[00:00:00]
Todd: Here we go. My name’s Todd. This is Cathy. Welcome back to another episode of Zen Parenting Radio. This is episode number 791. Why listen to Zen Parenting Radio? Because you’ll feel outstanding and always remember our motto, which is that the best predictor of a child’s well being is a parent’s self understanding, uh, episode 791.
Todd: That means we’re nine away from the big 800, sweetie. Thanks. And it’s also three, I was going to say three prime numbers. That’s not true. Nine’s not prime, Optimus Prime. Have you ever seen any of the Transformer movies? Zero. But you are excited for a little Wicked happening.
Cathy: I’m excited to see Wicked.
Todd: Yes.
Cathy: Yes. I’m excited to see Wicked. And a little
Todd: of the Gladiator action. I’m excited
Cathy: to see Gladiator. I love the first Gladiator movie. But not so
Todd: much [00:01:00] Moana part two.
Cathy: No, no. I’m excited. It’s just number three on that list. Yeah.
Todd: So we’ve got some good movies coming up. And maybe we’ll talk about that in another episode of pop culturing.
Cathy: I have a, I already have my tickets to Wicked.
Todd: Of course you do. Am I going?
Cathy: Yeah.
Todd: Cameron?
Cathy: Yeah.
Todd: So three of us?
Cathy: Saturday. Yep. I wasn’t sure. Like I was, what was I? Uh, was it Barbie? There was movies that like we couldn’t get tickets for. And I was like, I’m not gonna let that happen again.
Todd: No way. Not you, baby.
Todd: You know what you’re doing?
Cathy: No, I’m on it.
Todd: Um, okay. So we are talking about yellow.
Cathy: Well, I wanted to talk about adapting because I think that it’s a really big part of, um, our lives, our internal lives, our lives as parents. Um, I talk about it a lot in my new book and what I told Todd is that. One of the secrets from, it’s not really a secret, but it’s kind of a secret from my [00:02:00] book is that I based a lot of this book on spiral dynamics.
Cathy: And I, that’s like a big heady concept that I am not. A expert in.
Todd: No, some smart guy wrote like one of those 600 page complicated books on it.
Cathy: So complicated. And basically I listened to other people process through it. And basically it’s just how our society and how we as people, um, we change over time and we have like, it’s, it’s how a society evolves.
Cathy: And. There are different, um, layers and levels, um, to spiral dynamics, like how we all evolve as people, and, um, I wanted to focus on the level that I think we’re getting to, that I’m hoping we’re getting to, which is yellow. That’s why Todd mentioned that, but there’s many colors before that.
Todd: Are there many colors, sweetie?
Cathy: Yes, there are many [00:03:00] colors.
Todd: Are they true?
Cathy: They are true.
Todd: Where does this rank in your Cindy, in your Cindy Lauper songs? Is this top five? For sure. Yeah, I can only name Girls Wanna Have Fun, Time After Time, Shebop, and that, and this one. Very good. Yeah, that’s about all I got.
Cathy: Um, I drove all night.
Todd: Never heard
Cathy: of it.
Cathy: Remember that one? No. Yeah, but yes, Time After Time is just a great classic song.
Todd: But we’re going to head on over here, sweetie. Okay. This is where we’re heading.
How
Todd: in the world are you going to summarize Spiral Dynamics?
Cathy: So instead of getting into the intricacies of, um, you know, where it was developed or where we’re taking it, because honestly, if someone were to like interview me about it, I’d be like, I don’t know. I just know the. Basics [00:04:00] that give us this kind of viewpoint on how people experience the world.
Cathy: And I think it’s a very compassionate understanding of that people are functioning in a way that keeps them safe or that they perceive keeps them safe. And sometimes they’re functioning with a really kind of. forward thinking mindset. And a lot of times they’re functioning in a very going backwards kind of mindset because it makes them feel safer.
Cathy: So I have felt that when I have learned about spiral dynamics and read about it, that it helps me understand people better. And like I said, in a more compassionate way.
Todd: So I want to, I want to just, I just asked chat GPT and we’re not going to go through it all, but the first color in this evolution is beige, which means Basic instinctual survival mindset.
Cathy: So beige is like, you know, the very first humans, you know, that beige is like the idea that [00:05:00] we just have to survive our, where we are, the elements. And to be honest, like the thing about understanding spiral dynamics on many levels is that we often go back to stages depending on what’s going on. Like, for example, a city that gets destroyed by a hurricane are back to a beige level.
