Jason Kanz, Ph.D is a Neuropsychologist at the Marshfield Clinic in Eau Claire, Wisconsin where he lives with his wife and three children. Jason is the author of Soil of the Divine and Notes from the Upper Room: Lessons in Loving Like Jesus, as well as the editor of Living in the Larger Story: The Christian Psychology of Larry Crabb.
Jason talks and writes about the concepts of wholeness, integration, and reconciliation through the lens of neuroscience, spirituality, and creativity. For many of us, there’s always some sort of tension in our lives, whether in a relationship, in our own bodies, or frustration with things happening in the world around us. It also shows up as a sense within yourself that you know that you’re not being truly authentic in every area of your life. If you have been experiencing these feelings, this conversation may help you shift your perspective with three questions that will help you to be a voice of influence that could help heal the great divides that we are currently encountering in our world.
In this episode, Jason talks about what it means to be whole. He shares about the freedom that comes with wholeness, the cost to ourselves, our communities, and our organizations of remaining fragmented, how to live from a place of wholeness and freedom even when circumstances aren’t right, and so much more.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Jason Kanz’s Blog
- Jason Kanz on Twitter
- Jason Kanz on Facebook
- Jason Kanz’s Book | Notes from the Upper Room: Lessons in Loving Like Jesus
- Dr. Dan Siegel’s Website
Find our Lifeline resources and information about the course here.
Transcript
Hey, there! It’s Andrea. So, when was the last time that you took a nice, big, deep breath and exhaled and just relaxed with a big smile on your face knowing that everything felt like it was right in the world? Does that happen very often for you? I mean, if you’re like me, then more often than not instead, there’s always some sort of tension. There’s always something that just doesn’t quite feel right. Maybe it’s in a relationship – friction that might be in a relationship – or tension in my own body, or perhaps it’s frustration with things that are going on in the world. Or maybe it’s just a sense within yourself that you know that you’re not being truly authentic in every area of your life. It just doesn’t feel quite right.
Well, my guest today is Dr. Jason Kanz. He is a neuropsychologist who works in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where he lives with his wife and three children. He’s the author of four books, most recently, Notes from the Upper Room. And he seeks to think and write about the concepts of wholeness, integration, and reconciliation through the lens of neuroscience, spirituality, and creativity.
In this conversation with Jason, he’s going to talk a lot about what it means to be whole – the benefits and the freedom that comes with wholeness – and yet the cost that it is to ourselves, to our communities, to our organizations when we are not whole when we’re fragmented when things aren’t quite as they should be. He talks about how to live from a place of wholeness and freedom even when circumstances aren’t right. And he also shares three questions that will help you to be a “Voice of Influence” that could help heal the great divides that we currently experience in our world.
If you’re experiencing a lot of tension, a lot of frustration, a lot of that sense of, “Oh, it’s just things aren’t like they should be.” Well, maybe we don’t have to live like that.
Here’s my conversation with Dr. Jason Kanz:
Andrea: All right, Dr. Jason Kanz, it’s great to have you with us on the Voice of Influence podcast.
Dr. Jason Kanz: Glad to be here today.
Andrea: So, tell us a little bit about what you do.
Dr. Jason Kanz: So, I am what is called a neuropsychologist, and I often explain it to people that it’s a fancy term for a memory doctor. And so, part of what I do is my job involves trying to help people figure out what’s going on in terms of how their brains are functioning. So, I’m trained as a psychologist. I have a Ph.D. in counseling psychology, but I did additional training in a neurology department so that I can look at how the brain relates to behavior and how it affects how people live on a day-to-day basis. And especially when there’s something that’s gone wrong; so things like dementia, head injuries, learning disorders, and that sort of thing.
Andrea: Mhm, that’s really interesting. So, the patients that you work with, clients that you work with, do they cover kind of the gamut of those three things you mentioned?
