Dr Emily Musgrove: The Science of Belonging

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What does it mean to stay open to life when the heart has broken?

In this conversation with psychologist and author Dr Emily Musgrove, we explore the science and soul of belonging - how connection shapes our resilience, creativity and leadership.

Emily shares insights from her research and her therapy practice, revealing how our relationships literally rewire the nervous system and expand our capacity for courage, innovation and wellbeing. She invites us to see belonging not as a soft skill, but as the foundation of thriving - in life and in the workplace.

Emily reminds us that true leadership begins in relationships - and that our workplaces, like our lives, flourish when people feel safe enough to bring their whole selves.

Emily’s new book is entitled Unstuck - and you can find out more about her work at www.dremilymusgrove.com. 

NOTE: If you enjoyed this episode, I would be so grateful if you could rate the show and leave me a review on Apple podcasts. These reviews help more people discover the show. You could mention what you like about the show - the episode that made you a regular listener - or your favorite guest or episode. Here’s some easy instructions on how to leave a review.

Thank you so much!

• Transcription of Episode

  Jono (00:04.866)

  Well, welcome everyone. Welcome to this special live conversation with Dr. Emily Musgrove. It's a real thrill to have you here. Just a few kind of logistical details before we get started. Today's conversation is going to run probably about 60 to 90 minutes. And we've also allowed some time at the end for any kind of Q &A that any questions you might have.

  So we've received a few questions already in advance, but you're welcome to put anything in the chat box or when the time comes at the end, you can just come off and off your off mute and you'll be able to ask questions there. And just another thing that occasionally the video can get a little bit blurry with this platform that we're using. It's not it doesn't affect the recording, but it's just somehow somehow that's what it does. But if that's distracting for you, feel free to just do audio only if that's

  if that's better for you. But I think that's all for the logistics. I just really want to warmly welcome you here today. It's really, really wonderful to have you here around this theme of the science of belonging with Dr. Emily. And as always, to begin our time together, we always like to begin with a meditation or just an opportunity to settle in together. So if you're comfortable with that, I'd invite you to gently close your eyes and just become present to this moment right now.

  Jono (01:38.303)

  and becoming aware of where you are.

  Jono (01:48.992)

  And to help you settle in today, I'd invite you to take three deep breaths into your belly and on the up-breath to let go of any tension or worries or concerns that you might have.

  Jono (02:37.623)

  then bringing your attention to your feet on the ground.

  Noticing this natural pull of gravity.

  Some would say this is Mother Earth's way of letting you know that you belong here, keeping you close.

  Jono (02:59.187)

  And in your own way, you may want to acknowledge those who have taken care of this patch of earth that you reside on today.

  Jono (03:11.615)

  in your own way acknowledging those who have tended and taken care of this place.

  Jono (03:31.339)

  then bringing your attention up your legs to your calves and your thighs and just noticing any sensations that you might have or none. Either is okay.

  but just bringing awareness and attention to your legs and perhaps even offering thanks to these faithful servants that carry you throughout your life, that keep you upright and stable.

  Jono (04:14.613)

  and bringing your attention further up your body, your waist, your belly, perhaps stopping at your belly for a little moment and placing a hand if you feel comfortable doing that.

  and just noticing the natural rise and fall of your belly.

  Jono (04:40.033)

  this natural rise and fall that's been with you since you were born.

  Jono (04:49.685)

  reminding you of the pace in which life wants you to live.

  Jono (05:07.713)

  then bringing your attention to the, you can bring your hand down if you feel comfortable. bringing your awareness to the back of your body, to your spine, and perhaps even sitting up a little bit more uprightly.

  Jono (05:26.707)

  Noticing how that feels when you're upright, maybe bringing your shoulders back a little down from your ears.

  Jono (05:39.765)

  Many traditions would say that this is a dignified or a noble position, reminding you of your nobility. your dignity.

  Jono (05:56.571)

  even opening your chest a little as your shoulders come down.

  And as you do that, may want to imagine your chest being open.

  Jono (06:11.648)

  while simultaneously noticing your back feeling being strong and upright.

  Jono (06:21.588)

  So even a soft and an open front and a strong and stable back.

  Jono (06:33.684)

  allowing you to be open and receptive in your sharing and your listening, knowing that you can handle it all.

  
  this strong back.

  Jono (06:53.202)

  And as you bring your attention to your front body, to your chest and your heart region, you may want to have a wish or an intention or even a prayer for today.

  
  or even a longing, what is it that you would hope to happen or learn from today?

  Jono (07:19.646)

  or perhaps just to feel or experience.

  Jono (07:30.066)

  and even extending that out to those who are with us today as part of the Midlife Wisdom School community.

  Jono (07:40.788)

  What are the hopes and the wishes that you have for others? And also for our guest today, Emily.

  Jono (07:55.126)

  What do you hope and wish for her?

  Jono (08:03.157)

  and then perhaps in your own way, maybe dedicating this time to those beyond this circle.
  

  may this time be beneficial to them as well.

  their friends or family or animals or colleagues may this time benefit them as well through what we experience and learn today.

  Jono (08:41.239)

  And then before you open your eyes today, I'd invite you to take those three deep breaths again and to this time to really let go on the out-breath.

  Jono (09:26.763)

  And then when you're ready, absolutely no rush. You can gently open your eyes and come back into this circle.

  Jono (09:44.051)

  Well, welcome everyone and welcome, Emily, to this podcast, to this conversation. It's so lovely to have you here. I've heard you in conversation before and I was very, very thankful that you would say yes to coming and joining us today.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (09:48.258)

  Thank

  Dr Emily Musgrove (09:55.886)

  It's such a pleasure to be here with you all.

  Jono (10:00.694)

  Perhaps to begin, just to help our listeners know a little about you, perhaps you could share in the form of a check-in where you are right now, where you are maybe geographically and maybe emotionally, where are you?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (10:05.326)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (10:13.313)

  Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, I was very grateful for that little practice then. I said to you before that this is something that I do frequently with in my own work. So there was a feeling, certainly, of kind of a real gratitude for being here. I am in Perth in Western Australia. I'm physically located in my office. So this is my therapy room that I'm in at the moment.
  

  And yeah, I'm very, very happy to be here.

  Jono (10:44.342)

  Thank you, Emily. So we're here to explore the science of belonging and just to give you a little bit of background too, we started what's called the Midlife Wisdom School and we have just actually redone our website and one of the of the headlines on it was Belonging Changes Everything. And I'm curious to know from your perspective, from a kind of a research perspective, just to begin with, like how would you kind of describe

  Dr Emily Musgrove (10:59.886)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (11:09.678)

  Mm. Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, I would begin by really acknowledging that that belonging is a fundamental need, human need, and that we can actually really view belonging as akin to the needs that we have for things like food, water and shelter. And that really at its heart, a failure to fulfill this need

  Jono (11:13.802)

  belonging to people.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (11:38.782)

  really constitutes severe deprivation and results in a whole host of really negative and very poor outcomes for us as individuals and also as a community as well. So belonging really sits at the heart of of humaneness.

  Jono (12:01.399)

  You know, I've been thinking about belonging in the sense of...

  I I've grappled with it a lot in my life. know, I've grappled with the idea of, because I'm probably more on the introverted side as well, that just to even just to be with people is not necessarily enough. Can you say a little bit more about, because some people can kind of go, well does that mean I just need to get a posse of friends and then I'm kind of okay?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (12:09.506)

  Hmm. Hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (12:13.763)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (12:18.232)

  you

  Yeah, yeah.

  Yeah, yes. Yeah, well, no, you're absolutely right in that kind of intuition there. And even if we look at, there was a theory proposed by researchers, Baumeister and Leary in 1995 called the Need to Belong Theory. And they do really kind of ground this in the notion that it is a fundamental human need, but that it's comprised of two main components.

  So in order to have this need met, we have to have one being frequent interactions. So yes, you need to be in contact with people. We need to be seeing people frequently. But the second part is the most crucial, I think, and that is that there needs to be a structure of relatedness. And so what I mean by that is that there is a sense of a mutual care and concern for the people that you're interacting with.

  Jono (13:20.119)

  Hmm.
  

  Dr Emily Musgrove (13:21.271)

  And I think that's the real kind of defining feature there of feeling like I belong. And that is that I matter, if that makes sense.

  Jono (13:32.113)

  It so does make a big difference. Yeah, I notice such a difference in just groups where I feel accepted, where I feel like I kind of matter to the group, that I'm not just like a leg on the chair, so to speak.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (13:42.376)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, exactly. I'm curious if you don't mind me asking, Jono, how do you get a sense that you feel belonging? What would tell you then?

  Jono (13:58.269)

  For me personally, I'm not saying this is out of a universal thing, but for me when people take an interest in me and there's an opening for being listened to, would be probably my number one measure is that. And it's a big part of why in our school, this wisdom school we have listening as the primary piece, you know, and also not having people.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (13:59.662)

  Mm.

  Mm. Yeah.

  Jono (14:25.736)

  necessarily respond with any advice or even, that was really great, more just thank you. There's this opportunity to say thank you with the listening and it's quite a, I've been so struck with how in my life, because I've learnt this from other people, the likes of people like Parker Palmer in the US who have kind of understood how to structure things in a way where people can actually feel that. So yeah, listening, listening is a really big thing. And I think

  Dr Emily Musgrove (14:31.074)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

  Mm. Mm-hmm.

  Jono (14:53.014)

  But I think along with that, Emily, I would probably also say it corresponds as well to times in my life where I felt a belonging to myself. Then I can kind of feel a belonging with others. It's like a jewel thing. Do you know what I mean by that?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (15:04.684)

  Yes, yes. Yeah. absolutely. I mean, that's, that's so interesting. said that because it's actually something that I noticed very much when we did that meditation practice at the start is the, sense of, coming home to the self, and a, a feeling of being at home here then allows me also to notice that I can feel at home with others as well. Yeah.

  Jono (15:30.486)

  Yeah, yeah. And I think there's also, you, I mean, I think it's just as a context for this conversation too. There's probably, don't necessarily want to go into it all, but there's also these layers of belonging that as I was kind of preparing to talk to you around, you know, there's like self and others, but then there's probably also earth and place and mystery and kind of cosmos. And there's all these other layers that can make up what is quite a deep, a deep,

  Dr Emily Musgrove (15:46.798)

  Yep. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

  Mm. Mm-hmm.

  Jono (16:00.617)

  a very deep part of our lives, this feeling of being held in many, many domains.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (16:03.96)

  Yes, yeah, and I think that's such an important recognition in there because when it can feel like we're lacking a belonging in our communities or in our relationships, being able to tune into a universal sense of belonging in the world, for example, a sense of I belong because I exist.

  this more kind of zoomed out kind of meta sense that even if I don't have the relationships and connections that I'm yearning for, I exist in this universe and therefore I belong. I think that can be buffering and perhaps a place to start then cultivating maybe the relationships that we yearn for.

  Jono (16:47.179)

  Yeah, yeah, I concur with that hugely. in recent days in my life have kind of had a reconnection back to what I would probably call mystery. And that has, you know, things like prayer have kind of come back into my life and that has had a a profound impact in my life of a kind of a, yeah, just more of a cosmological belonging, just for, just like you were talking about, just from fundamentally being alive.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (16:56.632)

  Mm-hmm.

  Mm. Well.

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
  

  Jono (17:15.927)

  and not having to earn that or do anything to gain that. Yeah, but I have to say, Emily, I have to still say when you ask me about when do you feel belonging, I also have to say that I often still feel lonely. I often feel like the outside of a situation. So it's not, don't want anyone to kind of get the sense that I'm like in all these situations, I'm feeling belonging because a lot of the time I don't, know, like school pickups or a new party or even like a new, starting a new venture like this.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (17:24.589)

  Mm.

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah.
  

  Jono (17:45.824)

  I can feel like, anyone really want to hear kind of what I've got to say? And so I've got a pretty strong kind of fitting in pattern of wanting to, and I can probably sometimes contort and then I don't feel belonging. So I'm kind of doing things to make, myself feel like I'm belonging, but it's like, it's anything but in a way.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (17:47.992)

  Yeah.

  Mm-hmm.

  Yes, yes.
  

  Yeah, yeah. And that's that distinction there between fitting in and belonging. That, you know, from, it kind of reminds me of this idea that in, you know, maybe in primary school, you know, you can sit with us. That says that you fit in versus come sit with us. I want to know about you. That to me is kind of this distinction there, but like, how does it feel when I belong versus how does it feel when I'm fitting in?

  And they're often like from a psychological point of view for me, the notion of striving to fit in in some ways feels like an abandonment of the self. So I hide or leave behind the parts of me that may not be desired by this group. And that from that place, we can't have a true sense of belonging because it's not authentic or it's not representing my authentic self.

  Jono (19:03.425)

  What do you do in those settings? Like when there's the temptation to drop yourself in a way to slip in, you know?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (19:05.571)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (19:12.098)

  Yeah, mean, I think, first of all, I think it's extremely normal. So, you know, I certainly don't want to be pathologizing in any way or demonizing this drive that we have. It is very instinctual to want to fit in, you know, from an evolutionary point of view, we know that belonging in a group or existing in a group offers enormous evolutionary advantages. So of course we will seek approval or seek acceptance where we can.

  Now that we're no longer in primary school, for example, and we are adults and can navigate this world independently, I think for me the biggest task there is to tune in to notice when I am doing that. So what would be the cues for me? It might be that I'm in my head more. It might be that I've lost connection with my body. It might be that I leave a situation and go like, that just felt, that felt yuck.

  So really that first part for me would be this capacity to tune in and to notice both what the mind is saying and what the body's doing.

  Jono (20:24.193)

  Hmm. Yeah. I love that. I love that. Because there's such a, I noticed that my mind nearly at times can speed up when I'm with others and I don't feel like I belong and I'm starting to kind of like make up stuff in my mind. So it's interesting you say that because I can imagine you're slowing down when you're becoming more aware of it. I mean, I can nearly have a like a story, like a real story time going on about like these people, these people don't like me and.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (20:32.814)

  Yes.

  Jono (20:53.431)

  And it's like, I can look back and go, what are you going on about? Like, you know, I've kind of like completely isolated myself, yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (20:57.282)

  Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's amazing. Yeah. And interestingly, psychologically isolated yourself, what we all do so that you can be present in this group here, but psychologically I've, actually lost contact with the present moment when I've got hooked into these stories or even hooked into things like what to say next that would make me desirable or fit in here. So we get really preoccupied with

  Jono (21:08.791)

  All right.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (21:27.502)

  what should I do? What should I say here? And the irony of that is that we actually often lose the flow of a conversation then when we're trying to predict what to say next. so then it does feel disconnecting.

  Jono (21:38.774)

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I ask in your practice without breaking confidentialities or anything like that, but I know that there are kind of big studies kind of that are revealing how this lack of belonging, this kind of loneliness people are experiencing, are you noticing that in your practice with people? Are you noticing that's a common?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (21:52.098)

  Mm.

