June 23, 2024 • 56 mins
In this episode, co-hosts Keith and Mindy bring an unusual, relaxed energy to the show, marked by frequent yawns and a mellow atmosphere. They dive into a profound conversation exploring the importance of rest and the power of unplugging from screens. Keith and Mindy share their personal experiences with setting limits around social media and discuss the benefits of taking a break from the digital world.
As the discussion unfolds, they touch on the significance of breathing techniques for calming the mind, the impact of positive self-talk, and practical strategies for managing anxiety. Tune in for a laid-back yet insightful episode that encourages listeners to slow down, reflect, and prioritize their mental well-being.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to the Chasing Thoughts podcast.
(00:07):
Chasing Thoughts was founded by strangers, two life coaches who met on TikTok and shared
the desire to create a different kind of life coaching podcast.
Instead of talking about how to do it right, the Chasing Thoughts podcast explores embracing
our true essence to find a deeper sense of purpose and fulfillment.
Life coaches Keith and Mindy take a unique approach that transcends popular notions of
(00:32):
perpetual happiness and striving relentlessly to become one's ideal self.
Listen in as Mindy, Keith and their guests take a deep dive into their own minds and
souls to investigate the beauty of imperfection, challenge their beliefs, and embrace the richness
of living a truly authentic life.
Hi, my name is Keith and I'm a strategic interventionist and stoner-spirited life coach.
(00:59):
Hi, my name is Mindy and I am an authenticity empowerment coach.
Welcome to Chasing Thoughts.
Hey everybody, it is Chasing Thoughts season 2, episode 23.
And Keith and I, we're just talking about how we're both kind of tired and mellow today.
(01:23):
So if you hear us talking slowly, that's the reason why.
I'm not sure why.
Maybe it's just the end of a long week, but I'm like, I could take a nap after this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's the same.
I don't know if it's like the weather because it got pretty hot here.
Well, for us, it was like high 80s and stuff.
(01:46):
And now it's cooled off, but it feels so good.
I can just lay on my couch with the windows open and just...
I love that.
Yeah.
Just spend the day just laying there feeling the breeze and stuff.
Yeah.
I love to just put on light, instrumental or electric, low frequency music.
(02:09):
Like something just almost in the background and then it's so relaxing.
The windows open and yeah, I love that.
Yeah.
A lot of times too, I'll play the office in the background like that, but like...
So I can barely hear it and just close my eyes.
And nine times out of 10, I end up drifting off to like Dwight Shrew.
Yeah.
(02:29):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sometimes I do guided meditations or sometimes I do TV, but man, it just feels really good
to let yourself get into that deep, relaxed state.
Yeah.
And between being asleep and awake, I love that state.
Oh dude.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(02:50):
I think last night, around three o'clock, I got up real quick and when I went back in
bed, I was just like, I am so comfortable.
I was just looking out my window.
I didn't have a desire to close my eyes and go right back to sleep, but within like five
minutes I was out again, but I love those moments where everything is quiet, dark.
(03:10):
It's just, it's so cool.
Yeah.
And I think that kind of rest, I think it's valuable to do that on the weekend.
I mean, it's, our weekends are so short and I think there's a lot of pressure to be busy
and catch up on projects or see friends.
And also it's really important to take some downtime and let your body integrate everything
(03:35):
that's happened to it.
Yeah, man.
I mean, the majority of human history, we lived as hunter-gatherers and on average, they
worked about four hours a day.
So I think we even talked about the other day, like the four hour work week, that whole
thing, you know, and then like the consensus is like, oh, we're all just lazy.
We got to be working the 40 hours and more and all that.
(03:57):
Like that's not what we were designed to do.
Like they would go out, hunt and gather, you know, then come back and it was maintenance
and socialization and family time and just being community time.
Yeah.
Yeah, the more time that I spend just sitting around or journaling or, you know, sort of
(04:18):
integrating, the more addicted I get to it.
And then when I don't have it, I'm like, ah, what's happening in my life?
I need that time to sort of filter my thoughts and decide what actions I'm taking forward
and what's the most important thing.
And if I just stay busy all the time, it's like I'm not operating from my full self,
(04:42):
right?
I'm at like 10% of my capacity.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, we're not designed to do that.
I know.
Rest is so valuable.
Yeah.
And community was one of the things, probably the most important thing that kept us alive
as a species, you know?
(05:02):
And now we have less and less time with it.
Yeah.
And because of all the screens, we're less and less present with each other, even when
we are with each other.
That's something I highly recommend to people is, you know, with your kids, with your spouse,
with your friends, turn your phone off and put it away.
(05:25):
Give that other person your attention because it makes a difference.
Yeah.
Dude.
I mean, we're both like towards that age where we remember the landlines.
Oh, yeah.
Like, when we left the house, we left the house, nobody knew where we were.
Like you can't get in touch with me.
Nothing.
I would come home and there'd be like messages like on a board next to the phone, you know,
(05:50):
something like that, you know?
But now, like if I leave the house on my phone, I'm like, oh my God, what am I going to miss?
You know?
So for 30 something years of my life, I never missed anything.
But now all of a sudden, like I'm going to miss something major.
Like if I don't have my phone constantly with me.
Yeah.
And I notice it like an addiction type feeling coming up.
(06:13):
Like I'll plug my phone in on a Saturday and just leave it.
And then a couple hours later, I'm like, oh my gosh, if I don't check in something, bad's
going to happen or I don't know about what bad has happened.
I need to.
And it's a, like you said, that's a crazy thought.
Right?
Yeah.
But there's an idea that I have to be plugged in all the time or I'm being irresponsible
(06:34):
or missing out on something.
Yeah.
I've even noticed so like, in fact, it was last Friday at pool.
Um, we're like, everybody's playing, I'm keeping score.
So I have to like watch like what's going on and everything.
But everybody else like they'll play, they'll sit down and they open Facebook, which is funny
(06:55):
too because it's all like older people.
So they go to Facebook and not like talk or something, you know, but, and they're just
scrolling and all of a sudden there's one guy starts talking to me about football and
about how like they're bringing in some type of technology where for the first down, like
where the, it'll be like a camera mounted will, will tell them where the first down is.
