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You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Mel Schwartz. Mel Schwartz is a psychotherapist, marriage counselor, author, speaker, and seminar leader in private practice for more than two decades. He earned his licensed clinical social work degree from Columbia University and a master’s of philosophy degree from Lancaster University in England.
With Sounds True, Mel has written a new book called The Possibility Principle: How Quantum Physics Can Improve the Way You Think, Live, and Love, where he reveals how we can apply the three core tenets of quantum physics: inseparability, uncertainty, and potentiality to live the life we choose free from the wounds of our past and the constraints of our old beliefs.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Mel and I spoke about how to work with anxiety and our resistance to embracing uncertainty. He offered a powerful visualization about letting go of clinging to safety and entering what he called “the flow of life.” He talked about how the most important relationship we have is with our own thoughts and the steps we can take to make that a healthy and positive relationship.
We also talked about applying the discoveries of quantum physics to perfectionism, relationship challenges, and how we communicate with each other. Finally, we talked about the unlimited possibility that exists in the nanosecond before our next thought. Here’s my conversation with Mel Schwartz.
To begin with, Mel, could you share with our listeners how applying the discoveries of quantum physics to what I would call the psychological realm, the realm that we face when it comes to challenges in how we relate to ourselves, really, as well as other people? How that topic first became alive for you.
Mel Schwartz: Well, Tami, I’ll go back 20 some odd years ago: I had recently divorced. And on one particular weekend, my children were visiting their mother. I got up to take a bike ride. It was a beautiful spring day. In the middle of that ride, to my shock, I began to have a panic attack. I was feeling lonely, and missing my kids, and my future was altogether uncertain. I turned the bike around and headed back home.
When I got in to the house, I absentmindedly reached for a book, which was called The Turning Point, aptly named in my life. It was by Fritjof Capra, a quantum physicist. I started to learn about this paradigm shift that quantum physics was bringing us. A shift of how we think reality operates. It talked about a universe and the reality that was literally indivisible, inseparable, much like mystical traditions has always told us, but it was providing the science for that belief.
It also spoke to a reality which was awash with uncertainty, and uncertainty equals absolute potential and possibility. Within reading a few pages, I noticed that I was no longer feeling anxious. I was mesmerized, engaged, and hopeful and I never stopped along that path. Over time, I began to think, “If I overcame my anxiety, my fear, if I were feeling enabled and empowered to create the life I wanted, then why not integrate that into my work as a psychotherapist and assist others with that same approach?”
For me, putting it simply, the quantum approach is very different than the reality that we grew up and learned as kids. We were taught Newton’s determinism, which simply put is, “If we have enough information, we might reasonably predict the future.” The problem with that is we sit back and calculate and analyze instead of engaging life.
We’re also taught that we’re separate cogs in a machine, distant and disconnected from each other. That leaves us without meaning or purpose. It leads to depression and it creates selfishness and self-interest rather than empathy and compassion, which can be derived by this new worldview. You see, if we’re all as one, well there’s the science and the philosophy for finally living by the golden rule. This approach fosters empathy and compassion and I teach in the book a new way of communicating in relationships based upon this new worldview.
TS: Let’s start with understanding uncertainty in the quantum model and how that can help people with anxiety. I mean your own story is very telling. At the same time, I imagine someone who is prone to anxiety saying, “Look, I know everything is uncertain, that’s why I’m anxious.” Hearing that uncertainty is a principle in quantum physics, it’s not making me feel any better. In fact, it’s confirming all my reasons for being anxious. How come you created this transformation learning about uncertainty where I think other people—that’s not the effect it has on them?
MS: You see, if we’re taught to seek certainty and we’re taught and trained to think that is good, then of course uncertainty provokes our fear. Next weekend, I’m giving a TEDx talk called “Transcending Anxiety” in which I’m discussing this particular theme. Uncertainty equals new possibility. Certainty, particularly if I’m struggling with things in life and things are feeling problematic, certainty keeps me stuck inside of a tunnel where I can’t engage with wonder, and enchantment, and the hope and inspiration about what could be.
In life, there are people who are engaged [with] thoughts around, “Why can’t I?” It’s full of possibility. There are others who say, “Why I can’t.” They succumb to the pessimism. Uncertainty, if we look at it and embrace it—as a gift, as a carpet ride of change, as the wind in the sails of our change. Uncertainty is absolutely essential and desirable for us to prosper and grow.
I looked to change in careers in my life 20 some odd years ago. I had been in business and I realized that I wasn’t feeling fulfilled. It was gratifying financially, but I wasn’t fulfilled or having meaning and purpose in my life. I envisioned a new life for myself in which I could go to grad school, practice therapy, write, teach, inspire. That was rife with uncertainty. I couldn’t know in advance how it would work out. If I didn’t embrace uncertainty, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking with you now. I wouldn’t have written this book.
TS: I get you, Mel, but still, I want to address that person who says, “For me, uncertainty equals new possibilities, yes, but it also equals fear. I have a lot of fear.”