  
  Mm-hmm.
  

  Jono (22:06.345)

  feeling that people are having and I ask that to not in prying but also normalizing maybe what listeners are also feeling in their lives.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (22:11.758)

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think really that, you know, obviously I see a group of people and that I think in some ways they represent like a little microcosm of what I think is being experienced more broadly. And yes, I think that loneliness is an increasingly felt experience. And I know that we speak about this quite often, but the irony here is that we've never been more connected technically.

  but the quality of our connections are different. So, you know, the rise of online communications, of social media, obviously we know all this, that it's actually driving us away from this face-to-face contact or more meaningful connections.

  And so people, it might be presented not even necessarily as loneliness. People may not recognize that it's loneliness, but they may feel really flat or just a sense of apathy, being on autopilot, kind of indifference, and then like bringing a curiosity, like, why do I feel like that life's not that worth living at the moment? This kind of loss of vitality.

  yeah. And so that's certainly something that I would be saying there.

  Jono (23:31.927)

  That's interesting.

  Jono (23:36.056)

  You know, don't know if this resonates with you and people you've seen. I probably up until a few years ago in my life wouldn't confess to, and maybe it's a foil from what you were saying about some of people not recognizing it, but it's like a, I wouldn't want to say that I was experiencing loneliness or...

  Dr Emily Musgrove (23:57.922)

  Yes. Yeah.

  Jono (24:00.905)

  Or even acknowledging that I needed people in a particular way, because I might be coming across as codependent or needy or all these kind of phrases that people now use for people who might express a need. And yet over the last few years in my life, I've come to see and feel my need as kind of like as a mammal. You know, I think about the mammals, like the furry animals all together in a little cave or something, you know, and

  Dr Emily Musgrove (24:03.234)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (24:07.214)

  Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (24:22.446)

  Mm. Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (24:27.224)

  Yeah. Yeah.

  Jono (24:31.383)

  Yes, I'm just wondering if that's also you're noticing more of that as we become a more individualized society too. It's like, no, I don't need anyone. I'm fine. And to, and as a result, you don't ever go, you don't ever identify. I'm really lonely. I'm really not being seen. I'm not having the connections I want in fear of being you're kind of a loser.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (24:40.258)

  Yeah. Yes.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (24:53.804)

  Yes, I think that that is really, really kind of bang on there. And that is that there's almost a shamefulness attached to identifying loneliness that we feel in some ways as though it's a failing on our skillfulness as a social species. So if loneliness is here, this is mean this must mean that I'm not doing something right. And so then that when that shame shows up, you know, so often what the shame feeling tells us to do is to hide.

  So we don't name it, we don't ask for help, we don't reach out. It actually keeps us in paralysis. And then we get a deteriorating mood that accompanies that. So the ability to actually name, feel lonely. know, loneliness is in some ways an emotion. So I feel lonely. And if we think about emotion as information, if I can...

  tune into this information from that place I can then take action. But if I don't listen, if I'm not tuned in to the information, I can't do anything with it. So it's actually incredibly powerful to be able to name and to sit with the shame that's going to show up. But to name, I feel lonely because then we go, okay, so what do I do about it? And that's the place where we take action, which is I think much more powerful than the place of avoidance.

  Jono (26:23.937)

  Yeah, that's really interesting. And interesting also in the sense of...

  maybe not even having experienced what it's like to not feel lonely. And as a result, not having anything to contrast that with. You know, I think about, and I'm not, judgment behind this, the sense of, you know, so many of us have kind of lived in environments where there's been neglect or very busy parents or whatever it might be, and never having actually had that experience of feeling what it's like to belong.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (26:38.261)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (26:53.994)

  Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

  Jono (27:00.299)

  that that can also confuse this sense of knowing when I'm feeling lonely, because maybe you've never experienced it before.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (27:04.14)

  Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yes. And our early childhood experiences, you know, as we know, form such an imprint and can absolutely make us or increase our vulnerability towards experiencing certain types of relationships, for example. One of the, you know, when we think about our basic human needs. So, yes, we've got

  A family or a parent can provide our essentials to be alive. So they can provide us food and shelter and water and take us to school and perform the actions that are required to become an adult, for example. However, what often can show up is an experience of what's called emotional deprivation. And that is from a place of emotional deprivation, we don't receive warmth, care and nurture.

  And that's where we feel the belonging is when I have a sense of feeling nurtured, cared for, and loved. So we need that in order to feel the belonging then in later in life, because we know what that feels like, if that makes sense.

  Jono (28:20.393)

  It makes perfect sense. I've had the experience in small groups, know, these kind of more structured groups that I was talking about earlier. And I know I've seen it in the groups that we've been running recently of this feeling of like, I've never had someone listen to me like that. I've never been seen. that being seen is actually like an act of love.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (28:21.571)

  Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (28:28.873)

  Mm. Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (28:38.592)

  Mm. Mm. Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (28:49.911)

  Yes, yeah.

  Jono (28:50.091)

  and active care that's so profound and particularly in a world where it's so speedy and so surfacey that to actually just to be seen like that is everything in a way. I think I'm feeling more and more passionate about that in my life because of the effect it's had on me, but also because I in kind of quote unquote wellness circles or wellness worlds.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (28:56.879)

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (29:03.586)

  Hmm, it is.

  Jono (29:16.041)

  All the other areas that you spoke about as basic human needs are all talked about. Get your food right, move your body. I'm saying they're all great. They're all very important, but very rarely, other than like a token join my community kind of thing where there's no structure and there's no kind of real ability to connect. Yeah, it's just so not spoken about. And I think that's why I've so appreciated your thoroughness around this.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (29:20.44)

  Yes. Yeah.

  Jono (29:45.578)

  and the way that you communicate and speak about it. And you mentioned earlier too, and you've inferred it along the way to this kind of the cost of not belonging. And this is another part where I think we may not realize just how the effect it's having on our bodies and our worlds. Can you talk a little bit about what the science kind of tells us about what's happening when we lose belonging?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (29:55.134)

  Mm. Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (30:01.954)

  Yeah. Yes. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yes. Well, it's really interesting because there are, there are kind of two parts that I probably would like to mention. And one of, one of them is states where we, we lack a sense of belonging altogether. So in that state, you know, we could really see it as a stress response, a state of threat. So the body,

  Jono (30:31.433)

  to not belong is a state of stress.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (30:33.026)

  to, yeah, well, if we think about, this is in our biology, our kind of evolutionary history here is that when this need is not being met, it will move us into a state of threat because our sense of longevity is under threat here, basically. So when there's a chronic state of threat in the body, that will activate the stress response.

  And we know that when we sit in a stress response for too long, that there are significant physical implications. So we know that there is, for example, an increased rate of mortality for chronic experiences of loneliness. We know that people are more susceptible and vulnerable to experiencing things like heart attack, stroke, cancers, of dying younger when we lack a sense of belonging. So we can really see that.

  that belonging really serves to promote not only wellbeing, but also a longevity as well. There is of course the longest running study on adult happiness and that's the Harvard study of adult development. And that's such powerful information in there really at its core. have studied, originally they just studied men. It was in, I think in the 1940s, I could be getting this wrong.

  possibly earlier than that. They took a sample and they tracked these men across their life. At some point they thankfully brought in the women as well. And they took all measures or they have taken all measures of both physical health. So blood pressure, heart rate, weight, all this sort of stuff. They've looked at education and they've tracked this group of people across the longest running study in history. And what they have identified unequivocally

  is that the people that had healthy, happy relationships were the ones that lived the longest and had the happiest lives. So the key in all of that data was that relationships are the cornerstone of wellbeing and longevity. So I mean, that's pretty powerful information there as a star. Yeah. There is a second piece to this that

  Jono (32:50.74)

  It's very powerful.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (32:57.664)

  sits in between like the feeling of belonging and not belonging. And that's what's called the state of belonging uncertainty. And it's such an interesting construct. It was developed by researchers Gregory Cohen and now I've forgotten his other name. Cohen and Walters, I can't remember their first names, but they developed this particular term called belonging uncertainty. And it represents the state of not being sure

  Jono (33:18.871)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (33:27.904)

  and fearing that I don't belong. And that what sits underneath this construct is the experience that uncertainty, not knowing, is so much more aversive than knowing whether I do or don't belong.

  So wondering if I belong, not being sure, do I fit in here is actually more uncomfortable than knowing, yep, I definitely don't belong here. And that is such a, I think a really interesting thing to understand and to notice is that that state of uncertainty there is both the birthplace of opportunity, but it's also a place of distress and

  and overwhelm as well.

  Jono (34:23.233)

  Do you feel like that's a state that a lot of us potentially live in?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (34:29.006)

  Yes, yes, definitely. mean, uncertainty is a characteristic of being alive for a start, but we will face belonging uncertainty frequently. The most common context to experience belonging uncertainty is, first of all, when you start something new or you enter a new workplace, you enter a new situation, you start a new job, for example.

  So whenever we're entering a new context, belonging uncertainty is naturally high. We don't know yet how I will belong here or whether I will belong. That's a first piece. The second piece, and this is really important, and that is that if you are in a minority group, you will be much more likely to experience belonging uncertainty. So a minority group could be, I mean,

  it's represented by a whole host of different groups. So, you know, just to begin with people of color, diversity in terms of like neurodivergence, being a female, being LGBTQI plus, having a disability, there are any number of groups there. But basically anytime you're not in the majority, you will be more susceptible to experience belonging uncertainty.

  because history would say, in fact, history has said at certain times that you definitely don't belong here or you shouldn't belong here. So it's likely we bring with us this history, this kind of world history that has said in the past that you shouldn't be here. So it's very natural and understandable that we would be wary and attuned to that uncertainty when we go into these contexts.

  Jono (36:22.343)

  Well, I can imagine the effect that that has. was thinking about, is it Maslow and his hierarchy? You know, I just was looking at it the other day and I haven't looked at it since I was at university. But, you know, and then I saw belonging right in the middle. You after you've kind of looked after your basic, you know, your shelter and your safety, these really basic things. The next one, and I'm not saying Maslow's

  Dr Emily Musgrove (36:30.274)

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (36:34.658)

  Yeah. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (36:45.228)

  Yeah. Yeah.

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

  Jono (36:49.537)

  thing is the thing, but it's so interesting because then belonging comes up in this pyramid and then what comes after that is all your real development as a human. And so I can imagine if we're living in this belonging uncertainty all the time, all these kind of faculties and potential that aren't able to be activated, would that be kind of correct?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (36:54.112)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (37:00.61)

  Yes, exactly. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (37:11.352)

  Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the research is so clear about this is that in a state of uncertainty, our performance is undermined for a start. So if we were to look at both academic and occupational contexts in environments where there is a strong sense of belonging, like there's a really big belongingness culture, that culture or that workplace, for example, will outperform others that don't have that.

  that feeling there or that kind of sense of belonging. So we know that that if you have a sense of belonging in the workplace that their staff turnover is lower. We know that it increases loyalty, it increases, it actually increases our performance so we're more motivated. We're actually really kind of at its heart when we experience belonging we feel safe and it's only from safety

  that we can really access all of those kind of higher order parts of our brain and cognitive capacity to do the work, for example, or to be creative or to cultivate something meaningful. So it's from that place of safety there that we then get all of these. It's almost like living to our capacity.

  Jono (38:31.415)

  I've noticed that in workplaces in the past, one in particular where I was new and it was a very big change and that cognitive piece just wasn't kind of coming online. Like I was so constricted in my mind and I couldn't, that expansive kind of flowy state was just not there. And it wasn't, I remember the experience of someone.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (38:43.15)

  Mm. Mm-hmm.

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (38:52.685)

  Mm-hmm.

  Jono (38:57.463)

  kind of not taking me aside, but just having a connection with this one person that that just, it was like kind of air out of the balloon kind of thing. was like, wow. And it was the beginning of like this, this physiological change in how I could show up in the, because one person did something to have me feel like you're okay. You're part of this. Yeah, so I've kind of, have you had those experiences in your life where you've, someone's done something and

  Dr Emily Musgrove (39:03.822)

  Yeah. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (39:14.648)

  Yes, yes.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (39:18.796)

  Yeah. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (39:24.734)

  absolutely.

  Jono (39:27.743)

  all these other kind of faculties come online again.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (39:28.384)

  Yeah, yes. absolutely. mean, I remember, you know, even like when I moved to Perth 15 years ago, I remember even being invited to a dinner with a couple of people who are now one of whom that they're a couple and it was just me on my own. And, and they're some of my closest friends now kind of 15 years later. But I remember when they invited me for dinner was like, yes.

  There is this place here of feeling belonging, of feeling like there's something here to allow me to drop my guard a bit and to step down from being in this state of vigilance all the time. And there are, mean, there are a multitude of examples of where we might feel that, that we just need one person or one moment of really what it is, is like a welcoming, this experience of feeling welcomed. I think it's so important.

  Jono (40:28.115)

  It's like a superpower that we have to others to be able to do that. And I'd love to go into that a little bit later as to what we can do. But before that, I'd also like to touch on, was reading a little bit of Johann Hari's book about lost connections. And he was talking about how we often look at depression too as

  Dr Emily Musgrove (40:29.598)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (40:43.692)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (40:52.206)

  Hmm.

  Jono (40:54.633)

  We have a whole bunch of reasons for why we might be depressed and they might all be kind of legitimate. But in his assessment, one of the things that never gets really talked about is this grief that we're experiencing for the lost connection, the lost connection that we have from other people, but once again, not necessarily being aware of it. Is there any kind of science that would back up that notion that a chunk of us feeling depression could be this

  Dr Emily Musgrove (41:10.402)

  Hmm. Hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (41:14.893)

  Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (41:22.06)

  Yes.

  Yeah. Yes, absolutely. On an enormous number of levels, that's the case. mean, clinically speaking, yes, fundamentally we know that, for example, a lack of social support is a big risk factor for depression without question. But even if we get into the more nuanced part here, that depression, for example, can show up in adulthood.

  Jono (41:25.031)

  even unconscious grief that we have for not being seen, not being welcomed, etc.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (41:52.022)

  you know, really when we start to grieve the loss of what we didn't have as children often. the loss of, this is kind of this really interesting idea that we're grieving something we never had. And we get really hooked into or exposed to the fact that I didn't experience feeling nurtured or I didn't experience really meaningful connections here.

  And so yes, that can increase our vulnerability to feeling depressed. And it is a form of grief in that way. But yes, I mean, without doubt, we know that social support and connections are an absolute foundational key to being well and to good mental health.

  Jono (42:43.671)

  when you talk about our younger lives.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (42:46.796)

  Mm.

  Jono (42:49.407)

  What- how do you work with people who may have-

  had that degree of kind of neglect that they fundamentally, even they might recognise I'm lonely, so they might have done that piece, but then they fundamentally don't believe that they are lovable. And I don't, I say that too in the sense that I think that's probably more common than maybe we all recognise. You know, I know I've experienced that in my life and so how do you deal with that fundamental sense of like, or even...

