MGU 47 | Mindfulness

 

Concluding the two-part series of their Blissful, Balanced & Badass tips, Jason Wrobel and Whitney Lauritsen share their take on the second part of this book which strips away the BS to elevate your state of being and light up your life with love. Learn how finances can be tied to your feelings and how realities can be considered subjective. Don’t pass up this episode as they expand on the different concepts from the book, specifically on mindfulness, productivity, superhero action step, and life vision.

Sign up for free copies of “You Are Enough” and “Blissful, Balanced, and Badass” eBooks here: https://www.wellevatr.com/You-Are-Enough-Opt-in

Listen to the podcast here

 

7 Steps To More Bliss, Balance And Well-Being (Part 2)

Jason, are you ready to dive into part two of the Blissful, Balanced & Badass eBook? Why do you look at me like you didn’t know?

For a second I thought, “Did I get the order right in my mind?” I love alliteration. That’s one thing that I enjoy is putting the phonetics of certain words together that start with the same letter. I liked the three Bs and sometimes I get the three Bs confused, Blissful, Balanced & Badass.

For the reader, we got through part one of this, which is based on an eBook that Jason offered. You can download the free eBook. If you go to Wellevatr.com and look in the resource section. It’s hidden though. You’ll get this eBook if you download our other eBook called, You Are Enough. It’s a twofer deal. I would recommend downloading all the freebies that we have because there’s a lot of value on them and who doesn’t like free things? It’s free valuable things. We don’t want to give you something that you’re not going to use.

The first part of this episode was the previous one that came out. If you are ever curious to dig in further about what we discussed on each episode, that’s at Wellevatr.com. You click on the podcast button at the top of the website or you can go directly to Podcast.Wellevatr.com. You could bookmark that if you read a lot of the episodes. In the first part of this subject matter, in the previous episode, we got through about half of the book. What we’ve been doing is talking about the different sections in the book because it’s a seven-step eBook and we talked about fitness, we talked about food and we talked about relationships. We’re going to talk about the next step in the book and the rest of them, the second half of the book. The fourth one technically, but the first step in this episode is mindfulness. I’ll read the first page of the eBook to get us started.

Jason writes, “In the previous chapter on relationships, I touched on the concept of seeing clearly what is, seeing beyond our illusions and doing the work to dissolve our attachments, expectations, assumptions and demands of life. True mindfulness, I believe, is in cultivating a healthy, grounded, balanced and same relationship to the nature of life itself while seeing that we are also life itself, not apart from it, not separate from it. We are in life. Therefore, the nature of reality of life is our essential nature as well. We get into trouble then when we are in resistance to reality and not accepting what is happening in the present moment.”

First of all, presence, practice and mindfulness are nothing new. We look at Zen Buddhism. We look at the work of Byron Katie. I was fortunate enough to go to her School For The Work. The teachings of Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra. Many people talk about mindfulness and presence. For me though, there’s a deeper layer, which is looking at the tenets of Wabi-Sabi, the Japanese philosophy, which is all about imperfection, impermanence and the ever-changing nature of reality. Often as human beings, we get stuck in wanting things to stay the same, wanting to control things, wanting to manipulate things, wanting to make them as we want them to be. There is such beautiful cultivation of surrender that we can start to exercise and work on. Whereas even if reality isn’t what we wanted it to be necessarily or we weren’t able to control circumstances or manipulate the mechanics of life to have it be exactly what we want.

Joseph Campbell said this best. He’s one of my favorite authors. I often talk about his book, which is one of my top three books that has affected my life, which is A Joseph Campbell Companion. It’s a selected compendium of works throughout the years of his talks at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. One of his biggest things is transposing mythology, Greek, Roman, Sufi, Egyptian, all the great mythologies. How do those teachings, those parables and those fables pertain to modern life? His thing is the true essence of a warrior is to say yes to everything. If you say no or you have a spirit of negativism toward the ferocity of life, the unpredictability of life, the uncertainty of life, then you’re not fully alive.

For a lot of people, myself included, there’s this idea of, “I’m only going to be happy, content and feel good about things when everything’s the way I want it to be. Once I have the right car, the right partner, the right house, once everything’s aligned up as I envisioned, then I’ll finally be good. I’ll feel content and I’ll feel joyful. His approach and the ancients are like if you can surrender to whatever comes and accept it like full acceptance of what’s right in front of you, that’s true presence and mindfulness. That’s in Joseph Campbell’s eyes being a true warrior. For me, mindfulness, that’s a huge component of it. It’s easy if you have $300,000 in the bank. I’m content and joyful.

Why does that feel easy?

The common idea is the more abundance I have, then I’ll feel safe, secure, grounded and joyful. One of my practices has been in this regard of mindfulness, can I still maintain that state of joyfulness and clarity and enjoying my life even if I have $30 in my bank account?