Cathy: There’s a survival of like, like, you know, there was a friend of mine who was in one of the communities that got destroyed and she was like, the post office isn’t standing. You know, you can’t send me anything. You can’t, trucks can’t get in, like you can’t do anything. You’re in survival mode. You’re in survival mode.
Cathy: Beige, it, it, it talks about the beginning of time, but it also talks about different stages that we may go through depending on what we’re experiencing.
Todd: And it’s just another way of viewing our world, evolution, personal growth work. And we actually did a pretty intensive conversation about this on a Zen talk.
Todd: I don’t think we did it on a Zen parenting podcast. No. I don’t think so. Um. I But that’s not the purpose of [00:06:00] today, but I’m just going to skip all the way down to the last color, which is turquoise.
Cathy: Why are you doing that? Let’s just go in order. You want to go through it all? Yeah. It’s going you jump around.
Todd: Well, it’s just, I was going to say, you know, survival is level one and the last level is holistic and interconnected,
Cathy: and then
Todd: we could skip over the other six just so we could, but if you want to go through them all, I’m in.
Cathy: The only reason you can’t is because then it doesn’t make sense. All right, here we go.
Cathy: So you have to know how we evolve. So like. Purple. That’s the next one. Is the next phase is more of like a tribal understanding in that when people did start to be in community and understand they were in community, they lived at more of a tribal level. Like for example, they would do, uh, you know, certain groups would do like a rain dance or they would focus on a certain prayer or a certain kind of thing that they would do.
Cathy: Um, that they didn’t have an understanding of science yet. They didn’t have an understanding of how, you know, that the world was round and all of those things. So it was more of just a. Uh, a hoping and a praying and a coming together [00:07:00] to hope something happened.
Todd: Okay. Okay. Hold on one second. I just need to, I just need to do this one thing because it’s important.
Todd: I don’t know if I’m going to do it for every song, but I had to do this one.
Cathy: I understand. See, cause you’re like saying we have to move fast,
Todd: but we gotta do this. Okay.
Cathy: Okay. So what’s
Todd: after purple?
Cathy: More about purple is that it’s basically. Protection of familial or clan structures. Okay. So just the word clan takes you back to a different time, right?
Cathy: Okay, so purple. Now, again, I want to be clear, that is from a different era, but you can understand how certain people do go back. To that kind of mentality occasionally, you know what I mean? Like, um, you know, people who are found in tight knit communities, like traditional tribes, deeply connected, family oriented communities.
Cathy: Um, there is that more of that. Like it’s [00:08:00] just us kind of feeling. Okay. And then the next one is red. Um, this is more of a
Todd: what’s going on with red.
Cathy: Cause you know, red is my
Todd: third favorite Taylor Swift song. Well, just real quick. Um, uh, uh, my favorite album is the snake one
Cathy: reputation
Todd: rep, but in the heiress tour, my favorite section of the heiress live concert was red. Really? I
Cathy: thought it was 1989.
Todd: No red. Oh, okay.
Cathy: Well,
Todd: maybe we’ll have a podcast about that someday.
Cathy: Okay. So the next one, so Red is, this is about assertiveness, power, and impulsiveness. So this is more of an authoritarian kind of time. Um, it’s, uh, it’s about expressing oneself, being free from constraints, demonstrating power. And so we still have leaders today who have this red viewpoint. Okay. That [00:09:00] it’s an overpowering, it’s a one person kind of, um, You know, kind of dictator, business tycoons, domination.
Todd: Okay.
Cathy: So that’s still around. Did you know that?
Todd: I, unfortunately, I think it is.
Cathy: Yes. I just wanted to make that clear. That’s still around. Okay. So that’s red. That’s power. Um, next one is blue. Okay. Which is more around order. So that’s about evaluating order and authority and structure. And it’s about upholding rules and laws and moral codes and having a predictable, safe environment.
Cathy: So there are a lot of people still who are very blue thinking, you know what I mean? There, and I, I am too sometimes in some situations, but
One should see things to be Duh! Do you not
Todd: know why I play this [00:10:00] song? Good ol sweetie.
Cathy: I’m having like a brain problem. Would
Todd: you like to skip to the chorus to help you out?
Cathy: No one knows what it’s like? You
know
Todd: all the lyrics, but you still don’t know why I’m playing this song. Like
I do.
