Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast.

I'm Martha Beck.

How are you?

Last week we had an amazing time talking to the people from the Oprah Book Club who maybe had

never been to the gathering room before.

So if you came across us then and now you're back here with

us in the gathering room, those of us who've been hanging in from the beginning, we just want to

welcome you and give you a big friendly squeeze because it feels really good to get together on a

Sunday and I've come to depend on it deeply for my happiness.

So what I said last week that I have discovered that three things more than any other things

help sustain things like neuroplastic pain and other forms of discontent in our lives.

And those three things, you may recall, were self-criticism,

pressuring yourself, and worrying. All right.

And I said, I was going to go on a program to get rid of those things.

The fact that they make us sick and miserable means that they can't be true.

So even though, for example, you could,

you show me the headlines today and I'd be like, yeah, I have just reason to worry. It is right to

worry because look at everything that's going on. But the fact is, worrying makes me sick and

miserable. In my little cosmology, the truth sets you free, so whatever doesn't set you free cannot

be the truth.

And if you're miserable and sick, you're not as free.

So, hmm, maybe my worries aren't the truth.

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