September 7, 2023 • 54 mins
Join Darren and Donny for an insightful discussion on the art of being present. In this episode, they explore the significance of using physical reminders to stay grounded in the moment, including Donny's tattoo and Darren's jersey number change. Listen as they share personal anecdotes, drawing parallels between their experiences and their strategies for managing stress and impulsive behaviors. Gain valuable insights from Darren's perspective as the "new kid" with the New York Giants and Donny's candid journey to overcome mindless eating and endless scrolling.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Comeback Stories is a production of Inflection Network and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
What's going on? Everybody, Welcome back to another episode of
Comeback Stories. Hope by now you know me. My name
is Darren Waller. I play tied in for the New
York Giants, and.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
I'm Donnie Starkins mindfulness and mental health coach and yoga
and meditation teacher.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It's such an honor to have you guys join us
again today. For those of you that have been tapping
in with us on season three, we appreciate you. Keep
coming back. Everybody that's been here since day one of
the podcast, probably almost three years ago, we appreciate you
guys as well. Today it's going to be me and
Donnie shooting one on one and something that is so
near and dear to us and just an idea and
(00:47):
perspective that has really changed our life. And it's so simple,
but it's not always easy. But today we're going to
talk about anchoring in the present. And it's something that
I learned very early on in my rehab journey and
my journey of trying to change my life. And there's
something that Donnie coaches and has been teaching for a
while and his experience in his own life. So Donnie,
why don't you kick this off in give people an
(01:10):
introduction of what anchoring in the present would look like
for them.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, thanks, Darren. I love this topic, and I think
before we get into it or break it down, I
would just ask the listeners as you go about your day,
like how much of your time is spent in your head?
Because if you're actually in your head, you're not fully present,
which means you're not bringing reality, truth, and your art
(01:36):
into the present moment. So you're not creating space to
be fully expressive and the most authentic version of yourself.
So anchoring can really be any positive habits of mindfulness
or gratitude or things that are going to bring you
back to your body. I always like to say that
(01:56):
the body knows where home is, but it's the mind
that often takes us down these roads that makes us
feel so disconnected and so homeless. I think Tony Robbins
has the quote that says, if you're in your head,
you're dead, And I know that might sound harsh, but
in many ways it's true because we're living from a
(02:17):
place of looking into the future, worrying about the past,
and really not landing in the present. And as we know, Darren,
as we've been on this journey separately and together, that
really all the magic happens in the present moment. So
it just becomes like a foundational practice that keeps you
tied to the present moment, and we can An anchor
(02:41):
can be really anything from anything in your physical environment,
from a ring on your finger, a meaningful bracelet, it
could be a candle, it could be Well, your breath
is going to be the anchor that's always going to
be there for you, no matter where you're at or
what you're doing. That's always going to be the one
(03:01):
thing that brings the mind back to the body because
cause the breath becomes like an access point to that
mind body connection and the bridge to the present moment.
So I think we can we can have these anchors.
They're all around us, and the more that we have
around us, the more we can kind of use those
(03:21):
as pattern interrupts to bring us back to the present moment.
There are those little reminders as to really why you're
here and why you're doing this work, and why presence
is so important to us.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yes, that's what it is. It's extremely important, especially if
we want to live the life we want to live. Right,
because we get to the end of the road and
we create a legacy for the life that we want
to live, we're going to look back and realize it
was all individual moments that led up and cumulatively created
that legacy, created that life of whether it was fulfillment
(03:57):
or contentment, or whether it was regret. And you know,
to make it even simpler for the audience, if we
look at everybody knows the concepts of past, present, in future,
and the things that rob us mostly of being in
the present is our past something that we regret, some
a mistake we made, some way that we were harmed
(04:19):
in our past by a parent, by a friend, by
a coach, teacher, anyone. And we hold on to those
things and we lose hope, we lose faith, we lose
a vision for a future that has joy and happiness,
and those are things that can keep us arrested or
in prisoned to our past. And then there's the future
(04:40):
aspect on the other side, which is I want to
arrange every thing so perfectly so I don't have to
experience a single failure, I don't have to step in
a single pothole. I don't have to hurt myself. I
don't have to cry, I don't have to worry as
long as these things go the way that I plan
for them to go. And we spend so much time there,
but all that does is produce anxiety, produce worry my relationships,
(05:07):
which both of those are equally trying to pull us
away from the present moment. And it's not hard to
do that as people like you and I that have
been meditating, that have been putting in practices for years
on end, at least for speaking for me, I can
find myself being pulled out of the present moment so quickly,
and it's like, man, I preach mindfulness. I've seen the
(05:29):
impact that I've had in my life, but still I
can be so quickly pulled out of this moment. How
do I get myself back to it? And you hear
people say things like, you know, be where your feet are,
and it's really like Donne said, what are these things
around that you can listen to? For me in the morning,
I love listening to the birds chirp when I walk
to my car in the driveway. That lets me know like, hey,
I'm right here in my driveway. I'm not trying to
(05:51):
figure out my work day and trying to be great
before I get there. I'm not trying to be a
superhero and fix everything that I've ever done in my past.
I'm just right here in this moment and allow myself
to flow through my day in the most present way
that I possibly can.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
So.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
At the essence of this, we want to keep it
as simple as possible. As we talk more, there are
complexities to it, there are different details, there are different
perspectives on being present at the end of the day.
It's how can I be right here as least distracted,
as possible, as focus as I possibly can, as free
as I possibly can, as loose as I possibly can
(06:29):
in this moment so I can welcome the day, welcome
the challenges, and respond to everything exactly the way I
would want to.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, I was just as you were sharing. I just
wanted to ask you the question, if you go back
into pre sobriety, the mess, you know, the rock bottom,
and maybe those years, those years leading up to your
bottom and ultimately getting sober, what were the things back
then that pulled you out of the present, that had
(06:58):
you stress, worried, afraid, or anxious.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
There were so many things that pulled me out of
the moment. If we start from really early on as
a kid, it was trying to please everyone by now
I've if this is your first time checking in one
of my earliest memories of paying we always ask other
people what theirs are because we know ours and how
they impacted us. Mine was being told that I wasn't
(07:25):
black enough, and that to me turned into a reality
that I could only perform my way into being good enough.
I could only convince people the best I could to like,
I'm okay like. I may not be the you know,
(07:46):
the the image of what black is to you or
whatever that may be, but I'm okay like, and I
got to show it to you, and I got to
prove it to you. And that would always have me
scoping out moments in the future to where I could
what mask I would have to put on, how I
would have to act. I would have to show up
an energy I would have to try to embody that
(08:07):
wasn't even really authentically my own. And this is elementary school.
I showed up to the playground. This is middle school
in Pe, this is you know, in high school football
locker rooms at fourteen fifteen years old, not being able
to not feel like I was able to show up
as who I was because I just felt so deeply
(08:28):
down at early age that I just wasn't good enough
as I am. And you know, with the skills and
the talents I've been blessed with, I was able to
see that my performance in sports is what got had
me in good standing with people. It created these friendships,
not knowing how shallow they were at the time and
(08:50):
the quality of relationships I was seeking, but it felt
like love, It felt like real appreciation. And so I
just continued down that road of performing, and that turned
into what was pulling me out of the moment then
was my performance, whether it was getting a scholarship offer
turning into when I'm going to get playing time in college,
and then when I'm going to be the top receiver
(09:12):
on the team, and then when I'm getting to the NFL,
and then when I'm when I'm going to arrive to
a certain place. If only I can get there, if
only this would happen, then I'll be okay. If only
I achieve this, then I'll be content. Then my life
will be okay. I'll stop chasing I'll stop feeling like
I'm not good enough because I'll have so many things
that I accumulated and achieved that convince you that there's
(09:37):
no way you can't tell me I'm not enough. But
achieving all of those things just made the hole in
the void even deeper. And you know, you get into
my using my active addiction, it's where's the next high,
where's the next feeling? How quickly can I numb what
I'm feeling? How quickly can I escape physically, mentally, emotionally,
(10:00):
spiritually from what I have to face and what I'm
facing right now? And never allowed me to stay in
a certain place long enough to listen to my body,
to listen to my mind, listen to my soul, to
allow myself to heal, to allow myself to just pause
and be like, you know, why am I doing the
things that I'm doing? Why am I continuing to float
(10:22):
down this path knowing that I'm just even more anxious,
knowing that I'm just even more afraid, and I don't
feel like I'm getting any closer towards being enough yet
I'm checking off all these boxes. So it just it
continued to change as time went along. But it all
spawned from just wanting to prove that I was okay,
you know, and not knowing that it came from the
(10:44):
inside first, being present with myself and being able to
sit there. And nobody's really going to know that at twelve, thirteen,
fourteen years old. But when you approach twenty five, twenty six,
twenty seven, really becoming a man and we're still carrying
these childhood wounds around, being present just becomes even more exhausting.
(11:05):
You know, what are some of the examples from your
life that you feel like we're pulling you out of
the moment from very early on to even as as right.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Now, Man, I mean so much, I can relate to
so much that you shared, and it's bringing me all
the way even into my first few years of sobriety.
But if I go back, it was the same thing,
carrying what other people think. It was so rooted in
me to the point where it was I couldn't even
have a conversation or be listening to what somebody was
(11:36):
saying because I was already rehearsing what I was going
to say next. And if I fast forward, and then
I can come back again. If I fast forward, I
can remember early on in twelve step meetings where in
the format of meetings, sometimes you'll have a ticket and
your your ticket might be randomly called and then that's
your call to share, or it might be sitting in
a circle and eventually it's going to be your turn,
(11:59):
And I can just remember those first few years, and
most of these meetings were men's meetings do so it
wasn't like I was like trying to impress the girl
that was in the meeting, but I would sit there
and rehearse what I was going to say, so I
could really bring the fire and drop some nuggets and
sound like I knew what I was talking about. Where
the reality is, alls I really needed to do is
(12:20):
just be honest and maybe show some emotion and be vulnerable.
But I had to even then act like I had
it all together. So I would rehearse what I was
going to say, and then it would be like in
a circle meeting, it would be almost my turn, and
then time would run out and the meeting would end,
and I wouldn't even get to share, nor had I
(12:41):
heard a single word that anybody else had said, because
I was in my head the whole time, never listening
right and so, but it all was rooted and can
still sometimes be. But it's so much better, thank God,
in caring what other people think. If I go back
all the way back into the childhood and even into
the depths of my addiction, it was all those same things,
(13:03):
just being uncomfortable and my own skin needing performance to
get validation on the baseball field through family, through friends.