Why is that joyfulness tied into finances? It’s interesting how you brought that up.

Finances for me and a lot of people is a thing that is much tied to our feeling of security and feeling okay about our lives. Especially there’s a lot of financial uncertainty in the stock market. There’s a lot of financial uncertainty with people losing their jobs or getting laid off. We’re in a time where that’s a massive trigger for a lot of people.

I also feel like if we’re all in it together, it makes me feel safer because whether it’s ignorant or not, I feel like it’s different when everybody is experiencing the same thing versus when you feel like you’re the only one experiencing it.

Why is that? In examining this part of our I suppose connectivity and mindfulness, why does that make you feel more safe or comfortable knowing people are experiencing the same thing? What is it about that engenders that emotion for you?

MGU 47 | Mindfulness

Mindfulness: Finances is a thing that is much tied to our feeling of security and feeling okay about our lives.

 

When it comes to money, if we think about what money does for us and why it makes us feel secure, it’s usually to get our basic needs met. After those needs are met, we look for others need to be met that we think can be met through money. If for instance, if everybody is struggling financially, then everything has to shift versus when you’re the only one, then you’re the one that has to deal with the problem alone because other people aren’t concerned about it. They’re not going to necessarily shift as you are shifting. Money is such a relative thing. It’s relative to our lives, to the world, to the time that we’re in and to the circumstances. There are many factors at play and I always feel like it’s important to examine our relationship with money.

I’m particularly sensitive to anything that has to do with numbers because I feel like we put a lot of weight on numbers in general. A lot of the times, it’s unnecessary because most of these things are made up rules. Even money is just a number. We as a society have put much importance on money that it starts to be tied into our security unless it feels like it can make a big difference when it comes to how we feel in our mindfulness and all that stuff. Part of mindfulness is having awareness and paying attention like, “Is this a reality or is this something that I’m making up my head and how do I define what reality is?”

This is interesting because I have had many conversations with people about, is there an object of reality or is reality completely subjective based on our programming, our thoughts, our belief systems, our perspectives, our past, our projections in the future? What is the nature of reality? People are saying things like gravity, the Law of Attraction, the sunrises in the morning and the moon rises in the evening. The object of nature of reality. One thing that I think about and I remember practicing for the first time when I was working with Byron Katie was this meditative walk that we would do every single morning when I was in her school. It’s not naming things. We would pass by a tree and instead of saying, “That’s an Oak tree or that’s a Sycamore tree.” We would start to train ourselves to not label things or not have words for it. It changes reality when you don’t have a definition or a word for something where you’re almost like a child, before we had language and before we were able to label everything.

There was a time when you and I, and everyone on this planet who is human, we’re taking in the isness of something without labeling it. It wasn’t a tree, a cat, a dog, mama, dad, we were in full presence with things without labeling them. When I think about that, we manipulate reality in a way through language, meaning and defining things. As you talk about money as an example, about security control. Some people don’t have anxiety around money. Their perspective, belief system, viewpoint and definition of the energetics of money can differ much from another person. My belief system is that everything is inherently neutral in reality.

There’s a good section about this in A Course of Miracles. Maybe this is where Byron Katie got that from as well. Just because it’s talked about in A Course in Miracles doesn’t mean it’s the origination of it. I remember as I was going through the daily lessons, which you can sign up for free on their website and have it emailed to you, which I enjoy. I find it helpful for me to stay present and mindful is reading one sentence from A Course in Miracles. If I want to dig into it, I’ll go and read more about it. Marianne Williamson also has amazing work. Most of her work is based around her studies of A Course in Miracles.

One of the things that I found most insightful and that stuck with me from that is there is a practice where you look around the room and don’t assign meaning to things. You don’t give them names and it’s such a powerful practice to realize that because we call something a fan. What does that mean and what is it? We came up with all of these things as part of the idea. It’s almost like the Matrix. In that movie, his ability to bend the spoon. The lessons in there, we start creating all these definitions based on what we’re taught. Who’s to say that we can’t bend a spoon with our mind? We’re taught that we can’t do it and we’re taught to see the world in such specific ways but it’s all human construct.

Bruce Lipton has a great book, The Biology of Belief and how our belief systems, the meanings, definitions and energetics we assigned to things in our life not just creates reality, but also has an effect on the physiology of our being on a cellular level. One of the things that springs up to me is Abraham Hicks’s interesting quote when someone at one of their seminars asked, “Why aren’t humans regrowing their limbs?” Their response was, “Because no one believes they can.” I went to the eye doctor you recommended to me, a great optometrist, Dr. Rabbani here in LA. I had my eyes first examined a few years ago. He looked at the chart. He looked at me and he had this look on his face. He’s like, “Your eyesight improved.” I said, “What?” He’s like, “You’re going to be 43. Your eyes got better.” I believe we’re conditioned in society to say that as you age, your eyes get worse. This is the thing that’s always hammered into us. It’s interesting to examine mindfulness and how our belief systems and conditioning play into possibility.

