I'm Oprah Winfrey, welcome to Super Soul conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time taking time to be more fully present your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now. Whoo, look at
you. Hey,
good to see you
again.
It's nice to see you. Two always will
you know the first conversation that you and I had together back? It was 2013 was also the first episode, we posted on our super-soul podcast and somebody just told me one of The Producers just told me that before we started that that's been listening to you know, one and two over four point two million downloads on that. So it just says to me, I hope how
What you're saying and the content you're putting out into the world. I think what it says is that people are hungry for this kind of information and you're still doing it now not only the still trying. Yeah. Yes. No still trying. You have done it again with atlas of the heart. How do you keep doing it? I do not know. I would have to say this is a beautiful book. This is a hefty book. It feels, you know, I love a book book and even when they had sent
Me through PDF this book. I said, can somebody please just so somebody just get me. Look. This is whoever did this cover give them a round of applause because I just yeah many times when back in the day when I was choosing book clubs. I would just go through, you know, a bookstore just browsing, browsing browsing. And I often chose books by their cover. Certainly, you are interested by the cover. This is such an amazing cover.
Thank you so much. And it was a team from Global Prairie. It was a big collaboration. We really wanted it to capture. What was on the Inside.
Yes, mapping meaningful connection in the language of human experience, which is a hard thing to tackle. But I may I say you all have done it in such an accessible way that it feels like you're speaking our language, which is in essence, what we're trying to do. I love how you start with with with with
The epigraph from Rumi heart is C. Language is sure. So how do you interpret language is sure? And is that the idea at the heart of this book?
It's like no matter what I'm doing. There's a roomy quote for it. Heart is C. Language is sure whatever. C includes will hit the shore to me. What that means is our heart is this sea of expansiveness, of emotion of experience, at some point that emotion and experience needs to bump into language.
Wow.
Yes and language. Therefore is the shore. It's the it's that it's the stabilizer. Yeah,
I went into this with a love of language. I had no idea. I mean zero idea as much research as I've done.
What language means to us as a social species? I just did not understand.
And so you came out of it understanding. What? Because you describe language is finding the right words and gestures to communicate experience to as a kind of life jacket. I love that. Yeah, the kind of life jacket.
Well, imagine this maybe 15 years ago. We collected survey research from right over.
Some people and we asked them, this question, write a list of every emotion that you can recognize in yourself when you're feeling it and you can name it and the average number was three, happy, mad and sad. And I started to ask myself. What is it mean, if we don't have a vocabulary?
That's as expansive as The Human Experience.
Wow, of course, you would be asking that question. You would be asking that question. You know why I love this? Like, really in the beginning of the book. Where there is there. Is this letter that you have written back in? 1984, asking the question, why we feel the pain? We feel, so you've been thinking,
Thinking about these ideas for a very long time and may I say the most beautiful penmanship pain? It's just gorgeous writing. So you've been thinking about these and asking these questions for a long time and it wasn't until reading this that I realize, you're so right. Having the language to help you explore and Define, you know, your emotions, not only your emotions you, you were able to label 87. Different
emotions.
Yeah, and what I realized just in kind of a painful personal way.
What's that for me? Growing up survival was about understanding the connection between emotion, behavior and thinking. I needed to add a volatile hostile household. I needed to understand, especially as the oldest of four. What comment are, what Behavior was going to kick something into gear, where I needed to both protect myself and my siblings. And so I started really
And fine tuning, this ability. And let me tell you I was good at it. Like I could I could say oh this person said that to be funny. We've got five minutes before all. Hell breaks loose. Wow gentlemen. Do you know I mean like
it was a have? No. Yes
a hyper-vigilance, which my therapist would call it today hyper-vigilance around that connection. And I used to think to myself all the time. Like Jesus is no one else seems
did. No one else see this coming because it's always coming. It doesn't
Come from nowhere. No, so on this beautiful cover, you say that we are the map makers and The Travelers and in the book, you define yourself, as being a map maker and having been one for a long time. Where did that metaphor for yourself? And for the rest of us come
from. So a couple things I'm obsessed with maps and antique maps, like IMA just cartography is so interesting to me. The second thing is it's actually a correction.