MS: It equals fear. We fear what we resist. It’s the act of resisting and avoiding something that creates the fear. As soon as we shift our mind about it and shift our perspective and we invite it in, we no longer fear it. The one thing we have to do is shift our attitude toward it, but then fundamentally on a more substantive level, we have to look at our thoughts.
This is a major piece of the book, which is in the nanosecond before I have my next thought, I exist in the pure state of possibility. That possibility would be maybe I don’t have to have fear. But if my thought is consistently and perpetually seeking certainty, then I will feel fear. There’s a connection between what I feel and what my thought is. The way through it is to be able to observe your thought and see what it’s telling you. If your thought is addicted to certainty, you will have fear with uncertainty. If your thought re-envisions things and opens to uncertainty, the fear dissipates.
TS: Talk to me, Mel, about someone who comes to work with you who has anxiety. Technically, they understand what you’re saying, but when they look at their thoughts—yes, their thoughts tell them things like, “I want to make sure that I have enough money and this move is really risky, so I’m anxious. I want to make sure that I’m loved, and so confronting this person in XYZ way is too terrifying. I don’t want to do it.” They have all of these scary thoughts. How do you work with them to actually make a shift and how does the quantum physics model inform that?
MS: We’ll try to get underneath the thought. The thought comes from a larger system, which is a belief system. Our beliefs, personally and more generally, our beliefs inform our thoughts. If I’m working with somebody whose thoughts are inclined toward fear, “If I do this, she may not love me. If I make this career change, I might fail.” I’d work with them to understand: How do they come to that belief? I introduce a concept, which is called “wave collapse.” We need to take a moment for me to explain what that means.
TS: Sure.
MS: In quantum physics, and by the way, I should add that I am not a scientist. I am a layperson and I don’t read the mathematical equations of the science. I’m simply looking at the principles. Wave collapse in quantum physics is this. Light has a dual capacity. Light can exist either as a wave or as a particle. It’s kind of nonrational in our way of thinking, but this is how reality looks.
As a wave, in quantum physics, wave equals state of pure potential. It’s infinite potential. The moment that the light is observed and observation is made, the wave of potential collapses and it becomes a particle, a fixed thing. I thought, metaphorically speaking, something similar happens to us in our lives. We come into life more or less in a state of potential. Our personality isn’t shaped or derived yet, other than perhaps your astrological or reincarnational beliefs.
Yet, typically in childhood either through acute or chronic experiences, subtle or traumatic experiences, we create impressions and secure beliefs about ourselves and others and our wide state of potential limits and gets constrained. We become more like the particle and that’s what shapes our belief system.
I was working years ago with a woman who felt that she was not lovable and [it] created enormous stress and anxiety for her. How did she come to this belief? At about the age of eight, her mother had told her that her pregnancy with her was unwanted. It was an accident. Tremendous wave collapse. In that moment, she came away with the feeling of, “I wasn’t wanted. My parents didn’t want me. I’m not really loved like my siblings are.”
40 years later, I’m working with her in her marriage. Her husband loves her dearly, but she has this core belief that she’s not lovable and has ruined the marriage. I helped her see, through this phenomenon of wave collapse, how she came to this belief about herself. That’s first and fundamental. Then once she understood it, we then had to go to understanding how her thought operates.
You see, thought tricks us. Thought tricks us in that it’s telling us the truth. What I share with the people I work with and what I write about in the book is that thoughts should not be literal. It needs to be participatory. What I mean by that is while we’re talking, I may say to you, “You know Tami, when you asked that question, I had a thought. Let me tell you what my thought was telling me.”
I separate from the thought and thought’s just representing something. Working with this woman and with others, they could see that thought was misinstructing her. It was telling her she’s not lovable. We understand why. If she hadn’t had that wave collapse with her mother telling her that story, or if her pregnancy had been planned, she would have had different beliefs and different thoughts. Now, she’s poised to start to write a new script for her life.
TS: I want to make sure I understand a couple of things. When you say “wave collapse,” is that the same as identifying as a particle separating out from the wave nature and being, “I’m the separate particle?” Is that what you mean by wave collapse?
MS: Technically yes, but more to the point of our personal development. The way I’m using this wave collapse is: What were the events in our lives that shaped and informed our core beliefs about ourselves? The way I’m using the term here is that she had a limiting wave collapse, a confining wave collapse. It narrowed her sense of self and her possibilities.
Once I can explain that to her, we are then seeking to have a defining moment in her life. If that was confining, we want defining, which is an insight and understanding of how this happened. Once I can break free from my old, recurring, habitual thoughts that limit me, I can have a defining moment where I break free and head in an entirely new direction.
TS: I think one thing that would be helpful to me, Mel, if you’re willing, would be to talk about what a confining belief was in your own experience and then a defining breakthrough and how that worked for you personally.
MS: Excellent question. Usually, when people say excellent question, it means that’s the question they’re prepared for and have a ready answer. I say excellent because my first thought was I have no idea and I like that. In my own childhood, my grandmother passed away very suddenly at a relatively young age, which had a traumatic effect upon my mother and I was five years old.
My mother overprotected me. She drew me in too close to her for her own reasons. I wouldn’t have sleepovers at friends’ houses. She always wanted me to be within sight. She was very loving, but I suppose it certainly had impact on me. The impact it had on me, ultimately, is I probably had a fear of being alone or on my own.