For me and most people, we have this deep belief like, “You can’t do that. You can’t improve your eyesight in your 40s’. You can’t regrow that fingertip that you cut off.” I’ve cut chunks of my fingers off. It’s like little macabre during shuffling and it’s like, “Should I go get that reattached or should I let it grow back?” It’s like, “Let me see if I can grow it back.” I’m not saying I can’t do it. I know that’s an extreme example and I’m not recommending if you cut your finger off in the kitchen that you’re like, “Let it regrow.” I did it as an experiment without trying to limit my beliefs of maybe I can grow this piece of my finger back. Maybe I should get it re-attached. I don’t know. It’s interesting to see if we stop ourselves from negative thinking and saying, “I can’t do this or this isn’t a possibility.”

I have many isms and quotes. I remember watching a documentary way back in the day about Dr. Dre and his music career and his mindset. He was talking and he said, “There was a huge shift for me when I realized that the only limitations in life were the ones I was creating in my mind. I wasn’t blaming life, society or anyone holding me back.” He’s like, “I was the one holding me back. The limitations were in my mind, nowhere else.” It was like, “We do that.” To have this practice of mindfulness, part of this is to see where our self-imposed limitations are? Where our negative belief systems are? We’re not even trying. We’re like, “I can’t do that. That’s not even a possibility.” We realized that there are tremendous possibilities if we remove our negative limited belief thinking around things. I’m still working, especially around finances on that. Especially for me as an empath, I feel a lot of worry about my financial future. I’m recognizing that there are limiting belief systems that are coming up from me around that. That’s what I’m digging into.

Mindfulness is also the practice of paying attention to your thoughts and it’s not necessarily about changing your thoughts either. Sometimes it’s watching them and breathing through them. It’s much of that awareness. You don’t necessarily have to change your thoughts. You can observe them and try not to judge them too. The whole point of what we’re talking about here is there is no right or wrong. We place definitions as individuals in society. Being a human being, part of what we do as humans is create all of these definitions and rules. We created them and we can also change them at any point. When I think about that, it to me is exciting. It makes me feel empowered because I realize I don’t have to do things a certain way. I don’t have to think a certain way, live a certain way and have fear. It starts to release a lot of that concern within me if I can be present and do something like meditate. It’s like, “I can dissolve it.” The important element is that you do that regularly. As much as you can release, you can also bring it all back and get tense again. 

True mindfulness is in cultivating a healthy, grounded, balanced, and same relationship to the nature of life itself. Click To Tweet

I wanted to bring up one more thing that is super interesting. There’s a woman, she’s a coach and a teacher. Her name is Carolyn Elliott and she has a thing called Existential Kink. It’s nothing sexual. It’s more about reframing our belief systems and examining why we have perpetual cycles come up in our life. Part of these practices for example, if I’m having perpetual roller coaster financial issues as an entrepreneur, there’s this thing where we look at, “Why do I continue to have these financial issues coming up?” Maybe I’m doing this because I’m getting something from it. Maybe I’m perceiving these financial issues as “Negative,” but there’s something positive I’m getting from it. The spin on it that I’ve looked at when I’ve used this technique is there’s a part of me that thrives on uncertainty and wants the challenge of like, “How are we going to make payroll next month? How are we going to pay for this? How are we going to do for that?” There’s a part of me that is getting off in this full formula of Existential Kink. Getting off on like, “I can do it if my balls are against the wall and I’m freaking out, I know I can pull it off.”

It’s like an eleventh-hour motivation. You need tension or you need pressure to make things happen. 

To spin that, instead of this financial pressure you’re always feeling as an entrepreneur is “negative.” Perhaps there’s a part of me that’s getting off for thriving on the tension, the eleventh-hour thing of like, “I can pull this off.” There’s a part of me in my psychology that’s thriving on that. Once I started to look at that a little bit, I went, “This is an interesting framework to look at this differently.” Sometimes we can have something that we label as “Negative,” but if we dig into it, maybe there’s something we’re getting from it that’s fueling us. It’s a fascinating thing to look at it in a different way and put a different lens on it.

We’ll wrap up this conversation about mindfulness by sharing a superhero action-step, which is at the end of every section or chapter within the Blissful, Balanced & Badass eBook. The superhero action-step is the next time you find yourself in an uncomfortable, challenging or grossly inconvenient situation and you find yourself dissolving into a reactionary state of being, stop yourself as quickly as possible. Stop, close your eyes, take a deep breath, put your hand on your heart and ask yourself, “What’s real here? What’s truly important now?” This can stop the cycle of toxic and damaging reactivity before it even begins. Breathe some more. Take a few moments if possible to ground yourself and examine your options for a response. When you’re able to calm your breath in your body, choose the most positive, loving and appropriate response to the situation. This practice can help to save you from saying or doing a lot of dumb things that you might regret. Trust me on this one.

