolutionarily. But that's not the type of bias that I'm talking about. I'm really talking about it at a human level, human to human level.

• 18:51Dan Harris?

  Yeah, fair enough. And so again, just to put a fine point on this, if I'm coming at this, I completely get your point about internalized bias. And I think there are many people listening to this show who will have a profound experience of that. And we should talk about it. And I just want to ask the question again, from a very pointed perspective. If I have not experienced a lot of prejudice in my life, what is in it for me to do this work? I mean, I, I believe strongly it is worth doing this work. Otherwise I wouldn't be doing episodes about this all the time. But I want to hear your articulation of that.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  Whether you or someone who's listening, have you ever looked at the mirror? Looked at the person you see in the mirror and wished they were someone else? Wish they were taller, skinnier, more beautiful, handsome, what have you? Have you been that person? Have you wished something hadn't happened to you? Have you wished that you had certain opportunities? Those are those false beliefs or habits of thoughts. And if you've been that person and that's impacted you, it's impacted the way you relate to yourself, that negative self-talk. The job or that continues to go on. If that's impacted the way you treat your spouse or your family members or your children or your colleagues at work.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  Well, this is the work. This is for you.

• 20:10Dan Harris?

  So that's really interesting. So I, just to see if I can, I keep using myself because I don't have many other points of reference, but I, as a, a white man who, I've definitely experienced some prejudice. I'm Jewish and so I've spent a lot of time in the Middle East and so I've definitely experienced some prejudice, but generally speaking, my experience of moving through the world is quite easeful. To the extent that I have dis-ease, it's mostly self-manufactured. And of course, I've looked in the mirror and been like, oh, as I've often joked, where are the abs I had in my thirties? Which of course is me internalizing a story about these arbitrary aesthetic standards that we set for bodies. So I, I think what you're saying is something much more general and universal than the

• 20:53Dan Harris?

  internalized bias that we might feel based on race or gender. Those are huge issues, but it, it really is, this work is in the best interest of everyone.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  Yes, and this is why for me, this work was so important to talk about from an intersectional perspective and from a global perspective. You know, that every human being is suffering in some shape or form because of these learned ideas and they are mistreating themselves and one another as a result of it. And for me, when I discovered this for myself, again, using I, I was like, oh wow, like I can unlearn these things, let's try it. And I experimented and you're, you already heard my story where I started 15 years ago. And to the person that I'm now, I realized that, oh wow, our brains are really plastic. The idea of neuroplasticity, we can actually unlearn and relearn new habits. And that's what the opportunity for me is right now. And I really think that breaking bias is probably the most important work we can be

• 21:49Speaker 03

  doing in the 21st century because of how much self-loathing, mental health illnesses, loneliness that people feel. And this is across intersectionalities. Of course, race and gender play a prominent part, but all of us, like you mentioned, like even things like our looks. And it doesn't matter what those intersectionalities are, suffering is suffering.

• 22:09Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  You know.

• 22:11Dan Harris?

  Yeah, so that seems like a core thesis. I don't, I want to be overly confident about whether it's the core thesis, but a core thesis of yours is that everybody, no matter what kind of body you have, is suffering because of false, learned, internalized stories we're telling ourselves about the way we should be, i.e. self-loathing, self-criticism, the inner critic. And when you have that, which we all do to some extent, when you're kicking your own ass, that shows up in your relationships with other people. And because our relationships with other people are so central to our well-being, that is the beginning of what my friend Evelyn calls a toilet vortex, where you're kicking your own ass, and then you're mean to other people, and then your relationship's suffering,

• 22:56Dan Harris?

  you kick your own ass even worse, and down you go. Am I restating this with some degree of fidelity to your core ideas?

• 23:03Speaker 03

  Yes, I wouldn't state it that way, but I think I love the analogy. It makes so much sense. And the only thing I would add is that when we treat ourselves in this way, right? Where we want to be other than who we are, that's when we start treating others that way too. We want others to be a certain way, and we can't see them for who they are. And that begins to build that disconnection. And it really begins with the disconnection we feel with ourselves. So for me, breaking by usually begins with I, with us. And then the more we kind of work on ourselves and heal ourselves, it trickles into our relationships and the decisions we make, whether at work or in our communities and our families and beyond.

• 23:43Dan Harris?

  Maybe that's an internalized story.

• 23:44Speaker 03

  It is. I'm like, that negative self-talk, damn, you gotta watch that.

• 23:49Dan Harris?

  Yes, but one should still be allowed to make jokes.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  Yes, that's true.

• 23:52Dan Harris?

  Because I sometimes can take a minute to understand something that makes complete sense to me. And I just want to add on top of that, as somebody who is somewhat reluctantly a boss, and I think this is true in a business context, whether you're technically the boss or not, we all are leaders. If you're carrying around false ideas about other people based on their body shape, or skin color, or gender, or gender identity, or whatever, that makes you dumber, and makes you, can lead you to overlook people who can be incredible participants and contributors to your team. And so there's another piece of the self-interest for doing this work is, is I guess what I'm trying to argue. Would you agree with that?