Fast-forward to the story I shared about my children being with their mother on a particular weekend. What was triggering my anxiety and panic? I was on my own. My confining wave collapse was my mother’s compensating for the loss of her mother by becoming too attached to me. That was confining. The message I received, perhaps not verbalized by mom, but the message I got was “I’m not really OK on my own.” Now, my defining moment was elicited through having to spend some time on my own. Furthermore, through my divorce where other than raising my children, I was on my own. That allowed me to break free and become far more autonomous and whole as a man.
TS: That’s very helpful. You said something else that I thought was very interesting. “To have a view with our thoughts that is participatory.” I think that’s interesting. I haven’t heard that language before. I’ve heard people say not to identify with your thoughts. To take a step back, but you’re saying something interesting, a participatory relationship. I wonder if you can explain that a bit.
MS: Yes. I will credit Niels Bohr, the late Nobel laureate quantum physicist, with this terminology. He made a distinction between literal thought and participatory thought. Literal thought is what we ordinarily do. We’re not aware that we’re having the thought. The thought pervades and it tells us the truth. It makes a literal statement. A seemingly objective statement. About who I am, who you are, what this is—but we don’t see the thought operating.
The way to see your thought operating is through participatory thinking, whereby I realize it’s like hearing a knock at the door. I hear the knock at the door. I can decide whether to answer the door or not. I hear thought knocking. When I hear my thought knocking, I want to deal with it in a representative way—participatory. You see, the thought is participating in constructing my reality, so I need to see it as such.
Therefore, when we’re talking to each other in a relationship, in a close intimate relationship. Let’s suppose the relationship is getting conflicted. The conversation is getting heated up. If we speak in a participatory way, that means we’re not making objective accusations about each other. For example, Ted says to Sally, “You know, Sally, when you said that to me, I really felt myself becoming reactive. A thought came up for me. Let me tell you what my thought was saying.” You see, that is honest, is authentic, and it’s not telling her that she’s right or wrong.
By the way, when we can see thought operating, we’re thinking. The key to me is to develop a sense of self. This higher, larger, more sovereign than my thought. Otherwise, we live out our lives playing out the millions of thoughts we have. We’re imprisoned by them. The moment you have a thought, the thought summons up the accompanying emotion. We’re stuck in this thought-feeling complex and that’s why we say it’s hard to change. If I can think, if I can learn to see the thoughts and then choose to think and to select, then I’m free to change.
TS: I want to circle back to this central idea at the beginning of our conversation about embracing uncertainty and having a positive experience, if you will, of uncertainty. That it means unlimited possibilities, new possibilities are here. I’m still imagining someone who, let’s say, feels uncertain about uncertainty. They’re still not comfortable with it. It still makes them very uncomfortable. How do we go from being uncertain about uncertainty to the language you used, which was embracing uncertainty, celebrating uncertainty?
MS: Let’s just look at the word uncertain. The word uncertain has a negative connotation to it, doesn’t it? We never say, “Things look uncertain and that means positive.” We have to actually look at the semantic of the word and what it has come to mean for us. Uncertain doesn’t have to have a negative or a pejorative term. If I’ve been a D student and I’ve been studying hard and my grade on my next test is uncertain, the uncertain could be I make it a C or a B.
Let’s look at what’s some of the benefits of uncertainty are. Oscar Wilde said, “Uncertainty is the essence of romance.” Let’s think about that. Two people meet, they fall in love, it’s full of wonder and discovery and uncertainty. “I think I’m falling for her. How does she feel about me? I’m not sure yet.” We’re not finishing each other’s sentences for each other. There’s a sense of being present and the sense of oneness, which wouldn’t happen without some uncertainty.
I’m not proposing we don’t need to know what time to get on the train or when the kids get off the school bus. Of course we do, but we compensate for lives that are choked by certainty by watching sporting events or going to movies. The thrill of not knowing drives a significant percentage of the GNP, but our lives become dulled and robotic by the predictability and the certainty.
Let’s come back to your question. What if somebody isn’t buying it? I would then ask them, “Well, explain to me why certainty is good for you. What experiences have you had with uncertainty that were bad? How is certainty soothing you?” Ordinarily, if we start to unravel the belief like, “How did you come to this belief?” It starts to fall apart. If somebody is feeling depressed, or stuck in a horrible relationship, or anxious, certainty will suggest they’re going to continue to feel that way, won’t it?
TS: Yes, I hear your point, but let’s keep going. Somebody says, “I like certainty because it makes me feel safe. I feel safe and I like feeling safe.”
MS: I’ll ask them, “How can they assure more certainty in their lives?” The fear of uncertainty is like saying, “I have a fear of death. I’m going to die one day.” However we define “die,” whatever the spiritual context to that may be. One day, your physical being will cease to be as you know it. Now, if you’re going to live your life with the fear of death, it’s going to really impact how you experience your life, isn’t it? If you live your life seeking certainty—which is unattainable—we can’t succeed in acquiring certainty, can we?
TS: That’s true.
