An Interview With Drew Gerber
Begin a gratitude practice — try the new Gratitude Plus App because it has a community component that may feel good.
We live in a time of great excess. We have access to fast fashion, fast food, and fast everything. But studies show that all of our “stuff” is not making us any happier. How can we simplify and focus on what’s important? How can we let go of all the clutter and excess and find true happiness? In this interview series, we are talking to coaches, mental health experts, and authors who share insights, stories, and personal anecdotes about “How Simplifying and Decluttering Your Life Can Make You Happier.” As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Julie Potiker.
Julie Potiker is a mindfulness expert with extensive certifications and teacher training in a variety of tools and methods, including Mindful Self-Compassion. Her new book is “SNAP! From Chaos to Calm.” Through her Mindful Methods for Life program offerings, Julie helps others bring more peace and wellness into their lives. Julie’s first book, “Life Falls Apart, but You Don’t Have To: Mindful Methods for Staying Calm in the Midst of Chaos,” is now available on audiobook. Learn more at MindfulMethodsForLife.com.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share your “backstory” with us? What was it that led you to your eventual career choice?
When my speech became garbled, I sought help from a neurologist to rule out a brain issue. He diagnosed me with too much stress, and recommended MBSR. MBSR put me on the path I am on today, as a Certified Mindful Self Compassion teacher, author, and content creator.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
I have become a poet!
For me, writing poetry started when I said yes at the beginning of the lockdown to teaching mindfulness and meditation for Congregation Beth Israel’s virtual learning platform. The classes are open to the public, not just members of the temple.
The first three months of the pandemic, I was teaching every Tuesday and Thursday. Because I love hearing a poem at the end of a meditation, I was also researching poems every day and when I found one I liked, I would research the poet.
The class was a hit, providing succor and an anchor for people during their time in captivity. When they asked me to continue it, I dropped down to teaching once a week, purely because the poetry search was taking untold hours. It’s a wonderful rabbit hole to fall into, but a rabbit hole nonetheless!
Somewhere in all this, poems arose in me. Sometimes the group hears poems from famous poets, long dead, or contemporary poets, very much alive. And sometimes, they hear poems drafted by me! The unique extemporaneous meditations are recorded each week and uploaded with backing music by the fabulous Patty Lane to the Balanced Mind With Julie Potiker free podcast. That podcast has over 100 meditations with poems. Many in my group listen to it daily, besides showing up on Zoom every Wednesday morning to be in a loving community with each other. New people hear about the class and are welcomed by me and the original crew each week. It’s special how organically it grew into what it is today.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
I created a system for managing difficult emotions by calming our nervous system. I call it SNAP, an acronym with a somatic component that goes along with the teaching to broaden and deepen the learning. It is the title of my new book, “SNAP! From Calm to Chaos”. If people practice it, it will help them! The “S” stands for “Soothing touch,” tapping into our mammalian caregiver response which releases oxytocin and endorphins in our system. The “N” stands for “Name the emotion,” further calming down the system and allowing the pre-frontal cortex the time it needs to come online so that we can make a more skillful response. The “A,” which means “Ask,”is the biggie; it involves first asking “What do I need to hear right now?” and saying it to yourself. This is followed by asking “What do I need to do right now?” and pulling tools from your mental toolbox that are available in that moment when you are ready to shift your mood. The “P” stands for “Praise,” and that can be anything from patting yourself on the back for lovingly taking control of yourself, to praising your teachers, to thanking your deity of choice.
Can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority on the topic of “How Simplifying and Decluttering Your Life Can Make You Happier”?
I am an authority on mindfulness, which may assist people in simplifying and decluttering their life, which would make them happier. We need to slow down in order to determine what is important, and then focus on it — so I would submit that meditation, and mindfulness in general, is foundational in order to quiet the chatter in our minds enough to take stock of our core values (what is important) and then to gently inquire whether we are living in accordance with our core values. If we desire peace and tranquility, but we live in a high-rise in a cement city, can we make time to go to a park? Take an afternoon in a forest? Sit beside a body of water? When we experience things that are enduring, like nature, it can open our perspective and make it easier to drop down into ourselves with love and curiosity and see whether we might need a course correction.