It was just a lack of self love and an
assurance in myself. And a lot of it, looking back,
was even just the way I was living and not
being authentic and honest and being true and really showing
(13:24):
up as like the authentic version of myself, and it
just begins to spiral and snowball to a point where
you're just so uncomfortable in your own skin that for me,
the easiest way to get out of that was just
to pop pills, do drugs and escape. But even in
the depths of my addiction, I can even think about,
you know, having my pills and then finally being able
(13:47):
to take them, or going to the pharmacy and getting
my refill and getting them, and then it would be
I would take the pills and for an hour I
would be good and everything would go away, and then
the cycle would start and I would start to think
about when I'm going to take them again, because I'm
starting to feel anxiety come on. And it was all
like so worried about the future, as if it's not
(14:10):
going to be okay, It's not going to be okay
until I get this so very rarely. I don't know
if I really ever was actually in the present, nor
did I have the willingness or any tools to actually
come back to a place and notice all of this
madness going on. But you know, I think about it,
it's nobody stops us from being present. It's only ourselves.
(14:34):
And really all of our stress and all of our
anxiety and all this fear it comes from wanting the
moment to be something that it's not so, or wanting
maybe somebody else to be somebody that they're not so.
When I look at the root of it, it's trying
to control things you can't control. And in our program
of recovery, you know, they teach us that control is
(14:57):
just an illusion. Now there are things that we can
control eventually, and that's our perspective and our attitude and
our ability to control our internal response to what's happening
outside of us. But that shit doesn't happen overnight, and
it really takes like the willingness to start to practice
and use little anchors big anchors to come back home
(15:18):
to the body.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Ooo. Man after that reminds me of let us share.
One of my anchors to the present is the Serenity
Prayer for me. Somebody actually gave it to me in
the form of a wristband and it's something that's like
in my pocket that I take with me everywhere that
I go. And for those that may I have a
(15:39):
relationship with God or know the prayer, it's God grant
me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, and the
wisdom to know the difference, and continuing to pray that
and just having a deeper meaning and trying to pray
it slower and not in a hurry and feel every
(16:00):
word of that. It's like, you know, I want to
be at peace within myself and I need direction on
how to find that piece Like, help me find that,
help me to know and not chase my tail around,
help me to not exert all my energy on these
things that I can't determine the outcome. I can't force
(16:23):
them to go my way. I can't. It's not possible
help me, and I need the wisdom to know the difference,
because if I don't know the difference, I'm gonna exhaust
myself on the things that don't matter, and when it
comes time for the things that really do matter, I
may be depleted. My cup may be more empty. So
that's one of the anchors for me. Because you think
about being present, I always think of like that picture
(16:46):
of the of the iceberg, and you know, you see
you see an iceberg above water by like right there.
It's like that's huge, Like if a ship runs into it,
it's going down. But then you see the picture of
how deep it goes beneath the surface. And that's what
being present allows us to do. From an interurn pernal standpoint.
It allows us to not just stay on the surface
(17:08):
and with money and material things and shallow relationships and
feeling like those are the things that are going to
bring us fulfillment. But it allows us to get down
to the root of my emotions, the root of the
pain that I'm feeling, the purpose behind the things that
I'm doing, and really get down into those things. That's
what being present really means. It's I'm aware of all
(17:30):
that is me. I'm aware that's all that's inside of me,
all that is eating at me, all that's nourishing me,
and sitting there and being aware of it and knowing
that I need to be present. I need to be
aware of my attitude. I need to be aware of
my perspective. I need to be aware of the way
that I'm treating people, because odds are it's a reflection
(17:52):
of the way that I'm treating myself. So just trying
to paint this picture for you guys of what it
looks like for us, how we see it through our eyes.
Because everybody's different, everybody's coming to this topic with different experiences,
different pains, different traumas. We want to try to help you,
guys get this as in depth as possible because we
(18:14):
know it's something that can change your life if you
consistently build the habit to allow yourself to keep coming
back to it.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Yeah, and I'm so glad you brought up the serenity
prayer because that and regardless of what your beliefs around
God or spirituality are, this is something if you break
down the serenity prayer. So you just kept saying aware,
and that's the wisdom to know the difference. So God,
grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
That's letting go of what you can't control, courage to
(18:46):
change the things I can. You're asking for strength and
the courage to actually control the controllables. And then the
wisdom to know the difference is awareness. The wisdom to
know the difference is not going to come by just
sitting on your ass and hoping it's going to show up.
It actually takes practice. You have to meet the universe
(19:08):
or meet God half way in order to get it.
You know, the spiritual tools, they're sitting there at our feet,
but it's up to us to get off of our
asses and actually use the tools, because the tools only
work if we use them. So when I hear that
the wisdom to know the difference, that's kind of that's
a big anchor for me because it inspires me to know, Like,
(19:30):
I just want to be aware for so many years,
as you're describing your your past and as I see
my past in your past, and just how asleep and
unaware we are now the tough part about being awake
or a little bit more awake than we were before
is it's not always easy. It takes work, and we
(19:52):
know better now and for me today, it's more about
the con the impact of not doing these practices. So
if you stick with these practices, and we're talking maybe
a little bit in depth, but I know Darren and
I also like to just keep it simple and have
practical tools that can actually work for us to get
(20:14):
us back into the present. And there's simple, simple practices,
you know. Another one, I mean I have so an
anchor could be anything on your physical environment also, and
I mean Darren's got a lot more tattoos than I do,
but I have some too, And a tattoo, I mean,
I have my sobriety birth date on my forearm, and
that certainly is a huge anchor. So that if I
(20:35):
feel like my mind is going somewhere, or maybe it's
a day where I'm just like being lazy or being selfish,
not really wanting to take action, I can look down.
I have the word freedom on my bracelet here. That
word is like you know, it brings me back to
the depths of my addiction. Lying on my couch so
bound by my addiction, so I want to remember that.
(20:58):
I don't regret it, I don't like get stay stuck
in it, nor do I beat myself up over that
anymay more. It's my reminder like I want to be free.
So you can create these little accountability partners or these
anchors all around you, and the truth is, the more
of them that you have, you know, whether they're in
your site. That could be something on your desk, it
(21:20):
could be a screen saver of your family, it could
be a word, it could be anything. But these are
the things that are going to serve as pattern interrupts
so that when we are spiraling, which it's going to
happen because we just live in a world of addiction
and affliction to distraction, so we're going to constantly being pulled.
So we have to have we have to have the antidote.
(21:42):
We have to have practices, and we have to be
the we have to be willing to lean into those practices.
And yeah, they might be hard, but it's not as
hard as you know, trying to do it the same
old way and actually expecting things to change.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Man insanity, that could be a whole another episode in itself,
but I'm glad that you brought up the point about
the spiraling is going to happen. The being knocked off
your center or being distracted is going to happen because
we're not expecting anybody on this call to be perfect,
(22:17):
anybody on this episode, anybody that's listening, anybody anywhere, because
we aren't. Like there's times where you know, I get
a phone call and it's not something that I want
to hear, or something in my day with my schedule
or something that I'm doing. I may mess up, and
these things may serve as distractions and things that may
(22:38):
knock me off of the present moment and the momentum
that I built during that day. And it's more so
about bringing yourself back to it. And that's where I
feel like the misconception lies with mindfulness with meditation. It's
people think, oh, my mind has to just be completely still,
there has to be no thoughts, it just has to
be complete bliss, and anything that comes and knocks me off,
(23:00):
it's like, oh, my meditation, my practice is ruined, when
really it's a out allowing those things to come, embracing
those things when they happen, and bringing ourselves back to
the center, bringing ourselves back to the moment and think
of it. It's been it was put to me in
the early days that it's to think of it as
a bicep curl for your mind. Right anything, you go
(23:21):
into the weight room and do you got arm day,
you got back day, you got chess day. You're going
to do certain things and continue to build repetitions in
those things, and over time you grow stronger. Over time,
your muscles are more stable. Over time, you know, somebody
try to bump into you, they're not You're not moving
no more because you continuously put the repetitions in and
(23:43):
continue to show up, no matter if it was discouraging,
no matter if it was frustrating, you continue to show
up in practice. And that's what we're trying to present
to you, guys, being present as a practice. There's nothing
that's ever going to be completely perfect about it, but
you practice to continue and continue for a lifetime, continue
for as long as you're here on this earth, to
(24:04):
be as present to the moment because you're relying on
you first and foremost. A significant other in your life
is going to rely on you the way that you
live your life and write your comeback story communities around you.
People around you are going to be leaning on you,
drawing inspiration from you, future generations of your family, grandkids.
(24:26):
You know, we have to think in those ramifications, because
how we show up in this moment right here, odds
are is going to depict how we show up in
the next moment, in the next moment after that, in
the next moment after that. So it's very important stuff
not to put pressure on you, but more so to
develop a sense of urgency around just showing up for
the practice and putting in your best effort with the
(24:46):
best attitude you can.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Okay, so you've picked up some tools over the years.
Your willingness is off the charts, Your consistency and your
practices or are more dialed in than almost anybody I've
ever worked with. Now you are in New York City
and there's a lot of noise. There's hustle and bustle,
(25:08):
media capital of the world, energy sirens going off all
the time. What have you? What were some maybe early challenges,
maybe some culture shock of making that move. What were
some early challenges and what are you doing to really
dial that in and ground yourself in that chaos that's
(25:29):
all around you?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Some of the initial shocks, I would say, are just
being back living alone. I'm newly married at this point
as we record, just over four months into my marriage,
but when I moved to Jersey for the first time,
I was a little over one month married. But the
(25:51):
bond that we had and still have allowed me to
forget about some of the things that I faced when
I was living alone prior to being married, and some
of the anxiety, the allowing myself to be too drawn
(26:13):
out of the present moment, pressure to perform, being on
a new team and trying to put that in its
rightful place in my mind, you know, wanting to be excellent,
but it's more so about being than doing and performing.