Cathy: And
I blame you.
Cathy: I don’t know. I’m struggling, Todd. Help me. It’s okay. As my car. Oh boy. Yeah. My love is vengeance. Oh boy. Yeah.
Todd: Behind what eyes, sweetie?
Cathy: Oh, behind
Todd: blue eyes. There we go.
Cathy: Yeah, but that’s too obscure.
Cathy: You should have used, like, true blue, Madonna.
Todd: I don’t know. I want to play a good song.
Cathy: Or Yeah, but that’s too random. I was gonna play
Todd: that terrible song I hate that the girls always play.
Cathy: That’s what you should have played. Will you please play that? I hate
Todd: that song.
Cathy: You don’t hate that song. I
Todd: do hate that song.
Todd: And it’s not the
Cathy: girls
Todd: who love it, it’s me. What is it? Who’s the? It’s
Cathy: Cold Blue and it’s by Eiffel something. [00:11:00]
Todd: Eiffel. Okay. So I just want to get, I just want to ask our audience to just confirm with me, this is a terrible
song.
Todd: So just so you know, I’m looking at the lyrics, it says Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh.
Cathy: Okay. Here’s the problem. You are trying to compare this song to other like amazing lyrical songs that have all this deep understanding. When this song came out, this is when we were going dancing a lot. This is when we were going to clubs and we were going in, you know, we lived in Chicago at the time and we were going to places where.
Cathy: This is what you’d want to hear because you could dance to it. So my connection to this song is not based on, wow, what a lyrical, um, you know, adventure this song is. It’s more about, it was fun.
Todd: Uh, [00:12:00] to you.
Cathy: To you danced with me to this song.
Todd: Well, I must’ve had a few cocktails. And you did, but just
Cathy: anyway, so blue again, order, this is more like, um, in religious leaders, conservative politicians, an emphasis on law and order, which As you know, there is, that’s very common still.
Cathy: And like I said, we all have, there’s many layers to this because there’s parts of me that can be very like focused on the law and maintaining, you know, staying within what’s expected of us. Like, I think Todd is less blue than me. Todd does not follow certain rules. Like if there’s nobody
Todd: coming, I’ll cross the street, even though it’s a red light.
Cathy: Yes. But there’s, yes, that is it, but it’s not like I’m so afraid of jaywalking. I’m there’s cars coming and you make them slow down for you. And there’s, you’re not thinking about everybody around you. No,
Todd: I’m not. I’m very independently focused.
Cathy: So you’re not that [00:13:00] blue when it comes to, okay. The next one. Um, and I hope you’re going to play.
Cathy: It’s Orange. Very nice. Don’t follow me.
Don’t follow me. Got my spy. I’ve got my
Cathy: orange crush. No, it’s not a very uplifting song. It’s about Agent Orange, so.
Todd: Yeah, I thought it was about that Fanta soda, Orange Crush. No, it is not. That sum up.
Cathy: Um, so Orange. Is the next level of like success oriented people. Um, so it’s more about competition and innovation, um, entrepreneurs, scientists, corporate executives.
Cathy: It’s about science and progress. And so there are obviously are a lot of people who in our world who are very focused on that. That’s the most important thing. That’s where they land. That’s where they think society needs to be focused. And again, you can understand why all of these things have purpose and, you know, have, um, importance, but it’s when it becomes the only important thing that it [00:14:00] becomes a challenge.
Cathy: So people who are really focused on success and making money and innovation, if they forget about people. In that process, they may say, yeah, but we have to innovate. But if you’re creating Facebook or Instagram, and you’re not recognizing what you’re doing to young girls with your algorithm, then you’ve kind of missed a step of our humanity.
Cathy: Okay. So the next one is green and green. Do you have anything for me?
Todd: I do. You’re not gonna like it, but I’m gonna
Cathy: play it. Okay.
Todd: It’s called Green River by CCR. I know what it is. Sweetie doesn’t like CCR.
Cathy: No, I do not like Creedence Clearwater Revival. Um, so anyway. That’s
Todd: your problem. I
Cathy: know. Green is where I feel like a lot of people Especially progressives right now tend to fall, it’s community and it’s prioritizing equality, community, environmental issues, activists, social workers, which I am a culturally [00:15:00] sensitive therapist, like the focus is on, um, community and focusing on other people.