Dr. Jason Kanz: Yeah. I work for Marshfield Clinic, which is in Northern Wisconsin. I’m located in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And at the facility that I’m at, I’m the only neuropsychologist who is there, and so that involves seeing a broad range of things. Sometimes, it’s even questions of, “Hey, there’s something going on. We don’t know quite what it is. Can you help us figure it out?” So, there’s the luxury of being able to see just a broad range of people from kind of all across the age spectrum, all sorts of diagnostic categories, and really, it’s interesting. It keeps my day-to-day work quite interesting.
Andrea: Are there any kind of unifying themes in your work that you see come up on a regular basis or… I’m not even sure what I’m asking you.
Dr. Jason Kanz: Yeah. In terms of unifying themes, I think the principal reason people come to me is in regard to cognitive complaints. The most common thing people complain of are memory concerns. But again, that can show up in a lot of different ways. So, it may be that it’s memory, but it could be that a person just isn’t processing as fast as what others might. It could be inattention. It could be depression or anxiety. And so, again, if there’s a unifying theme, it’s there’s generally complaint about, again, thinking, principally memory. And so I’m kind of asked to solve puzzles on a day-to-day basis.
Andrea: So, you also have, from what I understand, you have a real interest in personal transformation, how people function as a whole, things like these. What kind of got you interested in that, and what would you say your interest really is there?
Dr. Jason Kanz: Yeah, I think that’s spot on. I think it probably developed partly out of wanting to do my own workaround becoming more whole, becoming more psychologically healthy. So, in neuropsychology, one of the hallmarks of how a lot of clinical neuropsychology is practiced is there’s often a focus on what we call pathology – so, things that are not working well. I’m, you know, often called to come in and explain what’s wrong with somebody.
And it can be very… fragmented is maybe a good word. You know, we tend to take these parts of thinking in isolation. But over time, as I thought about transformation – particularly as a counseling psychologist – how do I kind of shift the focus a little bit to what makes a person function well? What leads to human flourishing to success? A word you will frequently hear me refer to is wholeness. I think a lot about what makes a person whole.
But again, I think a lot of that has come out of my own background, my own experience with feeling as though who I present on the outside doesn’t always match how I feel on the inside. And so, you know, I’ve done a lot of reading. I’ve really engaged in a lot of different activities and practices to try and come to an understanding of what leads to psychological and spiritual health.
Andrea: So that desire to have integrity between who you are in the inside and who you’re presenting on the outside has been a huge piece of why you’ve moved in this direction?
Dr. Jason Kanz: I think so, yeah. And again, that word “integrity”, I think, is key. You know, the word integrity, the root is “integer” – you know, one – which integers are whole numbers. And I think that’s exactly right. One example, one story, I think that really moved me in this direction is we were involved in a church as a family for a number of years – I think, I don’t know, a dozen years or something like that. And I had been appointed as a lay pastor there and really was burning the candle at both ends, just exhausted, burned out. And there was so much on my end, so much image management and recognizing that I was not, again, functioning, not feeling the same way on the inside as this person that I was presenting to the church.
And there was kind of this hallmark moment I remember. It was a weekend. My daughter, my eldest daughter – who is twenty at this point – she was at church and she had kissed her boyfriend good-bye on the cheek, and I saw red. I became very angry. I pulled her into an office, and I just dressed her down. And she later confronted me and said, “You’re not a safe person. I don’t like being home when you’re here,” and it crushed me. And it really made me reflect on that, you know, I talk about being this loving person who wants to be grace-filled, and yet one of the people closest to me doesn’t experience me that way. And so, for me, that was cataclysmic. It really moved me in the direction of wanting to do my own work, I think, even more deeply than maybe what I already had.
Andrea: Mmm. There’s nothing like family, especially children, to kind of showcase our inadequacies on things that we actually care about. Oh, shoot.
Dr. Jason Kanz: Yeah, without a doubt, you know. And I have thanked her for doing that, for having the courage, you know, to say step in and confront me for my own brokenness, my sin – for lack of a better word – against her. You know, I think that she was really brave in doing that. And I actually had asked her permission to write about it. And I think, I don’t know, two years ago now, I wrote an article for Fathom Magazine that I titled I Became What I Hate, which dealt with the subject of shame, and that I was using this notion of shame to control others while I was preaching against shame. And so, there was this real disconnect between who I was and who I said I was.
