You Are Not Your Past - How To Let Go and Finally Feel Okay - Episode 138

What I notice that I don't fully understand what's happening fully, even when I'm certain, or even more so the other person, I allow myself to pause, create the space so that I can create a response versus a reaction. Have you noticed that the world that we live in has been doing most of the thinking for you, that your beliefs, perceptions, reactions, fears, and doubts have been shaped by unsolicited outside noise? How easy it's been for you to slip into that default sleepwalking mode and label it as life and reality. Yeah, that ends here. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. JC Podcast. This is your opportunity to start thinking for yourself, reclaim control, and step back into that role as the shock-caller and dominant force of your own reality. It's when you change the way that you look at things that the things that you look at begin to change. So let's wake up, let's rise up, and let's make sense of why and how shift happens. Make sense. Great morning, humans. Great morning, world, and welcome to another edition of the Make Sense with Dr. JC Podcast. Excited to be here. This is a space here to help us kind of slow down and question what it is that we've been taught to believe and notice. We're going to start to take note of how perception has this ability to quietly shape the way that we live, work, and relate to one another. This is You Are Not Your Past. Now, you'll notice that we talk a lot about unwrapping the present moment, removing ourselves from the past, and the worries and concern of something that doesn't even exist like the future. It is the core principle and essence of most everything that you're trying to accomplish in life, just being able to unwrap the present moment. So it's fitting that in every topic that we choose, there are topics that make you think reclaim control of that part of your brain that you actually control, the neocortex, the prefrontal cortex, because everything else is from that preconditioned mammalian brain that's running pretty much the whole show. So this is about reclaiming control by thinking, and that is something that only happens where in the present moment. So we're always going to correlate it to that. So this is You Are Not Your Past, How to Let Go and Finally Feel Okay. It begins with this. So there's kind of like a subtle form of stress that most of us live with, even if we don't consciously name it. That's an interesting concept right there is that we don't always have to see something and acknowledge something, but we still kind of know that it's there. There's a type of a stress that's there that we don't have to consciously name. And it's a pressure that's in the background. And it says something like this to you. This is the voice that it carries. It says, this shouldn't take so long, dragon. Things should be different for you by now. I should have figured this out by now, haven't we? So when life doesn't cooperate and never fully does, does it? Life doesn't really ever fully cooperate. Even on these days that you claim you're having a good day, does it ever fully cooperate? No. So we experience that familiar friction that we label as universally we'll call that friction stress, disappointment or suffering. And we kind of like to explain to people that that's what's going on. So I want to drop into Xana a little bit. I'm going to share a little bit, some stuff from my book makes sense. And a big part of my transformation was how and when I found myself to the philosophy not religion of Buddhism. So I'm going to share a little bit about that. So Zen has a simple way of pointing to the root of this tension. Now here's the word of the day. The word of the day is impermanence. The root of tension impermanence. And that's just the acknowledgement that nothing lasts forever. Sit with that just for a second. What if you carried that with you today in your tool belt? Just this reminder that nothing lasts forever. Now, if you're in a situation or a scenario in life where you bought into the idea that things do last forever and you're leaning towards permanence, it's more difficult. But if you reach down into your tool belt and you're just open and curious enough to entertain the word impermanence, nothing lasts forever. Not circumstances, moods, identities, or even your relationships in their current form. Heck, not even your opinions about yourself last forever. Have you ever noticed that? So I kind of allow myself to just kind of chill out sometimes and just recognize that even what I think about myself, let alone what I think about others or the world, it carries impermanence. And this is the good things and the bad, which is interesting. We have this tendency of saying, oh yes, impermanence, nothing bad happens forever. But this includes things that are good. Nothing lasts forever. And I think that's the key when you're starting to practice or utilize or become open and permit yourself to entertain impermanence, is to just realize that nothing lasts forever. Because if you choose, well, these things last forever and these don't, that's where it gets sticky. But the suffering doesn't come from change itself, does it? It comes from resisting it, resisting change. So there's a subtle violence found in permanence. Now sit with that. I just said that there's a subtle violence found in permanence. We're rarely people that walk around