• 24:33Speaker 03

  Absolutely. There are three ways particularly this shows up. Like every bias for businesses and employers is incredibly expensive in terms of thwarted performance and wasted costs. So that's just the money aspect that we would save a lot of money in our economy, in our world, if we could address, tackle bias. The other is, it's really inefficient, right? It creates inefficiencies. Like you said, we wouldn't be able to hire the best talent, or nurture the best talent because of these false ideas about who we want them to be versus who they are. And the third is really suffering, like it hurts. It also hurts us, like we just discussed, like we are putting these massive limitations on ourselves as well as others. So I think all three of them are things that we have to really look at

• 25:17Speaker 03

  around bias. And in terms of financial costs, I'll just give you one figure that this was 10 years ago, this number is probably higher, but Kellogg Foundation and a big think tank basically tried to monetize the cost of racial bias in the United States per year. And they found the number to be $2 trillion. This was like 2013. And they basically aggregated a lot of economic studies across different life outcomes, from housing to criminal justice to education, in terms of, again, thwarted performance and wasted costs. In OECD countries for gender bias, it's like upwards of $8 trillion annually. So for me, like, folks that care about money, let's say we're operating in that solely about monetary resource, and

• 25:59Speaker 03

  like, this is what we need to tackle. And sadly, this has been one of the challenges with the diversity industry is we're not getting to the root cause of the challenge, which is bias. And also how it's a learned habit. So when we think about diversity training, what we need to do is train people to unlearn them.

• 26:20Dan Harris?

  Coming up on UGupta talks about what has and has not been working in most of the DEI trainings out there. And then we dive into his Prism Toolkit. These are the moves you can make both in your head and in the world to break bias.

• 26:37Speaker 04

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• 27:10Dan Harris?

  Let me just pick up on the diversity industry comment that you made because I think a lot of, I know, you know, we get, I do a non-trivial amount of episodes on bias, prejudice, racism, sexism, and I get a lot of negative feedback when I do it.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:28Dan Harris?

  And I do it anyway, because I believe in the importance of the work. And I think part of the problem, and I could be wrong about this, and I want to say it out loud and see and check it with you, is that many people have gone to deeply unhelpful DEI sessions at work.

• 27:43Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 27:44Dan Harris?

  And also, there's something about the vocabulary, which with due respect, you use a lot of like dominant, subordinate, intersectionality, privilege. There's something about that language that sends the signal to some people, you're the other, you're the barbarian.

• 28:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:02Dan Harris?

  Because you don't talk this way, and us in the know use this lingo. So anyway, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on that.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  No, I think it's such a great point. And I accidentally fell into this industry. I was a human rights lawyer before I started my organization, because I saw that we could change policies all we wanted, but we're not really going to create equitable results unless we also shifted hearts and minds. So it's both end. And for me, that's really what unlearned. Learning biases about, breaking biases about. And you're absolutely right. I think a lot of people rightfully have critiqued the diversity industry because it's rooted in shame, it's rooted in blame, it's rooted in guilt. And these are afflictive emotions. They are incredibly dangerous. And the backlash that we've seen in the last couple of years, the polarization we're seeing in our country and our world is due to those emotions being triggered.

• 28:52Speaker 03

  And for me, as someone who was, I was a teacher before, I was slated to be a law professor, but I left that world to kind of build this education company. And I learned a lot about how adults learn, how people learn. And we have to keep shame, blame and guilt at bay. Rather, it needs to be playful. So for me, I use those terms, but from a sense of creating a psychological, safe learning environment. And it's really important that we do that, both in the book, but also in all of the work I've done. And this is where the magic of mindfulness-based tools really come. I came to this work, I was working as a lawyer in issues of human rights, racial equity, gender equity. That was like my professional job, but personally, I was addressing the harms of bias I'd experienced.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  And for that, I was going on long retreats, I was studying deeply the Buddha Dharma and really applying it to my life. And through that work, I came across the scientific studies that were showing that, oh, the tools I was practicing on retreat, loving kindness and compassion and curiosity and mindfulness are beginning to show a measurable reduction in bias. These are like large qualitative and quantitative studies. And that's when I, it just kind of hit me, it just clicked. It was like, oh, we have to blend contemplative science with the science of the work of ensuring fairness and equity in our society. That's how I came to the work, but the way I've been doing this work is quite unique for that reason.

• 30:21Speaker 03

  With that said, I will say that the mission. The objective of the diversity industry is quite noble, actually. But the way it's been enforced, not by everybody, but by many organizations, has been misguided for the reasons you stated, for the reason I've stated. And we don't even have to state it. It just feels bad. I remember I went to my first, I was working at, when I was working as a lawyer, we had a diversity training, a mandatory one that we had to attend. This was like 2011. And I remember leaving the room with my shoulders to my ears. It was so tense. Because that ability to be a human wasn't present and it was somatically uncomfortable.

• 31:00Dan Harris?