Andrea: Do you feel like you were able to kind of identify why you did that? Why you were doing that with her?
Dr. Jason Kanz: Um, for me, I think so much of it was around the notion of image management. If people somehow saw me as a bad father… and there was nothing that she did, in that instance, that would suggest that I was a bad father. But I think, for me, there were those internal messages that said, “If others see her, for example, kissing her boyfriend, that will reflect badly upon me.” And so, there was a real sense of, I think, fear, maybe shame around that. But I think that was just one example of maybe more stuff that was going on in me and recognizing the disintegration of many parts of myself that was showing up, I think, in a lot of burnout.
Andrea: Do you see that a lot, the connection between image management and the fragmentation of people and who they are?
Dr. Jason Kanz: Absolutely. I think one of the principal things that affects us as humans is that we tend to wear a lot of masks before the world. We don’t live from an authentic place where we’re consistent between groups of people. And again, that gets back to your word integrity. You know, I think we don’t often or maybe typically live from that place where we are consistent from situation to situation. And I see it frequently. Now, I think it shows up differently for different people. What might be my mask that I wear before the world might be different than yours or different from someone else’s. And I think that’s a real barrier to becoming whole people is living from that fragmented place.
Andrea: So, one of the reasons why we really wanted to invite you to be on the podcast was because we wanted to ask how does this fragmentation of an individual or lack of wholeness or lack of health of an individual person, how can that really impact the whole, the group, a systemic wellbeing, whether that’d be in an organization or a family unit or a country… You know, how does the individual impact the whole?
Dr. Jason Kanz: Well, I think one of the first things that becomes important as we ask that question is whether, as individuals, we are disconnected from the system or whether we are an integral part of the system, and in the opposite direction, whether the system is an integral part of us. And I think very commonly – especially in Western cultures with which I’m most familiar – I think we have a sense that we are somehow independent of systems; that our behaviors, our thoughts, feelings, emotions, you name it, don’t really have a significant effect upon the system. But in reality, we are all deeply embedded in multiple systems.
And I think when we begin to recognize this interconnectedness or interdependence, it helps us to begin to recognize that our own health, the work that we are doing has an effect – positive or negative – on the system of which we are a part. And again, I think you’re exactly right. I think that’s families, countries, communities, and we are all very likely part of multiple communities. And to recognize that we have an impact on that.
Andrea: Mhmm. How would you say that neurobiology can have that impact on a system?
Dr. Jason Kanz: Yeah. So, one of the things that I’m interested in is there’s a field that’s called Interpersonal Neurobiology, and it was first proposed back in the early ‘90s by a guy named Dan Siegel. And Dan Siegel is a psychiatrist at UCLA, and he really wanted to understand what is the mind. And so, he began to ask that question, and really, as he kind of pressed further into that, inviting a lot of different people into the conversation, not just physicians – not just scientists, but artists and social workers and physicists and chemists – recognizing that the brain is not an isolated organ.
I was mentioning earlier that as neuropsychologists or as a clinical neuropsychologist, there is often this fragmented approach to how we look at brain functioning. And part of that is a just kind of an effect of the types of testing, types of examinations that we do is what historically has been called a localizationist the approach, which again, you’re looking at focal parts of the brain. But this stuff that Dan Siegel is talking about is suggesting that the brain is inherently a social organ. We are made for connection. We are wired to connect with other people. And there’s all sorts of interesting data about – even on a cellular level – what are called mirror neurons, where my brain responds to something that you are doing just by observing it. And it helps us to see that there’s this, again, deep sense of interconnection. It’s the primary way in which we engage with one another.
And so, neurobiologically, when we begin to understand that our brains are not just an organ that moves our bodies around or helps us think or feel, but really helps us to connect deeply with others – those who are close with us, those who we are in community with. And Siegel would argue that it goes even beyond that to humanity in general, and I think he’s onto something with that.
Andrea: Why is that?