  Dr Emily Musgrove (42:56.706)

  Mm. Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (43:12.504)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (43:16.418)

  Yeah, yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (43:21.344)

  Mm. Mm.

  Jono (43:25.303)

  Here's the other thing that I've experienced myself and I've encountered in other people. If people really found out about me, they really knew me, then that ain't gonna promote belonging. Is that?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (43:28.045)

  Hmm.

  Mm-hmm. Yes.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. This is this kind of notion of that I hold some sort of defectiveness that underneath it all that I am actually defective. And that in fact, I must work so hard in order for people not to see that part of me. And that can bring about a whole host of difficult behaviors, for example. But I mean, gosh, it's...

  I must say it's a really complex question about how we address and work with the sense of neglectfulness, the sense of deprivation that we might've experienced as children. This might be very therapy-speak here, but really at its heart, the therapeutic relationship

  Jono (44:24.97)

  It's welcomed.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (44:31.776)

  in some ways works as a template for experiencing unconditional positive regard, for experiencing a sense of being cared for, of being heard and listened to. So even if that wasn't what you experienced as a child, it's this idea here that we can, it's actually, there's a technical word for it, it's called limited reparenting. And that in this relationship between you and I as in the therapy,

  that in some ways I as the therapist kind of walk with you in a space to in a limited way, reparent those early wounds. And not that I am causing the change, but that we're working together here. And that from that place, you then go out into the world and that you can take in, receive, pay attention to relationships that

  are giving you support or are giving you nurture and warmth. So it's a very, this is again, very technically, therapeutically speaking here, there's a power in just being with another person. And it's from that platform that we can then look at how do we experience change outside of this room.

  Jono (45:51.777)

  So you're kind of as a therapist, you are modeling or creating a opportunity for.

  a reparenting of sorts or redoing it in a therapeutic relationship.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (46:02.592)

  Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah.

  Yeah, yeah. Now often it can be that, and this is something I didn't recognise in my early career as a psychologist, that if I express a concern and a care for someone,

  My, I think my naive hopefulness at the very beginning of being a therapist was that, that that by itself would be believed and taken in by someone. But what, what absolutely has become very apparent and became very apparent quickly was that me expressing my care and concern for someone is actually not sufficient for change in any way because that person's history will say, don't believe what she's talking about or I don't know how to take it in.

  So it's a process that can be slow and but also very beautiful as it unfolds to learn how we take in someone's care, how we can notice feeling accepted and ultimately how we can feel lovable at just as we are.

  Jono (47:15.838)

  Yeah, you know, I've I love how you've expressed that.

  done a lot of therapy myself as the client. And I think it was like the experience of having shared so much about myself over a very long period of time, what seemed like a very long period of time, and just being accepted that somehow wore down my default of

  Dr Emily Musgrove (47:23.97)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (47:33.646)

  Hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (47:37.587)

  Mm. Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (47:45.132)

  Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

  Jono (47:49.161)

  unworthiness or my default of she's just saying that because that's her role or whatever. and, but boy, it can take a while to really break down what has been so well formed, you know, that it's nearly like nothing can change that, you know.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (47:53.73)

  Yeah, yes, yeah.

  Yes.

  Yeah. Yeah.

  Yeah, I mean, I'd often kind of explain it to clients as though like, this is our blueprint. This is your default mode. Now, it doesn't mean that we can't change and have a new map. We can rewire. We know that we can rewire the brain, but this will always be the default. And that when, you know, potentially when there are rough seas, you know, this is where you're to go back to. But we can look at the skills to help you kind of reorient yourself.

  and to come back again to this new way of experiencing the world.

  Jono (48:43.062)

  You mentioned earlier about.

  self-regard, I think that was kind of like your end, you were pointing somewhere to the end game of this kind of regard for oneself. Can you speak a little bit about that and just how that self-compassion kind of can regenerate this belonging to yourself as a starting kind of point or as a foundational point, I guess?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (48:47.763)

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

  Yeah, yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (48:58.712)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I must say that I think self-compassion probably sits for me at the very heart of, of change and,

  living well, really. And I think there can be a myth around self-compassion or compassion in general that it is too permissive or that it might promote apathy or inaction. But I think when we actually step into understanding self-compassion, it's actually very active.

  been some incredible work done by Kristin Neff and Christopher Gurmer in this and many other people as well. But this self-compassion is this capacity to first of all to understand that I'm not alone.

  and that in itself is connection there to belonging.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (50:09.494)

  The second part is that I can be present to my suffering, that I can offer a sense of kindness to the fact that I'm hurting. And then the last part is I can also take action to alleviate suffering. So it's both, it's, being able to hold here this awareness that I'm having a really hard time. What do I need next?

  And when, you I have a very strong feeling and belief that if we could be more compassionate as a species, not only would we be more kind to ourselves, I think we'd also be more open and receptive to other people. So the more self compassionate we are, we often find that the more compassionate we can be to other people's struggles and difficulties as well. And so therefore, you know, if we kind of zoom out and have a look at, okay, so when I'm feeling lonely,

  when I feel like I don't belong, then one of my first ports of call then would be to bring on board a self-compassion and to really deeply acknowledge this really hurts. This really hurts and I'm here for you in this. So it's kind of bringing on board what I would often call like the healthy adult mode that says, I can hear you having a really hard time and I'm here for you.

  And then the next question is, okay, so with this pain here, what is it telling you? What is it telling you about what you need? And then what would be the one next step that you could take that would be towards that thing?

  But without the self-compassion, we will very often beat ourselves up, get critical or move into avoidance. And those states don't tend to take us towards a place that feels meaningful to us.

  Jono (52:05.484)

  Hmm.

  I remember when that practice, two things come to mind. One is, I think it was Tara Brach that I heard talking about this in a kind of a more casual setting. And she was referring to how she says, I think it was either darling or sweetheart when she's talking to herself. And I was like, my gosh, like that, there's something about.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (52:20.16)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (52:27.864)

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.

  Jono (52:35.895)

  the name she was referring to herself as.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (52:36.588)

  Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I agree. I call myself sweetheart when I'm having a hard time. Yeah. yes. Yeah.

  Jono (52:43.293)

  Right, because that's a friendly, that's a what you would say to someone who you is dear to you.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (52:50.252)

  Yeah, it's what I say to my kids. I call my kids that. And I think this is, and she's so wonderful Tara Brack. I've always been very inspired by her, by her work and particularly her meditation practice. But when we think about the part of you that is suffering, it's often a very little part, like as in a smaller part, a part that is young, younger. And

  Jono (52:53.761)

  Right.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (53:19.95)

  One inroad for me would be when you think about a child suffering, how would you care for that child? How do you want to show up and nurture and look after this child that's having a hard time? And then how can I do that now for myself, recognizing that there is a little Emily here that's having a hard time?

  Jono (53:46.711)

  Beautiful.

  And for those who might be watching this or listening to this and wondering whether they can identify with these younger parts and such, I remember being at a business conference of all things. And this guy who'd established a very, successful business was kind of doing a Q &A. Someone asked him, what would you offer as a

  piece of advice that's really got you through hard times to get through here. And, you know, I was expecting just a, you know, and he said, he then began to tell the story of his Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodron, who was his live teacher at the time. And he said, she taught me about unconditional friendliness.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (54:17.464)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (54:34.242)

  Hmm. wow.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (54:44.878)

  Hmm.

  Jono (54:45.931)

  this practice of being unconditionally friendly towards myself. And as part of that, he said, I learned to even be embarrassed in situations and to really be okay with being embarrassed. He said it allowed me to move further and further into new areas of my business and to take all these risks because I knew.

  that I could carry myself into situations and I wouldn't, the failure wouldn't be this terrible thing where I'd collapse and hack into myself. It would be like, I could actually continue to maintain this friendship. And I share that by way of, cause I think sometimes in certain cultures that, know, that this can sound so soft and lovely for you guys to be thinking about this. And yet it has a, when I hear someone like him, I go, this is very hard and tangible.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (55:16.706)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (55:25.825)

  Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (55:36.254)

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (55:43.512)

  Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Exactly. I think that's so spot on. And in fact, one of the examples that I would most often give, particularly for skeptics around self compassion would be, okay, so you've got a child that's learning to ride a bike. We've got, in fact, we've got three children learning to ride bikes. The first child is riding and they fall off the bike.

  Jono (55:45.843)

  outcomes about this. This is about you growing and progressing in your life rather than having to stay stagnant and in this collapsed kind of state.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (56:13.024)

  And the parent goes in and says, what's wrong with you? You should be better than this. Like all your friends are riding. You should get like, need to get back on that bike. Otherwise you're going to be in deep trouble. That's the first one. The second one is we get the child riding the bike. They fall off and the parent goes, Ooh, yeah, that, that feels hard. Let's not worry about bike riding. Come on off we go. Okay. Don't worry about it. We'll do something else. And then the third one is

  same situation, the child falls off the bike and the parent goes, gosh, I can see that really hurt and I can see that this feels really hard. But I also know that you really want to learn to ride your bike because you want to keep up with your friends. So what can we do to help you get back on the bike and keep on going? And so those three situations represent the inner critic being the first one, how we speak to ourselves when we get something wrong. The second one,

  is when we move into passivity or avoidance, we give up on the goal. But the third one is the self compassionate approach. And that is that we offer ourselves a kindness and a support and we take action. So self compassion actually promotes productivity, it provides motivation, it promotes engagement, rather than it being a softly, softly passive experience. I think that's a huge misnomer about

  self-compassion.

  Jono (57:42.176)

  I that. I really love that. What about when it comes to other people? So I get this kind of, is that, that for me feels like the heart of coming back to yourself in a belonging sense. When it comes to our daily lives and, you know, catching the train or the bus or whatever, and you kind of know where I'm heading, like what are there things that we can do to enhance?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (57:49.4)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (57:53.304)

  Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (57:58.318)

  Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (58:02.67)

  Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (58:11.734)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think first of all, we can be on the lookout for cues of belonging. So when we feel uncertain about where we belong, the paradox is that a state of uncertainty activates a stress response, which makes us vigilant to cues of rejection.

  Jono (58:12.733)

  sense of belonging in a daily life.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (58:40.14)

  So we actually in that state are looking for signs that I don't belong here. So the shrug of a shoulder, the crossing of the arms of someone, maybe the mood of somebody else, we're attuned to those and we see them more readily. And we will also see or interpret other people's behavior as rejecting even when they're not.

  So this is very kind of a instinctual response that we have as humans. So the challenge and often the place to start would be, okay, what would it be like if I set as an experiment for the next week, I want you to go out and look for signs of belonging. So I want you to be like almost like scanning the environment for signs that I belong here. It might be that you actually really pay attention to the fact that someone asked you to go and grab a coffee.

  or you pay attention to the fact that someone said hello as you walked in, or that you made eye contact with someone on the bus, that when you're buying a coffee in the morning that the barista, that you make eye contact with the barista or they say hello. So we're actually, instead of scanning for rejection, we start to scan for acceptance. So that might be a starting point there.

  There are a whole host of things like little interventions that we can do. probably two of my favorite ones would be finding space to be a mentor. So what the research would suggest is that one of the best ways to promote belonging is for you to act as though you already belong and to be the mentor itself. So this might mean putting your hand up to be a mentor at work.

  It might be volunteering, I don't know, at the PNC, at schools. It is acting as though I already belong and also tuning into the knowledge and wisdom I already have to impart that to somebody else. That's one of my favorite ones. When you can, mentoring is so helpful in cultivating a feeling that I belong here.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:00:57.26)

  The other part here, and this is more for helping cultivate belonging for other people, is the idea of what's called perspective getting. And this is based on, I'm pretty sure it's the work of David Yeager, but it's this idea that as humans, we're actually not very skilled at perspective taking. We find it very difficult to imagine how other people might feel and think. And so what we need to tune into there is this

  notion that we need to ask what someone's perspective is. We need to be curious and to get their perspective on their experience because we cannot assume that my experience is the same as someone else's. And I want to give you an example. I think I've used this example elsewhere, but I feel like it's really, it feels really relevant. If you were to, so earlier this year I got on the

  the important bandwagon of weightlifting for a woman in my 40s. And I had had a stronger version to this for a very long time because I didn't feel comfortable in the gym. I felt very intimidated by the weight section and the people that were there. And so that's why I avoided it. And then I'm like, really, this was really important to me. I really had to kind of overcome this in some way. So the first time I went there, I felt very uncomfortable.

  I didn't like it at all. But then over time, and this is really important in the research too, is that over time, we know that we can start to feel belonging if we persist. So now, almost 12 months later, I have no problem going to the gym. I feel absolutely fine being there. But at the beginning, I felt a huge sense of uncertainty and a trepidation even about being in that space. But if you were to say to any of the other men that were in there,

  how do you feel about this gym here? They'd be like, yeah, it's great. Love it. No problem. But for me, my experience was like, no, I do not like it. So this is kind of really highlighting this notion that we can experience the same context, but based on our learning histories, our, know, whether we're in a minority group, how new we are to something, our experience of that same context will always be different. And so the great challenge we have there is we need to ask. We need to tune in.

  Jono (01:02:56.821)

  Hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:03:23.798)

  What is this like for you? What could we improve? What could we change? Can we have another check-in in a few weeks time and see how you're traveling? So it's really kind of this embodiment there of a curiosity.

  Jono (01:03:35.07)

  Hmm. Yeah.

  Hmm. I'm thinking about situations that I've been in. Well, two things I'm thinking about at the same time. One is I find it interesting. I lived in America for a while. And coming back to Australia, I noticed that at the end of a sentence in Australia, we say, you know, it's really hard here, isn't it? You know, or it's kind of like an aside when you talk about the perspective taking. It's nearly an assumption that you think the same as I do. Right. Even that. Right.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:03:48.408)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:04:03.992)

  Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's confirmation bias almost. Yeah.

  Jono (01:04:08.318)

  It nearly like jams you into like, it's not open. It's kind of like, yeah, that's So that's one thing I'm thinking about, just the use of language and how we actually ask questions rather than assuming that you think the same way I do. The other one was I was in a, was speaking to a quite a, quite a well-known person in a certain area. I won't go into the details of that, but he did a lot of presentations in different parts of the world. And in sudden, and I was curious about this because

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:04:17.939)

  Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:04:29.88)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:04:37.72)

  Mm-hmm.

  Jono (01:04:38.216)

  as you may have encountered and other people may have encountered, some audiences are different than others. And he was saying that an audience that he's quite, he has to present to quite often is quite deadpan and quite like non-responsive, conservative, held back. And he said very early in his career, and I very curious because I'm familiar with this cohort as well, right? He said, very early,

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:04:43.683)

  Yes.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:04:54.754)

  Yeah. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:05:02.474)

  Mm-hmm.