I’ve said and done a lot of dumb things out of a reactive state of being. That is for me one of the most important practices of stopping, taking a deep breath and saying, “What’s real here?” Oftentimes our projections of future fear or our past pain are not what’s real at the moment. That is one of the most effective practices that I continue to do. Shout out to my mentor, Michael Park, for teaching me that many years ago and reinforcing that for me.

The next section is about productivity, which begins with, “We all want to be more effective, efficient and productive in our lives.” Do we all want that? Is it safe to assume everybody wants that? 

It is a sweeping generalization. You caught me.

“Time is a precious thing and we try our best to make the most of it. I’ve struggled with procrastination and lack of productivity at many different times in my life and have assembled a variety of strategies, tools and mindset hacks that will help you get unstuck, get your ideas flowing and keep yourself balanced throughout your workday.” I bet you this section is going to be appealing to people as they read this book and listen to the eBook. Jason, you share what your cycle looks like. You can read all of this in the book. Productivity is interesting because there are many different definitions of it and we’ve talked about this throughout the show. We talked about how the two of us are a bit averse to the hustle mentality.

The word, busy, I want to flip that. I want to subvert that.

This is a long section in here too, Jason. This is in-depth. It’s one of the longer sections in the book. It’s twenty pages long. Lots of different tips and perspectives in there. Ultimately, at the end when you gave your superhero action-step, here are some of your suggestions. One was to start using a Pomodoro timer and make daily to-do lists that are prioritized. I can’t remember if you talked about this on the show, but we talked about this in our online programs. If the readers we’re not aware, we have a few different offerings on our website. One of them is called Wellness Warrior Training and we also have a program called The Consistency Code, which you can sign up for and listen to and do at your pace. We originally had done it in real-time to help people be accountable. Both are great courses. If you’re interested in learning how to be mindful and productive at the same time and work on your wellness. I always think of the Pomodoro timer, Jason, because you’re very passionate about that.

MGU 47 | Mindfulness

Mindfulness: Mindfulness is not necessarily about changing your thoughts, but the practice of paying attention to your thoughts.

 

I am and for several reasons. Number one, I tend to get deep into my work that I don’t take breaks. I will start to feel that my body is in a position that’s beyond uncomfortable. That’s probably detrimental because I’ll get sucked in particular to say a writing project. I love to write whether it’s blog posts for our website or working on a new book. I’ve always loved to write. The downside of that is if I don’t use a Pomodoro timer and give myself time blocks, I’ll sit there for hours with my face glued to the computer. First of all, I find it’s less productive in terms of I’m grinding or pushing at a certain point or I’m sucked in the zone that I’m not taking care of my physical needs. For me, a Pomodoro timer is great because I can do structured time blocks where I find that I’m much more efficient by working in time blocking. I’m building in breaks where I can literally get up from my chair at my desk, walk around, stretch, have a snack and it’s much better for that. For me, I’m a huge fan. Pomodoro Timer is a free app. Structured time blocking I found has increased my productivity because it focuses me more. A big part of productivity is focus. I’ve gone far as to take my cell phone and put it in the next room in a drawer on airplane motor or off so that I’m not bugged, or I’m disabling iMessage on my computer. Focus and distraction-free work time in specific time blocks is a succinct way that has rocked my productivity.

It’s a simple way to say it, but reducing distractions when possible, working in time blocks, making sure that we’re taking care of our physical and mental needs during the workday, lead to higher productivity. This is something you encourage, Whitney. Instead of using the words like, “I’m busy,” say like, “No, I’m productive.” That small languaging hack is huge. I want to get out of that hustle, busy, destroy ourselves, all costs to win or make money and have a more balanced approach. It’s almost counterintuitive, but I can say for sure, and I resisted this for a long time, is caring for myself and building in self-care at first felt hard because I was like, “You’re going to be less productive. You’re going to make less money. What about business?” I have found that when I take the best care of myself, I feel like my business does better or our business at Wellevatr does better when I’m taking better care of myself. To the reader, if the idea of self-care is like, “I’ve got to take care of this.” We all have these responsibilities, I get it. There’s something about the energetics of caring for ourselves that gives us more energetic bandwidth to do the other things we need to do.

It’s also interesting because it seems like a lot of people believe that time equates to money. That’s not always the case. Just because you work longer hours doesn’t mean that you’re going to make more money. For some jobs, it’s true, if you’re paid hourly but it doesn’t have to be that way. Some people are paid salary, some people are paid in a monthly fee as a consultant, a freelancer. There are all different ways to generate income that don’t have to be time-dependent. Sometimes being paid hourly, your productivity goes down because you’re like, “It doesn’t matter what I do in this hour as long as I work in this hour.” A lot of the times, it’s more about what quality you’re producing versus the quantity of time that you’re spending on it. It’s important to shift that. It’s an old school thing that was created back by Henry Ford. He might have created that 9:00 to 5:00 structure at the factories, if I recall correctly. It was a way for them to have more structure around the work environment and then it caught on. A lot of businesses were doing it and we’ve been doing it ever since.