  So you've come up with something called the Prism Toolkit. And I'll state the five steps of the Prism Toolkit out loud and then we'll just walk through them systematically. So mindfulness, stereotype replacement, individuation, pro-social behavior, perspective-taking. So you start with mindfulness, which makes complete sense to me. But maybe you can explain for those of us who are new to mindfulness, what you mean by that and why you start with it.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. So mindfulness is really the bedrock of the Prism Toolkit. And mindfulness is just being aware, noticing, being aware of what's arising in one's mind, one's body, one's somatic experience, emotions. It's a whole host of experiences. And what we do is particularly when it comes to stereotyping and prejudice, whether it's toward ourselves or others, we become mindful of it. It's like, oh, idea, oh, stereotype. And we also label it as such. Because that's really important. We see someone, something that we've not, like, I see a woman with a hijab. A whole host of associations come to mind that I've learned, right, from the causes of bias. But instead of being with the person who, you know, that I'm seeing. So I can just, if those associations come, I can just be like, oh, stereotype, stereotype.

• 32:10Speaker 03

  And that creates a gap between me following that train of thought versus kind of being with the person. So that's really the bedrock of it, to begin to acknowledge stereotypes and become mindful of them, notice them, label them in our minds.

• 32:22Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I took a, as an example of a really skillfully delivered diversity education product. I took a class, an online class with our mutual friend, Sebene A. Selassie, and several other teachers. Who are Dharma teachers talking about race through the prism of the Dharma. This was many years ago, pre pandemic, probably like 2017 or something like that. One of the practices they asked us to do was just to try to be mindful as you're walking through the world of the stories you tell yourself based on purely on other people's appearances. And I had many humbling experiences, which I've mentioned publicly before, but might be worth just saying a little bit more about again, taking my child to see the play Frozen.

• 33:06Dan Harris?

  On Broadway at that time, the people playing the parents of Elsa and Anna were black. They were the king and the queen. And my first thought was, oh, they must work in a castle somewhere. And that was really bracing to see that that was my initial reaction. Whoa, it's really embarrassing to admit that out loud, but these stories are coursing through all of us all the time. And so there's nothing you can do about it if you're unwilling to see it.

• 33:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. And the beautiful thing that you did in both those instances is you became mindful of it and you labeled it. The one thing I would invite the audience to do is also if it's accompanied by emotions of, as I said, embarrassment or shame, I would also make those emotions an object of mindfulness, because what we want to do is notice that shame and over time let go of that shame, because it's not personal. One of the other things that I talk about in the book is that all forms of biases that we've learned have five causes. And that's how our brains are trained in it. So it's not personal that we've learned these things, but now it's our responsibility, our obligation to unlearn them.

• 34:13Dan Harris?

  What are the five causes?

• 34:14Speaker 03

  So it's a false story. That's the first cause. Whether it's race or gender, there's a story about a hierarchy. Second is policies that are based off of that false story. And that all of us as humans operate in a cultural container created by those policies. And we learn biases through social contact, which is both our trusted spheres of influence, like our family members, our friends, and also our built environment. The fourth is education, which is a lot of misinformation or information gaps about identity in our school curriculum, university curriculum. And then the fifth is media, big one, as we're seeing right now. And just feeding these ideas consciously and unconsciously. So we can talk about that after we go through the Prism Toolkit.

• 34:57Dan Harris?

  Sure, I just want to stay with this mindfulness piece for a second. Because I think you said something crucial there. That you're talking about the disutility of shame. And I sometimes talk about shame as like a kind of psychic constipation. Like, nothing can move through if you're stuck in this story about what a horrible person you are. Instead of viewing it all as, I love this phrase from the Burmese meditation master Sayyidah Utejania. He asks his students to drop this phrase into their mind in the course of their meditation. This is nature. It's all nature. It's all nature. It's impersonal. It doesn't mean you shouldn't take responsibility for it. But getting stuck in shame is a cul-de-sac.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  It's beautifully said. And, you know, I quote him quite a bit in the book, Utejania. But it's just that it's an afflictive emotion. And also to create that story of I'm such a horrible person, that's delusion. That's Mara. Like shame itself is a manifestation of Mara. It's one of the poisons. So I think part of it is for us to become really intimately aware of it. And not just in the mind, but also in the body. You mentioned how uncomfortable you felt, right? Now we have to become aware of the somatic experience, a sensation that accompanies fear as well. And that's where I feel like this work is so important because bias isn't rational. If it was rational, we would have solved it by now. There's libraries of research and documentation around why it exists and how it exists. Now, we have to really apply it.

• 36:27Speaker 03

  And for me, that's what the Prism Toolkit helps us do, is really apply it to kind of move it from the head to both the heart and the body. And that's kind of the invitation that I would make around mindfulness is not just noticing the emotion or the thought and concept, but also land it on the body. Let's find the book. I have about 130 exercises to help people just do that and build that habit.

• 36:49Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I want to get into those exercises. Just as a point of definition or definitional clarity for people who aren't familiar with Mara and the concept of delusion. Can you unpack that a little bit?