MS: Why pursue what’s unachievable? That sets up a neurosis. That’s where the anxiety is. People whose thoughts are addicted to certainty suffer from anxiety. That’s what I’ve seen. There are other things that contribute to anxiety, but primarily, I’ve seen the people who struggle with anxiety have thoughts that are addicted to certainty.
I was working with a young man recently, a high school senior who came in. He’d just fallen in love. Great wonderful thing. Why is he here? He’s having anxiety. Why? “I don’t know if she’s going to continue to love me.” What assurance can we give him? If he’s seeking certainty—I guarantee that she’ll continue to love him—then he’s going to fail. It’s not going to work.
TS: I think the question that I’m still asking is you work with people and they see the logic of what you’re saying. They even think the quantum model feels intuitively so much more representative of the world we live in than this old Newtonian, Cartesian sense of solid objects bumping in to each other. I get that at any moment, something absolutely brand new can happen, but I’m not quite sure how to work with my own attachment to safety and certainty. I’m not quite sure how to work with that.
MS: What I would explore with that individual is I’d want to know: What is their attachment to safety? To what extent can they assure themselves of that safety and predictability? If so, if they can, what are the consequences of that? What are the confinements of that? What are the things they’re struggling with?
I created a visualization around this. I was working with an individual who seemingly would have had an excellent life. He had a good job, and a loving marriage, and great kids, and everyone was healthy, but he came to me for his anxiety disorder. His anxiety disorder was primarily around work, although he was doing well and getting great evaluations. He couldn’t be assured that his presentation next week would be good enough. He couldn’t be assured that his wife who love him would continue to love him.
On the fly, I created the visualization with him. I had him imagine that he was standing by the bank of a river. I said to him, “Imagine a river, and see it, and there’s a stream in the middle of the river and it’s flowing pretty strongly. Think of that stream as the current of life. I want you to visualize walking into that river, into the middle and letting go and letting the stream take you—the flow of life.” After a few moments passed, I asked him what he was seeing. He said to me, “Well, I’m in the middle, but there’s a big boulder here and I grabbed ahold of it.” I asked him why. He said, “Well, the river bends to the right up ahead and I guess that’s my future. I need to know where it’s going.” He was seeing certainty. I explained to him, “No, you have to let go of the boulder, but you’re free to navigate as you go along.”
You see, if we live our life as though it’s a chess match and we’re sitting back, and calculating, and obsessing, and struggling over making decisions, we’re not engaging life. Then change becomes hard and then we do struggle with anxiety. Fundamentally, we have to reconsider our primary belief. We were taught certainty is good, so we believe it, but is it? If we cling to certainty, what are we losing? We’re losing the ability to be creative and have wonder and re-experience our lives in even better ways. There’s a loss that comes with certainty.
TS: Now, let’s look at some of the other key principles, key ideas in quantum physics that have been really important to you and how you apply them therapeutically. Pick a couple other ideas, Mel, that have really meant a lot to you from the world of quantum physics.
MS: Well, the sense of oneness that we speak about is no longer a theoretical concept. Physics has essentially proven that—as counterintuitive as it may sound— that in certain circumstances, reality is as one. Indivisible. I find increasingly that those quantum realities exist in our everyday lives as well.
I look at relationships. From the old Newtonian model of separation where reality is like a giant machine and we are separate cogs in the machine, from that reality, excessive individualism, excessive competition, excessive selfishness would make sense because we’re competing with one another. From the quantum reality of inseparability, particularly in close intimate relationships—family or love relationships—when we start to shift our perspective and engage the relationship from a place of oneness, or what I call quantum entanglement, we start to communicate differently.
The communication is no longer about winning an argument. You see, if I have to win, that means you have to lose, and how is that going to work out? Instead of trying to win, what I teach and share is: what we want to do is to understand, have empathy, compassion. It’s more about a shared inquiry, which is the basis of genuine dialogue. I teach a new methodology in terms of communication in a relationship.
Imagine holding up your left hand and your right hand and they see themselves in opposition to each other and think that they’re in competition, not understanding they’re part of the same body. In relationship, we’re part of the same whole. Shifting our perspective around oneness would lead us back into that entangled state, which in a romantic relationship, we probably experience to begin with, But that dissipates over time as we drift back off into that state of oneness where we’re competing with each other and trying to win rather than to collaborate.
Oneness is essential in rethinking and re-envisioning how we experience relationships. In terms of our individual growth, I wrote an article many years ago called, “Who Am I?” In that article, I suggested that’s the wrong question. “Who am I” is looking for a fixed, specific answer. I proposed that what we should be asking is, “How would I like to experience my life?” You see, that’s flowing. That’s unfolding. That’s creative. That’s full of possibility. It helps us shift from a state of being into the process of becoming. That way, we align ourselves with the quantum messages, which is that reality is perpetually remaking itself. It isn’t fixed or static, but it is a reality-making process and we’re a part of that universe.
You see, we’re not separate and distinct from the universe. Sometimes people say, “Well, the universe teaches you this and teaches you that.” It sounds like the universe is separate from me teaching me, but I am an intrinsic part of the universe. If it’s unfolding and flowing and full of possibility, the quantum perspective allows me to jump into that process. That’s just awash with wonder and possibility and enchantment. It’s where I want to be.