You know. There was you know, as me as an
(26:34):
addictive person, drugs and alcohol were like the main thing,
but there were behaviors underneath that as well that I
leaned into, like like masturbation that became that was something
that ran parallel with that to take the edge off,
to get that high end. Because that addictive thinking is
(26:55):
still in me, and urges like that pop up when
I'm in an environment by myself. So it's making sure
that I'm letting people in to my struggle and being like, hey,
like this hasn't been something that's been tearing my life apart,
but it's knocking on the door a little bit here,
like and you know, letting my letting my wife into that,
(27:16):
letting my friends into that, and knowing that I'm not
ashamed because I'm tempted to go back into these new
behaviors when I'm facing you know, adversity early on in
my marriage, moving into a new city across the country,
and not to mention all the other different projects and
little things that I'm involved in. It's allowing the moment
(27:40):
to be hard, allowing the present to be a challenge,
but knowing and still having joy amidst those challenges being present.
So I would say it's the performance aspect the marriage.
Being aware of addictive patterns and behaviors that I turned
to when living by myself previously pre addiction and post using.
(28:06):
So those are some of the things that stand out.
And the noise will only continue to grow. I mean
talk about the media capital and all the attention that's there,
and if you perform the way you want to perform,
noise is only going to increase. People reaching out to
you is only going to increase, you know, and these things,
these are things that I'm going to have to navigate,
(28:28):
and it's going to continue to put my practice of
staying in the present moment to the test, because it's
no longer about arriving somewhere and achieving something. It's more
so about abiding and living and being in the present moment,
which brings the true joy and fulfillment of going along
(28:49):
this journey, and going along the journey with the people
that I'm doing it with. So it's it's it's a
journey man like for people that's listening, I'm right, I'm
right there with you. I'm exploring new challenges, I'm I'm
dealing with these things as they come and trying to
do that from my center, which isn't always easy. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
I always say we all have a center. It sits
really at the middle of the heart space. But we
often all can get pulled off off our center through
the world's demand for the attention of our mind. And
so if we don't have these practices that bring us back,
it doesn't mean we come back and two seconds later
(29:26):
we leave again. If we don't have those practices, we
are going to get swept up in this world and
everything with media, social media, and we really just lose
ourselves in that process. There's no foundation, there's no place
to come home too, and it can really lead to
a lot of struggles in mental health and addiction and
(29:48):
just overall unhappiness in the way that our lives are unfolding.
So it is there's nothing more important. And this is
fascinating to me someone that teaches meditation and meditates daily,
that sometimes even in my meditation, I will notice thoughts
that are telling me I need to be doing something else,
as if there was something more important than trying to
(30:10):
quiet down that noise, Like what could possibly be more
important than calling myself and laying the foundation for my
day and training my mind to be my best friend
and not my worst enemy. But what I found that
that little voice, that self sabotage voice that's saying, oh,
you need to be doing this, or you're doing it wrong,
or you know, it will creep in any opportunity it gets.
(30:34):
So if we go back to the serenity prayer with
like the wisdom to know the difference, when we are
aware of those thoughts, we are now not those thoughts
thoughts are just thoughts, but thoughts become things when we
believe them, attached to them, or maybe judge ourselves for
having some crazy ass thoughts. But when we can actually
practice and just be the observer and be aware of them,
(30:57):
it really does loosen the grip and then we get
to understand ourselves more and those patterns of thinking that
pull us out of presence. So yeah, it just it
always is going to come down to the practices. Speaking
of practice, as you were sharing earlier, I was just
curious when you showed up for those first one, two,
first or second day of practice, as you know, the
(31:20):
new kid on the team, did you notice like any
of the old, like childhood shit coming up at all?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Oh, definitely, definitely. I felt like the new kid in school,
you know, like that a little bit of the anxiety
of the sixth grader. I guess there's junior highs and
all this stuff now, but in Georgia there was elementary
school was k to five, and middle school was six
to eight. High school was nine to twelve. So it's
(31:47):
like that sixth grade and that freshman showing up into
that new school and you're just like, I don't know
anyone here. I you know, where do I begin and
not trying to begin by pleasing people, not trying to
begin by trying to fit in and be cool. But
by this time I've had practice and conviction in knowing
(32:11):
that who I am is going to, you know, always
create room for myself and always create just a level
of respect amongst my peers and the men that I'm around,
because I'm just being who I am. I'm not conforming
to what other guys are doing to try to be cool.
I'm not trying to get into anything like even like
(32:38):
like the like the like fashion aspects and these material aspects,
things that are like cool and that are really dope,
but if looked at the wrong way, they can be
used as a tool to please or to gain approval.
And so it's just really showing up in you know,
I wear the same pair of sneakers every day, same
pair of flip flops, wearing a T shirt in the shorts. Man,
(33:01):
I'm just showing up, and I'm trying to give the
best that I can give and lead with an example
when I come in. I'm not going to come in
and say a whole lot because that's just not who
I am. I'm one of the older guys on the team,
and I feel like over time, a more vocal leadership
role than I've ever had will come about. But I
feel like a great way to begin is just being
(33:22):
present to each and every day, showing up to every
meeting with a desire to learn, a desire to be coached,
a desire to be a part of the team, not
necessarily come in and demand what I can get. So
it's that's where those core values and just those things
that we talk about come into play. Because when you're
(33:43):
in the midst of uncertainty and things are changing around you,
you're in new environments. I have faith that these same habits,
these same practices are going to allow me to create
room to be successful and to enjoy my experience anywhere
that I go. And you know, I say all that
to say that's not that's not to say that I'm
(34:04):
going to experience those same emotions that I would as
a kid, because my inner child's in me, little Darren's
in there, like you know, I don't know about this,
Like I'm a little I'm still got a little social
anxiety in there. I'm still you know, got to feel
people out, i still got to feel situations out. You know,
I don't. I don't want to fail. I don't want
to mess this up. I want to do the best
(34:25):
that I can. And it's hearing that voice and knowing like, Okay,
I know that you're there, but I can't allow that
to dictate how I go about this new environment. It's
really just who am I being able to see with
myself and ask myself that consistently and then just go
be who I am and keep it as as simple
(34:48):
as simple as that. Man, So what are what are
what are things looking like for you today when it
comes to the present moment, because it's an interesting dichotomy
with you being a teacher but also as we talk
about remaining a student, what there are some ways today
that you find yourself trying to find that balance between
(35:10):
those two and to just continue your journey with the president.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Yeah, I always remind myself and also remind my clients
or just even talking on the podcast or talking on
social media, that I am still very often still tripping
over the same things that I'm teaching all the time.
And often the things I'm teaching are also the things
that I need to learn. They're not things that I've
figured out and I'm just dropping nuggets of wisdom as
(35:36):
if I'm enlightened and have it all figured out. So
often it's usually something that I've struggled with for a
long time and then found a way or got some
wise counsel and implemented it and started to practice it
and found another solution, or it's just still stuff in
this moment that I might still be working through. And
so I think, you know, teaching it back for me
(35:57):
is such a gift because I feel like the story
I tell myself is I'm a slow learner even in school,
like having to auty extra to memorize things, and so
the gift of being able to teach it back has
allowed me to retain so many of these things. Now
that doesn't mean that I'm still practicing them, you know.
One of the key points I wanted to touch on
(36:18):
when we talk about anchoring in the present moment is
the practice of slowing down. And I think about still
to this day, the way that I eat food, and
I do a talk and I talk about mindful eating
and how you know, our brain it takes twenty minutes
for the sensory pleasures of our brain to even feel
the satisfaction of being full and we're supposed to technically
(36:40):
chew like twenty bytes per two and I'm like, wow,
like I'm teaching this, and then I can see the
way that I eat, and it shows up most often
when I'm eating with somebody else, you know, and my
meal's gone and they're like four or four bites in.
So slowing down has been a practice where when I
(37:00):
get rushed, when I feel like there's not time, if
I haven't prepared for something, that feeling of being rushed
or out of my body like that's where I go
off the rails. And it doesn't maybe show up externally
like I'm yelling or anything, but man, internally, it's just
it's not a fun place to be. So the practice
(37:21):
of slowing down is so essential, and I'm really trying
to work on the eating part of it, because you know,
eating and breathing are such a vital part of the
whole digestive process, you know, the way we chew, the
way we breathe, and to eat in like a stress
state or eating on the go, it's like one of
the most counterproductive ways to fuel and feed our bodies.
(37:43):
So that's been like a huge one for me that
I've been in the practice, and sometimes I'm teaching it
back and I'm like, dude, you need to you need
to remind yourself of the shit you're you're telling your people.
But that's just that's just where I'm at. I can
relate a lot also to because I'm in a long
distance relationship and those gaps of when we're not together,
(38:05):
like I feel like I'm I can be very present
and less on my phone and engage, but it's in
those pockets where there's more time or maybe I am
feeling lonely that I will do something to numb it out,
which the easiest way is just to grab the phone
and you know, numb out and distract myself that way.
(38:26):
So oftentimes when and I would say the phone is
my greatest addiction to this day, I'm so thankful that
it's not drugs or alcohol or some of the other
ones that you know bring us to our knees a
lot quicker. But the phone is the one where I
can notice, and if I notice myself going to it
too often, I will just ask myself, like, what am
(38:46):
I unwilling to feel right now? And if it's a
time where maybe I'm not with my partner, it's usually
just feel alone or on board or what am I chasing?
And why? That's the other kind of These are anchors.
These are questions that you can ask that if you
get honest, if you answer them honestly, they're going to
to bring you back to the truth and bring you
back to the present moment. So yeah, I would say
(39:10):
the practice of slowing down is, and specifically around eating,
I'm giving myself enough time to get to places, to
get to the airport, to get to a class where
I'm not rushing and going last minute because I just
know the impact and I do not. I am so
uncomfortable in my own skin when I get in that place.
So it's kind of proactively giving myself enough time to
(39:33):
get to these places so that there is no rush,
because yeah, rushing for me is when I become one
of the worst versions of myself.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Wow, it's I'm so glad you brought that up because
it reminds me of when we do with ig lives,
and we always do the book recommendations, and every time
I recommend this book it's called The Ruthless Elimination of
Hurry by John Mark Komer. If I highly suggest you
read that book, because in that book he talks about
(40:04):
in this digital age, in this like smartphone, high speed internet,
like we get information so fast and it teaches us
to want things so quickly to not have to suffer
for it. But that whole instant gratification thing. And he
has quotes in the areas like love and hurry are incompatible.
(40:26):
So when it's like it speaks to what you're saying
about not being the best version of yourself when you're
in a rush, when you're in a hurry, and a
lot of us are rushed and hurry without even knowing it.