Cathy: Now I wanted to I think that we as a society, even though there’s definitely still people in all of these colors. And like I said, there are leaders who very much focus on red and there’s groups who focus on blue and lots of business people who focus on orange. I think as a society in many ways, we’ve moved green.
Cathy: And I think that can be very positive and progressive and thoughtful about community, but green has a shadow. Okay, every single one of these colors has a shadow. And the shadow of green is this idealism versus practicality, which is, this is where kind of cancel culture comes from. One of the pieces where we start to exclude people in the name of including others.
Cathy: We kind of end up oppressing others to include others. And it’s this very, like, I like the idea of the idealism versus realism because it’s often a very young kind of thinking, [00:16:00] which is equality all the way. And if you’re not with me, you’re against me, which I understand that kind of idealism. I’ve had it in my life and it shows up a lot.
Cathy: Like it definitely had it in my twenties. Even younger. And then I understand it still. I can feel the vibe of it. But we’re, what we’re doing then is though, excluding people again, we’re not bringing together. There’s an
Todd: other,
Cathy: there’s an other still. And so we tend to be kind of in this place. Um, like, so the push for inclusivity sometimes result in excluding those who do not.
Cathy: Yeah. Completely fit in with the green values, especially from traditional or progressive stages like blue or orange. So I, it’s a, I just wrote down all that information about the shadow because my friend Annie and I always talk about this, like, it’s wonderful that we’ve moved to a more community empathetic equality place, but we’re not quite there yet because we’re getting stuck.
Cathy: Okay. And that’s where [00:17:00] we get to yellow, yellow, which is what restoring our girls. It, it’s not that I wrote about spiral dynamics, but I used the ideas of yellow to talk about how we need to engage our girls. We need to use yellow, we, and yellow is about flexibility and adaptability.
Todd: Right. Which is kind of what we thought about when we decided what we’re going to talk about in the podcast.
Todd: Correct. It’s, it’s maybe adapting. And one of the very few things I have to share so far in this podcast is I think a lot of us parents, um, parent the same way we were conditioned. And this does not offer as much flexibility. It doesn’t offer as much opportunities to adapt. It’s very blue. It’s very blue.
Todd: So yellow is. Hey, this is, this is how my parents parented me. What is it my kid needs? Because just because I thought that’s what I needed or my parents thought that’s what I needed back at 30 years ago, doesn’t necessarily mean what’s going to [00:18:00] serve them now. And I think your book, Restoring Our Girls, which is out on December 10th.
Todd: So buy your copy now and buy one for your friend for the holiday season. Um, this whole book is about. Yellow.
Cathy: Yes. The whole,
Todd: not just this little section that we’re going to talk about, but the entire book.
Cathy: The entire book is based around the values of yellow, because that’s where we’re moving as a society.
Cathy: And many people already live it, you know, it’s not, and some people live it and then fall back into orange and fall back into blue. If there’s no perfection in this, this isn’t a game of, we don’t walk around and tag people and say, you’re this, this, this, and this. Cause we’re many different things. So
Todd: Chat GP says, uh, yellow is integrative thinking.
Todd: Correct. Embraces complexity. Correct. Systems thinking and flex, flex, flexible approaches.
Cathy: So basically what that means is that it’s bringing together everything, okay? So instead of leaving anything behind, we’re integrating all the best concepts from every stage. [00:19:00] Survival. Exactly. All
that
Cathy: stuff. And that we’re understanding that multiple things are true at once.
Cathy: And so there’s a lot of things like idealism is amazing, but not if it gets in the way of practicality and actually finishing something and getting something done.
Todd: Sometimes when people have their head in the clouds, but their feet are not planted on the ground.
Cathy: Correct. And then, you know, the other way, like law and order is good.
Cathy: But not if we get to the point where we’re losing sight of humanity of people, like we’re disengaging from, you know, some common sense thinking about how to take care of other people. We need to have that empathetic approach. And again, innovation that’s orange is necessary and important to move us forward.
Cathy: But if we lose sight of human beings, again, if we start to, you know, focus on AI and all of a sudden AI takes over, that’s not good. So we have to like. Yellow is this real
Todd: quick. Did you talk about law and order?[00:20:00]
Todd: That’s one of your favorite shows, sweetie.
Cathy: Uh, yeah, definitely. One of my favorite shows. I actually watched it. You were gone this weekend and I watched it a few times.
Todd: Was my guy in there?