It's a, it's an explanation because I think in the last three books, I've started by telling readers. I am a map maker and a traveler meaning. I'm going to give you the research and the findings, but, look, I'm on the road with you. I'm not leading you. I'm stumbling next to you in this book. I wanted to say to people, we're all the mapmakers here. I can't give you any direction about where to go because I have no idea where you are. Now where you've been, you are going to have to take responsibility for being the Cartographer of your own life.
Mmm, and we all
are we all are right. Yeah. So
what was it like you? You work with therapist. You work with Educators, you work with researchers. You work with Community leaders, you work with college interns among others to write this and entire team, sharing experiences and talking about emotions. That must be so powerful.
I love this part. I says like, oh, please let over ask me some of the key key.
Research questions, and I knew you would because you're you got the geek and you got the nerd in
me, right?
Yeah. So here's where it started.
I just when I saw the picture of some of you, I just thought, wow, that must have been, that must have been, like some hot Vibes, you know, like just like vibing off of each
other. Yes, but it started with you and me. I'll tell you why. How? So yeah. Yeah, it started with you and I several years ago.
Did the ecourse on the gifts of imperfection? Yes. Yes. It says something. Like, 80,000 people went through that course and we had hundreds of thousands of pieces of data. So we stripped all of the data. All the comments from that course, and analyzed it asking a question, what emotion or Human Experience are people struggling to name accurately and we got a big list. Then I gathered those therapists in those researchers.
Diverse not only in their identity but also diverse in the communities. They served, and we filled a room full of these emotions that emerge from that secondary data. From that course, that we talked, and we ask this question. We gave them literally garage sale, stickers, red, yellow, and green. And we asked the question on the wall, you'll see over 200, emotions and experiences.
Give me a Green Dot. If you have to be able to really name and understand this to heal from it or move through it. A yellow dot if naming it is 50/50 important and a red dot if naming, it's not really essential to understanding or moving through it from that, we ended up with the core group of emotions and experiences that I dig into in the middle of the book. That's how we came up with that list. So it was really and then we added a couple just because we
Achoo, like, for example, jealousy came up, but I needed to add Envy because the best way to teach jealousy was to teach the difference between jealousy and envy.
What is the difference?
Wow, God. I do not use the right language in my personal life. So, Envy is usually an experience between two people jealousy, is an experience between three.
Envy is when we want something that someone else has jealousy is when we're afraid of losing something. We already have to someone else. And so weirdly, like, if you showed me your vacation pictures and you're like, but I look at this last vacation. It was so fun. I would say, oh my God, I'm so jealous. That looks great. I'm actually not jealous or envious. I'm envious. Yes, but I think we don't say that for two reasons, one. We don't say that because I think it's one of the greats.
And no one wants to say they're envious. It has a different connotation. Secondly, there's two types of Indie and India where I'm glad you had that vacation. I want it to and then a dangerous kind of Envy, which is I want that. And I don't want you to
have that. Yes. Yes. Yes,
so it's so much easier. Just to say and we have cute words for jealousy, but
Oh, I'm so jelly. That looks like a mazing but we're actually not jealous. We're actually envious. And in some cases we have malicious in be.
Yes, you do. Before I read atlas of the heart. I knew of course, what schadenfreude was because I have experienced it. It's taking pleasure in another person's pain, but I'd never heard of fraud, Android, which is annoying. Another person's success. I love
And you say that depressed people might exhibit deficiencies in fraud Android, and then I only just just depressed people there. A lot of people who cannot take pleasure in other people's happiness.
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, it's interesting research. I was so shocked when I thought I'd never heard a fraud in Florida either, but this idea that sometimes we experience depression as a result of not experiencing enough fraud in Florida, like we just
And I thought about something I taught my kids. When they were in elementary school. I used to say, I used to ask them to cut their hands, and put them in front of me. And I said, in your hand, is your flame. It's your soul. It's your like, you need to surround yourself with friends, who, when your light is shining bright. Don't feel the need to blow it out.
Well.
So powerful.
Yeah, and I said and when things get windy and stormy you want a good friend who sees your light dimming and cuts their hands around it to protect it a little bit. And so I don't know how it happened. But both of my kids. My niece's to this day. Still say, yeah. I thought we'd be good friends, but she's a cat. She's a candle blow router. Yeah, I think the opposite of a catalyst and that
would stick that
Yeah, it's dick. So many things with me in the book, stop like the difference between I'm in the weeds and I'm blown II was only a waitress for one day and make it through one day. Because I realized there's never a place to sit down. You can never actually how do you wind up when you get to rest? Oh, no, that was not for me. But you describe being a waitress at a restaurant where the demand was really high?