We're so busy, we're trying to get that next promotion,
we're trying to get to the bag, we're trying to
do all these things, but we're not allowing ourselves to
slow down and take in the goodness of the moment,
(40:46):
to reflect, to affirm ourselves, to check in on how
we're doing. And it's so important that we do that,
and how counter cultural slowing down is. People don't want
to be outside of what everybody in culture are doing.
But for us to really nurture our spirits and to
(41:07):
nourish that spiritual life and to just be in tune
with ourselves and be the best version of ourselves. We
got slow down, and I feel like that plays into
the idea of solitude as well, like creating moments of silence,
time for meditation, time for reflection, time for prayer, time
for journaling, whatever it is for you to be still
(41:31):
and have that quiet moment with yourself. We've got to
find a way to do that that's personal to you,
that works for you, that doesn't feel robotic to you,
because that's the way we can fill our cups back up.
And a lot of our lives are spent pouring into
other people, pouring into situations, pouring into the vision of
(41:52):
our job, pouring into friendships, relationships. But what are we
doing to fill our cut back up so that there
is something to pour, so that I do have something
to offer. You know, the big book that we read
out of in our Fellowship of Recovery says you can't
transmit something that you haven't got, and in order for
(42:15):
us to be that transmitter, we have to create that
time of solitude of cutting all the noise out, cutting
Netflix off, turning the Xbox off, logging out of Twitter
and Instagram, and just being in that silence, being in
that void and dealing with the uncomfortability of it. It's
not easy. It's not going to be a walk in
(42:36):
the park and just bliss all the time. But we
have to embrace the fact that the discomfort always leads
to something better for us. It stretches us, it expands us,
it pushes us to our limits, only to find out
that our limits are way farther than we ever even imagined.
And it starts with something that's so simple as sitting
in the quiet, because those things are going to come up.
(42:57):
Those thoughts are gonna come up, those fears are going
to come up, those insecurities are going to come up,
and they need to come up. It's not going to
feel good when they come up, but they need to
come up. Otherwise we're just going to continue to brush
them under the rug. And we can't allow ourselves to
do that any longer. And that's what I speak about
with that sense of urgency. So we just want you
(43:19):
guys to see it through that lens of and see why.
You know, Donnie and Darren talking about meditation again, but
it's like it's just the healing and just the calm
and the joy and the inner contentment that overcomes you
and intertwines in you as you take that time. And
(43:42):
we just can't stress the importance of that enough.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
And to get out of your thoughts, you have to
first let them come up. The only way to get
through it is to go through it. So it comes
back to bringing those thoughts to the light. You know,
you can't say I'm just going to sit here and
not think, because if you try not to think, you're
just going to think more. Because what we resist persists.
So to get out out of your thoughts, you actually
(44:05):
have to take time to notice the thoughts that you
want to get out of and slow down. And that's
why solitude and meditation And if you're struggling with a
meditation practice, you're not alone. I struggled for years. There's
so many different techniques out there. I recommend guided meditations.
David g who's been on our guests. He's a two
time we went back to back with him, amazing meditation teacher,
(44:28):
amazing guided meditation teacher and storyteller who made meditation accessible
for me. So the resources are out there. You can
go on Google and find I mean, I can sit
here and give you a bunch of breath techniques and
I'm happy to do that. But if you take the
action and just pop it into Google, there's going to
be different breath techniques, patterns of breath that you can use,
(44:50):
different types of meditation. You just have to be willing
to try things on to see what works for you,
because what works for me might not exactly work for you,
and so the mind is going to look for every
reason not to do it, because the mind just likes
to have me jobs, and it likes to jump from
thought to thought. They call it the monkey mind, where
it jumps from branch to branch. But all of a
sudden you slow it down, and then the mind is
(45:13):
out of jobs, right, and then it gets uncomfortable. But
it's in that discomfort that really the magic is found.
And so if we can clear the clutter, we make space.
The only way to bring something new in is to
let go of the old. And so much of our
reality comes from our thinking. I mean, it comes from
our belief system, which is which shows up in our thinking.
(45:36):
But to change the way you're living, you have to
change the way you're thinking. And to change the way
you're thinking, you have to actually be willing to do
something to notice what you're thinking about. Because when you
get out of your head, you start to tap into
the flow state the spiritual world. You get back to
the heart and you start to see through the lens
of the heart and not like the madness that's going
(45:59):
on in the mind. And when we can see from
the heart, we can see with clarity, and it's like
just coming back home to the heart and to what
matters most, so that we can show up authentic and
we're not like I used to do, just rehearsing everything
I was going to say before I said it, which
if you're having a conversation with somebody, you cannot listen
if you're thinking about what you're going to say. So
(46:21):
what gets in the way of intentional listening, which you know,
if you want to connect more in any relationship, you know,
practice the art of listening. The only things that get
in the way of listening are judgments and distractions and defenses.
So you got judgments distractions if you're thinking about something else.
And if you're in any kind of relationship and you
(46:44):
start to defend after somebody says something, you're not listening
to what they're saying because you're already defending your stance,
so people want to be they people are always say
people are not going to remember what you said, They're
going to remember how you made them feel. And everybody
loves to be heard. Everybody loves to be heard, and
in that they feel a greater sense of connection. But
(47:06):
in order for them to be heard, we actually have
to listen, which comes back to getting out of our heads.
So there's a lot of practices. There's a lot of
different meditations. I mean, anybody listening and I'll be happy
you could reach out to me on Instagram and I'll
give you recommendations or techniques. But I think it's also
important for you to take the action to actually do
a little research. You won't get past page one in
(47:27):
the Google search with just amazing information and resources that
will help you really just get back to present and
find these anchors that we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
It's really a beautiful thing to see what your life
can develop into just from being present to the moment.
And one of the things I feel like that can
really spawn from it, and which is another foundational thing
that people have heard of talk about a lot, but
it's just the idea of gratitude. Right. If there's no
(47:58):
way if I'm not present, I'm not going to be grateful.
I'm going to be up in the way something was
in the past, whether it was good or bad, or
I'm gonna be caughting, kind of what I was talking
about earlier, of when I get to this moment in
the future, then things will be okay. When I get
this thing, then I'll be all right. But gratitude is
(48:20):
taking both of those extremes into account and choosing the
perspective of I don't lack anything. I have everything that
I need. I have everything that I could ever have
wanted in this present moment. But that's not how we're
taught to live, that's not how we're wired. That's not
how America and the world works. It's about getting somewhere.
(48:46):
It's about arriving there. And it's just that counter cultural
aspect of living that we have to embrace and stand
firm in because otherwise our peace and just our overall
gratitude in the moment is going to be what's lost
(49:09):
on this chase for what we're being told is success
or what we're being told is what's going to fulfill us.
But gratitude is so important because it defies that logic
and it says what I have now here is good
enough for me. And I feel like that goes such
(49:29):
a long way because it allows you to have such
a full and deep appreciation for everything that comes into
your life. If you don't appreciate what you have when
you have little, you're not just going to magically start
to fully appreciate what you have when you have a lot,
because that's not your character, that's not your habit, that's
not your practice. And we just want to help you, guys,
(49:51):
to be able to develop practices as we are currently
in the moment of doing as well that will allow
your life, your story, your comeback story that you're continuing
to write, as you're putting into paper, and as you're
experiencing these moments and the beauty that life has to offer,
you're going to be there, fully present to take all
(50:13):
of that in and be overwhelmed by the joy, be
just so happy and content and just full of praise
that you won't have words, you know, like I'm sitting
here trying to describe it right now. In some of
(50:34):
the moments that I've been able to experience in my
life that have stemmed from me going to rehab, and
one of the first things they taught us about was mindfulness,
being present to the moment in meditation, and I'm like,
what are you guys talking about? But sticking with it,
continuing to practice, continuing to wake up and just keep chopping,
keep putting reps in. It's turned into an amazing life
(50:56):
to where I just wake up and scratch my head
and I'm like, how did I get here? Like even
fighting this to this day, the internal unworthiness that I
had most of my life, it's like, it's just irritating
the crap out of that unworthiness and it's and it's beautiful,
(51:19):
just like the how it's it's all coming out and
coming together. And man, it's just a powerful thing. Dog,
It's a powerful thing. And we can't get there without
being in the moment. If there's any way we could
wrap this up, there's no way that I appreciate my
(51:40):
life as it is today, with all the good things
out of there, if I'm not present to each and
every moment of that journey along the way. And hope
you can take that with you.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
So beautifully said man, and just hearing you, I mean,
I'm so grateful for you and you've created this life
that you have today, and it came with a lot
of hard work and willingness that just didn't appear, especially
considering the mess that it used to look like. But yeah,
you can't be gratitude. You can't be grateful and stressed
(52:10):
at the same time. Gratitude is always going to bring
us back into the present moment. It's a powerful practice.
It's one of the many anchors that we touched on.
Slowing down is so important. You have your breath. Your
breath will always be there. It's been there since day one,
when you've took your first breath and you arrived, and
it's going to be the last thing you do when
you leave this earth and your legacy begins, You'll take
(52:31):
that last breath, So you have that in your back
pocket at all times. And really just being mindful with
our devices and technology, making sure we're taking time to relax.
And I would say to begin, just start with small targets.
If you want to start a meditation practice, take ten
deep breaths for the next week and let that be
your meditation practice, and then just build on it. These
(52:54):
small practices will compound over time and start to create
a system and a foundation that's going to always bring
you back. All the magic lies in the present moment.
And you know, Darren and I when we talk about
we could talk about this all day long, and I
feel like we could go on hours for this with this,
because this is when I'm the most present, is just listening,
(53:15):
especially this solo or duo episode where we don't have
a guest and we can really talk about these things
and then just kind of like reflect on the journey
that it's that it's taken to get to this point.
It's so beautiful. And you know, if you're listening and
this has really moved you or inspired you, or maybe
you have somebody in your life that you know could
(53:36):
benefit off this. Darren and I's mission has always been
to reach as many people as possible and share this message.
So maybe you put a screenshot, put it on Instagram,
send this to somebody. The reviews on Spotify and iTunes
or Apple Music really help the reviews or help the
help us reach more people if we have reviews in
(53:57):
five stars. So we're not trying to get as many
as possible for our egos. We're just wanting to reach
as many people as possible.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
And that's the magic of it. Man, thank you guys
for joining us for another episode of come Back Stories.
Like Donnie said, subscribe, like review, wherever you're at, wherever
you're getting your podcast, wherever you download, keep coming back.
We're going to keep coming back. You can find us
on the Inflection Network on YouTube as well, and we're
(54:25):
just going to continue on this journey with you guys,
trying to stay in the moment, trying to figure out
this thing called life and enjoy it while we got it.