Cathy: I actually didn’t watch. My favorite is regular law and order, not SVU, but I did watch an SVU. So I, that’s not my typical way of going, but anyway, so what color
Todd: is law and order?
Todd: I forget
Cathy: blue.
Todd: Blue. Okay.
Cathy: Yeah. That’s, that’s, Uh, you know, adhering to rules, laws, and structure. So again, yellow is seeing complexity in the world, adapting flexibly, you know, like, can we adapt to a situation that can be challenging, even if it’s not our ideal situation?
Todd: So can I challenge you with a real world?
Todd: Uh, can I finish this real quick? Because I’ve
Cathy: been trying to finish this a few times. So this is found in thinkers, philosophers, leaders in emerging fields like technology and ecological. Ecological. Am I saying that right? Ecological or ecologic? No,
Todd: you’re saying it right.
Cathy: Um, ecological does [00:21:00] not sound right.
Cathy: Sustainability. And so it’s like, there’s a little more, I love when my girls take philosophy classes because what does philosophy do? It takes you out of the box. It teaches you to think differently. It teaches, and a big part of my book, a big part of restoring our girls is critical thinking. Like there’s a whole section on critical thinking and how, if we’re not Practicing critical thinking and thinking outside the box.
Cathy: What we end up with are abusive relationships. High control groups, cults, conspiracy theories, and, you know, an us against them mentality. So critical thinking is not just about being highly educated. It’s not always about education, you know, and going to college. Critical thinking is being able to see things from many different sides.
Cathy: Understand other people’s perspective and have room for all of it. And I think that’s something we are, we’re in such a polarized society right now. There’s so much duality. There’s so much, you’re [00:22:00] either here or there, and that’s not really real. If you look at the data, like, you know, if I were to get into a political discussion about this, the things that we fight about the most, these political policy issues, we actually are much more close in the middle.
Cathy: We’re much more into the gray, you know, like, We think that progressives only want this and that conservatives only want this. But when you really look at the data, we’re not that far away from each other, but it is the benefit of people who are more red, who want power to push us away from each other, to make us think that it’s us against them, which is a very blue kind of thinking.
Cathy: And so do you see how this all, you know, interweaves? Yeah, of course. And so anyway, now go ahead, Todd.
Todd: Um, two things. One is, uh, my friends at school who are philosophy majors used to make fun of us business majors. Sure. Because they would say, uh, in business school, they teach you what to think, but in philosophy, they teach you how to think.
Cathy: That’s a, That’s a t shirt.
Todd: Oh, [00:23:00] really?
Cathy: Well, I’ve seen that said. So
Todd: I always got mad at my smarty farty friends who are philosophy. Um, a second thing is, so can you, like, I don’t know if you’re prepared to answer this, but, um, one of our kids threw us a little bit of a curveball this weekend. She had a tough weekend.
Todd: Okay. And I just wonder if you can, from Were you in yellow this weekend trying to get flexible? Cause it is complex. You got to figure out how to support this kid when she doesn’t know what support looks like, or she’s even interested in supporting her.
Cathy: Well, let me talk about this conceptually rather than literally because conceptually I feel like I’m always parenting in yellow.
Cathy: That’s my goal. Now, do, do I always end up saying the perfect thing or do I always end up like maintaining my own, you know, equilibrium or emotional regulation where I do it perfectly? No, but the whole, my whole idea of when I’m, you know, Parenting or with you in relationship or, or, you know, with a client is to have a flexible type of thinking to have an [00:24:00] expanded viewpoint and realize that I can have needs.
Cathy: The person across from me can have needs and we can figure out a way to blend our needs and we’re not going to reach perfect. Perfect compromise would be more green, which is either it’s either here or there. This is more or it could fall in many of the categories, but green is more like you’re either with me or against me, um, one way or the other.
Cathy: And, and yellow is more like, there’s the space in between. Like, um, there was a picture that I saw this weekend on, or last week on Instagram that identified this perfectly. You remember the one I showed you? Um, and I, it’s actually going to be in my Zen Parenting Moment this week. Um, and it’s about the overlap between two things and that we live in the middle.
Cathy: So for example, the world is a scary place. You hold that in one hand. Right. The world is a beautiful place. And if they’re two circles, you overlap them. And we live in that overlap. Yeah. Because it’s both. [00:25:00] So it’s the same thing when we’re parenting is I have my needs or things that I think are important as a parent.
