Ten Words To Transform Your Life: A Conversation With Lauryn Axelrod (Motivational and Inspirational)

In this episode, Reginald D sits down with Lauryn Axelrod, an Interspiritual minister, spiritual director, Chaplain and author of "Ten Words: An Interspiritual Guide To Becoming Better People In A Better World."

Lauryn discusses her unique journey through religion and spirituality. The discussion revolves around Lauryn's book. The concept of the " Ten words" that serve as foundational principles for personal and collective transformation. These words—attention, acceptance, authenticity, benevolence, balance, contemplation, creativity, collaboration, celebration, and care—are not only simple, but are also deeply profound and applicable across various faiths and belief systems.

Tune in for an inspiring conversation about spirituality, community, and the quest for understanding in a diverse world and promoting personal growth in a peaceful, compassionate society.

Purchase Lauryn's Book on Amazon: Ten Words: An Interspiritual Guide to Becoming Better People in a Better World

Lauryn's contact info:

Lauryn's website: www.laurynaxelrod.com

Lauryn's Instagram:  @lauryn.axelrod 

Lauryn Axelrod (Facebook Page)

Transcript

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Welcome to Real Talk with Reginald D. I'm your host, Reginald D. On today's episode, I have Lauren Aserod, an interfaith, interspiritual leader and teacher. Lauren believes that there is a global need to foster a more peaceful and compassionate society. Welcome to the show, Thank you. Thank you so much. It's definitely an honor. So Lauren, can you start out sharing a little bit about yourself and Well, I grew up in Texas and my family, I was surrounded by religion and various different ways. My family is Jewish, but I went to Episcopal schools and was raised by a woman who was a pastor in a small church in the inner city in Houston. She was amazing. She was really my first teacher. And religion was a very central part of my life, but I can't say that I understood it. And so I became a seeker and spent the bulk of my life exploring different religions and different religious traditions and faith traditions, really looking for what was going to help me be a better person in a better world. peaceful, joyful, happy, and a world where everybody You know, and that's one of the things that I struggled with because I grew up at a generation of pastors and preachers and things like that, man. We was very religious in this life. I saw some things and I was like, gotta be more than this, you know? And then you have different religion and different faiths that separates their self, but That's exactly it. And that's, you know, what I call and what, you know, the term these days is interspirituality is that at the core of all of our great faith and wisdom traditions, not necessarily the way they've been institutionalized, but at their real core of their teachings is a common thread And that common thread unites us. It doesn't divide us. It really does. It really does. Because I feel like at the end of the day, if you are in a religion, and a lot of times I kind of got away from religion when I was, I grew up Baptist, Southern Baptist. So it was a whole different thing with Southern Baptist people. And I just kind of felt like, It was more to this, and I ended up not accepting one particular religion. I said, hey, I am a kingdom-minded person. So I can take one religion, another religion, we can get together and we can have one common cause. If we out here feeding the hungry, it doesn't matter what religion you are. No, That's exactly it. And when I was young and considered going to seminary earlier, which place, which religion would I choose? And I couldn't because it really did, the religion itself didn't matter so much to me as what are the common, the principles, the teachings that bring us together, cause us to behave in ways that help each other, support each other, support our world, our planet, all of the above. And that's what I've been looking for my Yeah. And that's, and that's amazing because the thing about it is we see so much division in the world. And then a lot of people are divided because they don't know, or they don't try to understand somebody else's point of view. At the end of the day, everybody, I think for the most part has the same heart. You know, we want the life to be. calm, peaceful. We don't want war. We don't want all... Exactly. I think it's a thing of misunderstanding and it's amazing that you took the time out to really study and What is the common thing that we all want? We all want to live in a world that is peaceful, joyful, purposeful, and where everyone and everything thrives. Period. Great. How do we do that? Right? And I was looking for not just, you know, the highfalutin ideas, but what are the practical ways that we can become better people in a better world? And that's really, you know, distilling it down into principles that are not you know, it's not complicated. We actually know these things. We Exactly. So let me ask you this. Why do you think that people go to religion, stick to religion and let that just put them Because I think at the root of all spirituality is a mystery. And what religion does is it gives us certainty. Here's what you believe. Here's what you do. Here are the rules. But for some of us, that's not satisfying. And so for me, the mystery is what's amazing. The mystery is where I keep going. So spirituality mystifies whereas