Dr. Jason Kanz: Well, I think if you look at some of the stuff that’s coming out of quantum physics… and this is what Dan Siegel talks about, is that there can be evidences that, you know, one cork on one side of the world can have an immediate impact on something on the other side of the world. So, it’s universality, right? I mean, it’s this idea that we are much more interconnected than what we might think or imagine.
You know, in kind of common literature or common culture, I think we hear this term, the Butterfly Effect. And you know, the things that I do and think have a greater impact on others than I think what we imagine that they do. And when we begin to understand things in that way that we are not only a part of systems but a global system, it begins to change how we think about interacting with others, how we, again, show up in the world. And I think when we begin to understand that, this interconnectedness, it can have a positive effect on not only brain health but system health.
Andrea: How do you know if you’re fragmented or if you’re whole, you know? How does one kind of recognize that this is even an issue for themselves individually?
Dr. Jason Kanz: That’s a wonderful question, and I don’t know that I have a perfect answer for it. I think I would suggest a couple of things. One is maybe the question is not, “Am I fragmented,” but “How am I fragmented?” And so, I think, a recognition that all of us, to some degree or another, have this disintegrated self. And so, I think that’s one piece. I think we become aware of it either through intentional work on our own psychological and spiritual health or for example, in my case, what really brought it to a head was a crisis moment.
And I think sometimes we can have these times of chaos, these times of crisis that knock us off our feet and make us say, “There is something really wrong and I don’t know what it is. I don’t feel successful…” maybe not successful but feel whole or complete. “And I want to know what it is that’s wrong and how do I begin to dig into that a little bit to find out what is wholeness? What is integration?” Again, I think we can see that in a couple of ways. Nobody would, I think, invite chaos or crisis into their lives, but it sure is a good revealer when it does go wrong. And so, I think those are a couple of ways in which we begin to recognize that.
Andrea: Okay, so I can definitely see how a crisis moment would bring that to light or the self-reflection that you were talking about. But once you get to that point, once there is a crisis, and you’re thinking, “Wait a second. Things don’t feel right, and I want to be more integrated or want to feel more whole or be more healthy,” in that sense, where does somebody start?
Dr. Jason Kanz: You know, I think part of it begins in beginning to ask questions of ourselves of, “How do I show up in the world?” “How do I show up if I’m at home?” “Is that consistent with how I show up in the office or if I’m out with friends?” And to begin to look at those, the ways in which we interact, “Is there consistency between how we are showing up in different places?” Maybe one of the best ways we can do that is by inviting other people into the conversation and to be able to ask questions like, “How do you experience me?” And you know, maybe not ask everybody that but those who are in our lives on a day-to-day basis, to be able to say, “Are there things that you see in me?” Or “How do I impact you?” And to be able to ask those questions vulnerably without retaliation – because I think our heart’s desire when we hear bad things is to snap back – but to hear them graciously.
One of the big questions that I’ve asked repeatedly in the last several years is this question, “Is it possible I’m wrong?” And I think there’s a lot tied up in that question to be able to say, “You know what, I may not have all of the answers about someone else. I may not even have all of the answers about myself.” And so developing a curiosity about ourselves, inviting others to share their observations, I think are both really good. Again, that importance of community; good community is really hard to find, I think – to find people who are able to speak into our lives with honesty and conviction without destroying us or further fragmenting us.
You know, I think that I’ve been blessed with a couple of men that I meet with pretty regularly, where we can be rigorously honest with one another. And again, I think that if we find communities like that, we should treasure them because they help us to grow in wholeness. And we can’t do it on our own. So, I think those sorts of things are really useful in cultivating wholeness.
I think one of the other things that I would say is, again, neurobiologically, so many of us operate kind of in a single track of thinking. We tend to operate from a very logical, linear approach to life, you know. So, we’re looking for answers. And when we are looking for answers, we’re less able to simply be curious. We are less in touch with our emotions. And so, beginning to pay attention not only to what are we thinking, but what are we imagining, what emotions come up for us, and take intentional times and focus on those things.