• 37:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, so one of the things that's really prevalent in the Buddha Dharma is this idea of Mara. And Mara is basically all of the unwholesome ways of being that we have in our mind. Anything that's unskilled for, anything that causes us harm. And it's really a composite of what I would say the three poisons, according to the Buddha. Greed, aversion, and delusion, or ignorance. Ignorance of our inner dependence. Ignorance of our inner connection with one another. Because we believe that we're a separate self. And that's ignorance. So that's what Mara is. And then all the affective emotions are really a product of that. And for me, the Buddha Dharma is really what it says is that we suffer

• 37:43Speaker 03

  because we identify with these things. We cling on to certain ways of being. And the practice of mindfulness and others help us really cleanse our body, hearts, and minds of these defilements. Was that a good enough definition? Perhaps you have a better way of defining it.

• 38:00Dan Harris?

  No, I thought it was great. I mean, I would just build on the, because people get confused sometimes by this idea of, what do you mean, I'm not a separate self? And I think it's useful just to explain that from the Buddhist point of view. And just this makes complete sense to me. Yeah, there are two levels of reality. There's the Buddhists call relative reality and then ultimate reality. On the level of relative reality, yeah, you are you. A new when you look in the mirror, you're going to see a new looking back at you. And the world sees you and you need to use your driver's license when you get on a plane. And you, on this consensual level of everyday reality, you are you. But if you take a high-powered microscope,

• 38:43Dan Harris?

  you're going to have a hard time finding any essence of a new. Because on a deep, deep level, you are inextricably interwoven into the universe. You're an expression of the universe. And so is every thought you've ever had. It may feel personal, but it's actually just the universe. And that's ultimately true. And so thinking of it on these two levels can make this somewhat esoteric assertion a little bit more digestible. How does that sound to you?

• 39:10Speaker 03

  That's beautifully said.

• 39:11Dan Harris?

  Okay, so we talked about mindfulness as a first step and not only being mindful of the stories you're telling about yourself and other people, but also mindful of the emotional reaction, including shame. And it can be very useful in this case to be mindful of like how it's showing up in your body, which of course is a big emphasis of Buddhism in Buddhism. The next step, once you've become mindful, and that obviously, I don't want to diminish that, that's a huge step, but the next step is stereotype replacement. What does that mean?

• 39:42Speaker 03

  So basically, it's about creating new mental models. So the beautiful thing is, you've now become aware, you've noticed a stereotype arising in your mind. Now you replace or bring to mind a real, actual life example who defies that stereotype. So in the lab for black men, for example, they had folks think of Dr. King, someone who defies those stereotypes that are often presented to us about black men. But it doesn't have to be Dr. King, it could be someone you know, a colleague, a friend, a spouse, someone who basically would help your brain weaken those associations. And we do that as often as possible. And we do that if we see stereotypes in our environment, whether it's on the media, whether it's in our schools, whether it's a friend talking to us. And that's what helps

• 40:25Speaker 03

  us weaken those associations. So the way this really works is it helps rule neurons that fire together, wire together. So that's really how we've learned a lot of these stereotypes and prejudices. So what we're doing with Prism Tools is really beginning to create new wiring, unlearning old stuff and learning new stuff.

• 40:42Dan Harris?

  I like that. So just to, again, reemphasize it, once you become mindful of the story, oh yeah, I saw somebody in a hijab, or I saw somebody in a larger body, or whatever, and I told myself a story about them. If you've caught it, if you've been mindful, you can then replace the story with an example of somebody from the broader culture, or somebody even better, somebody you know, who puts the lie to that stereotype.

• 41:07Speaker 03

  Exactly. And if you can't think of anyone, right, because of how hyper segregated we are, we have our wonderful friend, Google, or any other search engine out there. Like, if you want to think of a surgeon as a woman who wears a hijab, you will get tons and tons of real life examples. So that's where we begin to really use technology to our benefit and begin to build new mental models.

• 41:28Dan Harris?

  All right. Next one is individuation. What does that mean?

• 41:31Speaker 03

  So individuation is the practice of cultivating curiosity, interest, investigation, and it's really decoupling the group-based associations from the individual. So when I'm with Dan, I'm with Dan, the human Dan is, versus my ideas of Dan because of all of his different identities. And that's really important because that allows us to really be in the presence of each unique human as they are versus live in the various identities that they're in. And this is again, we can do this ourselves, right? Through asking questions, through learning more about people, but kind of seeing the dynamic nature of a human being beyond their identities. And then we'll begin to see is like, oh, wow, like they're a brother, I'm a brother.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  Oh, they drive cars like I drive cars. This is what a lot of tabloid magazines do about, you know, celebrities. But these things are actually helpful. They help us see people in the fuller picture of who they are.

• 42:25Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. I mean, instead of, instead of constantly viewing people through the prism of whatever group society has placed them in to just think of them as an individual.

• 42:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:37Dan Harris?

  The next on the list is pro-social behaviors.