saying things like, I demand permanence. Instead, it kind of shows up in disguise as expectations. That's the way permanence shows up. We expect things. We don't demand things. We expect them to. There's a lot of danger in our expectations of permanence. Life must be a certain way. We have this way of thinking. People should behave differently. What I need is to feel confident, calm, successful, healed, and stay that way. Otherwise, something must be wrong. That's kind of what's happening in our program condition, mine. So this is where life suddenly becomes unsatisfactory. Where are you at in your life right now? Is your life satisfactory or unsatisfactory? Now there's different trains of thought there. You might have an unsatisfying life right now and just have this attitude of saying, hey, I'm grateful for what I have, can't complain. Or you actually might think that you're satisfied and have this background thing going on where you say, I have to keep going. I have to set my next goal. So either way, it's just about looking at the now, unwrap the present moment. Are you satisfied or unsatisfied at this current moment? So impermanence, when embraced, doesn't make life cold or detached. It makes it breathable and doable. It isn't that all we need sometimes. I think that when I'm having a rough time or I'm experiencing things like anxiety or worry or concern, and I'm running that through what I call the interface response system, I don't think that what I'm looking for is to get rid of it, the feeling and the acknowledgement, the noting of it. But I think that I'm practicing these tools and skills to make it breathable and doable. That makes sense. So let's discuss the practice of establishing what's called a beginner's mind. Now, this is one of my delicious finds. I didn't make this up. I found this in many, many different places, but this once again comes from Buddhism. And I'm going to share in a second how I found that. So we're going to talk about the beginner's mind, and I'm going to challenge you and encourage you to just entertain the idea of going about your day with a beginner's mind today. So Zen offers a beautiful counterbalance to the rigidity of having this always need to be right and this expert know-it-all type thing, fixer mode. There's a beautiful counterbalance to that rigidity in what we call the beginner's mind. And in Buddhism, I believe it's called Shoshin. The beginner's mind captures this concept of Shoshin perfectly. So consider this. In the beginner's mind, there are many, many possibilities. So just imagine something that you go back to this time where you were a beginner and in something that you're doing now or in the beginning, the ultimate beginning. In the beginner's mind, the beginner's mind has many, many possibilities. And in the expert mind, there's only a few possibilities, if any. So let's break down the difference between beginner and expert because I very often catch myself drifting into this expert know-it-all mode. And what we're entertaining now, and this is part of being open and curious and allowing for growth, we're going to entertain the difference between being a beginner and an expert. And you'll see which one gives you the most potential. So let's look at a beginner first. A beginner doesn't arrive armed with conclusions. I mean, we could be naive as a beginner, but we don't arrive armed with conclusions. They arrive with questions. They're open. They're curious and they're coachable. They have to be coachable in the beginning at least. They don't yet know how things are supposed to be, which means that they can actually see what is. It's such a delicious thing to allow yourself to be a beginner because it allows you to see only what is. We don't have any expectations. You could have expectations on how you perform and things like that, but you just lack in the knowing area. This is the danger of the expert. Beginners have a tendency to do this, raise their hand. Experts don't do that. So now let's look conversely at the expert, which we can catch ourselves being. So the expert on the other hand often doesn't realize when learning has suddenly turned into defending. We don't learn when we defend, do we? I mean, to a certain extent, we probably could. Defending your identity, maybe your position and what it is that you know. Remember, we always look at the difference between statements that have exclamation points behind them versus question marks. Beginners make statements with question marks. And you could take any statement of anything that you believe to be 100% true, anything that you're certain of. And if you remove the exclamation point, it's life changing. They defend things like identity or position and what it is that they know. And in that defense, perception narrows. Think about it. When you're in defense mode or even as a victim, defending or justifying your stance, your perception begins to narrow and growth potential starts to fade very, very fast. Experts don't leave a lot of room for growth, do they? But you're an expert. You don't seek growth anymore, right? Houston, we have a problem here. One of my distinctions that comes from my book as well, and this is in I think chapter seven, right versus kind. When I met my first mentor was that I was a know it all. And I thought I knew what I wanted. But unconsciously, all I wanted was to be seen and heard and validated. It was all about defending and