Cathy: My daughter has her needs and thinks, you know, things that she thinks are important. And the best kind of parenting, or let me even take it away from parenting, the best kind of relationship building is to find that middle place and to honor all of that rather than needing so much parenting is still blue and law and order which is my where the highway I’m right you’re wrong I’ve been here longer you don’t know I win you lose that’s very blue you know and the It’s much more beneficial for the relationship if you can live in that, in between that overlap.
Cathy: The problem is it’s not super comfortable all the time. Like flexibility and adaptability necessitate, yeah, they, they necessitate a, a high level of resilience and creative thinking and imagination reactivity. Correct. Or at least regulation [00:26:00] after reactivity. Because sometimes we can’t help it. Correct.
Cathy: Yeah. We just,
Todd: we just get reactive.
Cathy: Exactly. So, so in answer to your question, I, you know, I don’t need to break down every conversation, but whenever one of my girls is having a hard time, my goal is how do I take care of myself? So focus on me. How do I recognize where they are and what they need? How do I stay open to listening while still maintaining my own values?
Cathy: How do I take into account what keeps them safe and what they need to know for the future also with where they are now and not forcing them to live in the future? There’s all sorts of things that are happening within a conversation. And that’s a very yellow kind of thinking. So, and then, as you said, Todd, there’s one after yellow.
Todd: Turquoise. Yeah. And it’s a global view, holistic and interconnected values of a global collective consciousness and unity of life.
Cathy: So it’s like holistic global thinking, you know, there are people who are already in [00:27:00] turquoise, you know, visionaries, global leaders, thinkers who advocate for systems that integrate social and economic and environmental concerns, like people who can see the big picture, you can understand then why, if you have some turquoise type thinking where you see how this thing will affect this thing, and if we don’t do this, this will affect this thing.
Cathy: That’s you’ve got a holistic way of viewing things where a lot of people who are still in blue or are in red or, you know, purple, they can’t see that. They only see this second right now, my needs. And so it’s harder for them to get a holistic viewpoint. And I, and the reason I was focusing on yellow in the book versus turquoise is turquoise is so it’s a society.
Cathy: It’s oneness. Yes. And that is a much more spiritual, grandiose kind of thing.
Todd: It’s a Jeff Foster’s, uh, YouTube channel. Um, There is no center or something like that. I don’t know, something like this, something like kind of [00:28:00] really expansive or, you know, in COG, I learned the to me, by me, through me, as me and to me is when I’m a victim and I’m just blaming everybody.
Todd: By me means I take radical responsibility for everything that happens in my life. Through me is kind of the next stage. And then the as me is like, You know, instead of worrying about money, like there is no money, like money doesn’t even exist. It’s like a really kind of esoteric viewpoint.
Cathy: And I have tapped into those places and it can really quickly go into nihilism.
Cathy: So you have to be really, I want to say careful. It’s not that you need to be careful of thinking in a broad way, but I have had spiritual times or awakenings or been in groups where I’m like, Ooh, this, you’re kind of like walking on an edge because it’s that verge of like, nothing matters, but everything matters.
Cathy: So it’s, and, and we’re going to get there as a society. I don’t know what it’ll be, if it’ll be in my lifetime, but I believe we have the capacity to understand, um, [00:29:00] yellow, right? I think that we can work within yellow, no problem. And it’s a practice. And I think that we’re, like I said, so many people are already green and that I think we’ve got a real heart opened.
Cathy: You know, I know people will fight me on this because of certain situations and, you know, elections and such, but we do have a more heart open society where we do see things like two things can be true at once, right? Sure. We can be focusing more on equality and still not always see the outcomes that we’re looking for, but.
Cathy: Again, if we’re too green, then we get too dug in.
Todd: Yeah.
Cathy: And we’re not able to be flexible and realize how we can adapt within our society. Whenever
Todd: I’m convinced that I’m right, it tells me that I’m, there’s at least a part of me that’s closed off. And you know, I think For me, the goal is to never be certain that I’m right about anything and to be open to somebody else’s perspective, to somebody else’s opinion.
Todd: Can I share three key points to remember as told to me? Go ahead.
Cathy: Yes. But before I want to speak back to, I think [00:30:00] I get that like you and I did a presentation at the last Zen Parenting Conference where we said our biggest tip was no less, K N O W, less. Like, I think that is important. But I also think sometimes when we feel really like on not grounded or where we’re like, well, if I know nothing, I know nothing, you can have value systems.