(07:18):
So instead of those chains, they won't have to use anymore.
And I, I'm not big into sports, like at all.
Like I just, I don't know, like if I'm not playing, I don't get any enjoyment out of
watching it, you know, so I'm like, dude, I don't care, but I don't want to be me.
So I'm just like, wow, that's crazy.
(07:38):
Cause this, he's such a great dude, you know, and he's into football and everything, but
then he goes to scrolling and then two seconds later, he's talking to me about something completely
different, you know, like, so like, dude, and I looked around and everybody was doing
the same thing.
They were all just scrolling through Facebook.
Yes.
Yeah.
And I think that's actually a perfect segue cause we were going to talk about joy.
(08:01):
I think that a lot of people associate summer with joy.
It's like old programming from childhood where you're like, oh, it's summertime.
Even if you work the same schedule.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's like, okay, let's talk about joy and how do you source joy and how do you cultivate
it?
And I think this whole screen thing and phone thing is a huge part of it because overall
(08:26):
our phones don't bring us a lot of joy and they're not programmed to bring us a lot of
joy and you have to be super intentional about it.
If you're going to use it for joy, right?
Like big boundaries with it.
And yeah, usually with my husband and I, if we're like, you know, oh, let's spend the
(08:47):
evening together, we both put away our phones and the screens.
And then there's like a little minute of sort of like awkward boredom.
And then we go, oh, let's talk, like then we start talking to each other and looking
at each other and interacting with each other.
And it passes.
But I think that's true for a lot of people is it's almost as if they don't know how to
(09:09):
be with another human without checking their phone.
Yeah.
Especially, especially like a stranger.
Yeah, because it's too uncomfortable.
And therefore we're missing out on connection, which we're hardwired for connection to bring
joy.
So we're self sabotaging.
Dude, I saw a comedian, like he was talking about, you know, like in his day when you
(09:32):
were on a bus, like everything's mindfulness these days, you know, and he goes, well, we
were on a bus.
Our entertainment was watching like condensation drip down the window and like move from the
wind.
Like that's mindfulness.
But like we used to do it all the time because there was nothing to distract us.
So we had to just sit with our own thoughts.
(09:54):
Yes.
And now it's like, dude, if you don't have something constantly giving you something
to think about, geez, their people's heads go like in the garbage can quick.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was listening to this one guy talk about how he doesn't go on his cell phone or any
(10:15):
screens in the morning for a couple hours.
And he said, I want to start my day on the offense.
And I thought, what an interesting word to use because a lot of the time we are on the
defense, it's like things are coming to us, right?
And we're trying to filter it out.
But like you just said, if you sit long enough, you will think wise thoughts, you will come
(10:38):
to clarity, you will.
But if you never give that to yourself, you won't access those states.
And so it really is offense.
It's coming out of you.
It's your play game for life.
And I think that's key.
And I've been really wanting to, I mean, I have boundaries with my phone where I have
(10:58):
long carry the time where I set it aside and I have like my focus set up so different people
can get through it different times, but I would love to start a morning routine where
I don't even pick up and look at my phone until I've had breakfast, worked out, taken
a walk, whatever it is that I need.
Yeah.
I've heard similar things before and I'm like, all right, I want to try that.
(11:21):
Because somebody was talking about like the first thing you do in the morning, that's
what's most important to you.
And for most of us, I know for me, like I woke up, rolled over, like unplugged my phone
and then started looking like, what did people comment?
What did people say?
You know what I mean?
Like all that stuff.
And there's almost like this sense of anxiety.
(11:43):
Like is it going to be comment or people are going to be saying I'm stupid or whatever?
You know?
And so you start off your day in this sense of anxiety based off of other people's opinions
of something, a video that you put up that you liked.
You know what I mean?
That's why you put it up.
You know?
(12:03):
So yeah, it's...
Yeah.
I think you've been taking a couple minutes in the morning and you wake up instead of
immediately grabbing your phone, thinking like gratitude thoughts or envisioning the day
you want to have.
Just slowing it down a beat, right?
Remember you to have some of that before you go right to allowing this to program your
(12:27):
thoughts and feelings.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like remember like you ever see like a baby when they wake up and they stretch and they're
just like all over the place, you know?
And it looks so comfortable.
Like just spending a couple minutes in bed, like feeling that.
And then at my age, stretching like that creates a lot of noise, you know?
(12:51):
So like everything is...
That's the first crack pop.
Yeah.
Like all the things like getting back into place and stuff.
But like just doing that and enjoying comfort, you know?
Enjoying those little things.
It's all those little things that become white noise that it's just lost in the background.
Yeah.
(13:12):
And that is being mindful or present, right?
And it's like, oh man, it feels so good in my body when I do this or oh, this tastes so
good or right.
So many of these sensations we just completely blot out when they're positive sensations,
right?
Oh, what it feels like to hug my husband, what it feels like to pet my cat, right?
(13:35):
We're surrounded by pleasures and yet not feeling any of them.
You know, like one of the practices of a Taoist that I follow, he's like from the 16th generation
of the guy that started Tai Chi in China, the Wudang Mountains.
(13:57):
He still lives in the same monastery that is like whatever, great, great, 100 times
removed like grandfather built, you know, years ago.
And he said the first thing you do is you wake up and you go outside.
It doesn't matter if it's raining, if it's cold, hot, you just wake up and you go outside
(14:19):
and you just breathe.
You just look around and breathe, you know?
And then he gets into like some stretching, you know, some morning stretches and stuff
like that.
But he said, you do that for 10 minutes, start your day out for 10 minutes just being outside
and breathing.
And I've tried that, it's just like, my God, dude, like the, the, it just feels so good.
(14:42):
Yeah.
It feels so good and it still requires so much discipline not to let the rubber band snap
back where you go straight to your phone in the morning and then you're on your computer
all day and then you watch TV tell us time to go to bed.
And that's life.
And then you're like, why aren't I feeling fulfilled or happy?
(15:05):
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's not a recipe for happiness, right?
It's just not, you're never going to get that.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
I think that some of the things like we said, cultivating connection with other people,
having some kind of morning routine or like living on your terms, right?