As we talked about before, you have to think about like, “Why is your workday structured that way? Is that supporting your productivity?” A lot of the times we have all this stress too that we think if we don’t do these hours, we’re not going to make money. Most people are paying you for the results that you’re given, not the time that you’re giving. Time is also connected to our energy. The amount of energy that we’re putting out in that time or during those bouts of focus and productivity. It’s managing your energy and deciding how is that ultimately going to help you to reach that output that’s going to give you the money that you’re looking for or the goal that you’re trying to get. It’s similar to marathon runners as well. They have to be mindful of how they exert their energy throughout the course of race.

It’s all about pace and efficiency.

Some other things that you brought up in the superhero action-steps of the eBook, Jason, is you said, “To set attainable goals for yourself that stretch you past your limits and make you feel uncomfortable. Meaning you’re going to have to work for them and be open to new possibilities.” 

This is something that for me has been flowing with and sculpting in different ways over the years in terms of goals. I remember the TV series on the cookbook.

What TV series?

How to Live to 100 on Cooking Channel. You can download it on Amazon Prime. You can download it on iTunes. We’ve talked about it a lot on the show, for anyone who hasn’t seen it, you can still get it and see it out there.

What is How to Live to 100, Jason?

How to Live to 100 is my TV series on the Cooking Channel that was out years ago.

I want to give context. Somebody might be reading for the first time.

I remember back then, I had a goal. It was something like $100 million in a year. Some people were like, “That’s great. Set big goals.” To jump from $100,000 a year to $100 million is not outside of the realm of possibility, but there was a part of me that didn’t believe I was going to do that. I was trying to be like, “Have big balls, set big goals, go for it.” To me, when I say attainable goals, as I’ve had incremental goals that have made me stretch, that’s felt like a confidence builder as opposed to setting a goal that’s big, lofty and weight quantumly beyond where I’m at that if I don’t get there, I feel a feeling of failure. I also want to make this point, it’s not about avoiding failure. Rather than saying it’s a failure, it’s a learning opportunity, a growth opportunity. For me, the incremental goal structure to me is a momentum and confidence builder as opposed to, “I’m going to go from a $100,000 to $100 million.” It’s in the realm of possibility but for me, I felt it was starting to set me up for mental failure rather than creating incremental goals that I build on the way to the ultimate goal. I’m a big fan of that structure rather than what I used to do. To me, that’s a more useful thing in my cosmology.

Everything is inherently neutral in reality. Click To Tweet

You also said, “It’s important to ask yourself if you’re enjoying the process of producing or creating your work or if you’re slaving away for some imaginary outcome that may or may not happen just to validate your sense of self.”

“Once I make the $1 million, once I get the car, once I get the house, once I’m in the Forbes 30,” or whatever arbitrary material goal that people create for themselves, it’s like, “Are you chasing the validation?” I say this because I’ve talked about this in past episodes. There’s this idea that once I have been or do this thing, then I’ll feel good enough. That’s been my deepest wound is the feeling of not being good enough. I’ve certainly chased those material goals in the sense of once I have, be or do this thing, then I’ll feel enough. I’ll be enough finally. A lot of people are on that hamster wheel or a version of that materialistic hamster wheel. A lot of the goal setting, a lot of the hustle and grind mentality is chasing the dollar, the fame and the notoriety. You get there and then what? You’re going to feel enough then? I guarantee in my experience that when you get to whatever the thing you want is, it’s not going to make you feel enough. You’ll still be chasing. You’ll still have a void inside.

That’s why it’s important to step back and look at why you want what you want. When I was first starting to study money and get a better grasp on it. I remember one of the courses or books I was reading. I wish I remembered who it was. I got into anything money-related and want to have a better relationship with money. One of the best pieces of advice that I received is if we write down how much money we need and then how much money we want and assign a reason behind each number, we will find many of us that we don’t need or want nearly as much as we think. If you write out your finances, a lot of us can get by with a lot less money than we might realize.

It’s just that culturally, we compare ourselves to each other and we hear about different amounts of money. We think that people are happier than us. In general, we tend to believe that other people have it better or happier than us, especially through platforms like Instagram or social media in general, where people are showing their highlight reels. We’re like, “That person has enough money to go on a fancy vacation and they look happy in their photos and videos. If I could have this much money as them then I’ll be able to go on vacation to have as much fun.” The reality is not a lot of people are those transparent about how much money they have and where they got it from? We make a lot of assumptions about money in general that we don’t even realize what it took to get there.