TS: Now, it’s interesting. As you’re talking, Mel, I’m getting this feeling of—going with the example you used just a little while ago of the gentleman you were working with, who stepped into the middle of the flowing river and was willing to let go of the boulder. Just be with that fluid state. That fluid, completely interconnected way of being. I’m getting the feeling for that.
I’m curious to know. You’ve been studying this work for a long time. Do you ever find yourself like, “Oh my God, I just built an island, and jumped up on it, and I’m not in that fluid state anymore. I’ve created my own little territorial island. How do I get out of this?”
MS: Sure. Of course that happens. You remind yourself. I remind myself. We’re human. We don’t exist in perfection. There is no such thing as perfection. As a human, I can succumb to forgetfulness. I can miss the mark. That’s OK. I don’t judge myself when I do that. I simply remind myself to get off the island and back into the flow.
I primarily do it by coming back to my thought. I take a look and see what my thought is telling me. Then I’m in charge, not my thought. That’s where insight comes from. That’s where defining moments are born. When I can see my thought and see my belief and say, “You know what? That’s not serving me.” That’s when I can chart new territory. The answer is yes. Of course, from time to time, I get stuck on the island. The key is to get off that island. Or take a little break there and enjoy yourself for a little while. That’s OK.
TS: One of the interesting things in The Possibility Principle that you look at is perfectionism and how you can help people work with their perfectionistic tendencies, if they have them, by applying the principles of quantum physics. Let’s go ahead and take that on: perfectionism.
MS: Sure. I believe that the word “perfect” and the notion of perfection is a human-made construct. It’s a thought and it’s a construct. It isn’t a thing that exists unto itself. Imagine sitting and watching a beautiful rainbow. You wouldn’t look at the rainbow and say, “You know, that orange band is not as wide as the yellow band.” We don’t look at nature that way. How did we get stuck with this desire for perfectionism? I think it’s Newton’s machine-like universe. You see, a machine can operate perfectly for a period of time—a limited period of time—but humans and the universe were never designed, in my mind, to be perfect.
Let’s go back now to a more individual level. People who struggle with perfectionism typically have self-esteem issues and insecurities. They believe that the only way they’ll be safe, maybe safe from criticism—this may have to do with wave collapses from their childhood. Imagine in your childhood if you are scolded by parents or embarrassed by a teacher with a wrong answer, your compensation for that, your coping mechanism, is off. “I’m never going to make a mistake again. I’m never going to say anything that I haven’t really thought out. I’m going to try to be perfect.” They believe that they can be perfect, then they will be safe.
Of course, we can’t be perfect. As you can imagine, that is a bridle on your well-being, It’s a gross limitation. Perfectionism, from the way I’ve experienced it, and people who pursue perfectionism are terribly limiting their lives because they feel insecure or less than. They need to be safe from scrutiny or criticism so they seek perfectionism, which again, just like certainty, is unattainable. There is no such thing.
The irony is that I believe the closest thing to perfection is being present, but the irony is that the perfectionist is never present. They’re either dwelling on the past, thinking about what they should have done differently, or fretting the future. Perfectionism, I think, is born out of a coping mechanism for wave collapses that confined us early in life, and it’s the way we tried to adapt. Over decades of our lives, it’s like a suit of armor that you clank around with. It doesn’t help you in your relationships because the more somebody seeks to be a perfectionist, the more it turns other people off. I suggest that perfectionists rethink the entire thing. The goal is not to be perfect. It’s unachievable, and if it were achievable, no one would want to be in your company. You see, vulnerability is a strength. Vulnerability is loving. Vulnerability is authentic.
TS: OK. Now, one of the things I’m curious about is when you look at the world of quantum physics and you emphasize this other third principle. We’ve talked some about uncertainty and this principle of inseparability, but if we move to this idea of potentiality— that the universe is in a state of pure potential—how that changes us, and how you help people again and again find that state of pure potentiality in the moment?
MS: I believe that the state of pure potential on an individual level lies in the nanosecond between your thoughts. If I continue to have the same, old, habitual thoughts I ever have and I’ve always had, I won’t attain that potential. But if I learn to see my thoughts operating, if I can literally learn to see the thoughts and slow down my time experience of them, then there’s a moment. I’m calling it a nanosecond. It actually starts to feel like a couple of moments, not a nanosecond. In that moment, in that gap, is when new thinking can arise and I can choose differently. The moment I choose new thinking, I am apprehending new potential. It’s kind of like “what if,” but “what if” in a positive way. Some people will say “what if” fearfully. Others say “what if” positively. It’s in that moment between your thoughts. Your state of potential happens, coming back to wave collapse.
On another level, every time I have a thought, I’m having a mini wave collapse. My state of potential is gone and I become specific, concrete, fixed. If I can have some new thinking and some new insights, I’m going to prosper from having some new defining moments in my life. The most important relationship you will ever have isn’t with your parents, your children, your partner, your spouse. The relationship that will impact you far more than any other is with your thoughts. They are your constant companion. We need to learn to choose them with care and turn them into our ally. When we do, we can access that state of potentiality.