religion makes concrete, makes certain. Not saying that religion is bad. For some people, they just need the certainty, and that's fine. That's really fine. For some of us, though, it's like, really? Is that really so? I think there's more than that, and we keep searching, and we keep being awed by the mystery, being awed by it, just wow. Look at all this, look at this, this is life. How And you know, one of my things about religion that I've learned is that it does keep you in a box with some people. I know you want to tie yourself closer to what you believe in, but the thing about it is, I saw a lot of people that were Baptist, you know, went to church, and the preacher will get up there and he will do his thing. And the whole church is like on fire, people jumping down, shouting and stuff like that. But then they walk back out the door, then they lose their life. So, you know, it's not really changing you. I think it's more of it's, you know, making, making Yeah, you know, sometimes we mistake the emotional feeling for the deeper spiritual understanding. And that happens not just in church, it happens in a lot of contexts, you know, we get caught up in the experience, instead of digging deeper and digging deeper and digging deeper. And that said, I want to be really clear, I don't I don't think religion is a bad thing. I think that some people have been very traumatized, and I accept that, by being in a certain religion. Some people have felt not accepted, not loved, not part of the community because of who they are. But I do think that religion if approached in a way where the mystery in it is still alive, can Exactly. I was telling somebody the other day about that part, and I was like, you know, if religion, whatever religion you are, whatever church you go to, if they understand how to utilize the people and their gifts. Not just put them in position because you need somebody there. You know, I need an usher, I need somebody to play the guitar, but it's really not the gift. When you can usher in the real gift, you know, and that comes from the spirit, you know, things like that, it will grow more. Absolutely. And Absolutely. And the thing about going to church or going to synagogue or going to a mosque or whatever is, it's really about community. And it's how can we all contribute in the way that we are gifted, right? How can we contribute our gifts to the whole, to the community? It's not just show up, put your money in the basket and leave. It's how do we form community? Because for me, religion or spirituality is all about relationship. It is about the relationship you have with yourself, with others, with the world around you, and with whatever you call sacred. And that relationship is built in community, in a spiritual community. You can have your own independent spiritual practice, spiritual life, but it doesn't mean anything until you get out into community. It's how you behave with others, how you are in the world with others that matters. You know, there's a saying of like, if you think you're enlightened, go spend the weekend with your family. Right? You know, it's it's how we are with others. And so what I was really looking for in these principles is, is how who can we become? And how can we be with others? That's how we become better people in a better world, because it's us and the world. And the only way we're going to create a better world is by changing ourselves. Exactly. There's so much truth to that, what you just said, because I ended up being over the outreach ministry at my church. And I said, man, I'm going to go out here. I'm an outreach guy. So when you get out there and you're going downtown, you're feeding homeless people and just hanging out at work. I mean, this and that and the other. You never know. I mean, I tell people all the time, The person who really changed my life, it wasn't my grandfather that was a pastor. He did change my life a lot, but all the other pastors in my family, I said it was the homeless guy. I sat down and talked to him, and he had so much wisdom. He If we realize that every single person we meet is, you know, God incarnate, imagine how much wisdom we are surrounded by. We're just surrounded by it. You know, I was talking to somebody today, we were talking about praying. And I said, you know, you don't have to pray with words. You can pray with your hands. It's what you're going to do out in the world that matters just as much as the private conversation that you Right. Right. So Well, the 10 words. You highlighted in your book about the 10 words. How do that help guide individuals toward the personal and collective transformation? OK, so the 10 words, remember how before I was talking about seeking principles, finding the principles? The 10 words are distilled from the common principles of all the faith and wisdom traditions of our great humanity. All of them have these 10 principles in common. Forget the doctrines, forget all the details, it's the principles. So the 10 words, and they all begin with A, B, and C, so they're really simple. They're foundational. They're simple words, but they have great depth. The words are, the first one is attention, acceptance, authenticity, benevolence, balance, contemplation, creativity, collaboration, celebration, and care. There are 10 words, right? And they're verbs. They're not nouns. You have to do these things. So they look really simple. But if you also notice, they're different than, for example, the Ten Commandments. They're not thou