  Jono (01:05:08.112)

  to understand that, well had to make the decision to keep my heart open. He said because the alternative was that I would just kind of collapse within myself and be like well kind of F you or if you're not going to be responsive to me then I'm going to shut down. And he said what I did is I chose to kind of see that behind the non-responsiveness were the rich lives of other human beings and he said it has completely transformed his whole

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:05:18.178)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:05:23.885)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:05:32.558)

  Yes.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:05:37.151)

  Mm-hmm.

  Jono (01:05:37.911)

  He said that one decision. just the reason I say that is because like going back to that day to day searching for cues and all that stuff, and nearly also underneath that is a belief somehow in the goodness of people. That people are good. Like without that, why do I want to search for cues and why do I, you know, like there's that kind of cynicism that you can grow when you...

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:05:40.354)

  Hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:05:56.706)

  Yes.

  Yeah,

  Jono (01:06:04.192)

  feel like not accepted. It's like there can be bit of an F you or I'm just going to stay to myself, take my bat and go home kind of thing. Yeah, just wanted to say that.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:06:05.635)

  Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:06:14.286)

  I think that's absolutely fundamental and to me, I've had this discussion actually with a number of people in different contexts around our choice, our capacity to choose how we view the world and we can choose to have a generous read on people or we can choose to have a more cynical and critical and judgmental one. Now I know that there may be people out there that

  would prefer to have a cynical view because it may promote a sense that I will not be tricked, that I will not be taken advantage of, that I will be prepared for negative outcomes because I have low expectations of people. But the question that I would often be asking is that, but what's the cost of feeling that way? What's the cost of having such poor expectations of people?

  And what would be the contrasting experience to believe in like the humanity of this person in front of you and to see this whole human here that sits behind the blank face, for example, or that sits behind the angry outburst even, know, who is underneath there. And if I can hold onto, you know, just this shared humanity that actually for me, I would much prefer, I would much, much prefer.

  to be able to hold a generous rate of people and to walk through the world with that stance. And yes, there may be times then that maybe yes, I get taken advantage of in some circumstances or, you know, it certainly doesn't protect me from negative outcomes, but it changes the lens through which I live in the world.

  Jono (01:07:59.103)

  Yeah, love that. Just moving, I'm just aware of time, I know you have a client. When it comes to professional lives, workplaces and such, know that a little bit of a gripe that I have is that people spend so much time in talent hunting. I've got to find the best people, right? But then they come into an organization and it's like not much is going on there to want them to stay or to even to feel liberated and to feel...

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:08:03.85)

  Mm-hmm.

  Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:08:16.524)

  Yes, yes, yes, yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:08:22.616)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah. Yeah, yes.

  Jono (01:08:28.758)

  Can you talk a little bit about maybe what people can do to in more of these kind of group settings to have belonging really happen?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:08:30.595)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think it's this almost this idea of like onboarding belonging. So in the onboarding of a new staff member, how do you welcome them for a start? So the welcoming is really important. Do you offer them a mentor? And the research is really interesting around this is that it's really helpful to have a mentor who's quite junior.

  So someone that's maybe only been out of the, maybe been in the job for a year. So they're not really senior, but because they can relate to being new again, but they also offer an example of, know, I've done, I didn't feel like I belonged to the beginning, but now I do. So the role of mentoring at the very beginning is really helpful. There are also quite a bit of research around the idea of much more frequent

  organizational check-ins. So rather than having like the biannual team get together, you'd be much better to have monthly check-ins. You might be better to have smaller but more frequent group experiences. That's one thing. The other thing which is really powerful for an organization

  is to be able to undertake what's called values affirmations interventions. And so that is this idea that we want to get a sense of the whole person, not just the worker. And so it might be something like, whether it's a line manager with one individual, I want to know more about what you value. So it's kind of tuning into what this person's values are.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:10:25.804)

  because it's when we feel seen and when we have a curiosity for someone else that we feel a greater sense of belonging. So any action or activity in a workplace that can bring in understanding of someone's values or talking about this whole person rather than the worker, they're conditions that will absolutely promote a greater sense of loyalty and engagement with the company.

  Jono (01:10:56.458)

  Well, what comes to mind is I love that the we have I have a trainer that I see with my son. And before we start, when you talk about these check ins, these regular check ins, he always is curious. Like and warm and sounds so basic, right? Like it sounds really basic, but he's like, he'll give you a hug. He'll ask how you're going. not saying that people need to hug in the workplace or anything, but.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:11:01.474)

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:11:12.852)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:11:19.928)

  Yes. Yeah.

  Jono (01:11:25.15)

  And he often goes over time. I'm not suggesting that either. But there are these small things that instantly I feel belonging through him just not going straight into the task. He just takes like a minute or two to say, how are you going and all that. I think about that in workplaces as well. right.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:11:26.35)

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep.

  Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a heavy lift. You know, it's not a heavy lift. We're talking about one minute really of it might be like, how are you? I'm so curious. Or it might be just like a gentle, I don't know if this is appropriate or not, but like in some circumstances, like a gentle tap on the shoulder, for example, or like, you know, I heard you did this on the weekend. Like that's awesome. Or I heard that you really like fishing.

  Tell me about that. So how do you embody curiosity in essence?

  Jono (01:12:10.538)

  Yeah, I was looking up this morning this idea of the etymology of respect. yeah, over time, there's a whole bunch of things, but over time it evolved, I'm just reading this off my phone, to encompass both esteem for others and deference, so deferring to people. You know, it's like a, I go, wow, that's really different.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:12:17.088)

  Mm-hmm. I don't know it.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:12:30.434)

  Hmm. Hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:12:37.226)

  Mm. Yes and then. Yeah.

  Jono (01:12:37.866)

  than what maybe we superficially think of respect as maybe manners. But it's actually like, I think it's a really, it's just really see deeply into people and defer to them, know, nearly the Buddhist or the, you know, the hands, the bowing as we see the bigness in people, you know, that's it, that's it. But you're also referring to when you talk about onboarding and all that, you're talking about that situational crafting. Isn't that a?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:12:42.541)

  Yes.

  It's interesting.

  Yeah, yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:12:52.746)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. The dignity of other people. Yeah. Absolutely.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:13:05.582)

  Yes, yes. Yeah. So that's great. And thank you for reminding me. So that is, you know, from the work of Cohen and his colleagues, termed it situation crafting, meaning that we craft the situation to better cultivate belonging rather than the onus being on the individual seeking it out. And so how is it that you can really create the conditions?

  Jono (01:13:07.584)

  kind of a research-based term.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:13:33.102)

  for belonging and from an organizational point of view, it would be a huge disservice to not do this because the more belonging you experience in the workplace, the higher performing a company you become. So it pays, it pays to attend to belonging.

  Jono (01:13:56.363)

  Yeah, so once again, these are kind of hard skills. They're not just these soft, soft things that, yeah, this is really wonderful. mean, this is a big part of what we're doing at the Midlife Wisdom School. You know, like I've learned from people like Parker Palmer that situations can be crafted. And I know within myself, when people have done this for me, set up the conditions, whether it's confidentiality or how we listen to each other or what we do and don't do, it's like,

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:13:59.768)

  Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, exactly.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:14:10.872)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:14:19.916)

  Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're safe and do the, yeah, and do the work. Yes.

  Jono (01:14:26.292)

  All of a sudden, here we go. Here we go. We can really have a great time. Yeah. Totally. Totally. I'm just mindful of time. I think we have about, probably about 10 or 15 minutes left. I think we might move to another section of our podcast with the community, but I wanted to just ask you, was there anything else? I've loved this conversation with you.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:14:44.876)

  Yeah, great. Excellent.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:14:53.09)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

  Jono (01:14:53.974)

  I just want to know if there's anything else that when you think about belonging, when you think about what would be helpful to people to as they leave this conversation, is there anything that we haven't touched on?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:14:58.094)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:15:03.884)

  Yeah. look, there's only just probably, there's probably actually many things. I could talk about this for a long time. But there's one thing I think that feels important and that is being able to tune into your own values for a start. So something that I would work with clients around is let's just say you don't feel like you belong in certain environments. And sometimes I might just be like, this is really just not matching with the kind of person I want to be. So.

  Jono (01:15:09.364)

  Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there is. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:15:30.176)

  It might be an exercise of understanding your own values and then looking at how could I see you acting out those values and what context would they be in? So it might be something like maybe you really enjoy bushwalking. My invitation then would be join a bushwalking club. So I mean, it's pretty basic, but we're wanting to start where there's a sense of common shared values because it's from that place that it might feel easier to feel a sense of belonging.

  that would be just one kind of one thing to pay attention to.

  Jono (01:16:01.269)

  beautiful. And I also want to say this has been such a wonderful conversation. I'd love to do another one at some point because I know you do have a lot more to share. But I want to say congratulations on your new book, Unstuck. So wonderful. I'm curious, so for people who are listening, how do they get a copy? How do they stay connected with you? Like, how does that all happen?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:16:08.962)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:16:15.361)

  thank you. Yeah, thank you.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:16:21.058)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. that's very kind. Well, I do believe that it's available at all good bookstores. I have an audio book as well, and I have narrated it. So that's very easily accessible. But I have, I do have an Instagram account. It's Dr. Emily Musgrove. And I do share a little bit on there. And there'll be some more coming out next year, hopefully some other kind of new offerings as well.

  And then I have my practice, but that's actually my core business. So that's, yeah, that's there too.

  Jono (01:17:00.533)

  Well, I want to thank you for just your attentiveness and the thoroughness and the care in which you communicate this topic. I think it's such an important one and one that's not well communicated in many settings. And I just really acknowledge you for your work and everything you've done and continue to do. And thank you so much, Emily, for your time today.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:17:05.518)

  you

  Thank you.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:17:20.29)

  Thank you. It's been such a joy to be here with you, Jenna.

  Jono (01:17:32.117)

  We'll switch to our community time. Thank you. I know you've got about 10 minutes, is that right, Emily?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:17:33.422)

  So.

  That's okay, yeah, I'm also just gonna quickly plug my laptop in. That was a bad faux pas, but continue on whilst I'm doing that.

  Jono (01:17:40.693)

  Totally, totally. Just looking at the chat, I saw a few come in. Let me just see here. Welcome to everyone, to our community.

  Jono (01:17:55.477)

  don't seem to see the...

  questions.

  Jono (01:18:13.077)

  Here we go.

  Jono (01:18:18.218)

  About 10 minutes, Emily, is that okay?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:18:22.989)

  Okay.

  Jono (01:18:23.328)

  About 10 minutes, is that okay, Emily? Yep. So nine minutes. So this is from Ian. Emily, regarding belonging, can you speak to your experience about the meeting of psychology and spirituality? Yours specifically, if you are okay sharing some of

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:18:25.41)

  Yes, yep, maybe nine minutes. If that's okay.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:18:36.546)

  Thank

  Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, sure. So personally, I mean, I don't necessarily prescribe to a particular religion, but I think as we know that that's very distinct from a sense of spirituality. And in my in my training, early training, I was exposed to a lot of Buddhist, psychology, Buddhist practices. And so for me, spirituality comes from

  and attunement, really an attunement to the self. And for me personally, I would do that through a meditation practice. That's probably the most important piece for me. And I think that that can unfold to things like a knowing or an intuition. That's for me where kind of spirituality exists is this sense of internal knowing and also

  the idea of being one tiny piece of matter in a universe. I think that a meditation practice really kind of speaks to that as well.

  Jono (01:19:49.857)

  Beautiful. Someone else asked, there small everyday things that families can do to help everyone, especially kids, to feel like they belong?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:19:56.366)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah, that's great. That's great. Yeah, that's a really important question. I think it's really this idea of showing up, right? So showing up with your full attention. And on a very basic level, it might be, you know, having some rules around putting the phone down. It's about curiosity, like...

  practices like how did you, what was something difficult that you had to deal with today? How did you overcome that? I mean, we do this practice all the time at home and my kids get very sick of it, I must say. But what were you grateful for today? What was the best part of your day? So it's this real, again, this real knowing, like I wanna know you, I wanna know who this little person is. And sometimes obviously they won't give you very much or they'll be annoyed by a question, that's okay.

  But it's the remembering that mom and dad were curious, or my parents or caregivers were curious. They wanted to know me. So that might be a start. I mean, this is quite a big area, but belonging in family is so fundamental to a longer life of wellbeing. The message that often shows up for me is, and that I want my kids to know, is that it does not matter what you do, I will always love you.

  And I love you because you're here, not because you're anything else in particular.

  Jono (01:21:27.126)

  That's a huge foundation to live one's life from.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:21:27.714)

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

  Jono (01:21:33.526)

  Someone else says I often feel a bit different maybe because I'm introverted or I don't seem to fit the mold. How can people like me find a sense of belonging when I have to feel like I have to hide parts of myself?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:21:38.285)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:21:43.394)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:21:47.724)

  Yeah, yeah, that's really hard. It's really hard. And so, you know, for me, first of all, it would be working with that painful part and, you know, being able to offer some unconditional positive regard for that experience. It might be, again, starting small and it may not be that you have a sense of belonging in a lot of places, but maybe there might be one small place where you feel

  like even a micro moment of this. There's some great work by Dr. Rick Hansen and his work on what's called positive neuroplasticity. In other words, taking in the good. And we can use that as a real resource for being able to take in even micro moments of feeling connected and feeling a belonging. I mean, it's a much broader question and so I'm sorry that I can't answer that in a more profound way.

  But I would just maybe start there by noticing where is it that I can feel even for a moment that kind of smaller part.

  Jono (01:22:53.717)

  And this is probably the last question for you, which is a bigger kind of question. But she said, I feel like there have been many places where things haven't worked out and my sense of have not worked out in my life. And it's...

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:22:57.471)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:23:08.373)

  Mm. Mm-hmm.

  Jono (01:23:14.133)

  It's like, I guess it's something around like how do I bounce back from trying to find belonging hasn't worked out. And then probably it's a bit of a fatigue around trying to find the belonging.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:23:20.359)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah, gosh, I absolutely get that. Yeah, and that is exhausting. And that's probably to where kind of a self care comes in, not like a go and have a bath, have a massage situation, but a real deep care for this feels really hard. And it takes a lot of effort almost to get back up on the horse and to keep moving forward.

  Yeah, I mean, this is, there's a lot in here I want to acknowledge. For me, it would be, how do you take one next small step to reorient yourself again? What's the easiest step to take? So we don't have to look at the bigger picture of trying to feel again, like a profound sense of belonging here, but what's one small action step that you could take towards that direction? But I do acknowledge that's...

  there's a much greater complexity to that question and a really important one there too.

  Jono (01:24:29.503)

  Thank you, Emily. Thank you, everyone. That's probably the time Emily has a session she needs to go to right now. But I want to thank everyone for showing up. Thank you for your questions. Thank you for being part of this community. And thank you, Emily, for being part of really setting a foundation of belonging for our community and just a greater understanding of that. You're a wonderful person and a wonderful communicator. Thank you. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:24:35.445)

  Hehehe.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:24:45.636)

  Thank you.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:24:56.107)

  Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's been such a joy.