TS: Now, I think I’ve gotten a pretty good sense of what you mean by the wave collapse and confining moments. Being confined by identifying with some narrow way of being and describing ourselves. But I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “defining moments.” Can you help me understand that?
MS: Sure. I’ll share again personally. When I was a young man and started college, I was rather introverted. I had a high school girlfriend and I was a year older than her. I went off to college and she was still in high school. I went to the college of my choice with my friends. In those years, we called it “going steady” and we were. She started college the next year and I, nonrationally, decided to leave the school I was at and transfer to the school she went to, which I otherwise would have had no interest in.
The second or third week into the semester, she meets me in the cafeteria one day for lunch and tells me she’s decided she wants to go out with other guys. A crushing moment on two levels. My heart is broken and I don’t know a soul in this school and I’m very shy. My first instinct was, “Maybe I’ll transfer back to my old college.” That was the instinct. That was the default. That was the seeking certainty. I went for a walk, and during that walk I had a defining moment. I thought to myself, “No. There’s an opportunity here. I’m going to stay and I am going to break out of my shyness.” That was a defining moment in my life. By the time I graduated, I was probably one of the most well-known people on campus.
Defining moments come from insights. In life, we often have insights. The problem is, we don’t treat the insights very seriously, and so they retreat over time. I encourage people, when you have an insight, pause. Stop. Honor the insight and say to yourself, “I’m committed to this insight and my life is now changed because of it.” When you do that, that’s a defining moment. It requires a willful intention to say, “This insight is powerful. I value it, respect it, and now I’m heading in a new direction.”
TS: OK, let’s talk about that, because I think you’re right. People have these kinds of “Aha!” moments in their life. And maybe their commitment to that new way of being lasts 48 hours, 72 hours, whatever my New Year’s resolution “Aha!” moments are, but they don’t stick. When you describe, “I’m just going to make it stick,” but it’s not the way it works for most people. They get undermined by subconscious belief, by something.
MS: I think that also the undermining is not invaluing your change process and believing you can do it. You see, you have to shift your belief system into, “I can do this.” In that moment in college, I had to believe not only that I could do this, but I needed to. It would benefit me. It would get me past a place where I was stuck.
To make change, to have defining moments, what’s required is what I call “willful intention.” Think of change as being out at sea and putting your sail up. You’re on a sailboat. You’ll hoist the mast. That’s your intention to change, to move, but without wind in your sail, you’re not going anywhere. The wind comes from what I’m calling “willfulness.”
To have a defining moment, we need willfulness. We need to treat our lives with seriousness. We need to think, “I matter. I count. This is important. I can do this and I am now committed to doing it.” That’s about your core relationship with yourself. It’s about being present and having conviction, because if you do, more or less all things become reasonably possible, But if you don’t treat yourself with that value and you let the insight fade, then life goes on in a rather predetermined, predictable way.
TS: There’s an interesting quote toward the end of The Possibility Principle. You write, “I am opposed to gradualism in general and advocate instead for catalyzing your defining moments.” You were responding to this idea of gradual change and instead: have these big breakthroughs. Talk a little bit about that, why you might be opposed to gradualism.
MS: There’s a cultural meme, which is slow and steady. Gradual change. I ask, “Why? Why do I want to temper and slow down and mitigate all the joy and wonderful fruits of achieving defining moments? Why do I want to go after that gradually?” Perhaps I believe it occurred because other people may want you to go after it gradually because it won’t affect their lives as much. I’m not sure where that belief came from, but we stand back and think about it.
Let’s go back to having a kid who is getting Ds. Do you say to them, “Take your time. Move from a D to a C. It’s OK.” Or do you say, “Hey, go for the best grade you can as soon as you can.” If you’re in a job, is gradual progress all it should be, or do you want to go for achieving and succeeding as much as you can? If you’re in marriage counseling, do you say to the marriage counselor, “Listen? Let’s not get overboard here with too much progress all at once.” We have to step back and ask ourselves: Why? What are we waiting for? I’m not sure what the philosophy is that has led us toward gradualism, but instinctively, it doesn’t make much sense to me. In my own life, that’s not what has worked for me, because gradualism can lead to a loss of focus and a loss of intention.
What has worked for me in my defining moments—changing my career, coming out of shyness, and other defining moments—has come from a profound, pivotal moment where I put a willful intention into it and said, “I’m heading down a new path.”
TS: OK, Mel, just to push a little bit on this. If you approach something like a diet or maybe a new fitness regime, I can see that it makes sense to do a little bit at a time instead of just going gonzo. That maybe people won’t do anything if they think it’s gonzo, but they will do a little bit, a little bit, day after day. What do you think about that?
MS: It makes me recall—a number of years ago I got on the scale, and I’ve never had a weight problem, but my gut was starting to not look too attractive. I got on the scale and I was really turned off. In that moment, standing on the scale, I thought, “I’m not going to have a morsel of bread or pasta for 30 days. I want to see what happens.” I didn’t go gradual. I said, “I want to see what happens.” 30 days later, I had lost a significant amount of weight. Then I thought, “Well, am I going to go back to my old diet or what will my new diet be?” Gradualism, for me, nutritionally and health-wise, has not been the way I’ve gone after it. I don’t think of myself as a fanatic or as a zealot. I just think of myself in regard to wanting to provide for myself what it is I think I’m saying I want. If it’s what I want, then why not just go for it? What’s the sacrifice? What’s the loss of going for it?