Once we take the time to see our relationship to our materialism, we can let go of things we don’t need — gift them, or give them away. There’s a local place where I live called Kitchens for Good that has a retail store selling housewares and decor items which fund wonderful non-profits feeding and sheltering our neighbors who are unhoused. They have trunk loads of my stuff. There’s another place called the G’mach Gift Closet that sets up new families, immigrants, and refugees with everything to begin a new life here. I felt really good giving some of my late parents’ menorah collection to them, because there are so many impoverished families that celebrate Chanukah, and it felt good bringing a little light into their homes, from our home.
When you are of service, like gifting your clutter to people in need, it feels good — and feeling good makes people happy!
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the main focus of our interview. We live in a time of excess. We have access to so much. But studies show that all of our “stuff” is not making us any happier. Can you articulate for our readers a few reasons why all of our possessions are not giving us happiness?
Psychologists consider the “stuff” to give us hedonic joy, which is fleeting. When we are of service, we get a deeper longer lasting joy, which they term eudaimonic joy. Even people that win the lottery have been shown to eventually return to their base level of happiness. I suppose if the lottery winner created a fabulous organization where they were boots on the ground, actually helping people, or animals, or the environment, or whatever cause was for the benefit of others, they would get deep, long-lasting eudaimonic joy from their winnings.
On a broader societal level, how do you think this excessiveness may be harming our communities and society?
I’m not sure it is harming our communities and society. When I hear about a billionaire in the news, I think to myself that he must have a wonderful foundation doing terrific things. What’s harming our society is hate, ignorance, and lies — I’m speaking about my country, the USA.
The irony of struggling with happiness in modern times is glaring. In many places in the world today, we have more than ever before in history. Yet despite this, so many people are unhappy. Why is simplifying a solution? How would simplifying help people to access happiness?
Simplifying might give people more time in their waking hours to do something they value, something that would make them feel good, thereby making them happier. This actually helps society in that the people they come into contact with will be experiencing a happier person, which helps create an upward spiral of happiness in a community.
Can you share some insights from your own experience? Where in your life have you transformed yourself from not having enough to finally experiencing enough? For example, many people feel they don’t have enough money. Yet, people define abundance differently, and often, those with the least money can feel the most abundant. Where in your health, wealth, or relationships have you transformed your life?
I transformed my life in my relationships by practicing Mindful Self-Compassion, which has a large assortment of techniques: Taking in the Good, Gratitude Practices, Happiness Practices — all these things that allow me to show up for myself and others in a much calmer way than when I was younger.
People, places, and things shape our lives. For example, your friends generate conversations that influence you. Where you live impacts what you eat and how you spend your time. The “things” in your life, like phones, technology, or books impact your recreation. Can you tell us a little about how people, places, and things in your own life impact your experience of “experiencing enough?”
When I lean into the truth that I have people to care about, and that people care about me, I feel a profound sense of enoughness. I thank my lucky stars that I get to live in environments that have natural beauty — oceans, mountains and rivers, which make me feel grounded and peaceful.
What advice would you give to younger people about “experiencing enough?”
I would recommend they start a meditation practice, and a gratitude practice, and be a good person — treat others as they wish to be treated. They don’t call it “The Golden Rule” for nothing!
This is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience and research, can you share your “five ways we can simplify and declutter our lives to make us happier?”
- Listen to guided loving kindness meditations
- Begin a gratitude practice — try the new Gratitude Plus App because it has a community component that may feel good.
- Be of service in any way that warms your heart.
- Send items that you no longer need to a good home.
- Be a good person.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
SNAP as a global movement — snapping out of chaos and into calmness.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Thank you so much for these insights. This was so inspiring, and so important!
About The Interviewer: For 30 years, Drew Gerber has been inspiring those who want to change the world. Drew is the CEO of Wasabi Publicity, Inc., a full-service PR agency lauded by PR Week and Good Morning America. Wasabi Publicity, Inc. is a global marketing company that supports industry leaders, change agents, unconventional thinkers, companies and organizations that strive to make a difference. Whether it’s branding, traditional PR or social media marketing, every campaign is instilled with passion, creativity and brilliance to powerfully tell their clients’ story and amplify their intentions in the world. Schedule a free consultation at WasabiPublicity.com/Choosing-Publicity.
Author Julie Potiker On How Simplifying & Decluttering Your Life Can Make You Happier was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.