Emotional Alchemy with Tara Bennett-Goleman & Daniel Goleman

Program Description

We all have coping strategies that let us adapt to adversity. Yet as we grow older these thought patterns are no longer needed and we can even pay a price if we continue to use them. According to Tara Bennett-Goleman, such thought patterns are what she calls schema – hidden mental habits that shatter our peace of mind. “Schemas obscure the clarity and spaciousness of our true nature,” says Tara. With over 20 years of study with Buddhist masters from Tibet, Nepal and Burma, Tara takes what she learns to the next level by combining it with a scientific structure based on cognitive therapy and neuroscience – the perfect balance between fact and faith. In this dialogue, she and her partner, Daniel Goleman, explore schemas and relate how to use emotional alchemy to change shadows and confusion of the mind into clarity and how to use mindful investigation to see things as they are rather than as we think they are. Their own relationship has grown more loving because of the schema work they have been doing. “When you understand your emotional patterns, you take things much less personally,” says Daniel. The Golemans point out that many times we may unwittingly be attracted to partners who trigger our schemas and the antidote, says Tara, “is mindfulness, which involves being aware of our emotions without being ruled by them.”

Tara Bennett-Goleman has done post-graduate training at the Cognitive Therapy Center of New York and is the author of Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Heals the Heart (Harmony Books 2000). Goleman is a writer for the New York Times, and the author of Vital Lies, Simple Truths (Simon & Schuster 1985). Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (Bantam 1995), Working With Emotional Intelligence (Bantam 1998). Social Intelligence: Beyond IQ, Beyond Emotional Intelligence, The Revolutionary New Science of Human Relationships (Bantam 2006), and Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything (Doubleday 2009). To learn more about the work of Daniel Goleman go to www.DanielGoleman.info

Topics Explored in this Dialogue:

• How you can use emotional alchemy to transform
• What are the ten most crippling emotional patterns
• What are schemas and how can they cause havoc in your everyday life
• How to use interpersonal mindfulness to transform destructive relationship patterns
• How Buddhist principles can be practically applied in daily life
• Discover the neurological “magic quarter second” and how it can be used to dispel destructive thoughts

Program Number: 2864                Host: Michael Toms              Interview Date: 3/14/2001