I think that being able to redefine ourselves, evolve, move into that process of becoming that I spoke about earlier puts us in alignment with this new quantum worldview. I’ve learned not to say, “Reality is . . .” and then finish the sentence, because that suggests that reality is fixed. My current understanding is reality is a reality-making process. It’s like perpetually stirring and recreating itself.
I’d like to align myself and try to live my life as best as I can. That doesn’t mean that I’m unpredictable, or unreliable, or undependable. I’m solid in my relationships, and reliable, and dependable. I’m talking about in certain aspects of myself that I am seeking to have emerge in different ways like a sculptor with their hands in the clay. They can perpetually, constantly be remaking that piece of art until they reach a place where they say, “OK, I’ll let it be.”
TS: I want to circle back to something that you said that I thought really struck me, really got my attention. You said the most important relationship that we have is our relationship with our thoughts. That made a lot of sense to me. That’s right here, this relationship inside my being, every moment of my life. How am I relating to my thoughts?
I think people might have the perspective. Sometimes I’m taking them very seriously. Sometimes I’m not taking them very seriously at all. Sometimes I actually think my thoughts are me, I’m identified. How would you describe in general how to develop a healthy relationship with our thoughts? How in your view do you go about it?
MS: Well, the first direction is to become aware of your thought. When I’m working with people—and basically people are unaware of how to do this. We want to create a new muscle memory. The assignment I might give somebody is, “In the course of your day, I want you to become aware of your thought, the last thought you’ve had. Jot it down. Make a note of it. Don’t judge it. See how many thoughts you can capture or think of yourself sitting in front of a TV screen and your thoughts are being transcribed on the TV monitor. Just watch. Again, no judgment. Just see them.” This develops the muscle memory. So you begin to see the thought. Don’t judge the thought, if it’s right or wrong. Just see the thought.
Now, after you’ve done that, you can then look and ask: What are the thoughts telling me? The thoughts are coming from primary belief systems. Are the thoughts enhancing my life? Are the thoughts creating fear? Are the thoughts limiting me? I don’t want to think of the thought as true or not true. I want to think. I want to see the thought and see what it’s telling me. Then, I’m in charge. I’m thinking. I am more than the end product of those thoughts.
Remember then in that nanosecond between thoughts is where I can make change, where I’m in a state of pure potential. Our struggle with change is rooted in the fact that if we keep having the same old thoughts and the same old feelings, we don’t engage the change process, we get stuck. There are techniques around seeing the thought, not becoming the thought. Asking yourself what the thought is telling you and then developing new thinking. The thought may be OK for you. Ultimately, you may accept the thought, but we need to witness the thought before we become the thought.
TS: Is your sense, Mel, that the field of psychology is going to evolve and change such that it begins to reflect this new paradigm from science—the paradigm of quantum physics—and that psychology is just a little bit behind the time? Many of us are caught in a paradigm that’s behind the times. It’s just a question of a few decades here of growth and evolution and we’ll start to catch up.
MS: I certainly hope so. I think that the biomedical reductive aspect of psychology I find frightful. The reliance on diagnosis of—diagnoses aren’t real things. They’re just words we put together to describe what we think we see, but we walk around talking to each other as though the diagnosis is real. It’s called reification. Our mind or our thought makes something up and forgets we made it up.
Carl Jung, the great psychiatrist who studied the interface between quantum physics and psychology, collaborated with Wolfgang Pauli, the quantum physicist. Jung wrote that he believed that the future of psychology was in the integration of quantum physics and psychology. I certainly hope that that’s where the field will move. I am encouraged when I find many therapists attending my workshops or writing me to try to understand more about the approach I’ve developed. Last month, I spoke at an annual conference of marriage and family therapists to 300 therapists who wanted to learn this approach. That is encouraging.
TS: Now, finally, Mel, I want to talk a little bit about the state of our world today where many people feel anxious, and concerned, and not particularly optimistic. I’m curious how you would apply these principles and the idea that we do live in a moment of possibility where really new possibilities are possible if we can get into that nonthought place that you’re describing, the nanosecond before thought. How would you apply these ideas to people who are concerned, not so much about their own psychology, but the state of the world?
MS: I guess when you ask me the question, I noticed where my thought went. My thought went to the United States and the state of our current leadership politically. I was aware of my thought [that] went there. That may not be what your question was in regard to the state of the world.
When I was a young man, I was in college here in the Vietnam War and I was an activist, an anti-war activist. I believe that where I’ve evolved is I am still an activist, but perhaps an activist in terms of consciousness now. I believe that an individual, any individual, has the possibility and the potential to shift everything, given inseparability. Everything affects everything.