Dan Siegel talks a lot about what he calls Time In. He has a process called The Wheel of Awareness where you spend a period of time first kind of focusing on what’s going on in your body. And then you begin to focus on these other things – these images and thoughts and feelings – and not with any judgment about them, but to just notice them. And when we do those things, it can begin to foster that wholeness, foster that integration that we’re shooting for.
Andrea: So, some of what you were just describing I recognize for myself – but then I’ve certainly seen it all around me – is that it’s very difficult to go through that process of asking questions like, “Is it possible that I’m wrong?” And so, my question for you would be, can you remind us why it’s worth going through that? What’s the cost? Because there’s a lot of cost involved…
Dr. Jason Kanz: Without a doubt.
Andrea: …with this kind of self-reflection and stuff. So what is the cost on the other side if we don’t?
Dr. Jason Kanz: Well, I think the cost on the other side is we end up damaging other people. We end up with relationships that are fragmented. I think of – again, back to the story with my oldest, you know – if I had just said, “You’re all wet. Just back off,” and not heard her, that would have had created a much deeper schism in our relationship. And that can happen all around us. It happens in marriages, it happens with children, with friends, in communities, in organizations, or companies. When we are unwilling to do that work, it can have this deep fragmenting or dividing effect.
But I also think that moving toward wholeness, moving toward deeper psychological health is a gift to ourselves. We aren’t living as flourishing people if we are trying to hobble along in this fragmented place, in this disintegrated place. It takes a lot of emotional effort to continue to try and be different people in different places. And so, I think the long-term effect is, I think, it emotionally can have a really deep impact upon us, just in terms of… maybe not swinging into mental illness, but just not flourishing, not being all that we were created to be.
Andrea: Hmm. I think I’ve personally described it as almost like a feeling of freedom.
Dr. Jason Kanz: Yeah.
Andrea: Because with fragmentation, it seems that there comes these, I don’t know, walls or you know, constraints that make us try to consistently project that image that you were talking about before. That image management is so much work, and so there is such a freedom in not having to do that anymore.
Dr. Jason Kanz: Absolutely. You know, I waited until I was in my mid-forties to get a tattoo. And my first tattoo, which is on my right forearm is the Hebrew word “shalom”, which a lot of people think means peace. But if you dig into it, it actually has a deeper meaning. It has a meaning of flourishing. It has a meaning of wholeness. It’s the way things should be. And I think that’s what we’re shooting for. But my second tattoo, which is on my other forearm, is the Hebrew word for freedom. And I think those two ideas go hand-in-hand, absolutely; that when we can live from that authentic place that true self, it creates in us a deep sense of freedom where we don’t have to worry so much, we don’t have to hide so much. And that’s living. I mean, when you begin to taste that, it reminds you or teaches you, “My goodness, I can’t believe I’ve lived this other way for so long.”
Andrea: Yeah. The idea of shalom being the way that things should be… I think that one of the costs that there is to actually confronting that you’re not feeling shalom or you’re not feeling whole is the grief of realizing that things aren’t as they should be. Because we so want them to be the way that they should be. And it seems that we construct these ideas in our minds of the way that things should be, and we try to fit it all together with where we’re at right now so that I don’t have to move, so I don’t have to change. And one of the most difficult things, I think, for people to do is to confront that, “Dang, this is not the way it should be,” because then you have to grieve.
Dr. Jason Kanz: Right. I think there’s a grief piece, definitely. Because I think we say to ourselves… we grieve the fact that we’ve not been whole so far, but also we look around at the world around us and recognize that it is still not the way we want it to be. Even ourselves, even as we do this work and do it for a long time, there’s still fragmentation, there’s still disintegration. And I think that alone brings grief or sadness. And it’s good to acknowledge and recognize that.
But I think one other thing that just came up as you had said that was the importance of trusting the process that we’re going through. I think, so often, we want to have, “Five Steps to a Better You”, and we want them to be accomplished in six weeks or six hours. And that’s simply not reality. We are all on a journey, right? And it’s going to be lifelong, and we will continue striving after wholeness. The task, I think, that we face is how do we live from a place of freedom and contentment in this moment while recognizing that there is ongoing work to do?