• 42:40Speaker 03

  So basically, the way these prism tools so far, we've gone through are really head and body-based. Pro-social behavior is now bringing in the hard qualities. So pro-social behaviors are basically a whole host of mental and emotional states that are helpful, that are positive, that things like loving kindness, compassion, joy, altruism. So these are practices that we could actually cultivate. These are tools that we can cultivate. This is the Brahmaniyahars, for example. But these are things that help us be pro-social. What they're doing at the neural level is that they're beginning to shift that affect, that negative affect often associated with stereotypes, with grouping people in, boxing people in,

• 43:22Speaker 03

  because that's connected to like fear, or worry, or danger. So when we practice these tools toward ourselves for internalized biases and others for interpersonal biases, we're beginning to diminish that fear through practice.

• 43:36Dan Harris?

  So one way to undo the wiring is to, is to take real action, to take real steps to be kind. That actually changes the way you view the world.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. For me, I actually practiced loving kindness, for example. Like I would do a 20-minute sit for stereotype groups. I would do like a five minutes sit, whatever is possible. And there's a lot of activities like that. But really begin to send those well wishes to also stereotyped identities that we may have. Ways that we dislike ourselves or hate ourselves. We don't have that six pack. Okay, let's do that. And that's where we're beginning to kind of diminish the power of that, how things should be. And really opening the heart to the possibility of what we ultimately are at the absolute level, interdependent and interconnected.

• 44:25Dan Harris?

  So when you talk about pro-social behaviors, are you talking just about doing it in your head? Or actually like doing something useful in the world? And not to say that doing it in your head isn't useful, but I mean, taking concrete action in the world, off the cushion, as it were.

• 44:40Speaker 03

  So my sense is, and this is through my own practice, is we do it on the cushion. And that helps us, that basically informs our actions in the world. Because we're rewiring this nervous system, this brain. If I were to feel those bodily sensations of fear, they're not there anymore. Right? Or they're diminished. So I could actually be with humans for who they are versus my ideas of them. So it's a both and.

• 45:06Dan Harris?

  I've seen that in my own life. And the finally, perspective taking.

• 45:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, so this is kind of also a hard practice, but it's, it also requires visualization. So it's imagining being in the shoes of another person. And the fullness of who they are versus our ideas of them. So Isabel Wilkerson, in her book Cast, talks about this as radical empathy. But for me, it's really something that we have a capacity to do, like as human beings, to imagine. Like I can imagine, given what I know, what's it like to be in different humans' shoes? Great actors do this really well. They're not the ones who've lived whatever life they're depicting. But sometimes when you're in a theater or a movie, you're like, wow, like, I'm just so moved. Because they were able to capture the fullness of another human's experience. And that's something that we all have the capacity to do.

• 45:53Speaker 03

  And that really brings us together at a nervous system level. It helps us transcend that instinct for bias. For me personally, I did this for myself first, most of these tools. So I would do this for the six year old I was, or the 12 year old I was, or the 18 year old I was, one after another, either through journaling or through meditation. Meditation is helpful because it helps me feel the experience of it, the flood of emotions, but then it also triggers prosocial behaviors, empathy, compassion, care, concern. And that's where we can begin to really build, kind of bridge that polarization, that divide we've been trained to have toward aspects of ourselves and one another.

• 46:40Dan Harris?

  Coming up on New Talks about how to turn breaking bias into a habit in your everyday life, even if you feel overwhelmed by all the other stuff you have to do, and his response to skeptics.

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• 47:26Dan Harris?

  Is there research backing this Prism Toolkit approach?

• 47:31Speaker 03

  Yep. So each one of these tools have been shown to be efficacious around measured by reducing implicit bias as well as explicit bias. It's also the subject of a book that first came out in the 1950s on prejudice. So it's been longstanding. And the beautiful thing about this is that modern sciences, whether it's neuroscience or contemplative science, have just re-language what humans have known for millennia. Like these tools, I use it from Ancient Buddhist wisdom, but they they exist in the Sufi traditions, they exist in the contemplative Christian tradition. And this is what, this is a human technology that we have, with just different labels now.

• 48:14Dan Harris?

  If people are listening to this and thinking, oh, this sounds fantastic, but it's a lot. What kind of advice can you give people to like start small and keep it going?

• 48:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, part of it is like, it might feel like a lot, but once you're in the habit of it, it just becomes a new habit. It takes as little as eighteen days to build a new habit based on research. So part of it is like, we have to practice to build this habit. And when people feel like, oh, my God, it's a lot. Well, you know, it's a lot to carry that negative self-talk about yourself all day, every day. It's a lot to feel afraid of humans for no other reason than their being, because they're trans or black, what have you. That's a lot. So we're just carrying so much guck around. So for me, the opportunity really is that this is the trade off. We're going to feel better about ourselves and one another.

• 49:05Speaker 03

  And we can truly live, create workplaces and communities where we feel like we belong. And for me, that's worth it, right? In addition to all the other benefits of breaking bias. But practically speaking, it just begins with now. Like just coming now and kind of practicing now, becoming mindful of what's arising for people. And this is why I think in the, in the book, the way I've written it is it's really more than just talking about the theory of it. Like there are tons and tons of pauses. Like I ask people to pause and really feel it and practice the prism toolkit. Cause I want people to get into the habit of practicing this day to day. If folks don't care about other people and the world, which I understand, my family's like that too. Cause it's enough just like running their own life.