Cathy: You can have a value system, but be flexible and understanding within that value system. You know what I mean? Like to, you can understand that you may have a value system that, um, you know, there is, I’m trying to think of something that would kind of like fly here. Um, That I’ll just make something up because I work with a lot of people who feel like they still yell at their kids.
Cathy: So it’s like your value system may be, I know that kindness is the most important thing. I know that speaking in calm tones is helpful to my kids. I know that, you know, having a good back and forth is what builds a relationship. And sometimes I yell and that, and, and I’m [00:31:00] working on that, but my value system.
Cathy: Still really sturdy and that I know this is the most important thing. And I wanna work on really recognizing when I yell, why I yell, trying to regulate not be so reactive.
Todd: Well, and I’m kinda with you, like I’m not a big yeller. I don’t think we, we certainly don’t do that in our house, but there may be a time when your kids get cross the street and they don’t see a car.
Todd: You’re gonna yell, there’s when you have to yell.
Cathy: Mm-Hmm. . And even that’s a flexible type of thinking because that’s a different kind of yelling. Right? Right. That’s not a dysregulated yelling. That’s. Safety yelling. Correct. So that’s why you don’t want to be like, we don’t yell. Yeah. Instead, the value system is we practice kindness.
Cathy: We try and focus on responsibility and that can be adaptable and flexible depending on the situation. And I think a lot of people, these kinds of conversations get really hijacked by people who become very literal and who try and like nail you against the wall about you have no values. You’re a flip flopper.
Cathy: And that in itself is a very. blue or orange kind of thinking that that is like, I need to be [00:32:00] right. You’re wrong. Um, or it could be red, you know, depending on the situation.
Todd: We didn’t really do much with turquoise, but I did find a song that has turquoise in the title. It’s called Turquoise Days and it’s by.
Todd: You too. Okay. Let me, can I guess? Sure. I’ve heard of them, but I don’t know if you’re going to get
this. Arctic Monkeys.
Todd: Uh, this is from 1981. Ooh,
Cathy: 81. Okay, let me think. What other song is in
Todd: the house? I don’t know. I can’t name a single song. I’ve heard of this band, but I can’t. Okay,
Cathy: say it.
Todd: Echo and the Bunnymen.
Cathy: Oh, sure. I don’t know this song. Yeah, me neither. But I know Echo and the Bunnymen.
Todd: Um, so just a few quick things as we get going. Closer to shutting this podcast down. Um, three key points to remember. Um, it’s a developmental path. It says people in societies move through these levels sequentially, but not everyone reaches the highest [00:33:00] stages.
Todd: Progress depends on life conditions and experience. Number two, which I think two and three are better. There’s no stage that is better. Each level is appropriate for the specific life conditions and challenges an individual or society faces, which I appreciate. Cause I’m always thinking of like, how do I get to the next, how do I improve?
Todd: And how do I get to the next step? This isn’t
Cathy: like a sequential thing. Like someone is better than you. It’s like, it’s the community grew up in. It’s the religion you grew up in. It’s the. The small town or the big city. Like it, it’s just dependent on where you are.
Todd: And the third one, which I think is the best one, individuals can exhibit traits from multiple stages and may regress or pro or progress, uh, based on circumstances.
Cathy: Absolutely. Like I said, sometimes, and sometimes the circumstances like a hurricane or something like that, it, it does, it brings you to beige. You just go right back to the beginning where you’re like, we need food, water, shelter, and that’s the only thing we’re thinking about. And then, you know, In certain situations, you can look at your life and see how you show up is [00:34:00] different colors, depending on the situation.
Cathy: The goal is, um, because again, we’re talking about a spiral. We’re talking about evolving. We’re talking about as a, as a culture, getting to a place where of course we want to be more yellow or turquoise. We want to be more inclusive. We want to be more flexible, but again, that takes practice. And it also takes, you know, people who in every area.
Cathy: Making sure that every aspect is considered, you know what I mean? Because we can’t have a lawless community, right? That doesn’t work. And we, so we, we need that blue and we can’t have a society without innovation. We need that. We read it if, you know, it’s kind of dominance dominance and pushing forward, but sometimes it’s also speaking up about things, you know, speaking truth to power.
Cathy: Um, so sometimes we need that. And obviously we need, we
Todd: need rules, rule breakers. You need all, you need it all. Exactly.