Andrea: Mmm. Okay, can you answer that question?
Dr. Jason Kanz: Some days, I feel like I can. Boy, I think for me, I have to remind myself regularly of my inherent goodness, remind myself of who I am. I think that it’s really easy for me to get sucked into a shame spiral of, “I’m not there yet so I should feel horrible about where I’m at,” when in reality, you know, I am in a good place. And I have to be intentional about doing that. And when I can come to that place, it allows me to then to look forward to the future and say, “Okay, I can do this today. I can do this tomorrow.”
Every year, I choose a word of the year. I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but I choose a word that I want to kind of marinate in. And my 2020 word has been “presence.” And it’s really about trying to be in the present moment, paying attention to what’s going on around me without fretting about the future or overthinking the past, and that is easier said than done, I find. But I think when we can come to that place, that place of subtleness, it helps us to make sense of the already and the not yet.
Andrea: Do you have any suggestions for how you’ve seen it done, or how you’ve done it, or [how] you recommend people remind themselves of who they are?
Dr. Jason Kanz: I think we can do the work of looking at, “What are the positive traits?” I’m very committed to the idea that humans all have inherent value. I take the approach that every person is uniquely and inherently valuable as a child of God. I think when we can begin to see that reality about us – that we are valuable, we are loved – that we can begin to see that benefit… or not benefit. That’s not the word… the goodness within us.
Curt Thompson, who’s a friend of mine – who also does some work on interpersonal neurobiology – does this exercise where he has people imagine themselves on either a beach or somewhere that is seems peaceful and calm. And when they are able to put themselves in that place, imagining… for him, as a Christian psychiatrist, [he] talks about Jesus coming up and saying to him, “You know, you are beloved. I’m so glad you’re on the earth,” and to be able to sit in that space while Jesus is saying those things. If you can’t do that, pick someone whom you have experienced as loving or comforting and saying those things to you. Even if you can’t hear them yourself, to be able to hear another say them about us, I think, can also move us in the direction of self-acceptance.
Andrea: Mmm. Okay, I know that you’re into art.
Dr. Jason Kanz: I am.
Andrea: You write poetry. You paint with pallet watercolors. Talk to me about how art helps us feel more whole or be more whole.
Dr. Jason Kanz: Well, again, I think that ties back to that idea that so many of us get stuck on the word-based part of life. We don’t really think about left brain, right brain so much, but Dan Siegel talks about left mode versus right mode. And he talks about left mode being that very binary, black and white, looking for correct answers. But to foster that other side of the brain to the right mode processing is to foster things like creativity, maybe not having all of the answers. And I’m very convinced that it’s good for us to begin to engage that creative side.
I was interviewed for a Christian psychology journal a couple of years ago, and that was what they had wanted to talk about was the notion of creativity and art and how that affected my work. And for me, it has been a transformative thing to begin to express myself creatively.
Brené Brown has talked some about this idea of Creativity Wounds. And for a lot of us, usually around the fourth or the fifth grade, we begin to hear this message that we are not creative, that we’re not talented as artists, but that really misses the point. You know, I think it’s about self-expression. It’s not about creating a perfect product. So, for me to be able to step into that place where I can write more emotively or paint… I love to do watercolors. Part of the reason I love watercolors is they invite more freedom. You know, if I color outside the lines, it’s not a big deal. And so, for me that has been, again, I think, an important part of fostering wholeness for me.
But again, I know that there are watercolorists who are far superior to me. I know that there are poets who are far superior to me. But for me, it’s the courageous step into doing those things and at times, sharing them with others and inviting them to do their own creative expression.
Again, I think those are things that really can begin to pull together or integrate our minds and our brains. So, you know, I think that’s the case. I think connecting with nature is something that a lot of us miss. Some people live in places where it’s much easier to do that than others. But again, I think when we have this sense of connection with not just the people in our circle but with the world around us, I think it really helps to bring a lot of these pieces together.