Some people might have worked a lot harder than we realized. Some people may have inherited it or it might have come to them in what we perceive as easier. That vacation may not have been as happy as it was in the photos. Also, we can go and have an equally fun time while spending a lot less money. It’s interesting if you start to do the numbers and do the math, you can realize that your experiences can be wonderful on a budget. Your experiences may not need to cost as much as you think. You may not need to make as much money as somebody that had the things that you want. You may not need to have the fancy car that somebody has to feel happy. They might not be as happy as you think they are because they have the Lamborghini.

Doing that math and writing it down is a phenomenal exercise because we tie productivity much into money. We realize like, “I don’t need to work as hard as I think I do because I don’t need as much money.” You can also find out that you can work less time and make the same amount of money or more amounts of money if you shift to the way that you work with the type of work that you do. It’s about busting a lot of misconceptions that we have. A lot of people have misconceptions about money. It’s a huge struggle and it gets perpetuated. When you sit down and you write it out, you can have much insight and that can tie much into how productive you feel or want to be.

That leads me to the end of this chapter where Jason says, “Please be kind to yourself when you fall short of your lofty goals. You’re human and allowed to get knocked on your ass sometimes. Keep creating, create again, create some more, repeat. You rock.” I also would like to add in that a lot of the times we think we fall short of goals, but that’s a matter of perception. A lot of times we are hard on ourselves and yes, we are human, we’re allowed to fail, but we can also not look at failure as such a negative thing. Failing might be that you simply did not reach your goal, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are a failure. It’s that you did not reach that goal at this time. It keeps going over and over again. To get up and allow yourself to fall is important.

This is a bit tangential but related. I’m into the etymology of words and the deeper meaning of where words came from and how the meaning of words has changed over time. Similar to failure, the word, sin, for some people has a deep weight. Just that word, “I’ve sinned.” The etymology of that word or the actual meaning is in archery. When you miss the target, you miss your mark. The origin of the word sin is you miss your mark in archery. We’ve somehow changed the meaning of that word throughout history to mean. We’ve gone against God or we’ve done something ethically wrong. Sin has a much different connotation for a lot of people now, but the etymology, the meaning or the origin of that word is different. That sparked when you have that conversation about failure. It doesn’t have to be such a defeating, negative, painful thing. We could look at failure as an opportunity to pivot, an opportunity to grow or an opportunity to change our course of action. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an inherently destructive thing.

The next section of the book talks about the organization. You start with a quote, which is, “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”

It’s by Friedrich Nietzsche, one of my favorites.

You said, “Indeed, the contrast and the chaos within us can result in some pretty amazing stuff in our lives. When it comes to the organization of your life, chaos is going to get carded by the doorman at the club.” What does that mean?

This got brought up before. Someone asked me why my house is organized, the way my clothes are organized. If you come to my house, it’s organized. Why do I do that? Why is everything just so? Life is chaotic a lot of the time. There’s a lot of chaos in life. Chaos is part of the natural order of things. For me, I feel like if I can maintain a level of organization with not just my business, but the way my closet is organized, the way that my kitchen is organized, the way my house is set up, that in times of chaos I feel a calm, confident, compassionate energy because of the way that I’ve organized my life. It may not be how other people organize their life because I have my way that I organize my files and my paperwork and my taxes and my clothes. To me, I feel that the organization is a way to efficiency because I know how and where things are set up and stored and arranged. I feel that organization can be a balance for chaos in life. That’s how I approach organization. It’s a balancing mechanism for the chaos that I’m going to inevitably experience.

MGU 47 | Mindfulness

Mindfulness: An organization can be a balance for chaos in life.

 

In the superhero action-step at the end of that chapter, here are some of your recommendations for organizations. First, look at your daily, weekly, monthly calendar to see where you can create more time for self-care and self-nourishment and whatever form serves you best. Fitness, hikes, reading books, taking a bath, birdwatching, journaling, whatever your pleasure.” I don’t think about birdwatching that much. That’s a good one. I love that you put birdwatching in there. That’s a lovely thing to do, especially when you’re feeling stressed.

Whether that’s birdwatching or going to a park and watching whatever wildlife or nature is there, there’s something peaceful and grounding about communing with nature and animals in general. Communing with animals and nature is a grounding centering thing.

That’s important to talk about because a lot of us do not play self-care and self-nourishment on our calendars. We get into this busy-ness concept in our heads. I am willing to bet that a lot of people don’t stay that organized on their calendars. It’s not an hour by hour thing. In the most cases, I put all major things on my calendar. I block out time. I plan ahead when it comes to driving times or commute times. I’m mindful of what my day is going to look like. I try also not to over-schedule myself and I start to put things rest on my calendar as well because I will notice my habits. They’re the tendencies, I should say.