(15:28):
Being mindful.
And I would also say if you're in relationship with people, which everybody is, you know,
husband, kids, friends, the idea, have you heard that saying like, would you rather be
right or would you rather be happy?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think putting that into play and recognizing that there's a lot of small conflicts in life
(15:53):
and if you, if you just rather be happy, you don't really have to pay attention to them.
You don't really need all of your energy.
And I think practicing that can cultivate more joy in your day to day life because you're
not setting off spirals, right?
Or little bombs.
Yeah.
(16:14):
Yeah.
Yeah.
That has helped me and Sandy out so much where, you know, she'll be working, you know,
because the beginning of the year, she works tons of overtime and gets tired and gets drained
and she'll be up.
I think one day she got home at like three in the morning and then they let her sleep
(16:36):
for a little bit and then she had to be back in at 10.
And it's one like the legislative session is in.
She deals with like basically like editing the bills and stuff like that.
So she comes home, she's wasted, get cranky, you know, hungry, all that stuff.
And if she would speak to me like in a tone that I was like, you know, what the, I would
(17:00):
take it personal.
Be like, what the hell, you don't talk to me like that.
Like just because you're tired doesn't mean you can take it out on me, you know, which
is done because I do the same thing.
If I'm tired or hungry or whatever, you know, I'll snap at her real easy.
And in my head, I'm like, you idiot, you know, just because you're tired doesn't mean
you take it out on her.
(17:21):
You know, I don't say that at all because of course I have the right to do that, you
know, but I noticed like that.
Well, that's all about me.
You know, it's, it's like me taking personally how she's feeling instead of thinking about
her and being like, she's been working so hard then having to come home and deal with
me and then like taking care of stuff in the house and stuff, you know, that I, that I
(17:48):
don't get to or whatever.
And she has a right to feel that way.
And when she's, when she snaps at me, it's not because she's pissed off at me.
It's because she's hurting in a way.
Yeah.
So I'm going to go up and give her a hug instead of take it personal.
Yeah.
You know, and I even put that out once.
I did a video on that and some of the comments were like funny because the guy was like, because
(18:13):
it's funny, like they take it to the extreme, you know what I mean?
Like, so one of the comments was, um, um, it's more important to be right.
If someone's going to try to tell me the sky is purple, I'm not going to get out.
I'm like, dude, who, who's saying that?
Like, you know what I mean?
Like who the hell?
Like yes.
If somebody tells you that like they own a giraffe, but they only, they actually have
(18:37):
a Chihuahua, you can say, well, that's not a giraffe.
Like that, that's cool.
You know, but we can, we can surpass so much bullshit just by like saying, well, that person's
in a bad mood.
You know, that sucks too bad for them, but it's not going to affect my energy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(18:57):
And again, that's hard work to do and you have to be aware of self and be able to recognize
that you're not your thoughts or your feelings.
But yeah, I mean, this bag of skin and bones likes to get offended.
I don't know why, but it doesn't serve me.
Like, so I have to kind of be bigger than that reaction.
(19:20):
Yeah.
And then the best, the greatest thing, because you can, everything like to me, like everything
comes back to us, you know, like even doing good, it makes us feel good, which is then
you know, a drive to be good, you know?
So when Sandy is like struggling with that, and if I can answer her snapping or whatever
(19:45):
and say, okay, well, she's just hurting for whatever reason, you know?
So I'm going to answer her snapping with love.
And so she's like snapping and she doesn't like me right now or whatever.
And I just come up and give her a big hug and I'm like, like, you know, I'm sorry, your
day was rough.
You know, what can I do?
Whatever.
Dude, I can ask for anything after that.
(20:07):
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like, so it comes back to you too.
You can be selfish about it.
Be like, yeah, it comes back to you.
Yeah, and when you're showing up being loving your experiencing love, when you're showing
up being compassionate, you're the one experienced compassion, right?
These are good things to feel rather than feeling outraged or victimized or.
(20:28):
Yeah.
And it goes to the same thing with happiness.
Like we're on this search, it seems, for constant happiness.
And I think it's the marketing, social media, everything is designed to gather to grab our
attention for this moment so that we can feel happiness.
But happiness is not a constant state.
(20:49):
You know, it's an effect.
It's a byproduct of what we're doing.
You know, so.
Like, it's almost like you don't go out and be like, I'm going to be happy today.
You know, you go out and be like, I'm going to do good for me today.
I'm going to put in some work and it doesn't matter.
I'm not going to judge myself for what I don't get done.
(21:12):
You know what I mean?
And I'm going to enjoy what I do.
And if I have scheduled this, but like, I'm like, I don't want to do this.
I want to do this.
I'm going to do it.
Right.
And then I feel happiness.
Yeah.
For me, that, that baseline emotion I want to learn to live in is contentment.
Yeah.
And I think there's so many sort of dopamine hacks, right?
(21:37):
So if you wake up and you really do want to feel happy, well, yeah, go for a walk in
nature, exercise, eat healthy food, right?
Like there's so much science behind what will make you feel good.
It's just actually choosing it, right?
That is the challenge sometimes.
But yeah, you can hack your own brain chemicals on a day you're not feeling good, or you can
(21:59):
sit with it and learn something from those negative feelings.
Totally okay.
Whatever you want to do, right?
Yeah.
There's times I'll get into like a depressive mode or whatever where a last couple of days,
but I struggle with it at first, but when I relax into it, just be like, okay, this
is how I feel.
Like I feel contentment.
Yeah.
(22:20):
So I feel like I'm depressed, but I'm still happy at the same time.
Yeah.
It's so weird.
I know I get that way too sometimes.
And I actually find that that is like really rich fertile ground for me.
The states of being, right?
And so I don't necessarily want to chew them away.
(22:42):
The depression or the anxiety.
I want to know I'm okay during it, like you said, but it's serving me in its own way too,
right?
Yeah.
I mean, everything is a spectrum.
You know what I mean?
We have the light spectrum and we as humans see the visible light spectrum, even though
it's a lot bigger than just what we see.
(23:04):
You know, we have this like the sound waves.
And do you ever do that thing?