Cathy: So it’s a very flexible idea. And like I said, [00:35:00] I would not, if someone said, we’re going to do a full interview about spiral dynamics, I could talk about the colors pretty well, as you saw, but it is deep.
Todd: Yeah. And we just scrape the surface and the
Cathy: person who talks about the most is a guy named Ken Wilber.
Todd: Oh yeah. The Wilbs.
Cathy: Ken Wilber. So you
Todd: may want to look
Cathy: him up.
Todd: Yeah. Um, what else was I going to say about this? I don’t really remember what I was going to say. So it doesn’t matter. I was going to maybe see if I could find Ken Wilber’s voice, just to see what this guy sounds like.
Todd: But I don’t know if I’m going to Ken Wilber. You
Cathy: think he sounds smart?
Todd: Oh, he looks like, uh, well, he kind of looks like, uh, who’s the guy from Louisiana? Who’s Clinton’s campaign manager? James
Carville.
Todd: He looks a little bit like that. Okay. Let’s just hear what his voice sounds like.
Experience, direct spiritual experience.
What nobody [00:36:00] realized at the time was that these two major dimensions, the stages of growing up and the experiential states of waking up were indeed two quite different dimensions. But very real and equally important dimensions.
Todd: Yeah, this is one of those guys that’s super, super smart and can read or write really long books about stuff that’s really in depth.
Todd: Yeah. Not a book I want to be reading.
Cathy: Well, what I like, I’ve always liked about Spiral Dynamics, because like Todd said, we’ve been talking about it for a couple of years, um, kind of using it as a way to talk about issues in society. You know, we talk about being blue, green, all that kind of stuff. Is that it just helps me, like I said, have an understanding of people and compassion, not compassion.
Cathy: How do I say this? It’s not like, Oh, I feel bad for you that you’re here, but I understand why this is the most important thing to you. I understand why you are here. And can you see me as sometimes being. you know, [00:37:00] vacillating between all these colors too. And that why is this important? Why am I more orange here and more, you know, like, let me just say this, like, as a society, the vast majority of us were pretty orange when it came to COVID and getting a vaccine.
Cathy: Sure. We were like, I know that there was lots of conspiracy theorists and people pushing against it, but we needed the science to survive. So we were
Todd: so grateful. for orange, right? Well, for me, it’s just another vehicle of, it’s kind of like, um, Enneagram or I forget the other framework. It’s just, it’s yet another framework that offers Myers Briggs an ability to understand somebody with a little more curiosity and compassion.
Todd: Like, Oh, this, in this aspect of this person’s life, he’s displaying yellow, or he’s displaying orange, or he’s just, it’s just another way that I can empathize with somebody.
Cathy: And a way that we can see our society and our progress, because we really have progressed through [00:38:00] many of these stages as a society.
Cathy: Now, of course, there’s groups that are still Um, you know, stay more in a certain color because of where they are and, but it makes sense. And so, but it’s like, we see that to survive as a species, we need to move toward more yellow and turquoise to make sure that we take care of our planet. So, um, so again, that’s, I, that’s kind of the secret of restoring our girls is that was my, if you want to talk about a values, it’s
Todd: a big book of yellow.
Cathy: Yeah. That’s the big book.
Todd: Um, speaking of your book and other things, uh, we have a Zen con 20. ZenCon
Cathy: 2025. We have our conference in January. So just in a couple of months.
Todd: Uh, so if you are interested, please go to the show notes of this podcast and you can, uh, very quickly link to, um, our speakers lineup.
Todd: If money happens to be an issue, we are more than happy to scholarship people. We don’t want money to get in the way of somebody. Joining us. So, uh, shoot me an email at Todd at Zen parenting radio. [00:39:00] com. Uh, we’re just so excited. It’s going to be our last hurrah.
Cathy: So please come. Yeah. Don’t, you know, try and make it because this is a hit.
Cathy: And like Todd said, just email us if you’re struggling with, because especially people who have to fly here to Chicago, so we get it. We want to help you. Um, and, uh, that’s it.
Todd: All right. Uh, and I want to say thank you to Jeremy Kraft. He’s sponsored us since the very first podcast way back 14 years ago. Uh, Avid company, painting and remodeling throughout the Chicagoland area.
Todd: 630 956 1800. Give Jeremy a call. He’s a bald head of beauty, everybody. Keep trying.
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