protecting and projecting my identity. But I didn't know. So for those of you that are maybe catching yourself there right now, sometimes the question, what do you prefer? What's more important to you to be right versus kind? Sometimes that's how you can realize that you're trying so hard to be right. And as an expert, rather than just be kind as a beginner. I love when I interface with somebody, even when they're saying something that my condition mind at this time thinks is preposterous. I love just allowing myself to be a beginner as if I'm hearing it for the first time. I don't feel vulnerable when I'm a beginner. I just feel like I'm giving that person time to explain their stance. It doesn't have to be my stance. So here's an observation to consider. The truly wise person isn't the one that has the most answers in a room. Think about that. The truly wise person in any given room is not typically the person that has the most answers. It's the one who never stops asking questions. The next time you're in a social environment, keep an eye on that. And I just, I just saw some something really, really cool. It was on the Steve Bartlett podcast diary of a CEO, and his guest was a guy named Chad Hughes. Look it up. It's a great, it's long, but it's a great interview. And this is a guy that has this ability to profile and read rooms and things. And he was just talking about blinking. Now I'm going to bring this to light and you're going to look at me blinking if you're watching this. What he was talking about is you can identify who in the room has confidence and who doesn't and who has an agenda and who doesn't by their blink rate. So somebody that is calm and focused, like maybe I'm being right now, is blinking ever so often. But if you see people blinking all the time, it's a telltale sign. Right. So that's one of the ways that you can assess somebody's confidence and their nerves and things like that. That's the observation is the one who never stops asking the questions in a room is the wise one. So I want to share a story. Some of you from the makes sense Academy have heard this story and it's one from my book as well. But I think it's highly relevant right now and I'll show you why. It's something that I call my religion tour. And that was a story, you know, from the makes sense book. So this mindset that I'm sharing with you is not something that came to me through theory. It came to me through experience. And one of those experiences that helped me get to this place. And I'm saying that because just hearing this and knowing it is what I call the jacuzzi experience. It doesn't mean that you own it. It's just an experience. I had an experience that was so profound that it caused me to go out and continue working with this stuff. So I was at a crossroads in my life, go figure another crossroads in my life. I feel like I'm always at a crossroads. Somebody asked me the other day, what's it like to be 54? And I said, I feel like I've just had 54 years of near death experiences. So I was at a crossroads in my life and I felt called to explore religion. I didn't really get raised with religion in my family. And I'm kind of happy about that. I mean, I had the opportunity to look at all religions. I just never was directed towards one. There was a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And I never felt like I needed it because that's the way I was raised. But I went through this crossroads in my life and I said, maybe I need religion. So I wanted to feel what each path had to offer. I didn't know what religion to choose. So I kind of said, I'm going to assess all of them. I went on this religion tour and it's really, really funny. And if you read the book, you'll see that I kind of just threw myself into all religions, which is an interesting thing to do. You're like this naive fool that walks into these houses of God, these various houses of God, completely open and curious with no agenda or no concepts about it. He says, expose me to it. And some didn't let me in. But I wanted to feel what each of them had to offer. So on the tour, I stopped at a Christian event and it was at the Hammerstein Ballroom and this was in New York City. And I don't know how I found it, but I just heard about it. I went into this room and there was probably about like 8,000 people there. And there was, you could pay $10 to get in or it was free. So it was like a tithing thing. So I dropped 10 bucks in there. That was one of the stops on my tour. And what I noticed is I pushed my way up to the front and it was like almost like a rock concert and the stage, if you've ever been to a Hillsong event, all of the performers are super talented and super beautiful. So aesthetically, it was really, really nice. And there was a palpable energy in the room. And I noticed how, I didn't know what I was doing because I didn't have any exposure at that time other than my friends, but I never had really opened myself to it. So I noticed that an energy like would happen in the room and all of a sudden, everybody like on cue would take their hands and raise them in the air. It was like they would put them up to the sky as if receiving something unseen. And I assumed that that was some sort of a message from God or a blessing from God, but I didn't know when to do it. So I wanted to fully participate and I was right up against the front row with like the hard core followers and they were all wonderful