shalts or thou shalt nots. They aren't dogmatic. They're just principles that we can apply in many ways, and it doesn't matter what religion you are. They apply across the board. You can be, absolutely, you can be what we call a nun, somebody who doesn't have any religion, or doesn't subscribe to any religion, or you can be spiritual but not religious. It doesn't matter. The principles still apply, and these same principles, yes, they're derived from sacred texts, But if we look into science and psychology, they show up there too. So these are just the fundamental building blocks for how we can be better people in a better world, just by deeply exploring their meanings. What do they mean to you? How does it show up in your life? How can you cultivate it? And how can you use this out in the world to And you know, you said one thing, creating a better world for all, and how does this apply to you? Because too many times people kind of judge people on being Christian or being whatever it got to be of this and the other. My thing is, the title, the religion, and all of that really doesn't mean anything unless you do something positive in this world. you know, and humanity and do the things that help others or come together with others to Yeah, absolutely. I agree that at the end of the day, and especially if you look at the challenges that we face now, you know, they feel pretty insurmountable. They feel pretty rough. How are we going to get out of this? How are we going to create a world that we all, as you said, we all want the same things? What do we do to make that possible? Well, if we apply the principles of these 10 words, I guarantee you if everybody did it, we would live in heaven on earth. I promise you. But the question is, will everybody do it? And to what degree, right? And so one of the things that I like to emphasize is this isn't another thing that we have to beat ourselves up with, like, oh, I have to do this now. You know, they're not thou shalts, they're questions. It's a process. It's not a perfect. We don't have to be perfect. But we have to keep trying. We just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and trying to be better people in a world where everyone and That's so true. That's so true. And I would say, you know, Well, you know, it was actually a really interesting process, because as I said, I was looking for the principles. I've studied, you know, I went to seminary, I've studied all of the great faith and wisdom traditions. And I've spent my lifetime practicing different, you know, I was in Zen for 15 years, just all over the place. I found at the end of the day that while I had all of this knowledge and I had all of these practices and yeah, okay, you know, things were, things were okay. I wasn't getting anywhere. And I was looking for a path and I couldn't find one. I couldn't find a contemporary path and I wasn't willing to be in one box. So I said, well, I'm going to have to find the principles that I can follow. I'm going to have to find the steps that I can take. And through my studies and through my practices, I sat down and I wrote this list. And it was kind of interesting because after I wrote it, I looked at it and went, oh, there's a lot more here than I thought. And then I spent a year going through each one of the words, one word a month, and really exploring it and with a group of other people who also had gotten really excited about it. And by the end of the year, we discovered, oh, they work. They really work. And you don't even have to put a whole lot into it. You could literally put the word on a sticky note on your computer and look at it every day for a month. And I guarantee you something would change. something would transform in you. So I really found the flexible box I was looking for. And I found that a lot of other people got excited about it too, because they went, oh, I don't want to be in a box either. And I do want to try to be a better person in a better world. And I do need some guidelines. That's all the 10 words are. They're just guidelines. They're not thou shalts. You're not going to hell if you don't do them. They're just principles that if we apply them, That's amazing. And I definitely got to give this book. So how do you. What do you say with someone, because I know a lot of people and the reason the world is in a lot of turmoil right now because they don't people don't have a sense of inner peace. Yeah. You know, what would you say to someone that's like living in the world, everybody gets distracted by the world, doesn't have the inner peace. And I think one of the things about inner peace is that people are so distracted by other things when they should be walking in something else that they're authentic to do, you know, and the gift and things like that. But like I said, it gets so distracted. So what would you say to somebody who's struggling with inner peace in their life right now due to turmoil and things like that Well, it's, it's so easy to be distracted right now. You know, we live in a world where we are bombarded with information and we're, you know, between our phones and the computers and the news and finding peace is hard, especially when the external world feels so chaotic. But with these 10 words, if we turn, if we start just with the first one, attention, Where is your attention? If we put all of our attention into the external world, yeah, we're going to be nuts because it's crazy. But to find inner peace, we turn our attention in. We shut out a