Like where you listen to things and it said like, it'll be like a button like where this
sound like people 30 and older can't hear it.
Oh yeah.
That's cool.
Like at a science center or something.
They have those little exhibits.
Yeah.
My daughter found one online once and she was doing it and my two daughters and my niece
(23:26):
were like, yeah, we hear that.
I mean, my wife were like, whatever, dude, you're just making this up.
There is no sound whatsoever.
So like there's a spectrum of sound that we hear and then as we get older, apparently
that spectrum gets shorter and shorter and shorter.
Oh, it's true.
Yeah.
There's a spectrum of something that I had a point and my brain just took a laugh because
(23:52):
I started thinking about the whole spectrum thing.
But yeah, there's that spectrum of like happiness too.
You know, and it's not to chase.
Yeah.
When do you think that when you think about like the happiest times in your life or chapters
of life or moment of life, what did they have?
(24:14):
Like what elements did they have in them?
The biggest thing is community.
There were people there that I was close with.
Yeah.
You know, that's when I felt the most confident, the most connected and the funniest parts
(24:44):
are like, because as soon as you said the happiest times, I went right to a time that
caused a lot of problems for me as well.
Which is our deployment into Bosnia.
But looking back on it, I'm able to see it from a different angle where I remember all
(25:12):
of this stuff that just makes me so happy.
Like we had to build guard shacks out of sandbags and it's the middle of winter in Eastern
Europe.
The sound was not very giving and we had to work so hard for days to build these little
shacks.
And one time me and my sergeant were in there and it must have been like three in the morning
(25:35):
and we're just watching through our night vision and stuff like just scan it.
And all of a sudden three wild dogs just came like ripping into this little guard hut fighting.
And here's these two grown dudes.
My sergeant was a sniper.
He had gone through sniper school and saw he was badass.
(25:58):
And we just picked our legs up off the floor.
We were just like screaming.
We were like, we had weapons, we got ammo like all over the place and we're just screaming
as these three dogs are fighting and it lasted about 10 seconds and they were gone.
And we just looked at each other and we were like, what the hell was that?
And that was it.
(26:18):
That was the end of it.
Like we've never seen these dogs again.
And just thinking about those moments, the games that we would play with each other,
the things that we would do to each other, just to mess with each other.
I look back on that and I miss that camaraderie so bad.
(26:39):
But I feel so happy that I was once connected like that.
Yeah.
I think that's really, people find that really challenging to create as adults in the world.
I think everybody struggles with that.
Like unless you happen to be friends with people you went to college with or a family
or it's very different now that you're not getting married when you're 20 and it's just
(27:06):
about your family.
Most people are single into their 30s.
And so there's a lot more loneliness, I think.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, when I look back at my happy memories, they contain two things that we haven't talked
about yet.
One is health.
(27:27):
Like when my body was feeling great, when I was fit, when I was healthy.
And then the other one is like being connected to my purpose or feeling aligned or like aligned
contribution, aligned passion.
Those are my happiest moments when I look back, like when I felt like I was living life
(27:52):
the way I'm supposed to or wanted to, right?
I was on the right path.
For me, that's a really satisfying, joyful feeling.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's cool too because it's not like we were talking about it's not you going out
like the your focus is not I'm going to go out to be happy.
(28:15):
Your focus is just living in alignment, doing what you should be doing, all that stuff.
And then that happiness comes as a byproduct of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think those are all like, everything we're talking about takes work and dedication.
And scrolling Instagram or playing blocks on your phone is the like instant junk food
(28:39):
candy dopamine.
That's not really creating that like deep peace and joy.
It's creating that surface level.
I'm relaxing.
I'm happy, you know, but it's really not true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I gave a talk once at Central Connecticut State University and there was a girl there
(29:00):
that she said that when she's like at a family party or something, she gets overwhelmed with
all the people.
So she has to isolate herself to recharge.
So I was like, all right, cool.
What do you do when you recharge?
She's like, well, I go in my room, I shut the lights off and I scroll on my phone.
I'm like, okay.
And then how long does it take before you feel recharged?
(29:22):
And she goes, I never do.
So when I read this thing, neuroscience were talking about like when we do stuff with our
mind that's mindless, you know, just that mindless scrolling binge watching a TV, like
a TV show that we've watched millions of times or whatever, you know, our brain has a default
(29:42):
mode that is negative and slightly anxious because it's scanning for threats, you know,
and that's an artifact left over from our time as hunter-gatherers and our brain that
still runs.
And so when you're trying to recharge, when you feel like emotionally, you're just completely
(30:06):
emptied from wearing this mask of the person that you feel like you should be, and we go
and we do this mindless thing to recharge, we're actually draining more energy out of
ourselves.
And that was such an interesting thing to me.
Yeah.
And I think nowadays a lot of people don't even know anything else.
(30:28):
Like if you go like, no, what are your recharge activities?
Because like, what are you talking about?
People don't have hobbies anymore, right?
And that is negatively impacting us as people, as humans, I think.
Yeah.
(30:49):
Yeah, like Wednesday, I was exhausted.
I put in a lot of work, got a bunch of stuff done.
I was exhausted.
And where I play pool day on Wednesday nights, they have this drop-in eight-ball tournament
on Wednesdays.
Was that a yawn going on?
Yeah, I'm tired today, man.
Yeah.
We're going to, like this episode, we'll have to be calling it like chilling and resting
(31:14):
or something.
Oh, yeah, the yawning episode.
So I was like, I don't know if I'm going to go.
But me and my dad go sometimes.
So I'm like, he's going, all right, I'm going to go.
Because I know I'm going to have fun.
And when I get there, all of a sudden, all that tiredness goes away.
(31:39):
And now I'm surrounded by people, and it's all good people for the most part, having
fun, laughing, laughing at how bad I'm doing, whatever, but just having that fun.
And that produces energy.
Yes.
Yeah.
So like, I'm ready to fall asleep.
Like it's six.
(31:59):
And we start playing pool at seven and we get home at 1030.
And I'm like, all right, I'm still up.
Like, I'm not ready for bed.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, so I just don't know where I gain this energy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember someone told this great story once to illustrate that point.