  Jono (01:25:00.629)

  And look forward to another time that we can share this together. Alrighty. Take care everyone and take care Emily. Okay. Bye for now.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:25:03.207)

  Absolutely, absolutely.

  Jono (00:04.866)

  Well, welcome everyone. Welcome to this special live conversation with Dr. Emily Musgrove. It's a real thrill to have you here. Just a few kind of logistical details before we get started. Today's conversation is going to run probably about 60 to 90 minutes. And we've also allowed some time at the end for any kind of Q &A that any questions you might have.

  So we've received a few questions already in advance, but you're welcome to put anything in the chat box or when the time comes at the end, you can just come off and off your off mute and you'll be able to ask questions there. And just another thing that occasionally the video can get a little bit blurry with this platform that we're using. It's not it doesn't affect the recording, but it's just somehow somehow that's what it does. But if that's distracting for you, feel free to just do audio only if that's

  if that's better for you. But I think that's all for the logistics. I just really want to warmly welcome you here today. It's really, really wonderful to have you here around this theme of the science of belonging with Dr. Emily. And as always, to begin our time together, we always like to begin with a meditation or just an opportunity to settle in together. So if you're comfortable with that, I'd invite you to gently close your eyes.

  and just become present to this moment right now.

  Jono (01:38.303)

  and becoming aware of where you are.

  Jono (01:48.992)

  And to help you settle in today, I'd invite you to take three deep breaths into your belly and on the up-breath to let go of any tension or worries or concerns that you might have.

  Jono (02:37.623)

  then bringing your attention to your feet on the ground.

  Noticing this natural pull of gravity.

  Some would say this is Mother Earth's way of letting you know that you belong here, keeping you close.

  Jono (02:59.187)

  And in your own way, you may want to acknowledge those who have taken care of this patch of earth that you reside on today.

  Jono (03:11.615)

  in your own way.

  acknowledging those who have tended and taken care of this place.

  Jono (03:31.339)

  then bringing your attention up your legs to your calves and your thighs and just noticing any sensations that you might have or none. Either is okay.

  but just bringing awareness and attention to your legs and perhaps even offering thanks to these faithful servants that carry you throughout your life, that keep you upright and stable.

  Jono (04:14.613)

  and bringing your attention further up your body, your waist, your belly, perhaps stopping at your belly for a little moment and placing a hand if you feel comfortable doing that.

  and just noticing the natural rise and fall of your belly.

  Jono (04:40.033)

  this natural rise and fall that's been with you since you were born.

  Jono (04:49.685)

  reminding you of the pace in which life wants you to live.

  Jono (05:07.713)

  then bringing your attention to the, you can bring your hand down if you feel comfortable. bringing your awareness to the back of your body, to your spine, and perhaps even sitting up a little bit more uprightly.

  Jono (05:26.707)

  Noticing how that feels when you're upright, maybe bringing your shoulders back a little down from your ears.

  Jono (05:39.765)

  Many traditions would say that this is a dignified or a noble position, reminding you of your nobility.

  your dignity.

  Jono (05:56.571)

  even opening your chest a little as your shoulders come down.

  And as you do that, may want to imagine your chest being open.

  Jono (06:11.648)

  while simultaneously noticing your back feeling being strong and upright.

  Jono (06:21.588)

  So even a soft and an open front and a strong and stable back.

  Jono (06:33.684)

  allowing you to be open and receptive in your sharing and your listening, knowing that you can handle it all.

  this strong back.

  Jono (06:53.202)

  And as you bring your attention to your front body, to your chest and your heart region, you may want to have a wish or an intention or even a prayer for today.

  or even a longing, what is it that you would hope to happen or learn from today?

  Jono (07:19.646)

  or perhaps just to feel or experience.

  Jono (07:30.066)

  and even extending that out to those who are with us today as part of the Midlife Wisdom School community.

  Jono (07:40.788)

  What are the hopes and the wishes that you have for others? And also for our guest today, Emily.

  Jono (07:55.126)

  What do you hope and wish for her?

  Jono (08:03.157)

  and then perhaps in your own way, maybe dedicating this time to those beyond this circle.

  may this time be beneficial to them as well.

  their friends or family or animals or colleagues may this time benefit them as well through what we experience and learn today.

  Jono (08:41.239)

  And then before you open your eyes today, I'd invite you to take those three deep breaths again and to this time to really let go on the out-breath.

  Jono (09:26.763)

  And then when you're ready, absolutely no rush. You can gently open your eyes and come back into this circle.

  Jono (09:44.051)

  Well, welcome everyone and welcome, Emily, to this podcast, to this conversation. It's so lovely to have you here. I've heard you in conversation before and I was very, very thankful that you would say yes to coming and joining us today.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (09:48.258)

  Thank

  Dr Emily Musgrove (09:55.886)

  It's such a pleasure to be here with you all.

  Jono (10:00.694)

  Perhaps to begin, just to help our listeners know a little about you, perhaps you could share in the form of a check-in where you are right now, where you are maybe geographically and maybe emotionally, where are you?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (10:05.326)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (10:13.313)

  Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, I was very grateful for that little practice then. I said to you before that this is something that I do frequently with in my own work. So there was a feeling, certainly, of kind of a real gratitude for being here. I am in Perth in Western Australia. I'm physically located in my office. So this is my therapy room that I'm in at the moment.

  And yeah, I'm very, very happy to be here.

  Jono (10:44.342)

  Thank you, Emily. So we're here to explore the science of belonging and just to give you a little bit of background too, we started what's called the Midlife Wisdom School and we have just actually redone our website and one of the of the headlines on it was Belonging Changes Everything. And I'm curious to know from your perspective, from a kind of a research perspective, just to begin with, like how would you kind of describe

  Dr Emily Musgrove (10:59.886)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (11:09.678)

  Mm. Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, I would begin by really acknowledging that that belonging is a fundamental need, human need, and that we can actually really view belonging as akin to the needs that we have for things like food, water and shelter. And that really at its heart, a failure to fulfill this need

  Jono (11:13.802)

  belonging to people.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (11:38.782)

  really constitutes severe deprivation and results in a whole host of really negative and very poor outcomes for us as individuals and also as a community as well. So belonging really sits at the heart of of humaneness.

  Jono (12:01.399)

  You know, I've been thinking about belonging in the sense of...

  I I've grappled with it a lot in my life. know, I've grappled with the idea of, because I'm probably more on the introverted side as well, that just to even just to be with people is not necessarily enough. Can you say a little bit more about, because some people can kind of go, well does that mean I just need to get a posse of friends and then I'm kind of okay?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (12:09.506)

  Hmm. Hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (12:13.763)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (12:18.232)

  you

  Yeah, yeah.

  Yeah, yes. Yeah, well, no, you're absolutely right in that kind of intuition there. And even if we look at, there was a theory proposed by researchers, Baumeister and Leary in 1995 called the Need to Belong Theory. And they do really kind of ground this in the notion that it is a fundamental human need, but that it's comprised of two main components.

  So in order to have this need met, we have to have one being frequent interactions. So yes, you need to be in contact with people. We need to be seeing people frequently. But the second part is the most crucial, I think, and that is that there needs to be a structure of relatedness. And so what I mean by that is that there is a sense of a mutual care and concern for the people that you're interacting with.

  Jono (13:20.119)

  Hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (13:21.271)

  And I think that's the real kind of defining feature there of feeling like I belong. And that is that I matter, if that makes sense.

  Jono (13:32.113)

  It so does make a big difference. Yeah, I notice such a difference in just groups where I feel accepted, where I feel like I kind of matter to the group, that I'm not just like a leg on the chair, so to speak.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (13:42.376)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, exactly. I'm curious if you don't mind me asking, Jono, how do you get a sense that you feel belonging? What would tell you then?

  Jono (13:58.269)

  For me personally, I'm not saying this is out of a universal thing, but for me when people take an interest in me and there's an opening for being listened to, would be probably my number one measure is that. And it's a big part of why in our school, this wisdom school we have listening as the primary piece, you know, and also not having people.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (13:59.662)

  Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (14:10.944)

  Mm. Yeah.

  Jono (14:25.736)

  necessarily respond with any advice or even, that was really great, more just thank you. There's this opportunity to say thank you with the listening and it's quite a, I've been so struck with how in my life, because I've learnt this from other people, the likes of people like Parker Palmer in the US who have kind of understood how to structure things in a way where people can actually feel that. So yeah, listening, listening is a really big thing. And I think

  Dr Emily Musgrove (14:31.074)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (14:47.658)

  Mm. Mm-hmm.

  Jono (14:53.014)

  But I think along with that, Emily, I would probably also say it corresponds as well to times in my life where I felt a belonging to myself. Then I can kind of feel a belonging with others. It's like a jewel thing. Do you know what I mean by that?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (15:04.684)

  Yes, yes. Yeah. absolutely. I mean, that's, that's so interesting. said that because it's actually something that I noticed very much when we did that meditation practice at the start is the, sense of, coming home to the self, and a, a feeling of being at home here then allows me also to notice that I can feel at home with others as well. Yeah.

  Jono (15:30.486)

  Yeah, yeah. And I think there's also, you, I mean, I think it's just as a context for this conversation too. There's probably, don't necessarily want to go into it all, but there's also these layers of belonging that as I was kind of preparing to talk to you around, you know, there's like self and others, but then there's probably also earth and place and mystery and kind of cosmos. And there's all these other layers that can make up what is quite a deep, a deep,

  Dr Emily Musgrove (15:46.798)

  Yep. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (15:56.906)

  Mm. Mm-hmm.

  Jono (16:00.617)

  a very deep part of our lives, this feeling of being held in many, many domains.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (16:03.96)

  Yes, yeah, and I think that's such an important recognition in there because when it can feel like we're lacking a belonging in our communities or in our relationships, being able to tune into a universal sense of belonging in the world, for example, a sense of I belong because I exist.

  this more kind of zoomed out kind of meta sense that even if I don't have the relationships and connections that I'm yearning for, I exist in this universe and therefore I belong. I think that can be buffering and perhaps a place to start then cultivating maybe the relationships that we yearn for.

  Jono (16:47.179)

  Yeah, yeah, I concur with that hugely. in recent days in my life have kind of had a reconnection back to what I would probably call mystery. And that has, you know, things like prayer have kind of come back into my life and that has had a a profound impact in my life of a kind of a, yeah, just more of a cosmological belonging, just for, just like you were talking about, just from fundamentally being alive.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (16:56.632)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (17:05.876)

  Mm. Well.

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

  Jono (17:15.927)

  and not having to earn that or do anything to gain that. Yeah, but I have to say, Emily, I have to still say when you ask me about when do you feel belonging, I also have to say that I often still feel lonely. I often feel like the outside of a situation. So it's not, don't want anyone to kind of get the sense that I'm like in all these situations, I'm feeling belonging because a lot of the time I don't, know, like school pickups or a new party or even like a new, starting a new venture like this.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (17:24.589)

  Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (17:28.333)

  Mm-hmm.

  Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (17:34.253)

  Yeah.

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

  Mm. Mm-hmm.

  Jono (17:45.824)

  I can feel like, anyone really want to hear kind of what I've got to say? And so I've got a pretty strong kind of fitting in pattern of wanting to, and I can probably sometimes contort and then I don't feel belonging. So I'm kind of doing things to make, myself feel like I'm belonging, but it's like, it's anything but in a way.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (17:47.992)

  Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (17:54.829)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (18:00.15)

  Yes, yes.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (18:05.1)

  Yeah.

  Yeah, yeah. And that's that distinction there between fitting in and belonging. That, you know, from, it kind of reminds me of this idea that in, you know, maybe in primary school, you know, you can sit with us. That says that you fit in versus come sit with us. I want to know about you. That to me is kind of this distinction there, but like, how does it feel when I belong versus how does it feel when I'm fitting in?

  And they're often like from a psychological point of view for me, the notion of striving to fit in in some ways feels like an abandonment of the self. So I hide or leave behind the parts of me that may not be desired by this group. And that from that place, we can't have a true sense of belonging because it's not authentic or it's not representing my authentic self.

  Jono (19:03.425)

  What do you do in those settings? Like when there's the temptation to drop yourself in a way to slip in, you know?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (19:05.571)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (19:12.098)

  Yeah, mean, I think, first of all, I think it's extremely normal. So, you know, I certainly don't want to be pathologizing in any way or demonizing this drive that we have. It is very instinctual to want to fit in, you know, from an evolutionary point of view, we know that belonging in a group or existing in a group offers enormous evolutionary advantages. So of course we will seek approval or seek acceptance where we can.

  Now that we're no longer in primary school, for example, and we are adults and can navigate this world independently, I think for me the biggest task there is to tune in to notice when I am doing that. So what would be the cues for me? It might be that I'm in my head more. It might be that I've lost connection with my body. It might be that I leave a situation and go like, that just felt, that felt yuck.

  So really that first part for me would be this capacity to tune in and to notice both what the mind is saying and what the body's doing.

  Jono (20:24.193)

  Hmm. Yeah. I love that. I love that. Because there's such a, I noticed that my mind nearly at times can speed up when I'm with others and I don't feel like I belong and I'm starting to kind of like make up stuff in my mind. So it's interesting you say that because I can imagine you're slowing down when you're becoming more aware of it. I mean, I can nearly have a like a story, like a real story time going on about like these people, these people don't like me and.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (20:32.814)

  Yes.

  Jono (20:53.431)

  And it's like, I can look back and go, what are you going on about? Like, you know, I've kind of like completely isolated myself, yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (20:57.282)

  Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's amazing. Yeah. And interestingly, psychologically isolated yourself, what we all do so that you can be present in this group here, but psychologically I've, actually lost contact with the present moment when I've got hooked into these stories or even hooked into things like what to say next that would make me desirable or fit in here. So we get really preoccupied with

  Jono (21:08.791)

  All right.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (21:27.502)

  what should I do? What should I say here? And the irony of that is that we actually often lose the flow of a conversation then when we're trying to predict what to say next. so then it does feel disconnecting.

  Jono (21:38.774)

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I ask in your practice without breaking confidentialities or anything like that, but I know that there are kind of big studies kind of that are revealing how this lack of belonging, this kind of loneliness people are experiencing, are you noticing that in your practice with people? Are you noticing that's a common?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (21:52.098)

  Mm.

  Mm-hmm.

  Jono (22:06.345)

  feeling that people are having and I ask that to not in prying but also normalizing maybe what listeners are also feeling in their lives.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (22:11.758)

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think really that, you know, obviously I see a group of people and that I think in some ways they represent like a little microcosm of what I think is being experienced more broadly. And yes, I think that loneliness is an increasingly felt experience. And I know that we speak about this quite often, but the irony here is that we've never been more connected technically.

  but the quality of our connections are different. So, you know, the rise of online communications, of social media, obviously we know all this, that it's actually driving us away from this face-to-face contact or more meaningful connections.