So we appreciate you guys joining us and we'll catch
you next week.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
Comeback Stories is a production of Inflection Network and iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Comeback Stories is a production of Inflection Network and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
What's going on? Everybody, Welcome back to another episode of
Comeback Stories. Hope by now you know me. My name
is Darren Waller. I play tied in for the New
York Giants, and.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
I'm Donnie Starkins mindfulness and mental health coach and yoga
and meditation teacher.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It's such an honor to have you guys join us
again today. For those of you that have been tapping
in with us on season three, we appreciate you. Keep
coming back. Everybody that's been here since day one of
the podcast, probably almost three years ago, we appreciate you
guys as well. Today it's going to be me and
Donnie shooting one on one and something that is so
near and dear to us and just an idea and
(00:47):
perspective that has really changed our life. And it's so simple,
but it's not always easy. But today we're going to
talk about anchoring in the present. And it's something that
I learned very early on in my rehab journey and
my journey of trying to change my life. And there's
something that Donnie coaches and has been teaching for a
while and his experience in his own life. So Donnie,
why don't you kick this off in give people an
(01:10):
introduction of what anchoring in the present would look like
for them.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, thanks, Darren. I love this topic, and I think
before we get into it or break it down, I
would just ask the listeners as you go about your day,
like how much of your time is spent in your head?
Because if you're actually in your head, you're not fully present,
which means you're not bringing reality, truth, and your art
(01:36):
into the present moment. So you're not creating space to
be fully expressive and the most authentic version of yourself.
So anchoring can really be any positive habits of mindfulness
or gratitude or things that are going to bring you
back to your body. I always like to say that
(01:56):
the body knows where home is, but it's the mind
that often takes us down these roads that makes us
feel so disconnected and so homeless. I think Tony Robbins
has the quote that says, if you're in your head,
you're dead, And I know that might sound harsh, but
in many ways it's true because we're living from a
(02:17):
place of looking into the future, worrying about the past,
and really not landing in the present. And as we know, Darren,
as we've been on this journey separately and together, that
really all the magic happens in the present moment. So
it just becomes like a foundational practice that keeps you
tied to the present moment, and we can An anchor
(02:41):
can be really anything from anything in your physical environment,
from a ring on your finger, a meaningful bracelet, it
could be a candle, it could be Well, your breath
is going to be the anchor that's always going to
be there for you, no matter where you're at or
what you're doing. That's always going to be the one
(03:01):
thing that brings the mind back to the body because
cause the breath becomes like an access point to that
mind body connection and the bridge to the present moment.
So I think we can we can have these anchors.
They're all around us, and the more that we have
around us, the more we can kind of use those
(03:21):
as pattern interrupts to bring us back to the present moment.
There are those little reminders as to really why you're
here and why you're doing this work, and why presence
is so important to us.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yes, that's what it is. It's extremely important, especially if
we want to live the life we want to live. Right,
because we get to the end of the road and
we create a legacy for the life that we want
to live, we're going to look back and realize it
was all individual moments that led up and cumulatively created
that legacy, created that life of whether it was fulfillment
(03:57):
or contentment, or whether it was regret. And you know,
to make it even simpler for the audience, if we
look at everybody knows the concepts of past, present, in future,
and the things that rob us mostly of being in
the present is our past something that we regret, some
a mistake we made, some way that we were harmed
(04:19):
in our past by a parent, by a friend, by
a coach, teacher, anyone. And we hold on to those
things and we lose hope, we lose faith, we lose
a vision for a future that has joy and happiness,
and those are things that can keep us arrested or
in prisoned to our past. And then there's the future
(04:40):
aspect on the other side, which is I want to
arrange every thing so perfectly so I don't have to
experience a single failure, I don't have to step in
a single pothole. I don't have to hurt myself. I
don't have to cry, I don't have to worry as
long as these things go the way that I plan
for them to go. And we spend so much time there,
but all that does is produce anxiety, produce worry my relationships,
(05:07):
which both of those are equally trying to pull us
away from the present moment. And it's not hard to
do that as people like you and I that have
been meditating, that have been putting in practices for years
on end, at least for speaking for me, I can
find myself being pulled out of the present moment so quickly,
and it's like, man, I preach mindfulness. I've seen the
(05:29):
impact that I've had in my life, but still I
can be so quickly pulled out of this moment. How
do I get myself back to it? And you hear
people say things like, you know, be where your feet are,
and it's really like Donne said, what are these things
around that you can listen to? For me in the morning,
I love listening to the birds chirp when I walk
to my car in the driveway. That lets me know like, hey,
I'm right here in my driveway. I'm not trying to
(05:51):
figure out my work day and trying to be great
before I get there. I'm not trying to be a
superhero and fix everything that I've ever done in my past.
I'm just right here in this moment and allow myself
to flow through my day in the most present way
that I possibly can.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
So.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
At the essence of this, we want to keep it
as simple as possible. As we talk more, there are
complexities to it, there are different details, there are different
perspectives on being present at the end of the day.
It's how can I be right here as least distracted,
as possible, as focus as I possibly can, as free
as I possibly can, as loose as I possibly can
(06:29):
in this moment so I can welcome the day, welcome
the challenges, and respond to everything exactly the way I
would want to.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, I was just as you were sharing. I just
wanted to ask you the question, if you go back
into pre sobriety, the mess, you know, the rock bottom,
and maybe those years, those years leading up to your
bottom and ultimately getting sober, what were the things back
then that pulled you out of the present, that had
(06:58):
you stress, worried, afraid, or anxious.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
There were so many things that pulled me out of
the moment. If we start from really early on as
a kid, it was trying to please everyone by now
I've if this is your first time checking in one
of my earliest memories of paying we always ask other
people what theirs are because we know ours and how
they impacted us. Mine was being told that I wasn't
(07:25):
black enough, and that to me turned into a reality
that I could only perform my way into being good enough.
I could only convince people the best I could to like,
I'm okay like. I may not be the you know,
(07:46):
the the image of what black is to you or
whatever that may be, but I'm okay like, and I
got to show it to you, and I got to
prove it to you. And that would always have me
scoping out moments in the future to where I could
what mask I would have to put on, how I
would have to act. I would have to show up
an energy I would have to try to embody that
(08:07):
wasn't even really authentically my own. And this is elementary school.
I showed up to the playground. This is middle school
in Pe, this is you know, in high school football
locker rooms at fourteen fifteen years old, not being able
to not feel like I was able to show up
as who I was because I just felt so deeply
(08:28):
down at early age that I just wasn't good enough
as I am. And you know, with the skills and
the talents I've been blessed with, I was able to
see that my performance in sports is what got had
me in good standing with people. It created these friendships,
not knowing how shallow they were at the time and
(08:50):
the quality of relationships I was seeking, but it felt
like love, It felt like real appreciation. And so I
just continued down that road of performing, and that turned
into what was pulling me out of the moment then
was my performance, whether it was getting a scholarship offer
turning into when I'm going to get playing time in college,
and then when I'm going to be the top receiver
(09:12):
on the team, and then when I'm getting to the NFL,
and then when I'm when I'm going to arrive to
a certain place. If only I can get there, if
only this would happen, then I'll be okay. If only
I achieve this, then I'll be content. Then my life
will be okay. I'll stop chasing I'll stop feeling like
I'm not good enough because I'll have so many things
that I accumulated and achieved that convince you that there's
(09:37):
no way you can't tell me I'm not enough. But
achieving all of those things just made the hole in
the void even deeper. And you know, you get into
my using my active addiction, it's where's the next high,
where's the next feeling? How quickly can I numb what
I'm feeling? How quickly can I escape physically, mentally, emotionally,
(10:00):
spiritually from what I have to face and what I'm
facing right now? And never allowed me to stay in
a certain place long enough to listen to my body,
to listen to my mind, listen to my soul, to
allow myself to heal, to allow myself to just pause
and be like, you know, why am I doing the
things that I'm doing? Why am I continuing to float
(10:22):
down this path knowing that I'm just even more anxious,
knowing that I'm just even more afraid, and I don't
feel like I'm getting any closer towards being enough yet
I'm checking off all these boxes. So it just it
continued to change as time went along. But it all
spawned from just wanting to prove that I was okay,
you know, and not knowing that it came from the
(10:44):
inside first, being present with myself and being able to
sit there. And nobody's really going to know that at twelve, thirteen,
fourteen years old. But when you approach twenty five, twenty six,
twenty seven, really becoming a man and we're still carrying
these childhood wounds around, being present just becomes even more exhausting.
(11:05):
You know, what are some of the examples from your
life that you feel like we're pulling you out of
the moment from very early on to even as as right.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Now, Man, I mean so much, I can relate to
so much that you shared, and it's bringing me all
the way even into my first few years of sobriety.
But if I go back, it was the same thing,
carrying what other people think. It was so rooted in
me to the point where it was I couldn't even
have a conversation or be listening to what somebody was
(11:36):
saying because I was already rehearsing what I was going
to say next. And if I fast forward, and then
I can come back again. If I fast forward, I
can remember early on in twelve step meetings where in
the format of meetings, sometimes you'll have a ticket and
your your ticket might be randomly called and then that's
your call to share, or it might be sitting in
a circle and eventually it's going to be your turn,
(11:59):
And I can just remember those first few years, and
most of these meetings were men's meetings do so it
wasn't like I was like trying to impress the girl
that was in the meeting, but I would sit there
and rehearse what I was going to say, so I
could really bring the fire and drop some nuggets and
sound like I knew what I was talking about. Where
the reality is, alls I really needed to do is
(12:20):
just be honest and maybe show some emotion and be vulnerable.
But I had to even then act like I had
it all together. So I would rehearse what I was
going to say, and then it would be like in
a circle meeting, it would be almost my turn, and
then time would run out and the meeting would end,
and I wouldn't even get to share, nor had I
(12:41):
heard a single word that anybody else had said, because
I was in my head the whole time, never listening
right and so, but it all was rooted and can
still sometimes be. But it's so much better, thank God,
in caring what other people think. If I go back
all the way back into the childhood and even into
the depths of my addiction, it was all those same things,
(13:03):
just being uncomfortable and my own skin needing performance to
get validation on the baseball field through family, through friends.