And they said, you know, you're thinking about going to work or doing something.
(32:23):
And you just like, oh, I'm so tired.
Oh, I can't make it tonight.
You know, I'm supposed to go for drinks with friends.
I'm just too tired.
But then if you imagine that the person you would most love to have dinner with calls
you.
So whether that's Taylor Swift or the Dalai Lama or whoever, and goes, can you have dinner
tonight?
All of a sudden, you're not tired at all anymore.
(32:45):
You're like excited.
You're thrilled.
Right.
And so when you think about it like that, you're like, oh, I am a little bit more in
control of my feelings than I think.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's it's strange like how how we're able to create energy, you know, when we need that
(33:09):
when we're in like a higher vibrational emotion.
Energy can be created.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I absolutely believe that.
Yeah.
So is there anything this summer that you're particularly excited about that will bring
you joy?
(33:33):
So yes.
All right.
So I've been wanting to do something for a very long time.
In fact, it started this whole journey even into life coaching.
So when I first started using cannabis like in Connecticut before it was legalized recreationally
as well, I had to get a letter from my doctor saying I was being treated for one of the
(33:59):
causes that you in Connecticut you can get.
So I did that, started using it and before my doctor gave me the letter because he was
at the VA, the VA is, you know, more on the federal side.
So they're like, nope, there's absolutely no good that'll come of that.
And he gave me all of this, like these studies that'll show that one of two things will happen.
(34:21):
I'll either smoke and have a psychotic break and have more mental health issues than ever.
Or I'll just basically sit around my house never doing anything, you know, for the rest
of my life.
And I know both of those aren't true, especially the first one.
I looked at the study when they described the methodology, it was they looked at inner
(34:45):
city youth that had been arrested for a violent crime.
And then they looked at have they ever been arrested for marijuana possession.
And most of them have.
Right.
So they said, ah, see, if you use marijuana, you'll commit a violent crime.
Right.
But it's correlation, not causation, right?
(35:06):
Yeah.
Like, my God, like who couldn't be arrested?
Like, I even heard like a cop say, like, you know, when they have the quotas for the arrest,
said I can go out to a street corner and arrest like 12 people with marijuana, like right
now, like it's not hard to do, you know.
So I started watching Family Guy when I was when I was smoking.
(35:30):
And then when I got into the coaching, the way my mind works, like a lot of things that
were being said by like Peter Griffin that were just so stupid in a way can match up
with like the stuff that I was learning.
Like he had one time he had two angels, the angel and the devil on his shoulder told him
(35:51):
to do something and the angel just got fed up, grabbed the devil, Peter and like pulled
out a gun and put it to his put it or put it to real Peters had it was like, do it,
do the right thing, do it, you know, and I'm like, that's what it takes sometimes.
Like this angel just put his boot up our ass and being like, just get this freaking shit
done.
So I was like, and then what my background in in church, right?
(36:17):
So I started thinking one day and this was a complete cannabis induced thought, but Moses
was in the desert.
He wore a robe and sandals and he communed with the burning bush.
I'm not in a desert, but I spend most my time in my garage.
(36:37):
So and I wear sweatpants and sandals and I smoke a burning bush.
So could I be the prophet of Peter Griffin?
So I want to write this, this book based off of life lessons learned from Peter Griffin
(36:58):
on how to overcome PTSD.
And that almost like through this way of though, that I actually did have a psychotic break
and now I'm hearing the voice of God specifically through Peter Griffin.
So my for my birthday, my parents just got me this new journal.
Oh, so cool.
(37:19):
That's cool.
I can't imagine like it's all leather and then look at like the pages.
Oh, yeah, I love cool journals.
And I think that one is so neat because it looks like an old school log book or something.
Yeah, like someone you'd find like on a pirate ship or something.
Yeah, it's so cool.
So I'm like, this is going to be that that book that is going to be all of my notes for
(37:44):
this is going to go in here and I'm going to start figuring out how to put this thing
together because I haven't figured out how to like write it yet.
You know, I don't know.
That's like just it's it's like throwing me a curveball because I don't want to just put
like, you know, Peter Peter said this or whatever, you know, you know, I got to figure out like
(38:05):
a good way to write it.
But I'm just going to have fun with it and make it my goal is to make it as stupid and
foolish as I possibly can.
But to actually have, you know, like a legit message in there.
Yeah.
And it's fiction, even though it's mainly pulled from your life experience, right?
(38:26):
Yeah, yeah, because it's going to be filled with so the stuff in my life, which that that's
not going to be the page turner part of this thing, you know, but mixed with actual science
from physicists, quantum mechanics, psychology, from some of the more like, I don't know what
(38:50):
you call pop psychology, like, like Joe dispensa type stuff, but also from legit psychologists
like Victor Frankel, Edith Edgar, Bessel Vander Kolk, and really just kind of put all of that
together to take the things that Peter says and then explain them in the scientific light
(39:12):
and how I apply them to my life in a stupid way, you know what I mean?
But it made things better for me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you feel a lot of joy when you're writing?
I get lost.
Yeah.
When I went to school.
Yeah.
I went to school for anthropology and my minor was creative writing because I noticed that
(39:42):
academics write for each other.
You know, there's been so many books that like I've tried to read and I'm like, I'm
not smart enough like to read this book.
Like, I'm going to have to look up every other word in a dictionary because it's like 18
syllables and stuff, you know, and I'm just like, no.
(40:02):
But there's such cool stuff coming out of the academic world that is not filtering down
to us.
Yeah.
You know, like one of the things that there was a dude just on the Joe Rogan podcast,
I'm going to forget his name.
(40:23):
He's an actor.
He was like in the one of the first Iron Man movies.
He was a colonel and he was talking about how like science is completely wrong.
You know, so when I hear that, I'm like, all right, here's another idiot that thinks he
knows more than like people that have been studying this stuff for years and years and
(40:46):
years of their lives.
But he's coming up with some pretty weird stuff.
But I don't know how I'm sure it's like with his his fame and his money and stuff.
He's able to use Princeton supercomputers to model stuff.
So he rebuilt Saturn on this on this program with with taking out gravity as an element
(41:12):
in the universe.