One thing I started doing is when I get up early for an early morning yoga class, I will put on my calendar time to rest afterward because it’s early that I tend to be exhausted afterward, especially exerting all that energy. That way I won’t schedule anything immediately after that time where I’m putting out much energy. I give myself time to recover whether that’s taking a nap or reading a book, whatever that maybe, just resting. I have gone through phases where I’ll put book reading on my calendars. I do recommend experimenting with it. I say for the most part, because I’m not super strict about it, sometimes it stresses me out to be super organized. I do go through phases where every hour of my day is blocked out and that includes self-care time and self-nourishment.

A lot of people over-schedule themselves and they’re focused on the necessities. They’re focused on being productive. They’re focused on their output, but we also have to include time for the input. That can help us do things that might not serve us. Maybe instead of reading a book, you do want to go for a hike, take a bath, journal, read a book, bird watch, listen to a podcast and do a meditation. All of those things can go on your schedule and that will help you prioritize them and also be organized.

It reminds us of Brendon Burchard, one of our favorites. One of my favorite quotes of Brendon’s is, “If it’s not in your calendar, it’s not real.” He doesn’t mean real as an objective reality. To me, I interpret his quote for my life as it’s an accountability partner. Whereas if I want to sit down and record or write music or read a book or work on a new product, whatever the thing is for you, dear reader, I feel putting it in your calendar and putting reminders that are grabbing your attention. It’s an accountability partner. It keeps you honest with the commitments you’ve made to yourself. To Whitney’s point, it’s about balancing and not overwhelming yourself with too much, but if something’s important to you and you want to stay consistent with it, scheduling it on the calendar to stay organized, it helps you be accountable to yourself.

You’re building that self-care practice into your day as a non-negotiable. You also suggest, “Looking at any extraneous commitments or obligations that are no longer serving you and let them go. You do enough already and you are enough already. Getting rid of the unimportant to do will create more space inside and out for the good stuff to come running for you. Less is more, try minimalism and see what happens.”

On that point, life abhors a vacuum. Here’s what I mean by that. If you create space in your life, something will fill it. Life does not exist in a vacuum. Inevitably something or someone or some activity will fill the space that you create. If you feel overwhelmed, you feel like you’re in a people-pleasing mode where you’re doing too much and over-committing, perhaps shedding those extraneous things, those superfluous things that aren’t feeding you on a soul level, a physical level, a financial level, a creative level. When you create space, you can fill that space with things that do nourish you and do fill you up. Sometimes life will do it but generally, you need to be the one to take that initiative and create that space so it can be filled by something else.

The last section of your book, Jason, is called life vision. I like the picture you chose for that. It’s nice. It’s pleasant. The chapter or the section begins with, “Is it scary or exciting to consider the vision for your life? It’s an important question to ponder because it provides a glimpse into how you perceive the quality of your life.” To piggyback on that question, Jason wants to share one of his favorite quotes from Tony Robbins who said, “Your quality of life is determined by the quality of the questions you ask.”

We go back to why, which is one of Whitney’s favorite questions. She’s a questioner. I also love why, because it’s a deepening question. I feel like it’s one of those questions that help us break through the surface level into our deeper motivations. Our deeper desires, our deeper intentions. ‘Why’ is a great question. In the episode about Simon Sinek’s book, the Start With Why, this is not a new concept. We’re not like, “Ask yourself why. This is a brand-new thing.” To me, it’s an opportunity to spelunk the depths of your being and get to, why are you doing what you do? Why are you focusing on what you are focusing on?

I do believe that energy goes where attention flows. What you focus on most is getting the most energy in your life. This Tony quote is great because I often find that when I ask why, it leads me to another question that I often end up in a space where I had no idea that was the actual thing motivating my behavior, my desire and my drive. If I go back to a lot of examples in my life, specifically around purpose, career, creativity, money and business, for a lot of years, it was this drive in this desire to prove myself. It was what I thought, “Make the world a better place and give people tools to heal.” That was certainly a part of it. Subconsciously, for a long time, I was unaware of my “purpose” or life’s mission.

You need tension and pressure to make things happen. Click To Tweet

There was a huge part of it. This idea that I had to prove that I’m good enough and that I’m worthy of love and success. I found that became an unsustainable motivation for my life. Will Smith had a great interview about this where he said, “No amount of success is going to undo or heal the trauma of your childhood.” That hit a ton of bricks for me because I’ve been chasing in the past, money, success, fame and notoriety thinking that it will heal all the crap from my childhood that I went through. To that point, I got chills when I saw that interview with him because it was like, “How many people in the world are on that hamster wheel of thinking that the trauma, the pain, the sorrow and the depression will get healed once they have that fulfilling moment?”