people. But I leaned over to the guy next to me who looked like he knew what he was doing. And I said, Hey, what does that mean? And how do you know when to do it? So he smiled like, Oh, new guy, right? What are you doing here? How did you get up to the front row to the VIP section? And he said to me, he goes, Oh, you'll know exactly what to do when it's time. That's all he said to me. And I thought that was pretty cool. And I just allowed myself to just know. So later on, there was this moment that I felt it, you know, I felt whatever it was. And I kind of closed my eyes. And I just fully surrendered. And I just threw my hands up in the air and did it. And it felt good and everything. And the funny thing is, is the guy taps me on the shoulder and he quietly says, Hey, that's not the right time. We're in intermission right now. We had this laugh. What I took from that experience. And here's the relevance outside of the humor. What I took from that experience in connection with today's conversation, first of all, wasn't embarrassment. It was insight. Every tradition, that's the way I looked at religions. Every tradition, which is an interesting way to look at religions, every tradition had something beautiful to offer. There wasn't one that I said is cooler than the other or made more sense. There was a lot of intersecting confusion. But I said they're all good. So I decided to embrace all of them. That was my whole truth. So instead of choosing one, I chose curiosity and openness. So that was a big place for me. I didn't choose to follow one. I said, I want them all. I want them all. So that was a big step. And I don't know if you've been indoctrinated into something and you feel safe and secure, and your faith is strong, that wouldn't be something you'd even want to do. But I was kind of open and curious, but now is even more open and curious. And I said, why do I have to choose one way of thinking and following when they're all carry such beauty? So that was a big moment. So that openness eventually led me to Buddhism. And the reason why is Buddhism was the first stop on that tour that I realized was on a religion. I was on a religion tour. But when I found Buddhism, also stoicism, by the way, they were more philosophies and they didn't demand allegiance or talk about exclusion at all in any way, shape or form. They never looked at anything else and said, that's right or that's wrong. Oh, no, that's not the way you do it. This is the way we do it. They just said, interesting. Aha, I see. So that was a very, very attractive thing for me. Now, why am I sharing this in this context? You know, that nothing lasts forever. Well, this is an important step is how dramatically you are encased in some sort of a container in your belief system. If you're going to buy into the idea of impermanence that nothing lasts forever, but your container and your focus is teaching you otherwise, well, then it's challenging. Once again, disclaimer, I'm not saying that there's any better way to do things. I'm just saying, if we want to entertain really practicing open curiosity and this idea of impermanence and the value associated with it, we have to be kind of okay with everything in a sense. So in Buddhism, I learned the secret to suffering less. And I'm not going to get into a whole big thing about Buddhism, but the Four Noble Truths landed with me in a very, very big way. And in essence, they taught me that life includes suffering, whether you like it or not, like it's part of it. Suffering was not a bad thing. It was part of the whole thing. If you like the thing called life, you would have to embrace good times and bad, evil and good suffering and no suffering. So that was one and craving attachment intensifies it. So they talk about getting so enveloped in desire and need and wants and must haves and things which only exist in the future and come from a place of lack that intensifies the suffering and understanding that this changes our relationship with suffering. That was what it was really about as I was a moment where I said, hey, making mistakes, suffering is not a bad thing. And freedom comes not from avoiding discomfort, I learned, but from seeing its true nature and role in all things. I love to question and contemplate the role of things that I'm perceiving and people and moments, good or bad feeling, good or bad thoughts around it. Sometimes people say, how is that happening for you? I always say, what role is this playing in my overall story? Because then we can see the value. Impermanence is kind of baked into this understanding. Pain arises and pain passes just like the clouds in the sky. They show up, they don't make the sky and they pass on by. Joy arises, joy passes all in the same. And this is even true with our own identities as well. Remember, we're talking about impermanence. So now we're starting to take note, if you step away from the participation and tethering to it, you get to step away and say something like, you know what's interesting is that it comes and goes. Waves even build up before the next one and then they recede on the shore before the next one comes. They come and go, nothing lasts forever. It's universal everywhere. So when we stop demanding permanence in life, from temporary things, by the way, suffering starts to lose its grip, doesn't it? So this is where the beginner's mind and impermanence kind of come together at this phase. It's like perfect