Wow, that's crazy.
It worked perfectly.
He has like 97 patents, came up with a new method of flight.
And I don't I'm just hearing sentences.
So I don't know what I'm talking about.
But like that stuff is so engaging to me, you know, and when I and that's the stuff
(41:35):
I like to I like to go.
So like when I'm writing, I just get lost in my head in those words, especially after
I smoke like when I smoke, I feel like my mind is like that journal, like this old ancient
book that just opens up and the story just comes out of the pages and exit out in front
(41:57):
of me.
And it is the greatest feeling in the world to me.
I love that.
That is so cool.
Yeah, I think everybody needs to find their activities that make them feel that way.
Right.
Lost in the flow sort of blissed out giddy.
Yeah.
(42:17):
Yeah.
Yeah.
This thing.
I'm not going to remember his name either, but there's this documentary called.
I'm not going to remember this dude.
My mind is like, it's a tired, yawning.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The most low key episode.
Damn.
(42:40):
So he was the first Alex Humble.
I think his name is.
So he was the first person to climb El Capitan with no ropes.
And he did it like in three hours.
This dude is like a climbing savant.
Like, I mean, he does stuff that nobody else would do.
(43:01):
And he had a thing.
He was saying it's all about that level of focus where you get into a zone where everything
else falls away and only tunnel vision.
You only have the tanks get here.
And he said that moment of absolute perfection that lasts for a second.
(43:24):
That's what he lives for, you know, and, and for me, like when I look back at my writing,
I love printing out the first draft and then ripping it apart with a pen on the paper and
then writing up another one and then ripping out, ripping it apart.
And like that to me, those are my moments of perfection.
When I take something that's bullshit and then turn it into something that when I pick
(43:48):
up a year later and read it, I'm like, I wrote that.
Like I did that.
And I'm like, you know, like that's, that's what I love.
Yeah, that's beautiful.
Yeah.
I feel that way sometimes when I'm writing, I can get into that flow space.
And then also when I'm doing crafts or artwork or, you know, something like that, actually,
(44:15):
this is really silly, but you know how there's those guys that paint like the little figurines?
Yeah.
We got a Lord of the Rings game that has all sorts of like figurines.
And I thought, you know, I bet I would enjoy painting those because that's the kind of
focus where it's like you have to be focused enough to be doing this small artwork so that
(44:37):
your brain is actually resting, right?
Because you're in that like focus flow space.
But there's so many things that, you know, people can do to get to that space, but that
space is known, right?
There's research behind your brainwaves when you're in that state and how healing they are
to your body and your nervous system and how imperative they are for learning, like to
(45:00):
learn whatever you had previously taken in the week before.
So I think that, yeah, those activities are so key to joy and commitment.
And it's so cool too, because when we get into that flow state where when they do brain
(45:22):
scans of people that are in that state, they find that there is a lot of activity going
on in the frontal lobe.
Right.
So the frontal lobe is the latest diversion of our brain to evolve, you know, or the
part of our brain to evolve.
So it's the newest part of our brain.
When we're doing tasks that are routine, our frontal lobe is like basically shut off.
(45:46):
It's dark, you know, and all of the older parts of our brain are doing it because we
don't need to spend time thinking about, I'm going to do that.
Like I don't have to think about making my bed and folding lawn because it's all routine,
you know.
When I'm doing that, a lot of times my thoughts will just kind of go off into something and
(46:07):
of course they always go negative because it's natural for them to do that.
But when you're in that flow state, when you're doing something new, which requires more of
a level of concentration, your frontal lobe lights up.
And that's where like I'm trying to learn to live my life from that, that part of my
(46:28):
brain.
Yeah.
You know, we're experiencing everything as if it's brand new and focusing completely
on things.
And it is such an amazing feeling that comes out of that.
You know, I don't even know what emotion to apply to it besides I just feel good.
(46:51):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I totally get that.
I feel good just like complete content, right?
All those things.
Yeah.
There was a day last week, finished up all the stuff I wanted to do and I spent like
(47:12):
a good portion of my day like in that flow and I was just standing in my kitchen and
looking outside and I was like, that's a cool tree.
That tree got to be like a hundred feet tall and Sandy's like, what are you doing?
And I'm like, I don't know, but I can stand here for like another hour and be the happiest
(47:34):
person on the earth.
I just feel so content and good right now.
Yeah.
There's a word that comes out of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what do you think if someone's listening and they're not feeling any of the joy and
contentment and stuff?
And we obviously gave a lot of ideas, but like in your opinion, what's the number one
(47:59):
thing that shifts towards a more content, happy lifestyle?
The number one thing?
We're up there, right?
Like what are the top things?
Like if somebody could do one thing today to start changing the way they experience the
(48:19):
world so they have more joy, what would you say that it's a good tool?
Okay.
So and this comes to me from the beautiful cannabis flower.
This like, I was like in a tunnel yesterday with my thoughts and this thought like came
to me and I'm like, ah, it's so cool.
(48:41):
So at a certain level, like we've talked about before, everything is a binary choice.
So one or zero, it's up or down, left or right, right or wrong, on or off, black or
white, you know, like there's all these variations, but at a certain level, we can just look at
the two extreme sides of it.
(49:06):
And also with a coin, you have two sides of every coin, yeah, heads and tails, right?
So when we're not feeling that our brain, number one is focusing on how bad we're feeling,
which then drives more of our focus to that feeling, which means we're going to feel it
(49:28):
more.
Then our language is going to, I know for me, it goes, why are you feeling like this?
You should know all this stuff.
Why are you feeling anxiety?
Why are you feeling depression?
Like you're supposed to be a life coach.
Like you're supposed to teach people how to deal with this.
You suck.
You have to do it.
You got to disband everything and just like live under your house or something, you know,
all this stuff.
(49:50):
So the language then pushes you further down that way as well.
And again, that's natural.
So when that happens, that means your mind is working exactly the way it's supposed to
work.
It's not a disorder, right?
It's a negativity bias.
So when that's working, your mind is good.
It's calling me a piece of shit.
(50:10):
I'm good.
Right?
I'm good.
But we have to remember that even in our lives, there's two sides of that coin of who we are.