In this state of disconcert, disquiet, discord, fear, and ignorance that we see all around us, I always propose a state of potential, a state of activism. Doing something. Instead of sitting back passively and surrendering, which creates more anxiety, more depression—choose a path. Do something. Engage, and then you’re participating in the whole. That provides meaning and purpose. It doesn’t assure that things will turn out the way we want, but it feels a lot better when we’re participating than sitting back and feeling like a victim of circumstances.
TS: Can you unpack a little bit for our listeners how this idea of the participatory universe is central in quantum physics?
MS: Given inseparability—this means nothing is separate from anything. Now, that notion of participatory suggests that everything is participating with everything. Think about standing by a pond and throwing a big rock into the pond. The ripple of the water affects the entirety of the pond. Everything is participating.
You’re participating by what you do and don’t do. Your thoughts, your choices are part of the unfolding whole. If we’re not separate, we’re participating. But furthermore, it suggests this: we live under the myth of objectivity. That we can stand apart, separate and discretely, and make it an objective conclusion. That comes from Newton’s worldview of a static, inert, separate universe.
Given this new quantum worldview in which everything is unfolding together, there is no objectivity. There is an unfolding participation in which we’re all in this mix together. The participatory worldview means that consciousness is the primary driver of reality. It’s consciousness. It’s thought. We live in what appears to be a material universe, but the material is just a temporary consolidation of energy. The primary constructor of reality is consciousness. Your thoughts, your feelings, what you express, what you don’t express are part of the ingredients of the soup of what we call reality.
TS: Then finally, Mel—you’ve touched a couple of times, but I want to make sure that we’re really clear about this—that this quantum view applied to how we relate to our thoughts can be very powerful in interpersonal communication. I wonder if you can just talk about that very directly. How does this affect how we communicate with each other?
MS: In a participatory worldview in which I’m coming into a participatory thinking—where I see what my thoughts are telling me—in conversation with another, I’m no longer arguing about who’s right and who’s wrong and the truth. That’s an objective Newtonian reality. I can share how I feel as participatory, so I can say to somebody, “When you speak that way to me, I need to tell you how I feel.” That’s participatory. We’re all participating in a conversation together.
Furthermore, the last chapter of my book, I propose that if we begin to speak without using the “to be” verbs—is, am, were, was—those “to be” verbs are the verbs of Newton’s worldview because they all speak of a fixed, unchanging, objective reality. Those are the verbs that really get us stuck in our relationships and communication.
If I say to you in a negative way, “You are such and such,” we know what your reaction will be. You won’t take in what I said and you’ll be coming back at me. If I speak without using the “to be” verbs and I say, “You know, Tami, when you speak to me that way, let me share with you how I feel.” That’s a little more inviting. That’s open. It also takes us out of the place of victimhood.
I was having an exercise one evening with a group I was facilitating, and I asked everybody to share a confining wave collapse that they had identified. Really negative belief about themselves. One man in a group said, “I am nothing. I am empty.” I then asked him to re-say it without using “am,” without the “to be” verb. He thought about it and he said, “I feel like nothing. I feel empty.” But he had a different expression on his face. He didn’t have so much sadness. I asked him why and he said, “Well, if I feel like nothing, that could change. If I am nothing, that’s unchanging.” Semantics, the words, are very important to move into subjective discourse with each other and to try to communicate without the “to be” verbs.
TS: I’m afraid to say a sentence right now. I don’t know if I’ll be inadvertently using one of the “to be” verbs. It seems like they come up quite a lot. I don’t think I just used one.
MS: Certainly, I use them all the time when I’m speaking as well, except when I’m mindful or when I’m writing. That last chapter of the book, I wrote the entire chapter without using the “to be” verb. We become the author. We’re taking ownership of our thoughts and feelings, which is participatory.
TS: OK, Mel, I just have one final question for you. When you feel deeply into the model of quantum physics, the way that you understand it, what does that say to you about the spiritual dimension of your life? We’ve been talking a lot about psychological health, and I think that’s an area of applying quantum physics that’s quite pioneering in your work. But what about what’s traditionally considered a spiritual view? What it’s like just to feel—I’m trying not to use a “to be” verb—as a human, what matters most to us in our hearts, what people consider spiritual?
MS: For me personally, there is a rather perfect—I shouldn’t use the word perfect. Rather, natural alignment between quantum principles and spirituality. I find that the quantum mechanics, the quantum principles to be profoundly spiritual, because spiritual is a word. It means different things to all of us. For me, spirituality suggests that I am—that I experience myself as an integral part of the universe. I have meaning, and purpose, and compassion, and empathy, and kindness for all. I am able to be more than a physical being.
I am navigating life as a soul, as a spirit. When we look at the creation of the universe from the scientific point of view, and understand that the big bang proposes that the material of the universe from the moment of the big bang is everything that exists now, then we are all as one. We all came from matter perhaps the size of a basketball. We all are as one. That’s profoundly spiritual for me.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Mel Schwartz. He’s the author of a new book called The Possibility Principle: How Quantum Physics Can Improve the Way You Think, Live, and Love. Mel, thank you so much for being a guest here on Insights at the Edge and for your new book, The Possibility Principle.
MS: Thank you, Tami. Great being with you.
TS: SoundsTrue.com: many voices, one journey. Thanks for listening.