It was just a lack of self love and an
assurance in myself. And a lot of it, looking back,
was even just the way I was living and not
being authentic and honest and being true and really showing
(13:24):
up as like the authentic version of myself, and it
just begins to spiral and snowball to a point where
you're just so uncomfortable in your own skin that for me,
the easiest way to get out of that was just
to pop pills, do drugs and escape. But even in
the depths of my addiction, I can even think about,
you know, having my pills and then finally being able
(13:47):
to take them, or going to the pharmacy and getting
my refill and getting them, and then it would be
I would take the pills and for an hour I
would be good and everything would go away, and then
the cycle would start and I would start to think
about when I'm going to take them again, because I'm
starting to feel anxiety come on. And it was all
like so worried about the future, as if it's not
(14:10):
going to be okay, It's not going to be okay
until I get this so very rarely. I don't know
if I really ever was actually in the present, nor
did I have the willingness or any tools to actually
come back to a place and notice all of this
madness going on. But you know, I think about it,
it's nobody stops us from being present. It's only ourselves.
(14:34):
And really all of our stress and all of our
anxiety and all this fear it comes from wanting the
moment to be something that it's not so, or wanting
maybe somebody else to be somebody that they're not so.
When I look at the root of it, it's trying
to control things you can't control. And in our program
of recovery, you know, they teach us that control is
(14:57):
just an illusion. Now there are things that we can
control eventually, and that's our perspective and our attitude and
our ability to control our internal response to what's happening
outside of us. But that shit doesn't happen overnight, and
it really takes like the willingness to start to practice
and use little anchors big anchors to come back home
(15:18):
to the body.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Ooo. Man after that reminds me of let us share.
One of my anchors to the present is the Serenity
Prayer for me. Somebody actually gave it to me in
the form of a wristband and it's something that's like
in my pocket that I take with me everywhere that
I go. And for those that may I have a
(15:39):
relationship with God or know the prayer, it's God grant
me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, and the
wisdom to know the difference, and continuing to pray that
and just having a deeper meaning and trying to pray
it slower and not in a hurry and feel every
(16:00):
word of that. It's like, you know, I want to
be at peace within myself and I need direction on
how to find that piece Like, help me find that,
help me to know and not chase my tail around,
help me to not exert all my energy on these
things that I can't determine the outcome. I can't force
(16:23):
them to go my way. I can't. It's not possible
help me, and I need the wisdom to know the difference,
because if I don't know the difference, I'm gonna exhaust
myself on the things that don't matter, and when it
comes time for the things that really do matter, I
may be depleted. My cup may be more empty. So
that's one of the anchors for me. Because you think
about being present, I always think of like that picture
(16:46):
of the of the iceberg, and you know, you see
you see an iceberg above water by like right there.
It's like that's huge, Like if a ship runs into it,
it's going down. But then you see the picture of
how deep it goes beneath the surface. And that's what
being present allows us to do. From an interurn pernal standpoint.
It allows us to not just stay on the surface
(17:08):
and with money and material things and shallow relationships and
feeling like those are the things that are going to
bring us fulfillment. But it allows us to get down
to the root of my emotions, the root of the
pain that I'm feeling, the purpose behind the things that
I'm doing, and really get down into those things. That's
what being present really means. It's I'm aware of all
(17:30):
that is me. I'm aware that's all that's inside of me,
all that is eating at me, all that's nourishing me,
and sitting there and being aware of it and knowing
that I need to be present. I need to be
aware of my attitude. I need to be aware of
my perspective. I need to be aware of the way
that I'm treating people, because odds are it's a reflection
(17:52):
of the way that I'm treating myself. So just trying
to paint this picture for you guys of what it
looks like for us, how we see it through our eyes.
Because everybody's different, everybody's coming to this topic with different experiences,
different pains, different traumas. We want to try to help you,
guys get this as in depth as possible because we
(18:14):
know it's something that can change your life if you
consistently build the habit to allow yourself to keep coming
back to it.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Yeah, and I'm so glad you brought up the serenity
prayer because that and regardless of what your beliefs around
God or spirituality are, this is something if you break
down the serenity prayer. So you just kept saying aware,
and that's the wisdom to know the difference. So God,
grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
That's letting go of what you can't control, courage to
(18:46):
change the things I can. You're asking for strength and
the courage to actually control the controllables. And then the
wisdom to know the difference is awareness. The wisdom to
know the difference is not going to come by just
sitting on your ass and hoping it's going to show up.
It actually takes practice. You have to meet the universe
(19:08):
or meet God half way in order to get it.
You know, the spiritual tools, they're sitting there at our feet,
but it's up to us to get off of our
asses and actually use the tools, because the tools only
work if we use them. So when I hear that
the wisdom to know the difference, that's kind of that's
a big anchor for me because it inspires me to know, Like,
(19:30):
I just want to be aware for so many years,
as you're describing your your past and as I see
my past in your past, and just how asleep and
unaware we are now the tough part about being awake
or a little bit more awake than we were before
is it's not always easy. It takes work, and we
(19:52):
know better now and for me today, it's more about
the con the impact of not doing these practices. So
if you stick with these practices, and we're talking maybe
a little bit in depth, but I know Darren and
I also like to just keep it simple and have
practical tools that can actually work for us to get
(20:14):
us back into the present. And there's simple, simple practices,
you know. Another one, I mean I have so an
anchor could be anything on your physical environment also, and
I mean Darren's got a lot more tattoos than I do,
but I have some too, And a tattoo, I mean,
I have my sobriety birth date on my forearm, and
that certainly is a huge anchor. So that if I
(20:35):
feel like my mind is going somewhere, or maybe it's
a day where I'm just like being lazy or being selfish,
not really wanting to take action, I can look down.
I have the word freedom on my bracelet here. That
word is like you know, it brings me back to
the depths of my addiction. Lying on my couch so
bound by my addiction, so I want to remember that.
(20:58):
I don't regret it, I don't like get stay stuck
in it, nor do I beat myself up over that
anymay more. It's my reminder like I want to be free.
So you can create these little accountability partners or these
anchors all around you, and the truth is, the more
of them that you have, you know, whether they're in
your site. That could be something on your desk, it
(21:20):
could be a screen saver of your family, it could
be a word, it could be anything. But these are
the things that are going to serve as pattern interrupts
so that when we are spiraling, which it's going to
happen because we just live in a world of addiction
and affliction to distraction, so we're going to constantly being pulled.
So we have to have we have to have the antidote.
(21:42):
We have to have practices, and we have to be
the we have to be willing to lean into those practices.
And yeah, they might be hard, but it's not as
hard as you know, trying to do it the same
old way and actually expecting things to change.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Man insanity, that could be a whole another episode in itself,
but I'm glad that you brought up the point about
the spiraling is going to happen. The being knocked off
your center or being distracted is going to happen because
we're not expecting anybody on this call to be perfect,
(22:17):
anybody on this episode, anybody that's listening, anybody anywhere, because
we aren't. Like there's times where you know, I get
a phone call and it's not something that I want
to hear, or something in my day with my schedule
or something that I'm doing. I may mess up, and
these things may serve as distractions and things that may
(22:38):
knock me off of the present moment and the momentum
that I built during that day. And it's more so
about bringing yourself back to it. And that's where I
feel like the misconception lies with mindfulness with meditation. It's
people think, oh, my mind has to just be completely still,
there has to be no thoughts, it just has to
be complete bliss, and anything that comes and knocks me off,
(23:00):
it's like, oh, my meditation, my practice is ruined, when
really it's a out allowing those things to come, embracing
those things when they happen, and bringing ourselves back to
the center, bringing ourselves back to the moment and think
of it. It's been it was put to me in
the early days that it's to think of it as
a bicep curl for your mind. Right anything, you go
(23:21):
into the weight room and do you got arm day,
you got back day, you got chess day. You're going
to do certain things and continue to build repetitions in
those things, and over time you grow stronger. Over time,
your muscles are more stable. Over time, you know, somebody
try to bump into you, they're not You're not moving
no more because you continuously put the repetitions in and
(23:43):
continue to show up, no matter if it was discouraging,
no matter if it was frustrating, you continue to show
up in practice. And that's what we're trying to present
to you, guys, being present as a practice. There's nothing
that's ever going to be completely perfect about it, but
you practice to continue and continue for a lifetime, continue
for as long as you're here on this earth, to
(24:04):
be as present to the moment because you're relying on
you first and foremost. A significant other in your life
is going to rely on you the way that you
live your life and write your comeback story communities around you.
People around you are going to be leaning on you,
drawing inspiration from you, future generations of your family, grandkids.
(24:26):
You know, we have to think in those ramifications, because
how we show up in this moment right here, odds
are is going to depict how we show up in
the next moment, in the next moment after that, in
the next moment after that. So it's very important stuff
not to put pressure on you, but more so to
develop a sense of urgency around just showing up for
the practice and putting in your best effort with the
(24:46):
best attitude you can.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Okay, so you've picked up some tools over the years.
Your willingness is off the charts, Your consistency and your
practices or are more dialed in than almost anybody I've
ever worked with. Now you are in New York City
and there's a lot of noise. There's hustle and bustle,
(25:08):
media capital of the world, energy sirens going off all
the time. What have you? What were some maybe early challenges,
maybe some culture shock of making that move. What were
some early challenges and what are you doing to really
dial that in and ground yourself in that chaos that's
(25:29):
all around you?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Some of the initial shocks, I would say, are just
being back living alone. I'm newly married at this point
as we record, just over four months into my marriage,
but when I moved to Jersey for the first time,
I was a little over one month married. But the
(25:51):
bond that we had and still have allowed me to
forget about some of the things that I faced when
I was living alone prior to being married, and some
of the anxiety, the allowing myself to be too drawn
(26:13):
out of the present moment, pressure to perform, being on
a new team and trying to put that in its
rightful place in my mind, you know, wanting to be excellent,
but it's more so about being than doing and performing.
You know. There was you know, as me as an
(26:34):
addictive person, drugs and alcohol were like the main thing,
but there were behaviors underneath that as well that I
leaned into, like like masturbation that became that was something
that ran parallel with that to take the edge off,
to get that high end. Because that addictive thinking is
(26:55):
still in me, and urges like that pop up when
I'm in an environment by myself. So it's making sure
that I'm letting people in to my struggle and being like, hey,
like this hasn't been something that's been tearing my life apart,
but it's knocking on the door a little bit here,
like and you know, letting my letting my wife into that,
(27:16):
letting my friends into that, and knowing that I'm not
ashamed because I'm tempted to go back into these new
behaviors when I'm facing you know, adversity early on in
my marriage, moving into a new city across the country,
and not to mention all the other different projects and
little things that I'm involved in. It's allowing the moment
(27:40):
to be hard, allowing the present to be a challenge,
but knowing and still having joy amidst those challenges being present.