Andrea: If wholeness is the longing of a human heart, how does that really impact our opportunities or the way that we influence others?
Dr. Jason Kanz: You know, I think that’s a good question. I think we have an opportunity to engage people, even with that question. You know, we all exist in this world and know that something is amiss. You know, maybe we think it’s politics. Maybe we think it’s what’s going on in the media. Maybe it’s what’s going on in our family of origin. And there’s a lot of different, I think, contributions. But what the common thread is there is that we all experience the idea or the notion that something is wrong, something is broken. And I think to help people identify there’s brokenness and it hurts and it’s painful, and that the next step is to say, “All right, so if that’s the case, what is it you’re longing for?”
And when I’ve talked with people about this, it doesn’t matter what background they come from, whether they’re religious or non-religious. Religious tradition doesn’t seem to matter. Old, young, man, woman; it doesn’t matter. When there’s this idea of wholeness, it seems to resonate with people. Because there’s this desire for something complete, for integrity, again, to go back to the word that you had said earlier.
When we help people to see that, I think it allows us to be able to interact back and forth, to invite them into conversations about, “What does it mean to be authentic? What does it mean to live consistently, to live in this place of freedom?” It allows us to share parts of our story, again, to foster not just our individual wholeness, but this relational wholeness. And again, ideally even beyond our small communities to larger communities; state, world. I would love to see that continue to move in that direction.
You know, I think, to be able to identify that longing and invite people along on the journey. Now, one of the challenges, I think, for us is that even though there’s this common longing between us, sometimes I think we fail to recognize that we each maybe bring different tools to answer that or to begin to address those longings. You know, so not every person is a neuropsychologist. We have artists, and we have bakers, and we have mechanics, and we have moms. Everybody has their own story. Everybody has unique gifts and strengths. And I think they’re all important as we have this kind of communal conversation about moving in that direction of integration or wholeness.
Andrea: Hmm. So, Jason, I want to ask you one more question. But before I do that, would you share with the listener where they can find more information or your blog, or how they can follow you?
Dr. Jason Kanz: Yeah, so I have a blog, jasonkanz.com, and I’m pretty active on Twitter @dockanz and same on Facebook. I try to let people follow and interact with me. I’m pretty active on those places and try to interact with people as they are having questions, have ideas, and would love to have people connect with me in those places. I think my last book that I put out – which is Notes from the Upper Room: Lessons in Loving Like Jesus – I touched some on this notion of wholeness as well, and would love to have people connect that way, too.
Andrea: Yeah. So, it would be great to hear people get your book and learn more about wholeness in that way and be able to then interact with you on Twitter or something. That would be fun to see.
Dr. Jason Kanz: Yeah.
Andrea: Okay, so in wrapping things up, when you think of wholeness and some of the divisions that we’re really feeling right now – particularly in the United States, perhaps around the world – how can somebody be a “Voice of Influence” that would promote wholeness in that environment?
Dr. Jason Kanz: That’s the real challenge, isn’t it? I think I’m going to come back to that question. I’m actually going to share three questions. Again, people who know me know that I have the three questions. The first two come from a guy named Greg Coco. And they are, “What do you mean by that,” and “How did you come to that conclusion?” Generally, conversations go much better if we are asking questions rather than asserting ourselves. And then that third one is, “Is it possible I’m wrong?” And I think that brings in a level of humility to the conversation.
I also think that we can be a “Voice of Influence” when we recognize our deep interconnectedness. It seems that so much of the world in which we’re living now is what I’ve called an “against mindset”. Somebody’s got to be right; somebody’s got to be wrong. Up and down. Powerful versus the weak person, as opposed to what I would refer to as a “with mindset”, which I think operates from the assumption that we are all part of the human race. We’re all longing and all seeking after wholeness. And when we can shift our mindset and begin to engage from that place where we have curiosity about what other share – not so we can correct them but so that we can learn and understand – I think we can have a profound influence on the world around us.
Andrea: Mmm. Good word. Thank you so much! Thank you, Jason for being a “Voice of Influence” in the world and for our listeners.