So I'm a guy that, if I let my brain run free range, I'm a guy that got out of the military,
(50:33):
worked in a prison for a while, got hurt, retired, gained tons of weight, graduated from
school that did nothing, you know, and, and so that whole time, that 20 year period, I'm
calling myself every day worthless, a bum, I'm a coward.
(50:53):
Even when I realized it was PTSD that I was dealing with, like, why did I have PTSD?
It was Bosnia.
It wasn't Iraq, wasn't Afghanistan.
I'm a bitch, you know, all this stuff.
So which is making me feel more and more and more.
But even though I am that guy, I am also the guy that at 18 at 210 pounds of pure chub
(51:16):
joined the military, had a great reputation in the military.
Towards the end, I, to me, I lost that a little bit when I started having trouble with the
PTSD, got out of the military, had a successful career in, in, in the prisons, had to leave
that because I got hurt.
Didn't, I wasn't content to just change state jobs and like count traffic cones for the
(51:42):
rest of my life, you know what I mean?
So went, got my degree.
And now here I am trying to run my business, trying to do things that I'm passionate about
because I lived in a way that allows for me to do that right now without having to worry
about our bills paid or, you know, everything is taken care of.
So I'm the guy that got back with Sandy after we got divorced, fixed my relationship with
(52:10):
my kids.
So all of that is true at the same time.
The guy that gained, you know, 300 pounds, you know, from going knee deep in Doritos every
other day, you know, I'm still this guy.
Yeah.
So it's, which one am I going to choose to let my focus go to my focus naturally will
(52:31):
go to the negative side.
So I think one of the greatest things that you can do is choose in that moment to remember
good things about yourself.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, if we don't start off with loving ourselves and feeling good with ourselves,
like my, I think I've said this before, like my church background, like one of my favorite
(52:56):
verses in the Bible now is when they asked you just what's the most important commandment.
He said to love thy neighbor or to love the Lord, thy God, and then to love thy neighbor
as I self.
And if you like look at that verse backwards, if you don't love yourself, you can't love
your neighbor, I mean, because everything is going to be like a threat and like, oh,
what's going on or whatever, you know, and then if you, if you can't love your neighbor,
(53:17):
you can't love God.
So hating yourself is natural.
And then we want somebody else to love us.
We want somebody else to give to us what we can't provide for ourselves.
Yeah.
But when we can love ourselves and I'm not talking about like, I am the most handsome
(53:38):
guy in the world.
Like, I mean, now if I lived in the land of Oopa Loopa, dude, I am a model in that land,
you know, but like, I'm not talking about, but I'm just talking about you like, you know,
I made some bad choices, but I've handled my shit.
Yeah.
Proud of that.
Yeah.
(53:59):
I agree.
100% agree with you that like managing yourself, talk and learning to be kinder to yourself
and to love yourself is absolutely the foundation.
And then the second thing I would say is just slow the fuck down, like slow down.
You can't find joy and peace in the hustle or like this frenetic energy that a lot of
(54:23):
people live in.
And it's like, if you slow down and start talking kinder to yourself, you're going to
be amazed at the changes in your life.
Just doing those two things, I think, because they're huge.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like I knew a dude that he was like, like big into like the hustle.
I'm going to change the world and like work and like crazy and stuff.
(54:48):
And he's big into wolves.
And he's like, I'm going to, I'm the wolf, you know, and I never understood like, why
I'm wanting to be an animal, you know what I mean?
Because like they live outside.
I want to be a human being, you know, like a cool couch and a TV.
And if I was going to be an animal, I'd want to be a manatee man, like just lasening, grazing
(55:11):
dude, like just floating in the warm waters in Florida, you know, like that's what I want
to be.
But like he wants to be a wolf.
But like a lot of times, like with that frenetic energy, you're a chihuahua, you're just this
little thing that's not doing anything and just shaking off.
I got to move.
I got to move.
I got to move.
Like wolves chill out.
Like I just saw a video of a coyote and a golf course playing with a golf ball, you
(55:36):
know, like throwing it up in the air in its mouth and then like prancing around like a
dog would, you know, like, and this is just a wild coyote.
And I'm like that seed, like that's the thing.
Like these animals know when to rest.
Yeah.
They know when to work.
They know when to fight.
They know when not to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Responding appropriately, right?
(55:57):
Yeah.
We're just told it's always like go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, like no.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, even though this was been a tired yawning episode, I still think that we came out with
some really good nuggets.
Yeah.
Maybe we should have add that into our like, like stack of videos that we do like, like
(56:20):
every once in a while we'll do the ones on the mushrooms.
Yeah.
Just do one like low energy and just see where it goes.
Who knows?
Oh, all right.
And that a big yawn and a stretch and goodbye.
Time to take a nap.
Thank you for listening to the Chasing Thoughts podcast.
(56:40):
Please support us by liking, subscribing, or leaving a review or comment.
We would really appreciate it.
If you'd like to be a guest, we would love to explore life and what it means to be human
with you.
And if you'd like to see more of us, please email us at chasingthoughtspodcast at gmail.com.
Welcome to the Chasing Thoughts podcast.
(00:07):
Chasing Thoughts was founded by strangers, two life coaches who met on TikTok and shared
the desire to create a different kind of life coaching podcast.
Instead of talking about how to do it right, the Chasing Thoughts podcast explores embracing
our true essence to find a deeper sense of purpose and fulfillment.
Life coaches Keith and Mindy take a unique approach that transcends popular notions of
(00:32):
perpetual happiness and striving relentlessly to become one's ideal self.
Listen in as Mindy, Keith and their guests take a deep dive into their own minds and
souls to investigate the beauty of imperfection, challenge their beliefs, and embrace the richness
of living a truly authentic life.
Hi, my name is Keith and I'm a strategic interventionist and stoner-spirited life coach.
(00:59):
Hi, my name is Mindy and I am an authenticity empowerment coach.
Welcome to Chasing Thoughts.
Hey everybody, it is Chasing Thoughts season 2, episode 23.
And Keith and I, we're just talking about how we're both kind of tired and mellow today.
(01:23):
So if you hear us talking slowly, that's the reason why.