harmony, yin and yang type thing. If I don't fully know what's happening inside me or inside another person, I allow myself to pause and this is a big part of the interface response system that's part of my book and my teachings, makes sense Academy. I allow myself to pause and soften my response instead of just reacting. So that's what it means to move from reaction to response. It's not something that you just decide to do. You have to create space for it. This is the beginner's mind all the time for the rest of your life. What I noticed that I don't fully understand what's happening fully, even when I'm certain fully understand what's happening me or even more so the other person. I allow myself to pause, create the space so that I can create a response versus a reaction. So let's talk about the idea of being a scientist. I call this the scientist advantage. I often think that the best scientists are kind of like spiritual leaders in lab coats. So they love facts. Scientists love fact. They read that playbook all of the time, but they love even more discovery. They're willing to let go of yesterday's theory when a better one emerges. What a great way to live life. I find, and this is just an observation in myself and in humans, I find that one of the reasons people struggle so much is that they're out of discovery mode and they're in validation mode. That's not the way a scientist acts. If a scientist comes up with a theory, even wins a Nobel Prize and somebody else comes up with something that discounts it and it's even more valid, the scientist doesn't get upset. He gets excited. So he's seeking. He's in discovery mode. They don't cling to being right. They're devoted to being accurate. Another tool, say, hmm, impermanence, all of these different ways of looking at things. Maybe I'll act like a scientist today. And the challenge with acting like a scientist is you'll have to allow yourself to not need your thoughts and feelings to be the end all right ones. Now, what's the value of that? We're talking about impermanence here. Nothing lasts forever. This too shall pass. If you really want to buy into that, you're going to have to change the way you look at things because it's only when you change the way you look at things that the things you look at change. If you find yourself right now saying, yeah, I get it, but not for me. That's fine. And it doesn't mean that you're a bad person, but it does mean that you're not ready to look at things differently. And therefore, you can't ask for things to change. That's the beginner's mind in action. And the difference between an expert who gets stuck and an expert who evolves, because you can be an expert, but you can be one that gets stuck versus one that evolves is really simple. One secretly believes that they have arrived and the other knows that they haven't. So there's nothing wrong with having an expertise, just like the scientist that postulates a Nobel Prize theory, but they don't think that they've arrived. That's what makes them still have the beginner's mindset. I think that as a human being, what I love most is learning new things, which very often means I have to discount something that I was certain of. So even when the world calls you or them an expert, the beginner's mind expert, that version that's still in growth mode, they still experience themselves as a student. You probably have two different versions of yourself. So that orientation towards learning over proving what it does is it keeps the mind spacious and full of possibilities. So let's talk about mindfulness for a second here. And this is unwrapping the gift of the present moment. Impermanence isn't meant to be contemplated only in books. It's meant to be practiced moment by moment, which is the challenge through mindfulness. And how long do we have to do this? Well, we don't have to do anything, but the value of practicing mindfulness is doing it forever. And also catching yourself drifting out of it and bringing yourself back. I practice transcendental meditation. I've been doing it two times a day for years and years and years. If you learn about meditation, you'll never get to this place where there's no distractions or external ideas trying to crowd their way in. Those are actually the opportunities to catch yourself drifting and come back to center. So the work of meditation is when you have a thought that's distracting. It's an opportunity for you to say, oh, okay, this is my time to come back to center. And when you achieve that, it's a very, very big win. You do get better at that, but you'll never have to stop working at it. There's never a last meditation where you're all set. Well, maybe at the end of life. When you're present, impermanence becomes less threatening and becomes sensible. This is the value of mindfulness. It just becomes logical, rational and sensible. Consider cutting yourself and others right now, some slack. I love to cut myself some slack. I'm going to give everybody here permission, take it or leave it to cut yourself and others some slack today. I think that we would have an immediate improvement in the quality of living and this experience that we call life if we just cut ourselves and others some more slack. So this is where compassion nationally enters the conversation. People snap. I mean, it's everywhere, right? People snap. They get short. They say things that they don't mean. And guess what? You're part of