Hi. And this idea of in the weeds or I'm blown and it's so important. I realized to be able to know the difference because a lot of times people just say, I'm overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed. Can you speak to that?
Yeah, so let me start by saying this and this is, I'm telling you language Oprah. There's a, there's a quote in the book that I came across. Well, I was in college and it hit now and you come across those things and that, you know, somewhere this is going to play out in your life, it
By ludvig can steam, and it says the limits of my language mean, the limits of my world.
So, stress and overwhelm, here's what I did not know and I've been a researcher for 20-something years. I should I wish I would have known, let's say you decide to make some chocolate chip cookies. You get out of bowl. You add the milk, add the flour, the brown sugar, the egg, but what if I told you that the cookies changed the way, they tasted based on the bull you picked. That's what language is language does not just communicate.
Emotion, it shapes what we're feeling.
So, when I use a word to describe how I'm feeling.
Many times my body will follow my language. So the difference between stress and overwhelm as a waiter. We would always say, oh crap. I'm in the weeds. Hey Oprah. Can you take bread to table, 14, re T, table, 16 and table. Four needs a Greek salad, great. Thanks, and we all depend on each other like that. The life life in general is weeds and stressful.
But, two times in my six-year bartending and waiting tables career, I would walk into the kitchen and I would say I'm alone. And in that moment, everyone went into action. They would say go sit, get leave as like what know like leave and someone would run up to the hostess stand and say what tables is Renee have she has five to twenty ten. The line manager in the restaurant would say we've got Open tickets on 5, 6 and 7 9 10, or eating people would just take over.
They wouldn't even expect you to help them help you. I thought that was so significant
that even in that somebody had figured out that when you're out in the blown State and not that you really just need to be able to come back to yourself. Yes, do nothing and do nothing in order to do that. Yes, and nothingness is
actually what the researchers say is the only way to come back from overwhelmed.
So we were allowed to go into the freezer the parking lot, but we had to be gone for ten minutes. And so now I use the word overwhelmed too much. I'd say, oh God. I'm so overwhelmed. I'm so overwhelmed. Stop Renee because what would happen is my heart would start racing. My nervous system would say. Oh geez. I
didn't go anywhere overwhelmed language. Yes. Yeah.
There's a great quote from John kabat-zinn around. Overwhelm that kind of took my breath away.
He said that overwhelm means life is unfolding at a rate that neither my psyche nor my nervous system can handle. Yes. Ah, dang. That's
me. Well, let's go back to that. Quote from the German philosopher, the limits of my language mean the limits of my world. I think that was so perfectly said and it gets to the heart of what you're trying to do in this book. You're trying to help us.
The language within which we communicate our feelings. Yes.
Yeah, because imagine this is an example. I give him the book and I think about it all the time. Imagine. We'll just use will use you as an example. Imagine that you have a pain in your shoulder that so acute that when you feel it, you literally see stars. Like it takes your breath away. You finally get a an appointment with the orthopedist. You go in.
And she looks at you and says, I'm here to help what's going on and the moment you try to point to it and describe it. There's duct tape over your mouth. Your hands are tied behind your back. Right? And she said, I don't understand. I don't understand. I know people well enough to know that there are probably two options for us in that situation. We either lose control and part. Start thrashing about and knocking things off the counter and just lose. Our minds. Are we
Over in despair.
If all we really have are three words to describe. Happy. Happy, sad and mad. What happens to grief? Anguish despair Wonder Joy. Heartbreak what happens and that is why language is a portal.
Two universes, a new choices and Second Chances,
and language is a portal to actual connection. That's how I met action and what you say, so beautifully in the book is the connection is the energy that exists between people when they feel seen heard and valued when they can give and receive without judgment and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship, but you can't have that.
If you can't communicate your feelings, which is what we've heard for so many years from women, talking about their spouses, in particular. He doesn't communicate, he doesn't communicate, but we're what you're saying in atlas of the heart is that we all have issues with the language of communicating our
emotions. Yes, Erica tell you is like really hard to group these these words and I say emotions and experiences because as you know, you've done this
Work for decades as well. There's a lot of academic fighting about really, what, constituent constitutes an emotion. What doesn't? So I just say emotions and experiences because that covers everything, but when I was like, okay, we've got these 87, do we do them? Alphabetically, what do we do? What do we do? You know, what do we do? And then when I realized no, I didn't realize sucking that back. My art interns told us, God don't teach them alphabetically.
As we learned the most comparatively, so when you put. Yeah, so that's how we did it. So we did places you go and things are uncertain when we compare
that is so interesting that your intern said that because I remember so much from the book because of the comparisons, for example, shame, this truck me. Shame is the birthplace of perfectionism, the comparison of shame to perfectionism that perfectionism is not striving to be.
Our best or working toward Excellence, which I always thought it was healthy striving is internally driven, perfectionism is externally driven by a simple, but potentially all-consuming. Question of what will people think? So, I'm thinking, wow, I never ever would have been able to compare or even, you know, analyzed in the same space shame and perfectionism. So y'all we're doing it. Y'all have done some work in this
book.
It was exciting to me. That is two things. Shame and comparison. I mean Shaymin perfectionism.
It's so interesting.
Especially as I do all this leadership work in organizations where people don't understand that relationship and they actually build a perfectionistic culture intentionally and then they get to this place where they're like, there's no innovation or creativity. What's going on? Well, shame kills, creativity and Innovation and perfectionism is perfectionism is a defense mechanism against shame if I look perfect with perfect and do it perfectly. I can avoid or minimize shame judge.
And blame.
And for those of us who struggle with perfectionism myself included, when we invariably feel judgment, or blame or shame because it's just part of The Human Experience. Our thinking is not, this perfectionism thing is BS, it's not working. Our thinking is I wasn't perfect
enough. Yeah. And you write that love and belonging are irreducible needs for all people. You say, and in the absence of these experiences. There's always suffering and then
When we look
around at our society today, we see so many people, literally, in crisis, Binet, and suffering and that is people somehow feeling I think about what is the root of all of that suffering and anger, and I'm and think of it different now after reading Atlas, because I don't even know. It looks like anger, but there's got to be lots of other things going on there, but I think ultimately so many people feel that they don't belong. They are disconnected.
Did they aren't connected to others and to the Natural and the spiritual world? Is that how you see it? What do you what is happening to us? Now?
We are untethered.
Hmm. Yes,
we're addressed. I think spiritually emotionally physically cognitively. I think we're adrift and we are
lose because of politics.
Right. No, no. No, we're addressed. We're adrift because you know how overwhelmed like I said that that that definition of overwhelm. The world is unfolding faster than my nervous system and my psyche can manage the world is unfolding faster than we as a social species can manage, and it's unfolding in a way that drives separation. Not that drives connection, and we've confused hyper.
Skating with connection. I think one of the big problems and I got this wrong to actually. I didn't get it wrong, but I missed it. As we're unmoored untethered adrift. We are desperately trying to find a port somewhere to pull in and find Safe Harbor.
What we don't understand is that Port is inside of us. It is not external. It is not external. The only way to find the shore right now is within us, but there are a lot of very smart people who recognize lost the fact that we're lost and have created external ports that offer us.
Very quick, very counterfeit connection and a sense of belonging
aren't they. Also trying to
control their absolutely trying to control and they're being very successful.
And the reason they're being so successful is because we are untethered and Surround heathered lost where we are. Yeah.
Yeah, and
however, many is what it seems. It seems like well certainly in the last Administration. There was a lot of talk about.
Division and and how disconnected we all are from each other, but that didn't just happen that work for that to happen. And for us to be in this space now means it had to be coming for a while and we had to be loose a loosened from ourselves to now to be so to be completely untethered. Don't you think
I do think? And I think you know, I think that the answer is really hard and people disagree with me, but I feel more convinced than ever that this is at least a big.
Variable.
I know on a micro-level from the research that if you do not turn toward a painful story and own it, that story owns you and this country. If we do not turn toward our Collective painful, story around race around poverty around. If we do not turn toward that story and own it, it will continue to
Phone us. And that pain is owning us right now.
And if you look at the way it's showing us, you will see that. It's just, it's being leveraged and really painful ways. And it's a legacy of dehumanization and power over. Yeah.
Well, it's being leveraged in ways that literally, we no longer have a shared
reality. That's right.
that that but that, but that is by Design,
but whose design
Bye, I mean if you want to get really granular like I've taught critical race theory for 20 years. Like there is a school district in Texas. That is now saying, if we're going to teach the Holocaust, we have to teach the opposite point of view. There's no freaking opposite point of view. Like, you know, I think it's about this is not about I'm going to use a bunch of words together, but I but this is about white male.
Our over not white male power with or Mount male power to. But a type of power that has always existed. Its power over its power maintained by using beer, its power maintained by using control and its power. Most of all that's defined as finite.
If I give you any, I lose some, right, right? And that type of power right now, I mean, I wrote about this in 2015.
Is making a Last Stand. A last-ditch heroic effort in their eyes. Yes. And last hands are bloody long painful. And we're in the middle of it. We're in the middle of, do you remember when, you know, the feminist movement was making great strides and domestic violence and sexual assault rates went up and you know, the backlash, you know, we're in the
Of that. And it is a full on every day challenge and the systems that are being threatened, our systems, that I never thought in my lifetime. I would see threatened democracy science. I mean, I just never thought it would be a threat to science.
Literature literature. Yeah, teaching
education, history, history, actual history. Yeah,
so, and so, what you, what you smell is desperation, what you smell is desperation.
And we, we, how do we begin to foster a deeper sense of belonging or figuring out what really matters to us. Andre?
Tethering ourselves. How do you have for? What are we going to do to save
ourselves? You know, the only thing I know and I think her I hope there are like a million answers and more than a million people smarter than me working on it. For sure. The only one I know that will make it could make a big difference is self-awareness
for sure. That's it is so this book the heart is so important at this.
Ticular moment in time because what It ultimately brings each person who reads it to is a greater sense of there's an aha on every page practically is a greater sense of self-awareness about your feelings and your ability to articulate those feelings. So, you're doing your part,
but hope
I hope. But so it's a sense of self-awareness. It's by writing this and speaking up into the world and using your platform. How do we get the world to respond?
One person at a time, I guess.
I mean it's a million individual acts of self-awareness. It is that you know, I thought about I thought about you before this interview, but I also thought about you and I was writing this, we will do almost anything to not feel pain.
Including causing other people paying correct, you said? Yeah, and it's so much easier to hurt than to feel hurt. I don't, you know, it's just part of our Humanity. I guess. We need to understand where the hurt the sorrow, the despair, the anguish, the rage is coming from.
So that we cannot work it out on other people on an individual level or a collective level. It's like I saw that boat. I saw a boat the other day in Austin that had the F. Uck your feelings flag. James G. I'm talking about that is the most emotional flag ever made in the history of flax. That is, that is the most, the deepest emotional.
Flag in the whole world. The irony is like I can't even believe that irony.
That, that is a rage flag. That is not a rational flag. That is not
a, it's a rage play. Yes, it is. Yes, which is an emotion.
That is a hate flag. That is a rage flag. And what people don't understand is luck. I hate to be the bearer of shit news, but we are not cognitive beings who on occasion feel and think we are emotional beings.
And the war that's being waged right now is an emotional war. And until we have, a better sense of our emotions and understand where they're coming from. We're going to continue to conflict between inflict pain on each other. Well,
what you stated before is just it's just the fact, I mean, it's almost like a it's natural law that if you don't lean into the truth of what has happened in your own family and in your own life.
Life. Yes, you it happens individually in the micro and in the macro for us as as communities as societies and as position that if you're not willing to admit the truth, you're not willing to admit to the errors of the past. If you're not willing to do that, then we are never going to
overcome ever ever. Which is why?
There's such a Focus right now on making sure people don't get that
history.
And we know that that cannot work because you can't deny what's already happened? No, but, I mean, how many people have you talked
to over the years? Whether it's addiction divorced violence? Who spend their lives, denying on a micro level and their families. Yes, only to repeat it. Myself included.
It. Keep repeating it. Yeah, our conversation will continue in the next episode. You can listen by downloading part 2.
I'm Oprah Winfrey and you've been listening to super-soul conversations the podcast. You can follow super-soul on Instagram Twitter and Facebook. If you haven't yet, go to Apple, podcasts And subscribe rate and review this podcast. Join me next week for another super-soul conversation. Thank you for listening.