So I would say it's the performance aspect the marriage.
Being aware of addictive patterns and behaviors that I turned
to when living by myself previously pre addiction and post using.
(28:06):
So those are some of the things that stand out.
And the noise will only continue to grow. I mean
talk about the media capital and all the attention that's there,
and if you perform the way you want to perform,
noise is only going to increase. People reaching out to
you is only going to increase, you know, and these things,
these are things that I'm going to have to navigate,
(28:28):
and it's going to continue to put my practice of
staying in the present moment to the test, because it's
no longer about arriving somewhere and achieving something. It's more
so about abiding and living and being in the present moment,
which brings the true joy and fulfillment of going along
(28:49):
this journey, and going along the journey with the people
that I'm doing it with. So it's it's it's a
journey man like for people that's listening, I'm right, I'm
right there with you. I'm exploring new challenges, I'm I'm
dealing with these things as they come and trying to
do that from my center, which isn't always easy. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
I always say we all have a center. It sits
really at the middle of the heart space. But we
often all can get pulled off off our center through
the world's demand for the attention of our mind. And
so if we don't have these practices that bring us back,
it doesn't mean we come back and two seconds later
(29:26):
we leave again. If we don't have those practices, we
are going to get swept up in this world and
everything with media, social media, and we really just lose
ourselves in that process. There's no foundation, there's no place
to come home too, and it can really lead to
a lot of struggles in mental health and addiction and
(29:48):
just overall unhappiness in the way that our lives are unfolding.
So it is there's nothing more important. And this is
fascinating to me someone that teaches meditation and meditates daily,
that sometimes even in my meditation, I will notice thoughts
that are telling me I need to be doing something else,
as if there was something more important than trying to
(30:10):
quiet down that noise, Like what could possibly be more
important than calling myself and laying the foundation for my
day and training my mind to be my best friend
and not my worst enemy. But what I found that
that little voice, that self sabotage voice that's saying, oh,
you need to be doing this, or you're doing it wrong,
or you know, it will creep in any opportunity it gets.
(30:34):
So if we go back to the serenity prayer with
like the wisdom to know the difference, when we are
aware of those thoughts, we are now not those thoughts
thoughts are just thoughts, but thoughts become things when we
believe them, attached to them, or maybe judge ourselves for
having some crazy ass thoughts. But when we can actually
practice and just be the observer and be aware of them,
(30:57):
it really does loosen the grip and then we get
to understand ourselves more and those patterns of thinking that
pull us out of presence. So yeah, it just it
always is going to come down to the practices. Speaking
of practice, as you were sharing earlier, I was just
curious when you showed up for those first one, two,
first or second day of practice, as you know, the
(31:20):
new kid on the team, did you notice like any
of the old, like childhood shit coming up at all?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Oh, definitely, definitely. I felt like the new kid in school,
you know, like that a little bit of the anxiety
of the sixth grader. I guess there's junior highs and
all this stuff now, but in Georgia there was elementary
school was k to five, and middle school was six
to eight. High school was nine to twelve. So it's
(31:47):
like that sixth grade and that freshman showing up into
that new school and you're just like, I don't know
anyone here. I you know, where do I begin and
not trying to begin by pleasing people, not trying to
begin by trying to fit in and be cool. But
by this time I've had practice and conviction in knowing
(32:11):
that who I am is going to, you know, always
create room for myself and always create just a level
of respect amongst my peers and the men that I'm around,
because I'm just being who I am. I'm not conforming
to what other guys are doing to try to be cool.
I'm not trying to get into anything like even like
(32:38):
like the like the like fashion aspects and these material aspects,
things that are like cool and that are really dope,
but if looked at the wrong way, they can be
used as a tool to please or to gain approval.
And so it's just really showing up in you know,
I wear the same pair of sneakers every day, same
pair of flip flops, wearing a T shirt in the shorts. Man,
(33:01):
I'm just showing up, and I'm trying to give the
best that I can give and lead with an example
when I come in. I'm not going to come in
and say a whole lot because that's just not who
I am. I'm one of the older guys on the team,
and I feel like over time, a more vocal leadership
role than I've ever had will come about. But I
feel like a great way to begin is just being
(33:22):
present to each and every day, showing up to every
meeting with a desire to learn, a desire to be coached,
a desire to be a part of the team, not
necessarily come in and demand what I can get. So
it's that's where those core values and just those things
that we talk about come into play. Because when you're
(33:43):
in the midst of uncertainty and things are changing around you,
you're in new environments. I have faith that these same habits,
these same practices are going to allow me to create
room to be successful and to enjoy my experience anywhere
that I go. And you know, I say all that
to say that's not that's not to say that I'm
(34:04):
going to experience those same emotions that I would as
a kid, because my inner child's in me, little Darren's
in there, like you know, I don't know about this,
Like I'm a little I'm still got a little social
anxiety in there. I'm still you know, got to feel
people out, i still got to feel situations out. You know,
I don't. I don't want to fail. I don't want
to mess this up. I want to do the best
(34:25):
that I can. And it's hearing that voice and knowing like, Okay,
I know that you're there, but I can't allow that
to dictate how I go about this new environment. It's
really just who am I being able to see with
myself and ask myself that consistently and then just go
be who I am and keep it as as simple
(34:48):
as simple as that. Man, So what are what are
what are things looking like for you today when it
comes to the present moment, because it's an interesting dichotomy
with you being a teacher but also as we talk
about remaining a student, what there are some ways today
that you find yourself trying to find that balance between
(35:10):
those two and to just continue your journey with the president.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Yeah, I always remind myself and also remind my clients
or just even talking on the podcast or talking on
social media, that I am still very often still tripping
over the same things that I'm teaching all the time.
And often the things I'm teaching are also the things
that I need to learn. They're not things that I've
figured out and I'm just dropping nuggets of wisdom as
(35:36):
if I'm enlightened and have it all figured out. So
often it's usually something that I've struggled with for a
long time and then found a way or got some
wise counsel and implemented it and started to practice it
and found another solution, or it's just still stuff in
this moment that I might still be working through. And
so I think, you know, teaching it back for me
(35:57):
is such a gift because I feel like the story
I tell myself is I'm a slow learner even in school,
like having to auty extra to memorize things, and so
the gift of being able to teach it back has
allowed me to retain so many of these things. Now
that doesn't mean that I'm still practicing them, you know.
One of the key points I wanted to touch on
(36:18):
when we talk about anchoring in the present moment is
the practice of slowing down. And I think about still
to this day, the way that I eat food, and
I do a talk and I talk about mindful eating
and how you know, our brain it takes twenty minutes
for the sensory pleasures of our brain to even feel
the satisfaction of being full and we're supposed to technically
(36:40):
chew like twenty bytes per two and I'm like, wow,
like I'm teaching this, and then I can see the
way that I eat, and it shows up most often
when I'm eating with somebody else, you know, and my
meal's gone and they're like four or four bites in.
So slowing down has been a practice where when I
(37:00):
get rushed, when I feel like there's not time, if
I haven't prepared for something, that feeling of being rushed
or out of my body like that's where I go
off the rails. And it doesn't maybe show up externally
like I'm yelling or anything, but man, internally, it's just
it's not a fun place to be. So the practice
(37:21):
of slowing down is so essential, and I'm really trying
to work on the eating part of it, because you know,
eating and breathing are such a vital part of the
whole digestive process, you know, the way we chew, the
way we breathe, and to eat in like a stress
state or eating on the go, it's like one of
the most counterproductive ways to fuel and feed our bodies.
(37:43):
So that's been like a huge one for me that
I've been in the practice, and sometimes I'm teaching it
back and I'm like, dude, you need to you need
to remind yourself of the shit you're you're telling your people.
But that's just that's just where I'm at. I can
relate a lot also to because I'm in a long
distance relationship and those gaps of when we're not together,
(38:05):
like I feel like I'm I can be very present
and less on my phone and engage, but it's in
those pockets where there's more time or maybe I am
feeling lonely that I will do something to numb it out,
which the easiest way is just to grab the phone
and you know, numb out and distract myself that way.
(38:26):
So oftentimes when and I would say the phone is
my greatest addiction to this day, I'm so thankful that
it's not drugs or alcohol or some of the other
ones that you know bring us to our knees a
lot quicker. But the phone is the one where I
can notice, and if I notice myself going to it
too often, I will just ask myself, like, what am
(38:46):
I unwilling to feel right now? And if it's a
time where maybe I'm not with my partner, it's usually
just feel alone or on board or what am I chasing?
And why? That's the other kind of These are anchors.
These are questions that you can ask that if you
get honest, if you answer them honestly, they're going to
to bring you back to the truth and bring you
back to the present moment. So yeah, I would say
(39:10):
the practice of slowing down is, and specifically around eating,
I'm giving myself enough time to get to places, to
get to the airport, to get to a class where
I'm not rushing and going last minute because I just
know the impact and I do not. I am so
uncomfortable in my own skin when I get in that place.
So it's kind of proactively giving myself enough time to
(39:33):
get to these places so that there is no rush,
because yeah, rushing for me is when I become one
of the worst versions of myself.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Wow, it's I'm so glad you brought that up because
it reminds me of when we do with ig lives,
and we always do the book recommendations, and every time
I recommend this book it's called The Ruthless Elimination of
Hurry by John Mark Komer. If I highly suggest you
read that book, because in that book he talks about
(40:04):
in this digital age, in this like smartphone, high speed internet,
like we get information so fast and it teaches us
to want things so quickly to not have to suffer
for it. But that whole instant gratification thing. And he
has quotes in the areas like love and hurry are incompatible.
(40:26):
So when it's like it speaks to what you're saying
about not being the best version of yourself when you're
in a rush, when you're in a hurry, and a
lot of us are rushed and hurry without even knowing it.
We're so busy, we're trying to get that next promotion,
we're trying to get to the bag, we're trying to
do all these things, but we're not allowing ourselves to
slow down and take in the goodness of the moment,
(40:46):
to reflect, to affirm ourselves, to check in on how
we're doing. And it's so important that we do that,
and how counter cultural slowing down is. People don't want
to be outside of what everybody in culture are doing.