With life vision, asking the right questions to understand your motivation and your intention. What is the fuel that is pushing you forward? Finding out, is it a sustainable thing? There’s a deeper level of motivation that we can cultivate beyond proving ourselves and material attainment into getting into a spirit of generosity, true service, uplifting others and giving our gift to the world. Naturally, when we do that, good things come. Marianne Williamson has this amazing book where she talks about, there’s a spiritual bank or there’s a reciprocal currency. When you’re putting out good works into the world and you’re doing it from a space of service, a spirit of generosity and giving your talents, there’s reciprocity that the world, the universe, God, all that is, returns the goodness to you. It’s interesting because one of my favorite quotes from my mom, Susan, that I remember her telling me for years and years is, “The love that you put into the world will return to you tenfold.” If we can get to a point of our life’s purpose and our life’s work coming from a more sustainable place, we find that the love and the generosity and the spirit of service are returned to us. It’s not a reason to do it.

We can’t be attached to it.

We’re not like, “If I do this, it’ll come back to me tenfold.” Putting goodness, love, creativity and our heart into the world. If we can do it from an unattached place, I feel it does come back. I believe Marianne Williamson and I believe my mother because they have similar qualities. Marianne Williamson and my mom were similar in certain ways. It’s interesting.

Their style is similar. I don’t know if they’re in a similar age range and the way they hold themselves.

Some of their wisdom tidbits too.

For our final superhero action-step for this book, Jason says, “Ask yourself this question over and over again until you get a raw, visceral, connected, authentic answer. You will feel it when it hits you. What do I really want? Write down everything that springs forth into your consciousness after you asked this question. It will tell you a lot about where you are in life and where you’re heading. You will likely get some surprising answers, so buckle up and ask away.”

I do this once a year without fail in my journal. I ask myself, “What do I want?” Before resistance comes up, “What do you want?” I had a roommate years ago, Janney. She had a story about this preacher that was at a church that she went to.

I love that you remember where this came from because I don’t remember the context at all.

She said, this preacher at this Baptist Church, his whole sermon was about this subject, getting to the heart of who you are, what’s your motivation and what do you want? He got up on the pulpit and he was like, “What do you want? You’ve got to ask yourself what you really want.” That is such a powerful question. Also, if you are journaling or recording yourself and you asked this question, start writing or start talking. Don’t resist, don’t think about it too much. Whatever the visceral primal responses, write that down or speak that into existence. I do this at least once a year and it changes.

If I go back and I look in my journal from year-to-year, the answers I put down, some of them are the same, but some of them are different. Some of them have evolved. Some of them have grown out. Some of them are growing different heads like a Hydra. Doing this at least once a year like, “What the hell do you want?” Write it down and see from an unfiltered, unrestricted, unresisting place what comes out of you. You got to let it flow. Don’t stunt yourself. Don’t be like, “Do I really?” Let it out. That power of unrestricted and unfiltered journaling, not just on the subject but in general. For the reader, if you haven’t started journaling yet. The idea of journaling, a great place to start with this is morning pages. As part of your morning routine to write 1 to 2 pages every single morning of free association.

Whatever’s on your mind, “I hate my life. Things are crazy. This Coronavirus is freaking me out. I love my life. My cat is in the corner. That crunching sound she makes is weird,” whatever it is that comes out of you in your morning practice. Doing morning pages is a great way to start a journaling practice. I want to shout out to a good friend of mine named Katie Dalebout, who has a wonderful book that was coincidentally released the same day as my book, Eaternity. The book is all about journaling and about the emotional freedom of journaling and it’s called Let It Out. Check it out for a great starter guide to journaling and the power of journaling.

That concludes the two-part series of Blissful, Balanced & Badass tips, which were steps to strip away the BS elevates your state of being and light up your life with love. We hope that you enjoyed these two episodes. This is our second time we’ve done a two-part episode because our first was about Ayahuasca. If you are interested in more two-part episodes where we get deep because we could certainly do long episodes. That could be two hours, but we’d love your feedback on these two episodes and any of the show. If you want to give us some feedback, you can do that publicly or privately. We are available publicly, @Wellevatr. You can write to us on social media. You can comment on posts. You can write about us in your Stories and we’ll share it. You can go to the Wellevatr website and comment on individual episodes. There’s a comment section at the bottom and we’ll respond to you. Also, make it public as long as it’s not cruel. We don’t allow cruelty in our sphere at Wellevatr. If you also want to reach out to us privately, you can do that through email or direct message or email us at [email protected]. We both read that. We love hearing from you.

We’d love your suggestions on future episodes, your feedback on past episodes. Also, if you want to leave us a review on iTunes or on Stitcher I believe it is the other one. We have instructions on how to review if you have not done that. If you go on our website again, Podcast.Wellevatr.com, there’s a whole section about how to review. The only two platforms that we know of where you can leave reviews is Stitcher and Apple Podcasts. In general, we love to stay in touch. Being connected to one another is important to us. It’s also important to your well-being, developing a community, spreading kindness, asking questions, giving feedback. All of those things are important in life in general. We hope we do that. Thank you so much for reading. We’ll be back for another episode shortly.

 

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