  And so people, it might be presented not even necessarily as loneliness. People may not recognize that it's loneliness, but they may feel really flat or just a sense of apathy, being on autopilot, kind of indifference, and then like bringing a curiosity, like, why do I feel like that life's not that worth living at the moment? This kind of loss of vitality.

  yeah. And so that's certainly something that I would be saying there.

  Jono (23:31.927)

  That's interesting.

  Jono (23:36.056)

  You know, don't know if this resonates with you and people you've seen. I probably up until a few years ago in my life wouldn't confess to, and maybe it's a foil from what you were saying about some of people not recognizing it, but it's like a, I wouldn't want to say that I was experiencing loneliness or...

  Dr Emily Musgrove (23:57.922)

  Yes. Yeah.

  Jono (24:00.905)

  Or even acknowledging that I needed people in a particular way, because I might be coming across as codependent or needy or all these kind of phrases that people now use for people who might express a need. And yet over the last few years in my life, I've come to see and feel my need as kind of like as a mammal. You know, I think about the mammals, like the furry animals all together in a little cave or something, you know, and

  Dr Emily Musgrove (24:03.234)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (24:07.214)

  Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (24:22.446)

  Mm. Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (24:27.224)

  Yeah. Yeah.

  Jono (24:31.383)

  Yes, I'm just wondering if that's also you're noticing more of that as we become a more individualized society too. It's like, no, I don't need anyone. I'm fine. And to, and as a result, you don't ever go, you don't ever identify. I'm really lonely. I'm really not being seen. I'm not having the connections I want in fear of being you're kind of a loser.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (24:40.258)

  Yeah. Yes.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (24:53.804)

  Yes, I think that that is really, really kind of bang on there. And that is that there's almost a shamefulness attached to identifying loneliness that we feel in some ways as though it's a failing on our skillfulness as a social species. So if loneliness is here, this is mean this must mean that I'm not doing something right. And so then that when that shame shows up, you know, so often what the shame feeling tells us to do is to hide.

  So we don't name it, we don't ask for help, we don't reach out. It actually keeps us in paralysis. And then we get a deteriorating mood that accompanies that. So the ability to actually name, feel lonely. know, loneliness is in some ways an emotion. So I feel lonely. And if we think about emotion as information, if I can...

  tune into this information from that place I can then take action. But if I don't listen, if I'm not tuned in to the information, I can't do anything with it. So it's actually incredibly powerful to be able to name and to sit with the shame that's going to show up. But to name, I feel lonely because then we go, okay, so what do I do about it? And that's the place where we take action, which is I think much more powerful than the place of avoidance.

  Jono (26:23.937)

  Yeah, that's really interesting. And interesting also in the sense of...

  maybe not even having experienced what it's like to not feel lonely. And as a result, not having anything to contrast that with. You know, I think about, and I'm not, judgment behind this, the sense of, you know, so many of us have kind of lived in environments where there's been neglect or very busy parents or whatever it might be, and never having actually had that experience of feeling what it's like to belong.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (26:38.261)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (26:53.994)

  Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

  Jono (27:00.299)

  that that can also confuse this sense of knowing when I'm feeling lonely, because maybe you've never experienced it before.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (27:04.14)

  Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yes. And our early childhood experiences, you know, as we know, form such an imprint and can absolutely make us or increase our vulnerability towards experiencing certain types of relationships, for example. One of the, you know, when we think about our basic human needs. So, yes, we've got

  A family or a parent can provide our essentials to be alive. So they can provide us food and shelter and water and take us to school and perform the actions that are required to become an adult, for example. However, what often can show up is an experience of what's called emotional deprivation. And that is from a place of emotional deprivation, we don't receive warmth, care and nurture.

  And that's where we feel the belonging is when I have a sense of feeling nurtured, cared for, and loved. So we need that in order to feel the belonging then in later in life, because we know what that feels like, if that makes sense.

  Jono (28:20.393)

  It makes perfect sense. I've had the experience in small groups, know, these kind of more structured groups that I was talking about earlier. And I know I've seen it in the groups that we've been running recently of this feeling of like, I've never had someone listen to me like that. I've never been seen. that being seen is actually like an act of love.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (28:21.571)

  Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (28:28.873)

  Mm. Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (28:38.592)

  Mm. Mm. Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (28:49.911)

  Yes, yeah.

  Jono (28:50.091)

  and active care that's so profound and particularly in a world where it's so speedy and so surfacey that to actually just to be seen like that is everything in a way. I think I'm feeling more and more passionate about that in my life because of the effect it's had on me, but also because I in kind of quote unquote wellness circles or wellness worlds.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (28:56.879)

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (29:03.586)

  Hmm, it is.

  Jono (29:16.041)

  All the other areas that you spoke about as basic human needs are all talked about. Get your food right, move your body. I'm saying they're all great. They're all very important, but very rarely, other than like a token join my community kind of thing where there's no structure and there's no kind of real ability to connect. Yeah, it's just so not spoken about. And I think that's why I've so appreciated your thoroughness around this.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (29:20.44)

  Yes. Yeah.

  Jono (29:45.578)

  and the way that you communicate and speak about it. And you mentioned earlier too, and you've inferred it along the way to this kind of the cost of not belonging. And this is another part where I think we may not realize just how the effect it's having on our bodies and our worlds. Can you talk a little bit about what the science kind of tells us about what's happening when we lose belonging?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (29:55.134)

  Mm. Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (30:01.954)

  Yeah. Yes. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yes. Well, it's really interesting because there are, there are kind of two parts that I probably would like to mention. And one of, one of them is states where we, we lack a sense of belonging altogether. So in that state, you know, we could really see it as a stress response, a state of threat. So the body,

  Jono (30:31.433)

  to not belong is a state of stress.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (30:33.026)

  to, yeah, well, if we think about, this is in our biology, our kind of evolutionary history here is that when this need is not being met, it will move us into a state of threat because our sense of longevity is under threat here, basically. So when there's a chronic state of threat in the body, that will activate the stress response.

  And we know that when we sit in a stress response for too long, that there are significant physical implications. So we know that there is, for example, an increased rate of mortality for chronic experiences of loneliness. We know that people are more susceptible and vulnerable to experiencing things like heart attack, stroke, cancers, of dying younger when we lack a sense of belonging. So we can really see that.

  that belonging really serves to promote not only wellbeing, but also a longevity as well. There is of course the longest running study on adult happiness and that's the Harvard study of adult development. And that's such powerful information in there really at its core. have studied, originally they just studied men. It was in, I think in the 1940s, I could be getting this wrong.

  possibly earlier than that. They took a sample and they tracked these men across their life. At some point they thankfully brought in the women as well. And they took all measures or they have taken all measures of both physical health. So blood pressure, heart rate, weight, all this sort of stuff. They've looked at education and they've tracked this group of people across the longest running study in history. And what they have identified unequivocally

  is that the people that had healthy, happy relationships were the ones that lived the longest and had the happiest lives. So the key in all of that data was that relationships are the cornerstone of wellbeing and longevity. So I mean, that's pretty powerful information there as a star. Yeah. There is a second piece to this that

  Jono (32:50.74)

  It's very powerful.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (32:57.664)

  sits in between like the feeling of belonging and not belonging. And that's what's called the state of belonging uncertainty. And it's such an interesting construct. It was developed by researchers Gregory Cohen and now I've forgotten his other name. Cohen and Walters, I can't remember their first names, but they developed this particular term called belonging uncertainty. And it represents the state of not being sure

  Jono (33:18.871)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (33:27.904)

  and fearing that I don't belong. And that what sits underneath this construct is the experience that uncertainty, not knowing, is so much more aversive than knowing whether I do or don't belong.

  So wondering if I belong, not being sure, do I fit in here is actually more uncomfortable than knowing, yep, I definitely don't belong here. And that is such a, I think a really interesting thing to understand and to notice is that that state of uncertainty there is both the birthplace of opportunity, but it's also a place of distress and

  and overwhelm as well.

  Jono (34:23.233)

  Do you feel like that's a state that a lot of us potentially live in?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (34:29.006)

  Yes, yes, definitely. mean, uncertainty is a characteristic of being alive for a start, but we will face belonging uncertainty frequently. The most common context to experience belonging uncertainty is, first of all, when you start something new or you enter a new workplace, you enter a new situation, you start a new job, for example.

  So whenever we're entering a new context, belonging uncertainty is naturally high. We don't know yet how I will belong here or whether I will belong. That's a first piece. The second piece, and this is really important, and that is that if you are in a minority group, you will be much more likely to experience belonging uncertainty. So a minority group could be, I mean,

  it's represented by a whole host of different groups. So, you know, just to begin with people of color, diversity in terms of like neurodivergence, being a female, being LGBTQI plus, having a disability, there are any number of groups there. But basically anytime you're not in the majority, you will be more susceptible to experience belonging uncertainty.

  because history would say, in fact, history has said at certain times that you definitely don't belong here or you shouldn't belong here. So it's likely we bring with us this history, this kind of world history that has said in the past that you shouldn't be here. So it's very natural and understandable that we would be wary and attuned to that uncertainty when we go into these contexts.

  Jono (36:22.343)

  Well, I can imagine the effect that that has. was thinking about, is it Maslow and his hierarchy? You know, I just was looking at it the other day and I haven't looked at it since I was at university. But, you know, and then I saw belonging right in the middle. You after you've kind of looked after your basic, you know, your shelter and your safety, these really basic things. The next one, and I'm not saying Maslow's

  Dr Emily Musgrove (36:30.274)

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (36:34.658)

  Yeah. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (36:45.228)

  Yeah. Yeah.

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

  Jono (36:49.537)

  thing is the thing, but it's so interesting because then belonging comes up in this pyramid and then what comes after that is all your real development as a human. And so I can imagine if we're living in this belonging uncertainty all the time, all these kind of faculties and potential that aren't able to be activated, would that be kind of correct?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (36:54.112)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (37:00.61)

  Yes, exactly. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (37:11.352)

  Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the research is so clear about this is that in a state of uncertainty, our performance is undermined for a start. So if we were to look at both academic and occupational contexts in environments where there is a strong sense of belonging, like there's a really big belongingness culture, that culture or that workplace, for example, will outperform others that don't have that.

  that feeling there or that kind of sense of belonging. So we know that that if you have a sense of belonging in the workplace that their staff turnover is lower. We know that it increases loyalty, it increases, it actually increases our performance so we're more motivated. We're actually really kind of at its heart when we experience belonging we feel safe and it's only from safety

  that we can really access all of those kind of higher order parts of our brain and cognitive capacity to do the work, for example, or to be creative or to cultivate something meaningful. So it's from that place of safety there that we then get all of these. It's almost like living to our capacity.

  Jono (38:31.415)

  I've noticed that in workplaces in the past, one in particular where I was new and it was a very big change and that cognitive piece just wasn't kind of coming online. Like I was so constricted in my mind and I couldn't, that expansive kind of flowy state was just not there. And it wasn't, I remember the experience of someone.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (38:43.15)

  Mm. Mm-hmm.

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (38:52.685)

  Mm-hmm.

  Jono (38:57.463)

  kind of not taking me aside, but just having a connection with this one person that that just, it was like kind of air out of the balloon kind of thing. was like, wow. And it was the beginning of like this, this physiological change in how I could show up in the, because one person did something to have me feel like you're okay. You're part of this. Yeah, so I've kind of, have you had those experiences in your life where you've, someone's done something and

  Dr Emily Musgrove (39:03.822)

  Yeah. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (39:14.648)

  Yes, yes.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (39:18.796)

  Yeah. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (39:24.734)

  absolutely.

  Jono (39:27.743)

  all these other kind of faculties come online again.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (39:28.384)

  Yeah, yes. absolutely. mean, I remember, you know, even like when I moved to Perth 15 years ago, I remember even being invited to a dinner with a couple of people who are now one of whom that they're a couple and it was just me on my own. And, and they're some of my closest friends now kind of 15 years later. But I remember when they invited me for dinner was like, yes.

  There is this place here of feeling belonging, of feeling like there's something here to allow me to drop my guard a bit and to step down from being in this state of vigilance all the time. And there are, mean, there are a multitude of examples of where we might feel that, that we just need one person or one moment of really what it is, is like a welcoming, this experience of feeling welcomed. I think it's so important.

  Jono (40:28.115)

  It's like a superpower that we have to others to be able to do that. And I'd love to go into that a little bit later as to what we can do. But before that, I'd also like to touch on, was reading a little bit of Johann Hari's book about lost connections. And he was talking about how we often look at depression too as

  Dr Emily Musgrove (40:29.598)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (40:43.692)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (40:52.206)

  Hmm.

  Jono (40:54.633)

  We have a whole bunch of reasons for why we might be depressed and they might all be kind of legitimate. But in his assessment, one of the things that never gets really talked about is this grief that we're experiencing for the lost connection, the lost connection that we have from other people, but once again, not necessarily being aware of it. Is there any kind of science that would back up that notion that a chunk of us feeling depression could be this

  Dr Emily Musgrove (41:10.402)

  Hmm. Hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (41:14.893)

  Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (41:22.06)

  Yes.

  Yeah. Yes, absolutely. On an enormous number of levels, that's the case. mean, clinically speaking, yes, fundamentally we know that, for example, a lack of social support is a big risk factor for depression without question. But even if we get into the more nuanced part here, that depression, for example, can show up in adulthood.

  Jono (41:25.031)

  even unconscious grief that we have for not being seen, not being welcomed, etc.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (41:52.022)

  you know, really when we start to grieve the loss of what we didn't have as children often. the loss of, this is kind of this really interesting idea that we're grieving something we never had. And we get really hooked into or exposed to the fact that I didn't experience feeling nurtured or I didn't experience really meaningful connections here.

  And so yes, that can increase our vulnerability to feeling depressed. And it is a form of grief in that way. But yes, I mean, without doubt, we know that social support and connections are an absolute foundational key to being well and to good mental health.

  Jono (42:43.671)

  when you talk about our younger lives.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (42:46.796)

  Mm.

  Jono (42:49.407)

  What- how do you work with people who may have-

  had that degree of kind of neglect that they fundamentally, even they might recognise I'm lonely, so they might have done that piece, but then they fundamentally don't believe that they are lovable. And I don't, I say that too in the sense that I think that's probably more common than maybe we all recognise. You know, I know I've experienced that in my life and so how do you deal with that fundamental sense of like, or even...

  Dr Emily Musgrove (42:56.706)

  Mm. Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (43:12.504)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (43:16.418)

  Yeah, yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (43:21.344)

  Mm. Mm.

  Jono (43:25.303)

  Here's the other thing that I've experienced myself and I've encountered in other people. If people really found out about me, they really knew me, then that ain't gonna promote belonging. Is that?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (43:28.045)

  Hmm.