little bit of the external world. We decide what we want to give our attention to. It's a gift. Where do I want to give my attention? And so, as you say, people you know, where you put your focus, what you're going to focus on. That is the first step towards finding inner peace is really looking at where is your attention? Where do you want to give the gift of your attention and where do Always about choices, right? And, you know, every spiritual practice in every tradition is about learning to pay attention to what matters. and not being distracted by the bright flashing lights. Every single practice is about that. So there must be something to it, and that's why it's the first word. When you turn your attention, when you really focus on where you're putting your attention, the rest of these kind of fall into place. You will find that authenticity. You'll find that inner peace. You'll Yeah, of course, the attention part of it, once you understand that this is where I'm going to focus my attention on, second word is acceptance. Now you can accept it, because you know this is where I'm Right, right, exactly. And that's the beautiful thing about these words. This was what I discovered when we went through them, is they naturally flow into each other. As you said, once you start paying attention, the next step's acceptance. It's going to come naturally and on and on and on until you get to the end. The last of the words is care. To care for something means to attend to it. To give your attention to it in a really focused way. So they become a complete holistic path. It's not like, you know, you think about the Ten Commandments, it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, they're separate. By the time you go all the way through these words, they're not separate anymore. Right, they all come right together. Pulling from the same So Lauren, let's talk about some personal experiences. Did you have a personal experience that shaped your understanding of a single personal experience that shaped my understanding of these words. I see them every day. These words literally show up every day in my life. I'm also a hospice chaplain. So I spend a lot of my days with people at the end of their lives. And these words come up even at the end. coming to acceptance, paying attention, contemplation, finding ways to celebrate. Even when it may seem on the external surface, there's nothing to celebrate. They show up every day. I can't say that there's one particular experience. And in different times, different days, one of the words might be more sort of more present than the other. So people have asked me, you know, like, what's the word for you right now? And the word that keeps coming from me right now is collaboration. Going back to that idea of unity, not division, that we need to move from me to we, and that is collaboration. How do we go for the win-win? How do we work together where everyone and everything has the ability to live that life that we all are talking about? Peaceful, joyful, thriving. So that's the word that comes up right now, especially where we are in our culture right now, in our election cycle right now, all of these things that we have to figure out how not to be in division and in separation, but to come together in unity. And that word is collaboration. The principle is collaboration. And everything in nature is collaborative. Everything. It's ironic that you said that, because my next question, and a lot of times I don't touch on things like this, but I was going to ask you about the principles, one of your principles, to help navigate the social and political environment. But you spoke about a It's collaboration, really, Reginald. If we continue to be focused on me, my needs, my fears, my scarcity, then there's no way that we can build a world where everyone and everything thrives. But if we turn that focus to understanding the other and to collaborating in ways where everyone gets their needs met, it's a both and. The world is, in order to create harmony and balance, one of those words, right? We need the both And you look at it, you know, it's kind of like you look at this situation with the hurricane that's going on now. It's like people from everywhere is coming together. We've got to help. I mean, it shouldn't take, you know, tragic for us to come together. We should do that, you know, when things are not, you know, where it is and things like that. But it's amazing that people do these things. And you'd be like, wow, we all built like this. This is who we really are. We just wait till something really happens bad until we start it. Exactly. And it should be Yeah, this is who we are. We really are, by nature, benevolent, kind, caring, generous, collaborative, creative people. That's who we are. We just need to practice doing that and not waiting until it's a great disaster. You know? And it is, it's amazing to see how people do come together when there's a crisis. But, you know, there's a saying, you go to the funeral and you also go to the wedding. Right? You're there for the hard stuff, but you also need to show up for the good stuff. We need to show up for one another. It's the only way this is going to work. We've seen what happens when we don't. And it's not pretty. Right. We have to be there for one another. And that means seeing the humanity, the common humanity and the common divinity. And I will say that the common divinity in each Yeah. And one of my biggest things that I thrive on is reflection. So how do you