that. You do this too. Am I right? So, you know, things like stress, fatigue, fear and unpredictability press on all of us. This is the environment we live in. Part of it. They all play a role in the overall thing that we're talking about, but they press on all of us. When we forget about impermanence, we personalize everything. All of those things that are happening. That's when we say they're happening to me. This is where the interface response system and my book come into play is if you can separate yourself from the participation and the personalization that you're experiencing and create space and ask a question, this is about me. This is happening to me, question mark instead of exclamation point, massive shift. So we become victims of subtle nuances like tone when we're sensitive like this or mood or momentary behavior. I love the idea of evaluating and looking for momentary behavior. Why? Because whenever I experience behavior, my biggest challenge is when it's got a tone or energy that seems like it's attacking me. This happens to me almost every day where I see that. But I always say, what is the momentary behavior that I am seeing right now? It's just a delicious way to release yourself from being the participant to just the observer, the momentary behavior. What momentary behavior are you exhibiting right now? Because if you can identify that, then it's going to pass. And as soon as you're ready for it to pass, that's what happens. Cutting someone's slack doesn't mean, by the way, tolerating harm. This is why people struggle with forgiveness. People struggle with forgiveness because it doesn't mean that you're saying it's okay or you're tolerating harm or abandoning your own boundaries. That's not what it means. Well, it means whatever you think it means. What it means is recognizing the hidden context, hidden context, meaning we can't see it at first. We can't feel it at first. We have to stop and evaluate it. And remembering that this version of them or you isn't permanent. It's not permanent. As I'm speaking to you right now, in this present moment, I feel great, but I have a terrible neck pain. I mean, it's a little bit better. It's been keeping me up and all of that stuff. But right here today, it still hurts. It's a little better being with you guys. I gotta spend more time with you. But it's not going to last forever. And I know that. And boom, it automatically helps. So when you offer the same slack that we're talking about inwardly to yourself, something softens. Self-forgiveness is a big one. Self-forgiveness becomes possible. A surprising amount of daily stress will suddenly disappear when we stop demanding that imperfect moments behave perfectly. That's not what imperfect moments do. They don't behave perfectly. They behave imperfectly. That's why they're called imperfect moments. So detach yourself from participating with them and just acknowledge them and say, oh, I see an imperfect moment. But we know that it's impermanent, that imperfect moment. So this is about living lighter by knowing less impermanence invites us to travel lighter. I love that. Let's travel lighter today. The beginner's mind gives us the flexibility to do so. So together, they free us from the exhausting job of maintaining fixed identities in a fluid world. It is very difficult, like trying to drink water from a fork, to maintain a fixed identity in a world that is fluid. You don't have to have it all figured out today, folks, right now or even tomorrow. You don't have to defend your position at every turn today. You don't have to. Even if you choose to, you don't have to. You don't have to be the same person tomorrow that you were yesterday or today. You don't have to. You just have to get back to being you. That's what we're trying to do. Back to being curious and present as a beginner and cut yourself some slack. So in doing so, you may discover may, I love that word, may, you may discover that life just as it is, including all of the unpredictable changes that arise is already more than enough. Makes sense? If today's conversation stayed with you, if it impacted you, you're welcome to explore our free echoes of hum, substack. You just go to substack and you can find our free weekly reflections. We do a lot of cool notes and things like that just to every day give you a little dose of consciousness designed to help you pause and reconnect with your clarity before the week takes over. We always say in our communities at all levels that we see clarity before action. So you can find everything at substack by searching something like makes sense with Dr. JC. That's how you find our podcast, our YouTube and everything. For those of you that want to go deeper, I always like to open the door. We have something called the signal, which is our weekday practice. This is where we actually move from knowing and learning to action and practice a short daily pause that helps you meet life more clearly and in real time. That's it for today. To support the makes sense with Dr. JC podcast, be sure to subscribe, like, and share as well as follow the makes sense, substack for free daily quotes, live streams, and blogs. And remember learning without action is just another form of distraction. If something hit home and you learn something today, give it away. That's the only way it's going to stay. See you next time. If you liked the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening.