If it's true that the traumatized are more likely to cause trauma and damage people cause damage,

then it's equally true. It has to be that a cherished person is going to be able to find their way to the joy there is in cherishing themselves and others.

Welcome to Kelly Corrigan Wonders. I'm Kelly Corrigan and today I'm wondering about morality and character and change

with one of my most favorite thought partners ever.

Father Greg Boyle, who has been running something called Home Boy Industries in East LA for former gang members for 37 years.

I cannot tell you how much this conversation stayed with me, so please join us for a deep conversation with Father Greg Boyle.

We'll be right back with Kelly Corrigan Wonders.

Welcome back to Kelly Corrigan Wonders. I'm Kelly Corrigan. A few years ago, I lost 30 pounds. Seven years later, it's all back.

I know and love people who are trying to quit drinking, but cannot yet.

My children have promised to use their phones less and they use them more. There are whole sections of bookstores devoted to self-help because change is that hard.

Even if you're able to push yourself out of complacency, there is the daunting matter of making your new way of being stick for years, ideally for the rest of your life.

Over the last three decades, Father Greg Boyle has been witnessed two thousands of people who actually changed.

They disassembled their lives and rebuilt them from the ground up. No drugs, no violence, no stealing, cheating, leaving.

On the east side of LA and replicated worldwide, Father Greg Boyle's Home Boy Industries is a flourishing community where traumatized people teach themselves and each other how to attach,

how to love. Here is my conversation with the one and only Father Greg Boyle.

A lot of people say a lot of nice things about you in this building and outside of this building. Fancy people, the Pope and Barack Obama. What does notice and return mean?

I think this is a reference to praise and blame so that you kind of have the same response to both.

So you notice that maybe you're curious about it, you allow it in. You don't cling to nice things that people say about you and you don't cling to when people don't.

You notice that you see it, you're curious about it, you lean into it and then you return to your true self and loving.

Sometimes in your line of work where you're the center of something, a big part of your work becomes de-centering yourself.

Do you feel that way and if so, like how do you get out of the way?

Well, I don't know if it's about de-centering but I know that it can't ever be about you. So that's kind of the moral of the story.

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