think reflection will play in Well, it's interesting that you bring that up. This time of year right now is the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. So it's the New Year and the Day of Atonement. And during those 10 days between the two is this period of deep reflection where we have to look and say, where did I miss the mark? How can I do better? What do I need to do? How do I need to change? Because we don't have a lot of control over what happens out there. We really don't. The only thing we can really control is ourselves. So how can I change? And that's one of the words. It's contemplation. It's turning in and reflecting, self-reflection, contemplating our relationship to ourselves, to others, to whatever we call the sacred, We have to, we have to look at ourselves. We have to recognize where we are complicit, where we are. Even sometimes it's like, eh, you know, let somebody else do it. Let somebody else do the hard work. I'm busy. I've got stuff to do. Really? We can't do that anymore. We have to look at where we're saying, you know, I can't. Right. We all have to roll up our sleeves and put our hands in the dirt. in whatever way we can, right? It doesn't mean we all have to get out there and save the world. We can't. But we can take care of the little piece of the world right in front of us, the people right in front of us, the places right in front of us, the communities right in front of us. And we do what we can in each moment. And sometimes that might be, you know, all I can do right now is make a phone call and check in on a sick friend. or all I can do right now is go and volunteer and help the homeless, or all I can do right now is take a nap because I'm tired and I need to build my strength so that I have something Yes, and then we talk about community. If you think about this, if everybody that's in a community take care of the community, or most people, One community after another community, after another community, now you got the state, now you got states, now you got the world. Everybody just Exactly. That's exactly the principle behind the 10 words, is that if each of us explore these words and cultivate them and try to practice what these words, what these principles teach us, and then we're taking care of the last word, right? We're taking care of ourselves, each other, our communities. It's just Most definitely. And the thing about it, I like the way you kind of took the religious beliefs and were like, Hey, it's okay to think this way. It's okay to think that way. But. you know, it's one common cause at the end of the day. And I remember this, and you may remember it too, when you have Dr. Martin Luther King out there doing the love and peace movement, and then you have Malcolm X was the radical Muslim guy, and all of a sudden, Malcolm X partnered with King to help do peace movement, even though they had two different mindsets of the religion they were in. What they knew was one common cause and they came together, right? Right. That's real powerful because you set aside all the religion beliefs and all your egos and everything else and say, hey, man, we got a problem. Let's Everybody, because ultimately it's not the world we all want to live in. And if only some people get to thrive. We have to work towards a world where we all have the opportunity, regardless of what we believe, regardless of which side of the aisle we're on. Right. Everybody has to have that opportunity. Yeah. Otherwise, it's not that world of justice. It's not that world of peace. It is not the kingdom of heaven on earth. That's not what, you know, if we think about what the divine wants, the sacred wants, look around, it wants it to thrive. It wants us to thrive. Exactly. We got to help out. We got to help the divine do the work, right? We've got to co-create. That's another one of the words, creativity. We have to co-create. We work, we pray with our hands. We pray with our hearts, we pray with our heads, our mouths, our ideas, our pens, our Exactly. And the thing about it, you know, like I think about my neighbors, I don't know like what religion they are or whatever. I just know they're good people. You know, people that I work with, you know, a bunch of us and the people I lead, I don't know what they do, what religion they are. All I know is that they're dedicated people and we pull one coming calls every day to get a job done. And that's just what we do. So like I say, it's all about Right. You just got to know how to come together and put it together and do It's very much, you know, it's simple, but not easy. Right. It's a lot of us. Right. But I really do believe that if we practice these words, you know this isn't a it's not a thou shalt i you know i want to emphasize that it's not you have to do this or but if you actually explore these words genuinely deeply and say how can i today bring more balance into my life into the world around me right how can i bring my creativity how can i be more benevolent can i just be kind right now instead of losing it in the checkout line in the grocery store, can I just go, okay, take into account that this person might be having a bad day too, I don't need to yell at them. You know, I really believe that we can't complain about the world being unjust, unfair, or unkind if we are not willing ourselves to become kinder, more just, and more fair. It doesn't work. We can't sit on the sidelines and go, oh, well, the world's terrible, and then turn around and badmouth our neighbor. It's not