• 49:50Speaker 03

  Well, care about your kids. You know, I have two nieces and these things have already begun to show up in their lives, in elementary school and middle school. So by practicing this, we can really model and teach these skills to our young ones.

• 50:03Dan Harris?

  I mean, this is why I'm always so focused on self-interest because. I don't know that there's anybody who doesn't care about the world, but they may just be so wrapped up in their shit that they're not feeling super pro-social.

• 50:14Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 50:14Dan Harris?

  But everybody cares about their own suffering. And that's why I emphasize what's in it for me, because I do think that's just the sharp end of the stick generally. And you've made the point very well and repeatedly, I'll just say it again here. It sucks to walk around with self-limiting, negative, self-lacerating stories about yourself. And then, of course, it leads to all sorts of deleterious impacts for how you treat other people in the world. But just start at how it sucks for you, and that should provide incentive enough to dip your toes into these waters.

• 50:45Speaker 03

  Exactly. And it helps us build new habits, right? So oftentimes, what I used to do, and I talk about this quite in detail in the book, particularly in the media chapter, is when I feel shitty about myself, I would go to social media, I would read the news, which would make me feel shittier. I would drink alcohol, or whatever I would do. I would like gossip. I would always come out feeling worse, and more depressed, and more annoyed, and more irritated. And once I started practicing these tools, of course, like, I still engage in some of those things, but there's mindfulness there. Like, I'm doing it with a purpose. If I get a drink with a friend or two, I'm really doing it to be social with them versus to run away from how shitty I'm feeling about myself.

• 51:27Speaker 03

  And that's where I think it helps us become agents of change within our own lives.

• 51:32Dan Harris?

  Okay, so help us get started here. You said before you've got dozens and dozens of practices in the book. Let's talk about, uh, let's pick a few and talk about them as a way to help people, like I said before, dip their toes in here.

• 51:46Speaker 03

  Well, Sinead, one of the things that would be helpful to talk about here is also the causes of bias, like how we've learned biases, because that's what we're bringing really mindfulness to over and over again in the book. So, as I said, there's five causes of bias, including the foundational cause, the first cause, which is a false story. So one of the things I ask people to do in the book is document, write down in the book or somewhere else, define, let's come, let's talk about race, for example. What is race for you? It doesn't matter what it actually is, but what is race? Just define it in your own words. And where did you learn these ideas? So again, we're beginning to notice, where did you learn what race is? Who told you? Who taught you? And that's where I think we begin.

• 52:28Speaker 03

  Bringing mindfulness, oh, this is how I've learned this idea of how humans are separated according to this identity we call race. And then I go into kind of the history of how race came about. You know, you'd be surprised how many doctors, teachers, lawyers I've trained in the last decade who believe race is biological, that there's fundamentally a biological difference between humans who are black and white and Asian and Latina. But ultimately, the story that we've all been infected with was created less than 300 years ago by a bunch of dudes who love to collect skulls. And they created a lot of these stereotypes, right? So when I share that history, for example, then I say, okay, how does this feel? Let's become mindful of what is the body sensation? What are the emotions that arise?

• 53:13Speaker 03

  And then begin to document it. I don't know if you have a reaction to that. Maybe you knew this already.

• 53:17Dan Harris?

  I did know, yes.

• 53:19Speaker 03

  And for a lot of my students, they feel like, oh, my God, I feel angry. Why didn't anything, my schooling, I went to medical school, right? I got residency. Why was I never taught this? Right? And then we begin to kind of really investigate how that feels first, because in order for us to take action, we have to really manage those emotions. Other thought, like, because the history is pretty horrific sometimes, right? Because of the massive amounts of violence, that's we bring in the pro-social behaviors and to help us, the compassion, the joy, the loving kindness for ourselves, but also for others. And then we also practice perspective-taking, particularly for people who created these stories.

• 53:58Speaker 03

  And that's really important for us to feel, like, what stories would they have to imagine? How would they feel in their own bodies for them to create such simplistic hierarchies about humanity, to dominate other people? And this is where we're beginning to kind of make sense of the fullness of the human experience, because we can then see in our own bodies that urge to dominate and subordinate. So that's kind of some ways how this kind of really carries through. Similarly, for gender, I go into the story about, well, how I learned about gender. You know, I grew up in India for the first 10 years, but as a, as a boy, I was given special treatment, like, from a young age, from the women in my family. I have two sisters. I couldn't do any household chores. Everything was done for me.

• 54:43Speaker 03

  And I was repeatedly taught that because my sisters were going to get married, they were somehow inferior, coded ways, uncoded ways. And for me, that was really important to bring to surface. Where did, where do these stories come from? Right, and then not to practice them anymore. So this is kind of the way like we're really like breaking bias. And also it's emotional and mental response. Cause I still love the women and the men in my family. Like, I don't want to discount my grandmother, who I love and admire. But she was a product of those same causes and conditions. And this is where kind of empathy and compassion really flows in and flows through.