  Mm-hmm. Yes.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. This is this kind of notion of that I hold some sort of defectiveness that underneath it all that I am actually defective. And that in fact, I must work so hard in order for people not to see that part of me. And that can bring about a whole host of difficult behaviors, for example. But I mean, gosh, it's...

  I must say it's a really complex question about how we address and work with the sense of neglectfulness, the sense of deprivation that we might've experienced as children. This might be very therapy-speak here, but really at its heart, the therapeutic relationship

  Jono (44:24.97)

  It's welcomed.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (44:31.776)

  in some ways works as a template for experiencing unconditional positive regard, for experiencing a sense of being cared for, of being heard and listened to. So even if that wasn't what you experienced as a child, it's this idea here that we can, it's actually, there's a technical word for it, it's called limited reparenting. And that in this relationship between you and I as in the therapy,

  that in some ways I as the therapist kind of walk with you in a space to in a limited way, reparent those early wounds. And not that I am causing the change, but that we're working together here. And that from that place, you then go out into the world and that you can take in, receive, pay attention to relationships that

  are giving you support or are giving you nurture and warmth. So it's a very, this is again, very technically, therapeutically speaking here, there's a power in just being with another person. And it's from that platform that we can then look at how do we experience change outside of this room.

  Jono (45:51.777)

  So you're kind of as a therapist, you are modeling or creating a opportunity for.

  a reparenting of sorts or redoing it in a therapeutic relationship.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (46:02.592)

  Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah.

  Yeah, yeah. Now often it can be that, and this is something I didn't recognise in my early career as a psychologist, that if I express a concern and a care for someone,

  My, I think my naive hopefulness at the very beginning of being a therapist was that, that that by itself would be believed and taken in by someone. But what, what absolutely has become very apparent and became very apparent quickly was that me expressing my care and concern for someone is actually not sufficient for change in any way because that person's history will say, don't believe what she's talking about or I don't know how to take it in.

  So it's a process that can be slow and but also very beautiful as it unfolds to learn how we take in someone's care, how we can notice feeling accepted and ultimately how we can feel lovable at just as we are.

  Jono (47:15.838)

  Yeah, you know, I've I love how you've expressed that.

  done a lot of therapy myself as the client. And I think it was like the experience of having shared so much about myself over a very long period of time, what seemed like a very long period of time, and just being accepted that somehow wore down my default of

  Dr Emily Musgrove (47:23.97)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (47:33.646)

  Hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (47:37.587)

  Mm. Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (47:45.132)

  Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

  Jono (47:49.161)

  unworthiness or my default of she's just saying that because that's her role or whatever. and, but boy, it can take a while to really break down what has been so well formed, you know, that it's nearly like nothing can change that, you know.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (47:53.73)

  Yeah, yes, yeah.

  Yes.

  Yeah. Yeah.

  Yeah, I mean, I'd often kind of explain it to clients as though like, this is our blueprint. This is your default mode. Now, it doesn't mean that we can't change and have a new map. We can rewire. We know that we can rewire the brain, but this will always be the default. And that when, you know, potentially when there are rough seas, you know, this is where you're to go back to. But we can look at the skills to help you kind of reorient yourself.

  and to come back again to this new way of experiencing the world.

  Jono (48:43.062)

  You mentioned earlier about.

  self-regard, I think that was kind of like your end, you were pointing somewhere to the end game of this kind of regard for oneself. Can you speak a little bit about that and just how that self-compassion kind of can regenerate this belonging to yourself as a starting kind of point or as a foundational point, I guess?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (48:47.763)

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

  Yeah, yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (48:58.712)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I must say that I think self-compassion probably sits for me at the very heart of, of change and,

  living well, really. And I think there can be a myth around self-compassion or compassion in general that it is too permissive or that it might promote apathy or inaction. But I think when we actually step into understanding self-compassion, it's actually very active.

  been some incredible work done by Kristin Neff and Christopher Gurmer in this and many other people as well. But this self-compassion is this capacity to first of all to understand that I'm not alone.

  and that in itself is connection there to belonging.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (50:09.494)

  The second part is that I can be present to my suffering, that I can offer a sense of kindness to the fact that I'm hurting. And then the last part is I can also take action to alleviate suffering. So it's both, it's, being able to hold here this awareness that I'm having a really hard time. What do I need next?

  And when, you I have a very strong feeling and belief that if we could be more compassionate as a species, not only would we be more kind to ourselves, I think we'd also be more open and receptive to other people. So the more self compassionate we are, we often find that the more compassionate we can be to other people's struggles and difficulties as well. And so therefore, you know, if we kind of zoom out and have a look at, okay, so when I'm feeling lonely,

  when I feel like I don't belong, then one of my first ports of call then would be to bring on board a self-compassion and to really deeply acknowledge this really hurts. This really hurts and I'm here for you in this. So it's kind of bringing on board what I would often call like the healthy adult mode that says, I can hear you having a really hard time and I'm here for you.

  And then the next question is, okay, so with this pain here, what is it telling you? What is it telling you about what you need? And then what would be the one next step that you could take that would be towards that thing?

  But without the self-compassion, we will very often beat ourselves up, get critical or move into avoidance. And those states don't tend to take us towards a place that feels meaningful to us.

  Jono (52:05.484)

  Hmm.

  I remember when that practice, two things come to mind. One is, I think it was Tara Brach that I heard talking about this in a kind of a more casual setting. And she was referring to how she says, I think it was either darling or sweetheart when she's talking to herself. And I was like, my gosh, like that, there's something about.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (52:20.16)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (52:27.864)

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.

  Jono (52:35.895)

  the name she was referring to herself as.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (52:36.588)

  Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I agree. I call myself sweetheart when I'm having a hard time. Yeah. yes. Yeah.

  Jono (52:43.293)

  Right, because that's a friendly, that's a what you would say to someone who you is dear to you.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (52:50.252)

  Yeah, it's what I say to my kids. I call my kids that. And I think this is, and she's so wonderful Tara Brack. I've always been very inspired by her, by her work and particularly her meditation practice. But when we think about the part of you that is suffering, it's often a very little part, like as in a smaller part, a part that is young, younger. And

  Jono (52:53.761)

  Right.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (53:19.95)

  One inroad for me would be when you think about a child suffering, how would you care for that child? How do you want to show up and nurture and look after this child that's having a hard time? And then how can I do that now for myself, recognizing that there is a little Emily here that's having a hard time?

  Jono (53:46.711)

  Beautiful.

  And for those who might be watching this or listening to this and wondering whether they can identify with these younger parts and such, I remember being at a business conference of all things. And this guy who'd established a very, successful business was kind of doing a Q &A. Someone asked him, what would you offer as a

  piece of advice that's really got you through hard times to get through here. And, you know, I was expecting just a, you know, and he said, he then began to tell the story of his Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodron, who was his live teacher at the time. And he said, she taught me about unconditional friendliness.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (54:17.464)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (54:34.242)

  Hmm. wow.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (54:44.878)

  Hmm.

  Jono (54:45.931)

  this practice of being unconditionally friendly towards myself. And as part of that, he said, I learned to even be embarrassed in situations and to really be okay with being embarrassed. He said it allowed me to move further and further into new areas of my business and to take all these risks because I knew.

  that I could carry myself into situations and I wouldn't, the failure wouldn't be this terrible thing where I'd collapse and hack into myself. It would be like, I could actually continue to maintain this friendship. And I share that by way of, cause I think sometimes in certain cultures that, know, that this can sound so soft and lovely for you guys to be thinking about this. And yet it has a, when I hear someone like him, I go, this is very hard and tangible.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (55:16.706)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (55:25.825)

  Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (55:36.254)

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (55:43.512)

  Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Exactly. I think that's so spot on. And in fact, one of the examples that I would most often give, particularly for skeptics around self compassion would be, okay, so you've got a child that's learning to ride a bike. We've got, in fact, we've got three children learning to ride bikes. The first child is riding and they fall off the bike.

  Jono (55:45.843)

  outcomes about this. This is about you growing and progressing in your life rather than having to stay stagnant and in this collapsed kind of state.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (56:13.024)

  And the parent goes in and says, what's wrong with you? You should be better than this. Like all your friends are riding. You should get like, need to get back on that bike. Otherwise you're going to be in deep trouble. That's the first one. The second one is we get the child riding the bike. They fall off and the parent goes, Ooh, yeah, that, that feels hard. Let's not worry about bike riding. Come on off we go. Okay. Don't worry about it. We'll do something else. And then the third one is

  same situation, the child falls off the bike and the parent goes, gosh, I can see that really hurt and I can see that this feels really hard. But I also know that you really want to learn to ride your bike because you want to keep up with your friends. So what can we do to help you get back on the bike and keep on going? And so those three situations represent the inner critic being the first one, how we speak to ourselves when we get something wrong. The second one,

  is when we move into passivity or avoidance, we give up on the goal. But the third one is the self compassionate approach. And that is that we offer ourselves a kindness and a support and we take action. So self compassion actually promotes productivity, it provides motivation, it promotes engagement, rather than it being a softly, softly passive experience. I think that's a huge misnomer about

  self-compassion.

  Jono (57:42.176)

  I that. I really love that. What about when it comes to other people? So I get this kind of, is that, that for me feels like the heart of coming back to yourself in a belonging sense. When it comes to our daily lives and, you know, catching the train or the bus or whatever, and you kind of know where I'm heading, like what are there things that we can do to enhance?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (57:49.4)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (57:53.304)

  Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (57:58.318)

  Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (58:02.67)

  Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (58:11.734)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think first of all, we can be on the lookout for cues of belonging. So when we feel uncertain about where we belong, the paradox is that a state of uncertainty activates a stress response, which makes us vigilant to cues of rejection.

  Jono (58:12.733)

  sense of belonging in a daily life.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (58:40.14)

  So we actually in that state are looking for signs that I don't belong here. So the shrug of a shoulder, the crossing of the arms of someone, maybe the mood of somebody else, we're attuned to those and we see them more readily. And we will also see or interpret other people's behavior as rejecting even when they're not.

  So this is very kind of a instinctual response that we have as humans. So the challenge and often the place to start would be, okay, what would it be like if I set as an experiment for the next week, I want you to go out and look for signs of belonging. So I want you to be like almost like scanning the environment for signs that I belong here. It might be that you actually really pay attention to the fact that someone asked you to go and grab a coffee.

  or you pay attention to the fact that someone said hello as you walked in, or that you made eye contact with someone on the bus, that when you're buying a coffee in the morning that the barista, that you make eye contact with the barista or they say hello. So we're actually, instead of scanning for rejection, we start to scan for acceptance. So that might be a starting point there.

  There are a whole host of things like little interventions that we can do. probably two of my favorite ones would be finding space to be a mentor. So what the research would suggest is that one of the best ways to promote belonging is for you to act as though you already belong and to be the mentor itself. So this might mean putting your hand up to be a mentor at work.

  It might be volunteering, I don't know, at the PNC, at schools. It is acting as though I already belong and also tuning into the knowledge and wisdom I already have to impart that to somebody else. That's one of my favorite ones. When you can, mentoring is so helpful in cultivating a feeling that I belong here.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:00:57.26)

  The other part here, and this is more for helping cultivate belonging for other people, is the idea of what's called perspective getting. And this is based on, I'm pretty sure it's the work of David Yeager, but it's this idea that as humans, we're actually not very skilled at perspective taking. We find it very difficult to imagine how other people might feel and think. And so what we need to tune into there is this

  notion that we need to ask what someone's perspective is. We need to be curious and to get their perspective on their experience because we cannot assume that my experience is the same as someone else's. And I want to give you an example. I think I've used this example elsewhere, but I feel like it's really, it feels really relevant. If you were to, so earlier this year I got on the

  the important bandwagon of weightlifting for a woman in my 40s. And I had had a stronger version to this for a very long time because I didn't feel comfortable in the gym. I felt very intimidated by the weight section and the people that were there. And so that's why I avoided it. And then I'm like, really, this was really important to me. I really had to kind of overcome this in some way. So the first time I went there, I felt very uncomfortable.

  I didn't like it at all. But then over time, and this is really important in the research too, is that over time, we know that we can start to feel belonging if we persist. So now, almost 12 months later, I have no problem going to the gym. I feel absolutely fine being there. But at the beginning, I felt a huge sense of uncertainty and a trepidation even about being in that space. But if you were to say to any of the other men that were in there,

  how do you feel about this gym here? They'd be like, yeah, it's great. Love it. No problem. But for me, my experience was like, no, I do not like it. So this is kind of really highlighting this notion that we can experience the same context, but based on our learning histories, our, know, whether we're in a minority group, how new we are to something, our experience of that same context will always be different. And so the great challenge we have there is we need to ask. We need to tune in.

  Jono (01:02:56.821)

  Hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:03:23.798)

  What is this like for you? What could we improve? What could we change? Can we have another check-in in a few weeks time and see how you're traveling? So it's really kind of this embodiment there of a curiosity.

  Jono (01:03:35.07)

  Hmm. Yeah.

  Hmm. I'm thinking about situations that I've been in. Well, two things I'm thinking about at the same time. One is I find it interesting. I lived in America for a while. And coming back to Australia, I noticed that at the end of a sentence in Australia, we say, you know, it's really hard here, isn't it? You know, or it's kind of like an aside when you talk about the perspective taking. It's nearly an assumption that you think the same as I do. Right. Even that. Right.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:03:48.408)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:04:03.992)

  Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's confirmation bias almost. Yeah.

  Jono (01:04:08.318)

  It nearly like jams you into like, it's not open. It's kind of like, yeah, that's So that's one thing I'm thinking about, just the use of language and how we actually ask questions rather than assuming that you think the same way I do. The other one was I was in a, was speaking to a quite a, quite a well-known person in a certain area. I won't go into the details of that, but he did a lot of presentations in different parts of the world. And in sudden, and I was curious about this because

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:04:17.939)

  Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:04:29.88)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:04:37.72)

  Mm-hmm.

  Jono (01:04:38.216)

  as you may have encountered and other people may have encountered, some audiences are different than others. And he was saying that an audience that he's quite, he has to present to quite often is quite deadpan and quite like non-responsive, conservative, held back. And he said very early in his career, and I very curious because I'm familiar with this cohort as well, right? He said, very early,

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:04:43.683)

  Yes.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:04:54.754)

  Yeah. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:05:02.474)

  Mm-hmm.

  Jono (01:05:08.112)

  to understand that, well had to make the decision to keep my heart open. He said because the alternative was that I would just kind of collapse within myself and be like well kind of F you or if you're not going to be responsive to me then I'm going to shut down. And he said what I did is I chose to kind of see that behind the non-responsiveness were the rich lives of other human beings and he said it has completely transformed his whole

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:05:18.178)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:05:23.885)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:05:32.558)

  Yes.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:05:37.151)

  Mm-hmm.