going to work. We and Dr. Martin Luther King said this, be the change you want to see in the world. The 10 words are the way that we can become the change that And to think about it, people let their emotions get in the way. Like you say, in a checkout line and they going off on somebody. But to think about when you do that, then you go home and you be thinking about it, now you feel bad. But you can't go apologize to that person because you probably never see them again. You know, so that's weighing on you for days and days and days. Oh, man, I should have never done that. You have to have patience in life. Like I say, person in front of you, you don't know what they're going So, right, so this is where things like compassion come in and self compassion also, right? Like, we're not perfect. We're all gonna slip up. That's just being human. Right? We're all gonna slip up. But we if we recognize when we've done it, then we can change. Right? Then we could say, yeah, no, I was tired. I wasn't paying attention. There's that word again, right? I was thinking about me. I wasn't in the collaborative mindset. Oops. I will try and do better next time. There's always a next time because we're always in the process of becoming. Always. We're never like set. Okay, now I'm done. I'm cooked. I'm all good. I don't have to do anything, you know? And that said, we're also, you know, we're perfect just the way we are. And there's always a little room for improvement. We And one thing I like what you said about your book, it's not a thou shall. Now, I'm going to believe in Jesus Christ and things like that. Now, I was telling people, I said, well, Jesus didn't tell you to do anything. He always asked you. He asked questions, right? And that's what the 10 words do, is they ask the question, what does this word mean to you? How does it show up in your life? How can you embody it? How can you practice it? And fundamentally, it asks you, what kind of person do you want to become? And Exactly, and that's powerful. When you live a life, and I tell people a lot of times, when you live a life that gives you choices, you have choices, that's powerful. Because Yep. My teacher used to say, you're always one choice away from changing your life entirely. Yep. Think about that. You are literally always one choice away. Yep. So every choice you make matters, right? So that's in creativity, in the principle of creativity. If we are creative, every word, every thought, every breath that we take creates the world around us. then we have a responsibility to create well, not to create in ways that cause harm and pain and suffering, but to create in ways that bring joy and life and purpose and meaning and peace. That's always a choice in every single Yes, I really like that. I really like that, Lauren. But Lauren, lastly, what advice would you offer to someone seeking more spiritual peace or understanding in Well, of course, I'm biased and I would say explore the 10 words. I think to realize. That all is not lost and that you have the capacity, we have the capacity to become better people in a better world. It's not lost. Every moment, as you said, we have the opportunity. We have the opportunity to make a different choice, to behave, to bring our attention, our acceptance, our authenticity, our kindness, our benevolence, balance, contemplation, creativity, collaboration, celebration, and care into the world in every moment. and it doesn't matter what you call the sacred it really doesn't because the sacred's at work whether you're aware of it or not you're on a spiritual path it's called life this is the path so how do you want to live it how do you want to That is so good. I use one key word is opportunity. I told my team the other day that I show up every day to be the best I can be every day because all my life. I've been through things in my life, and I'm like, man, I shouldn't be here right now. I had grace over me. I said, I shouldn't be here right now. And all the things I overcame and things that I've been through, I said, the reason I showed to be the best, and they always tell me, they say, man, you're always five steps ahead of us. I said, because, man, it's just an opportunity again. Man, I shouldn't be here. So I embraced the opportunity that was given to me. And I cherish it and I put my best foot forward because I got that opportunity every day. That's exactly it, Reginald. You know, we have this precious, mind-blowing, miraculous opportunity called life. It's amazing. And it is an opportunity we don't get again, at least not in this form, right? We don't get to come back as We only get this opportunity once. What Exactly. So Laura, where can listeners purchase your book and find more about your work and get involved in your community initiatives? The book is available on Amazon and all your favorite booksellers. An ebook and paperback, 10 Words, an Interspiritual Guide to Becoming Better People in a Better World. You can check out my website, laurenaxelrod.com. That's L-A-U-R-Y-N-A-X-E-L-R-O-D.com. And that's got information on my writings, teaching, speaking, other things. And you can check it out on Facebook and Instagram, Lauren Axelrod. Yeah, you have it. Lauren Axelrod. Lauren, thank you so much for your time. This has been an amazing moment for me. I'm sure Thank you so much, Reginald. Really, it's been an honor and a pleasure. All Blessings to you, too. Thanks for tuning in to Real Talk with Regina D. If you enjoyed listening to Real Talk with Regina D, Please