• 55:23Dan Harris?

  And that that's key, because people could do pretty bad things. And we should excuse those things, but we can see them in the context of, to use your phrase. It's a very Buddhist phrase, causes and conditions. Get even more Buddhist, you can talk about karma, the law of cause and effect. And that's, it's very useful because it can take some of, just as shame is not so helpful. Often hatred of people who are doing bad, pretty objectively unfair or unkind things. Isn't the best way to deal with them.

• 55:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, I didn't use that phrase yet, but that's really how the book is structured. Bias is a consequence of certain causes and conditions. Those five causes and five conditions. As a result, we get bias. So in order for us to really transform bias, we have to get to the root cause to shift those causes and conditions. So if we see like, I've been working in the medical field for a long time. We see a lot of racial disparities, right? We see a lot of gender disparities on how different types of patients are being treated. For no other reason than their being, their skin color or their gender. Now, because those health professionals are actively racist or sexist. Well, some of them may be, but the vast majority aren't. But the vast majority have learned some associations.

• 56:37Speaker 03

  So in order for us to really shift that consciousness, right? Shift those perceptions, the lens through which they're viewing their patients. We have to correct that misinformation. There's a study you'll find really fascinating is they've actually shown health providers. A hand that's being pierced with like a, with a needle. And then they're able to track empathy by looking at their sweat glands. And, and they saw that when the hand is darker skin, there's less. Empathy that's evoked.

• 57:06Dan Harris?

  I believe there are also studies that show that black people are less likely to get painkillers in the hospital, even when the doctor is black.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  Yep, yep, that's the internalized bias, right? Because this is all about those mental models we talked about that we've all been trained in because of media, because of social contact. So for me, the opportunity really is, what I call breaking bias is really a shift in consciousness. We're really shifting the way we are with ourselves and one another. And this is gonna take some time, but it really begins with us individually. Like, we have to begin with ourselves, which is why I think I so admire a lot of people who are doing the self-work and really leading by example. And that's kind of the theory of change I have around the book as well.

• 57:51Dan Harris?

  Let's get back to the notion of how to get started practically, some practices that we can do to, as I keep saying, like dip our toes here.

• 58:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, there are two practices that I begin the book with that are really, really helpful and something that I've been doing for a very long time. And regardless of where one is, you can practice along with me. So I want you to bring to mind and notice what arises in a word or a phrase when I ask you the following: How do you feel about bias in our society today? So just in a word or a phrase, just notice the first thing that arises. But again, you don't have to change it, or fix it, or analyze it, but just notice this word or phrase. So this is where you're practicing mindfulness. And then kind of really going deeper into any emotions that may be attached to this, any emotional affect. Is it pleasant?

• 58:45Speaker 03

  Is it unpleasant? Is it neutral? Somewhere on that spectrum? How does it feel in the body? This concept or phrase. So again, we don't have to change it, but just becoming aware of the somatic experience of this idea and now letting it go. And then similarly, in a word or a phrase, how would you feel in a world without bias? In a world where belonging replaces bias? Just notice what arises, a word or a phrase. Oftentimes, people have trouble with this one. Because of how cynical we are in our society. So I like to say that if you can imagine colonizing Mars, some people are imagining it, they're expanding resources there.

• 59:28Speaker 03

  We could also imagine what it's like to be in a world without bias. So if that's helpful, just notice a word or a phrase that arises. Once again, seeing this emotional affect, is it pleasant, unpleasant, neutral? Any emotions that accompany it? As well as a somatic experience, body sensations, spaciousness, love, whatever, whatever it is in the body. And now, moving to kind of pro-social behaviors and perspective-taking, really beginning to cradle these emotions, these ideas with loving-kindness. These are your experiences.

• 1:00:14Speaker 03

  They are. There's no right way to feel about these things. So I'm bringing that sense of compassion and kindness to yourself.

• 1:00:23Speaker 03

  And then what we can do, because we both practice this every time where, when we feel, when we witness bias in our society and we feel what we felt in a word or a phrase in the first exercise, we can replace it with this other feeling that we felt in a world without bias. That stereotype replacement. So that's just a quick way to really begin to put these practices, apply these practices into action. And I'll say that this is what a lot of our ancestors have done, right? For any kind of civil or human rights around the world. When I think about my ancestors in South Asia and in India, a lot of the freedom, independence,

• 1:01:05Speaker 03

  freedom fighters, were really imagining what it's like to be an independent country. What it would be like to, and that's what really inspired and motivated their actions. Similarly, for the suffragists, the women's rights advocates, the queer rights advocates, civil rights advocates. So this is what our work is really helping us do. And if the systemic stuff is too big for us, we could just do this for ourself. What would it be like for ourselves to be free of self-loathing? How would I feel, right? Free of whatever afflictive challenge we see.

• 1:01:43Speaker 03

  And that's kind of the invitation really here. And my hope is that it's a practice we're building on, right? So for me, this, I mean, 15 years ago, I could have never imagined it. But the more I practiced, right? The more I practiced, the more it became a reality. Because ultimately, what we're doing is really shifting that underlying affect.