  Jono (01:05:37.911)

  He said that one decision. just the reason I say that is because like going back to that day to day searching for cues and all that stuff, and nearly also underneath that is a belief somehow in the goodness of people. That people are good. Like without that, why do I want to search for cues and why do I, you know, like there's that kind of cynicism that you can grow when you...

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:05:40.354)

  Hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:05:56.706)

  Yes.

  Yeah,

  Jono (01:06:04.192)

  feel like not accepted. It's like there can be bit of an F you or I'm just going to stay to myself, take my bat and go home kind of thing. Yeah, just wanted to say that.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:06:05.635)

  Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:06:14.286)

  I think that's absolutely fundamental and to me, I've had this discussion actually with a number of people in different contexts around our choice, our capacity to choose how we view the world and we can choose to have a generous read on people or we can choose to have a more cynical and critical and judgmental one. Now I know that there may be people out there that

  would prefer to have a cynical view because it may promote a sense that I will not be tricked, that I will not be taken advantage of, that I will be prepared for negative outcomes because I have low expectations of people. But the question that I would often be asking is that, but what's the cost of feeling that way? What's the cost of having such poor expectations of people?

  And what would be the contrasting experience to believe in like the humanity of this person in front of you and to see this whole human here that sits behind the blank face, for example, or that sits behind the angry outburst even, know, who is underneath there. And if I can hold onto, you know, just this shared humanity that actually for me, I would much prefer, I would much, much prefer.

  to be able to hold a generous rate of people and to walk through the world with that stance. And yes, there may be times then that maybe yes, I get taken advantage of in some circumstances or, you know, it certainly doesn't protect me from negative outcomes, but it changes the lens through which I live in the world.

  Jono (01:07:59.103)

  Yeah, love that. Just moving, I'm just aware of time, I know you have a client. When it comes to professional lives, workplaces and such, know that a little bit of a gripe that I have is that people spend so much time in talent hunting. I've got to find the best people, right? But then they come into an organization and it's like not much is going on there to want them to stay or to even to feel liberated and to feel...

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:08:03.85)

  Mm-hmm.

  Mm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:08:16.524)

  Yes, yes, yes, yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:08:22.616)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah. Yeah, yes.

  Jono (01:08:28.758)

  Can you talk a little bit about maybe what people can do to in more of these kind of group settings to have belonging really happen?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:08:30.595)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think it's this almost this idea of like onboarding belonging. So in the onboarding of a new staff member, how do you welcome them for a start? So the welcoming is really important. Do you offer them a mentor? And the research is really interesting around this is that it's really helpful to have a mentor who's quite junior.

  So someone that's maybe only been out of the, maybe been in the job for a year. So they're not really senior, but because they can relate to being new again, but they also offer an example of, know, I've done, I didn't feel like I belonged to the beginning, but now I do. So the role of mentoring at the very beginning is really helpful. There are also quite a bit of research around the idea of much more frequent

  organizational check-ins. So rather than having like the biannual team get together, you'd be much better to have monthly check-ins. You might be better to have smaller but more frequent group experiences. That's one thing. The other thing which is really powerful for an organization

  is to be able to undertake what's called values affirmations interventions. And so that is this idea that we want to get a sense of the whole person, not just the worker. And so it might be something like, whether it's a line manager with one individual, I want to know more about what you value. So it's kind of tuning into what this person's values are.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:10:25.804)

  because it's when we feel seen and when we have a curiosity for someone else that we feel a greater sense of belonging. So any action or activity in a workplace that can bring in understanding of someone's values or talking about this whole person rather than the worker, they're conditions that will absolutely promote a greater sense of loyalty and engagement with the company.

  Jono (01:10:56.458)

  Well, what comes to mind is I love that the we have I have a trainer that I see with my son. And before we start, when you talk about these check ins, these regular check ins, he always is curious. Like and warm and sounds so basic, right? Like it sounds really basic, but he's like, he'll give you a hug. He'll ask how you're going. not saying that people need to hug in the workplace or anything, but.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:11:01.474)

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:11:12.852)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:11:19.928)

  Yes. Yeah.

  Jono (01:11:25.15)

  And he often goes over time. I'm not suggesting that either. But there are these small things that instantly I feel belonging through him just not going straight into the task. He just takes like a minute or two to say, how are you going and all that. I think about that in workplaces as well. right.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:11:26.35)

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep.

  Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a heavy lift. You know, it's not a heavy lift. We're talking about one minute really of it might be like, how are you? I'm so curious. Or it might be just like a gentle, I don't know if this is appropriate or not, but like in some circumstances, like a gentle tap on the shoulder, for example, or like, you know, I heard you did this on the weekend. Like that's awesome. Or I heard that you really like fishing.

  Tell me about that. So how do you embody curiosity in essence?

  Jono (01:12:10.538)

  Yeah, I was looking up this morning this idea of the etymology of respect. yeah, over time, there's a whole bunch of things, but over time it evolved, I'm just reading this off my phone, to encompass both esteem for others and deference, so deferring to people. You know, it's like a, I go, wow, that's really different.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:12:17.088)

  Mm-hmm. I don't know it.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:12:30.434)

  Hmm. Hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:12:37.226)

  Mm. Yes and then. Yeah.

  Jono (01:12:37.866)

  than what maybe we superficially think of respect as maybe manners. But it's actually like, I think it's a really, it's just really see deeply into people and defer to them, know, nearly the Buddhist or the, you know, the hands, the bowing as we see the bigness in people, you know, that's it, that's it. But you're also referring to when you talk about onboarding and all that, you're talking about that situational crafting. Isn't that a?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:12:42.541)

  Yes.

  It's interesting.

  Yeah, yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:12:52.746)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. The dignity of other people. Yeah. Absolutely.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:13:05.582)

  Yes, yes. Yeah. So that's great. And thank you for reminding me. So that is, you know, from the work of Cohen and his colleagues, termed it situation crafting, meaning that we craft the situation to better cultivate belonging rather than the onus being on the individual seeking it out. And so how is it that you can really create the conditions?

  Jono (01:13:07.584)

  kind of a research-based term.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:13:33.102)

  for belonging and from an organizational point of view, it would be a huge disservice to not do this because the more belonging you experience in the workplace, the higher performing a company you become. So it pays, it pays to attend to belonging.

  Jono (01:13:56.363)

  Yeah, so once again, these are kind of hard skills. They're not just these soft, soft things that, yeah, this is really wonderful. mean, this is a big part of what we're doing at the Midlife Wisdom School. You know, like I've learned from people like Parker Palmer that situations can be crafted. And I know within myself, when people have done this for me, set up the conditions, whether it's confidentiality or how we listen to each other or what we do and don't do, it's like,

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:13:59.768)

  Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, exactly.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:14:10.872)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:14:19.916)

  Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're safe and do the, yeah, and do the work. Yes.

  Jono (01:14:26.292)

  All of a sudden, here we go. Here we go. We can really have a great time. Yeah. Totally. Totally. I'm just mindful of time. I think we have about, probably about 10 or 15 minutes left. I think we might move to another section of our podcast with the community, but I wanted to just ask you, was there anything else? I've loved this conversation with you.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:14:44.876)

  Yeah, great. Excellent.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:14:53.09)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

  Jono (01:14:53.974)

  I just want to know if there's anything else that when you think about belonging, when you think about what would be helpful to people to as they leave this conversation, is there anything that we haven't touched on?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:14:58.094)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:15:03.884)

  Yeah. look, there's only just probably, there's probably actually many things. I could talk about this for a long time. But there's one thing I think that feels important and that is being able to tune into your own values for a start. So something that I would work with clients around is let's just say you don't feel like you belong in certain environments. And sometimes I might just be like, this is really just not matching with the kind of person I want to be. So.

  Jono (01:15:09.364)

  Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there is. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:15:30.176)

  It might be an exercise of understanding your own values and then looking at how could I see you acting out those values and what context would they be in? So it might be something like maybe you really enjoy bushwalking. My invitation then would be join a bushwalking club. So I mean, it's pretty basic, but we're wanting to start where there's a sense of common shared values because it's from that place that it might feel easier to feel a sense of belonging.

  that would be just one kind of one thing to pay attention to.

  Jono (01:16:01.269)

  beautiful. And I also want to say this has been such a wonderful conversation. I'd love to do another one at some point because I know you do have a lot more to share. But I want to say congratulations on your new book, Unstuck. So wonderful. I'm curious, so for people who are listening, how do they get a copy? How do they stay connected with you? Like, how does that all happen?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:16:08.962)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:16:15.361)

  thank you. Yeah, thank you.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:16:21.058)

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. that's very kind. Well, I do believe that it's available at all good bookstores. I have an audio book as well, and I have narrated it. So that's very easily accessible. But I have, I do have an Instagram account. It's Dr. Emily Musgrove. And I do share a little bit on there. And there'll be some more coming out next year, hopefully some other kind of new offerings as well.

  And then I have my practice, but that's actually my core business. So that's, yeah, that's there too.

  Jono (01:17:00.533)

  Well, I want to thank you for just your attentiveness and the thoroughness and the care in which you communicate this topic. I think it's such an important one and one that's not well communicated in many settings. And I just really acknowledge you for your work and everything you've done and continue to do. And thank you so much, Emily, for your time today.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:17:05.518)

  you

  Thank you.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:17:20.29)

  Thank you. It's been such a joy to be here with you, Jenna.

  Jono (01:17:32.117)

  We'll switch to our community time. Thank you. I know you've got about 10 minutes, is that right, Emily?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:17:33.422)

  So.

  That's okay, yeah, I'm also just gonna quickly plug my laptop in. That was a bad faux pas, but continue on whilst I'm doing that.

  Jono (01:17:40.693)

  Totally, totally. Just looking at the chat, I saw a few come in. Let me just see here. Welcome to everyone, to our community.

  Jono (01:17:55.477)

  don't seem to see the...

  questions.

  Jono (01:18:13.077)

  Here we go.

  Jono (01:18:18.218)

  About 10 minutes, Emily, is that okay?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:18:22.989)

  Okay.

  Jono (01:18:23.328)

  About 10 minutes, is that okay, Emily? Yep. So nine minutes. So this is from Ian. Emily, regarding belonging, can you speak to your experience about the meeting of psychology and spirituality? Yours specifically, if you are okay sharing some of

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:18:25.41)

  Yes, yep, maybe nine minutes. If that's okay.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:18:36.546)

  Thank

  Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, sure. So personally, I mean, I don't necessarily prescribe to a particular religion, but I think as we know that that's very distinct from a sense of spirituality. And in my in my training, early training, I was exposed to a lot of Buddhist, psychology, Buddhist practices. And so for me, spirituality comes from

  and attunement, really an attunement to the self. And for me personally, I would do that through a meditation practice. That's probably the most important piece for me. And I think that that can unfold to things like a knowing or an intuition. That's for me where kind of spirituality exists is this sense of internal knowing and also

  the idea of being one tiny piece of matter in a universe. I think that a meditation practice really kind of speaks to that as well.

  Jono (01:19:49.857)

  Beautiful. Someone else asked, there small everyday things that families can do to help everyone, especially kids, to feel like they belong?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:19:56.366)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah, that's great. That's great. Yeah, that's a really important question. I think it's really this idea of showing up, right? So showing up with your full attention. And on a very basic level, it might be, you know, having some rules around putting the phone down. It's about curiosity, like...

  practices like how did you, what was something difficult that you had to deal with today? How did you overcome that? I mean, we do this practice all the time at home and my kids get very sick of it, I must say. But what were you grateful for today? What was the best part of your day? So it's this real, again, this real knowing, like I wanna know you, I wanna know who this little person is. And sometimes obviously they won't give you very much or they'll be annoyed by a question, that's okay.

  But it's the remembering that mom and dad were curious, or my parents or caregivers were curious. They wanted to know me. So that might be a start. I mean, this is quite a big area, but belonging in family is so fundamental to a longer life of wellbeing. The message that often shows up for me is, and that I want my kids to know, is that it does not matter what you do, I will always love you.

  And I love you because you're here, not because you're anything else in particular.

  Jono (01:21:27.126)

  That's a huge foundation to live one's life from.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:21:27.714)

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

  Jono (01:21:33.526)

  Someone else says I often feel a bit different maybe because I'm introverted or I don't seem to fit the mold. How can people like me find a sense of belonging when I have to feel like I have to hide parts of myself?

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:21:38.285)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:21:43.394)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:21:47.724)

  Yeah, yeah, that's really hard. It's really hard. And so, you know, for me, first of all, it would be working with that painful part and, you know, being able to offer some unconditional positive regard for that experience. It might be, again, starting small and it may not be that you have a sense of belonging in a lot of places, but maybe there might be one small place where you feel

  like even a micro moment of this. There's some great work by Dr. Rick Hansen and his work on what's called positive neuroplasticity. In other words, taking in the good. And we can use that as a real resource for being able to take in even micro moments of feeling connected and feeling a belonging. I mean, it's a much broader question and so I'm sorry that I can't answer that in a more profound way.

  But I would just maybe start there by noticing where is it that I can feel even for a moment that kind of smaller part.

  Jono (01:22:53.717)

  And this is probably the last question for you, which is a bigger kind of question. But she said, I feel like there have been many places where things haven't worked out and my sense of have not worked out in my life. And it's...

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:22:57.471)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:23:08.373)

  Mm. Mm-hmm.

  Jono (01:23:14.133)

  It's like, I guess it's something around like how do I bounce back from trying to find belonging hasn't worked out. And then probably it's a bit of a fatigue around trying to find the belonging.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:23:20.359)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah, gosh, I absolutely get that. Yeah, and that is exhausting. And that's probably to where kind of a self care comes in, not like a go and have a bath, have a massage situation, but a real deep care for this feels really hard. And it takes a lot of effort almost to get back up on the horse and to keep moving forward.

  Yeah, I mean, this is, there's a lot in here I want to acknowledge. For me, it would be, how do you take one next small step to reorient yourself again? What's the easiest step to take? So we don't have to look at the bigger picture of trying to feel again, like a profound sense of belonging here, but what's one small action step that you could take towards that direction? But I do acknowledge that's...

  there's a much greater complexity to that question and a really important one there too.

  Jono (01:24:29.503)

  Thank you, Emily. Thank you, everyone. That's probably the time Emily has a session she needs to go to right now. But I want to thank everyone for showing up. Thank you for your questions. Thank you for being part of this community. And thank you, Emily, for being part of really setting a foundation of belonging for our community and just a greater understanding of that. You're a wonderful person and a wonderful communicator. Thank you. Yeah.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:24:35.445)

  Hehehe.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:24:45.636)

  Thank you.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:24:56.107)

  Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's been such a joy.

  Jono (01:25:00.629)

  And look forward to another time that we can share this together. Alrighty. Take care everyone and take care Emily. Okay. Bye for now.

  Dr Emily Musgrove (01:25:03.207)

  Absolutely, absolutely.

  See you later, bye bye.

  See you later, bye bye.

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Dr Emily Musgrove

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