But for us to really nurture our spirits and to
(41:07):
nourish that spiritual life and to just be in tune
with ourselves and be the best version of ourselves. We
got slow down, and I feel like that plays into
the idea of solitude as well, like creating moments of silence,
time for meditation, time for reflection, time for prayer, time
for journaling, whatever it is for you to be still
(41:31):
and have that quiet moment with yourself. We've got to
find a way to do that that's personal to you,
that works for you, that doesn't feel robotic to you,
because that's the way we can fill our cups back up.
And a lot of our lives are spent pouring into
other people, pouring into situations, pouring into the vision of
(41:52):
our job, pouring into friendships, relationships. But what are we
doing to fill our cut back up so that there
is something to pour, so that I do have something
to offer. You know, the big book that we read
out of in our Fellowship of Recovery says you can't
transmit something that you haven't got, and in order for
(42:15):
us to be that transmitter, we have to create that
time of solitude of cutting all the noise out, cutting
Netflix off, turning the Xbox off, logging out of Twitter
and Instagram, and just being in that silence, being in
that void and dealing with the uncomfortability of it. It's
not easy. It's not going to be a walk in
(42:36):
the park and just bliss all the time. But we
have to embrace the fact that the discomfort always leads
to something better for us. It stretches us, it expands us,
it pushes us to our limits, only to find out
that our limits are way farther than we ever even imagined.
And it starts with something that's so simple as sitting
in the quiet, because those things are going to come up.
(42:57):
Those thoughts are gonna come up, those fears are going
to come up, those insecurities are going to come up,
and they need to come up. It's not going to
feel good when they come up, but they need to
come up. Otherwise we're just going to continue to brush
them under the rug. And we can't allow ourselves to
do that any longer. And that's what I speak about
with that sense of urgency. So we just want you
(43:19):
guys to see it through that lens of and see why.
You know, Donnie and Darren talking about meditation again, but
it's like it's just the healing and just the calm
and the joy and the inner contentment that overcomes you
and intertwines in you as you take that time. And
(43:42):
we just can't stress the importance of that enough.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
And to get out of your thoughts, you have to
first let them come up. The only way to get
through it is to go through it. So it comes
back to bringing those thoughts to the light. You know,
you can't say I'm just going to sit here and
not think, because if you try not to think, you're
just going to think more. Because what we resist persists.
So to get out out of your thoughts, you actually
(44:05):
have to take time to notice the thoughts that you
want to get out of and slow down. And that's
why solitude and meditation And if you're struggling with a
meditation practice, you're not alone. I struggled for years. There's
so many different techniques out there. I recommend guided meditations.
David g who's been on our guests. He's a two
time we went back to back with him, amazing meditation teacher,
(44:28):
amazing guided meditation teacher and storyteller who made meditation accessible
for me. So the resources are out there. You can
go on Google and find I mean, I can sit
here and give you a bunch of breath techniques and
I'm happy to do that. But if you take the
action and just pop it into Google, there's going to
be different breath techniques, patterns of breath that you can use,
(44:50):
different types of meditation. You just have to be willing
to try things on to see what works for you,
because what works for me might not exactly work for you,
and so the mind is going to look for every
reason not to do it, because the mind just likes
to have me jobs, and it likes to jump from
thought to thought. They call it the monkey mind, where
it jumps from branch to branch. But all of a
sudden you slow it down, and then the mind is
(45:13):
out of jobs, right, and then it gets uncomfortable. But
it's in that discomfort that really the magic is found.
And so if we can clear the clutter, we make space.
The only way to bring something new in is to
let go of the old. And so much of our
reality comes from our thinking. I mean, it comes from
our belief system, which is which shows up in our thinking.
(45:36):
But to change the way you're living, you have to
change the way you're thinking. And to change the way
you're thinking, you have to actually be willing to do
something to notice what you're thinking about. Because when you
get out of your head, you start to tap into
the flow state the spiritual world. You get back to
the heart and you start to see through the lens
of the heart and not like the madness that's going
(45:59):
on in the mind. And when we can see from
the heart, we can see with clarity, and it's like
just coming back home to the heart and to what
matters most, so that we can show up authentic and
we're not like I used to do, just rehearsing everything
I was going to say before I said it, which
if you're having a conversation with somebody, you cannot listen
if you're thinking about what you're going to say. So
(46:21):
what gets in the way of intentional listening, which you know,
if you want to connect more in any relationship, you know,
practice the art of listening. The only things that get
in the way of listening are judgments and distractions and defenses.
So you got judgments distractions if you're thinking about something else.
And if you're in any kind of relationship and you
(46:44):
start to defend after somebody says something, you're not listening
to what they're saying because you're already defending your stance,
so people want to be they people are always say
people are not going to remember what you said, They're
going to remember how you made them feel. And everybody
loves to be heard. Everybody loves to be heard, and
in that they feel a greater sense of connection. But
(47:06):
in order for them to be heard, we actually have
to listen, which comes back to getting out of our heads.
So there's a lot of practices. There's a lot of
different meditations. I mean, anybody listening and I'll be happy
you could reach out to me on Instagram and I'll
give you recommendations or techniques. But I think it's also
important for you to take the action to actually do
a little research. You won't get past page one in
(47:27):
the Google search with just amazing information and resources that
will help you really just get back to present and
find these anchors that we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
It's really a beautiful thing to see what your life
can develop into just from being present to the moment.
And one of the things I feel like that can
really spawn from it, and which is another foundational thing
that people have heard of talk about a lot, but
it's just the idea of gratitude. Right. If there's no
(47:58):
way if I'm not present, I'm not going to be grateful.
I'm going to be up in the way something was
in the past, whether it was good or bad, or
I'm gonna be caughting, kind of what I was talking
about earlier, of when I get to this moment in
the future, then things will be okay. When I get
this thing, then I'll be all right. But gratitude is
(48:20):
taking both of those extremes into account and choosing the
perspective of I don't lack anything. I have everything that
I need. I have everything that I could ever have
wanted in this present moment. But that's not how we're
taught to live, that's not how we're wired. That's not
how America and the world works. It's about getting somewhere.
(48:46):
It's about arriving there. And it's just that counter cultural
aspect of living that we have to embrace and stand
firm in because otherwise our peace and just our overall
gratitude in the moment is going to be what's lost
(49:09):
on this chase for what we're being told is success
or what we're being told is what's going to fulfill us.
But gratitude is so important because it defies that logic
and it says what I have now here is good
enough for me. And I feel like that goes such
(49:29):
a long way because it allows you to have such
a full and deep appreciation for everything that comes into
your life. If you don't appreciate what you have when
you have little, you're not just going to magically start
to fully appreciate what you have when you have a lot,
because that's not your character, that's not your habit, that's
not your practice. And we just want to help you, guys,
(49:51):
to be able to develop practices as we are currently
in the moment of doing as well that will allow
your life, your story, your comeback story that you're continuing
to write, as you're putting into paper, and as you're
experiencing these moments and the beauty that life has to offer,
you're going to be there, fully present to take all
(50:13):
of that in and be overwhelmed by the joy, be
just so happy and content and just full of praise
that you won't have words, you know, like I'm sitting
here trying to describe it right now. In some of
(50:34):
the moments that I've been able to experience in my
life that have stemmed from me going to rehab, and
one of the first things they taught us about was mindfulness,
being present to the moment in meditation, and I'm like,
what are you guys talking about? But sticking with it,
continuing to practice, continuing to wake up and just keep chopping,
keep putting reps in. It's turned into an amazing life
(50:56):
to where I just wake up and scratch my head
and I'm like, how did I get here? Like even
fighting this to this day, the internal unworthiness that I
had most of my life, it's like, it's just irritating
the crap out of that unworthiness and it's and it's beautiful,
(51:19):
just like the how it's it's all coming out and
coming together. And man, it's just a powerful thing. Dog,
It's a powerful thing. And we can't get there without
being in the moment. If there's any way we could
wrap this up, there's no way that I appreciate my
(51:40):
life as it is today, with all the good things
out of there, if I'm not present to each and
every moment of that journey along the way. And hope
you can take that with you.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
So beautifully said man, and just hearing you, I mean,
I'm so grateful for you and you've created this life
that you have today, and it came with a lot
of hard work and willingness that just didn't appear, especially
considering the mess that it used to look like. But yeah,
you can't be gratitude. You can't be grateful and stressed
(52:10):
at the same time. Gratitude is always going to bring
us back into the present moment. It's a powerful practice.
It's one of the many anchors that we touched on.
Slowing down is so important. You have your breath. Your
breath will always be there. It's been there since day one,
when you've took your first breath and you arrived, and
it's going to be the last thing you do when
you leave this earth and your legacy begins, You'll take
(52:31):
that last breath, So you have that in your back
pocket at all times. And really just being mindful with
our devices and technology, making sure we're taking time to relax.
And I would say to begin, just start with small targets.
If you want to start a meditation practice, take ten
deep breaths for the next week and let that be
your meditation practice, and then just build on it. These
(52:54):
small practices will compound over time and start to create
a system and a foundation that's going to always bring
you back. All the magic lies in the present moment.
And you know, Darren and I when we talk about
we could talk about this all day long, and I
feel like we could go on hours for this with this,
because this is when I'm the most present, is just listening,
(53:15):
especially this solo or duo episode where we don't have
a guest and we can really talk about these things
and then just kind of like reflect on the journey
that it's that it's taken to get to this point.
It's so beautiful. And you know, if you're listening and
this has really moved you or inspired you, or maybe
you have somebody in your life that you know could
(53:36):
benefit off this. Darren and I's mission has always been
to reach as many people as possible and share this message.
So maybe you put a screenshot, put it on Instagram,
send this to somebody. The reviews on Spotify and iTunes
or Apple Music really help the reviews or help the
help us reach more people if we have reviews in
(53:57):
five stars. So we're not trying to get as many
as possible for our egos. We're just wanting to reach
as many people as possible.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
And that's the magic of it. Man, thank you guys
for joining us for another episode of come Back Stories.
Like Donnie said, subscribe, like review, wherever you're at, wherever
you're getting your podcast, wherever you download, keep coming back.
We're going to keep coming back. You can find us
on the Inflection Network on YouTube as well, and we're
(54:25):
just going to continue on this journey with you guys,
trying to stay in the moment, trying to figure out
this thing called life and enjoy it while we got it.
So we appreciate you guys joining us and we'll catch
you next week.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
Comeback Stories is a production of Inflection Network and iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Eric Balchunas
Donny Starkins
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