• 1:02:05Speaker 03

  So shifting, of course, our thoughts, our beliefs, our habits, but also how we feel. And this is why prosocial behaviors really support us in making that transformation.

• 1:02:15Dan Harris?

  Interesting, I was thinking about my level of optimism. I wouldn't be doing this work if I didn't think that the Dharma or contemplative practices couldn't make a difference. To imagine a world without bias is a little bit of a stretch for me. So I'm just curious like how you get there.

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think for me, it's not about making it into a reality. There's two answers, two aspects of an answer. One is I'm not identified with like, oh, my God, this is how I feel and I have to create it in my lifetime, but rather I want to just feel what it would be like. And what I feel is real spaciousness, real openness. There's just like a heart opener and it just feels really free. And for me, I wanted to just have, and I've had this felt sense experience for so long that every time I see something on the news or I hear some comment that may be ignorant or bigoted, I'm able to bring that up again because that emotion is there with me and that keeps me inspired, that keeps me doing this work.

• 1:03:15Speaker 03

  So that's kind of like very practical, how I put this into practice on a day to day basis, because I know it's possible and bring to mind tons and tons of stories from history. The other thing that has really inspired me is really getting deeper into the Dharma. I don't know if you've read Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth.

• 1:03:33Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I have.

• 1:03:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, so he talks really about like how human consciousness over time, as limiting as it may seem, is moving towards more equity, more fairness, more love, more compassion. And when I study, when I go deep into the Buddha Dharma, the Hindu lineages that I'm a part of, the Vedic lineages, they really divide the world into various yogas. There's a Kali Yoga and the Deva Paro Yoga. And there's an incredible book on this, actually. It's called The Holy Science by Sri Yukteshwar. He lived in the late 19th century. Incredible kind of leader from South Asia. And he really simplified this for me. And he basically said that according to deep time calculation,

• 1:04:18Speaker 03

  the age of darkness, right? Immorality really ended in the year 1700. And since then, we've been in what is the second yoga, the Dvapara yoga, which is the age of morality. And we've seen those shifts, right? Since 1700, there's been, we've abolished enslavement. You know, there's been more rights for women and queer people. And there's been more collaborations and understanding between humans. So that's, but we're only 300 years in, in this 2,400 year old long cycle. So I think that deep time, it doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. But that gives me comfort that a lot of people in the world have been thinking about this. And as a human in this body, in this forum, I'm just part of that circle.

• 1:05:03Speaker 03

  And for me, that's what keeps me going. Dr. King said, the arc of the moral universe is long and it bends toward justice. Like, oh, that's right. So for me, it's, that means that, oh, we gotta do our work. We gotta keep on stepping up, showing up and growing up for our planet, for one another. And for me, these are the practices that really support that.

• 1:05:23Dan Harris?

  Yep, that makes sense. Reminds me of two Dharma things I've heard. One is just the concept of non-attachment to results. You know, you can do your work, the universe that is entropic. Do your work and don't try to get overly attached to the results. And then the other thing I've heard is the Dalai Lama counseling activists. Like, don't think about the impact in your lifetime. Think about it over the course of multiple lifetimes. And you don't even have to believe in reincarnation to see the wisdom in that. Anu, before I let you go, my two little questions I ask you. Is there anything that we didn't get to that you feel is like a form of malpractice?

• 1:05:59Speaker 03

  No, not at all. This was really, really fun for me. Again, I'm just really excited for listeners to get a hold of the book and to really engage with it. One thing I'll share is that one of the things that really, really inspires me is a quote by Grace Lee Boggs, who was a really incredible American. Activists who lived to, I think, 101 years old, based out of Detroit. And what she said was that people think of revolutions as changing state leadership, but that's not enough. You know, we have to recognize that we're responsible for the evolution of human consciousness. And for me, that's what really Breaking Bias is about.

• 1:06:36Dan Harris?

  Well, you kind of answered both questions. I was gonna say, what did we miss? And then also, I just reminded everybody of the name of the book, but you did both in one answer. Breaking Bias, check it out. And we'll put links to everything Anu related in the show notes. Anu Gupta, thank you very much.

• 1:06:51Speaker 03

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 1:06:55Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Anu. Great to talk to him. During the course of the episode, I mentioned in several previous episodes, I just want to mention that I will put links to those in the show notes. They include my conversations with Jessica Nordell, John Biewen, Dolly Chugh, Rhonda McGee, and Loretta Ross. Don't forget to check out what we're doing over at danharris.com. Free subscribers will get a gentle IV drip of wisdom from me and my podcast guests in your inbox several times a week. Paid subscribers get to chat with me directly via text, and also you get access to monthly AMAs, live video sessions where I'll lead a meditation and then also answer your questions.

• 1:07:38Dan Harris?

  And of course, all of it is designed to create a sense of community. So we're experimenting, we're learning. I'd love to have you on board, danharris.com. Finally, thanks to everybody who worked so hard to make this show a reality. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

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