I'm not sure why.
Maybe it's just the end of a long week, but I'm like, I could take a nap after this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's the same.
I don't know if it's like the weather because it got pretty hot here.
Well, for us, it was like high 80s and stuff.
(01:46):
And now it's cooled off, but it feels so good.
I can just lay on my couch with the windows open and just...
I love that.
Yeah.
Just spend the day just laying there feeling the breeze and stuff.
Yeah.
I love to just put on light, instrumental or electric, low frequency music.
(02:09):
Like something just almost in the background and then it's so relaxing.
The windows open and yeah, I love that.
Yeah.
A lot of times too, I'll play the office in the background like that, but like...
So I can barely hear it and just close my eyes.
And nine times out of 10, I end up drifting off to like Dwight Shrew.
Yeah.
(02:29):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sometimes I do guided meditations or sometimes I do TV, but man, it just feels really good
to let yourself get into that deep, relaxed state.
Yeah.
And between being asleep and awake, I love that state.
Oh dude.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(02:50):
I think last night, around three o'clock, I got up real quick and when I went back in
bed, I was just like, I am so comfortable.
I was just looking out my window.
I didn't have a desire to close my eyes and go right back to sleep, but within like five
minutes I was out again, but I love those moments where everything is quiet, dark.
(03:10):
It's just, it's so cool.
Yeah.
And I think that kind of rest, I think it's valuable to do that on the weekend.
I mean, it's, our weekends are so short and I think there's a lot of pressure to be busy
and catch up on projects or see friends.
And also it's really important to take some downtime and let your body integrate everything
(03:35):
that's happened to it.
Yeah, man.
I mean, the majority of human history, we lived as hunter-gatherers and on average, they
worked about four hours a day.
So I think we even talked about the other day, like the four hour work week, that whole
thing, you know, and then like the consensus is like, oh, we're all just lazy.
We got to be working the 40 hours and more and all that.
(03:57):
Like that's not what we were designed to do.
Like they would go out, hunt and gather, you know, then come back and it was maintenance
and socialization and family time and just being community time.
Yeah.
Yeah, the more time that I spend just sitting around or journaling or, you know, sort of
(04:18):
integrating, the more addicted I get to it.
And then when I don't have it, I'm like, ah, what's happening in my life?
I need that time to sort of filter my thoughts and decide what actions I'm taking forward
and what's the most important thing.
And if I just stay busy all the time, it's like I'm not operating from my full self,
(04:42):
right?
I'm at like 10% of my capacity.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, we're not designed to do that.
I know.
Rest is so valuable.
Yeah.
And community was one of the things, probably the most important thing that kept us alive
as a species, you know?
(05:02):
And now we have less and less time with it.
Yeah.
And because of all the screens, we're less and less present with each other, even when
we are with each other.
That's something I highly recommend to people is, you know, with your kids, with your spouse,
with your friends, turn your phone off and put it away.
(05:25):
Give that other person your attention because it makes a difference.
Yeah.
Dude.
I mean, we're both like towards that age where we remember the landlines.
Oh, yeah.
Like, when we left the house, we left the house, nobody knew where we were.
Like you can't get in touch with me.
Nothing.
I would come home and there'd be like messages like on a board next to the phone, you know,
(05:50):
something like that, you know?
But now, like if I leave the house on my phone, I'm like, oh my God, what am I going to miss?
You know?
So for 30 something years of my life, I never missed anything.
But now all of a sudden, like I'm going to miss something major.
Like if I don't have my phone constantly with me.
Yeah.
And I notice it like an addiction type feeling coming up.
(06:13):
Like I'll plug my phone in on a Saturday and just leave it.
And then a couple hours later, I'm like, oh my gosh, if I don't check in something, bad's
going to happen or I don't know about what bad has happened.
I need to.
And it's a, like you said, that's a crazy thought.
Right?
Yeah.
But there's an idea that I have to be plugged in all the time or I'm being irresponsible
(06:34):
or missing out on something.
Yeah.
I've even noticed so like, in fact, it was last Friday at pool.
Um, we're like, everybody's playing, I'm keeping score.
So I have to like watch like what's going on and everything.
But everybody else like they'll play, they'll sit down and they open Facebook, which is funny
(06:55):
too because it's all like older people.
So they go to Facebook and not like talk or something, you know, but, and they're just
scrolling and all of a sudden there's one guy starts talking to me about football and
about how like they're bringing in some type of technology where for the first down, like
where the, it'll be like a camera mounted will, will tell them where the first down is.
(07:18):
So instead of those chains, they won't have to use anymore.
And I, I'm not big into sports, like at all.
Like I just, I don't know, like if I'm not playing, I don't get any enjoyment out of
watching it, you know, so I'm like, dude, I don't care, but I don't want to be me.
So I'm just like, wow, that's crazy.
(07:38):
Cause this, he's such a great dude, you know, and he's into football and everything, but
then he goes to scrolling and then two seconds later, he's talking to me about something completely
different, you know, like, so like, dude, and I looked around and everybody was doing
the same thing.
They were all just scrolling through Facebook.
Yes.
Yeah.
And I think that's actually a perfect segue cause we were going to talk about joy.
(08:01):
I think that a lot of people associate summer with joy.
It's like old programming from childhood where you're like, oh, it's summertime.
Even if you work the same schedule.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's like, okay, let's talk about joy and how do you source joy and how do you cultivate
it?
And I think this whole screen thing and phone thing is a huge part of it because overall
(08:26):
our phones don't bring us a lot of joy and they're not programmed to bring us a lot of
joy and you have to be super intentional about it.
If you're going to use it for joy, right?
Like big boundaries with it.
And yeah, usually with my husband and I, if we're like, you know, oh, let's spend the
(08:47):
evening together, we both put away our phones and the screens.
And then there's like a little minute of sort of like awkward boredom.
And then we go, oh, let's talk, like then we start talking to each other and looking
at each other and interacting with each other.
And it passes.
But I think that's true for a lot of people is it's almost as if they don't know how to
(09:09):
be with another human without checking their phone.
Yeah.
Especially, especially like a stranger.
Yeah, because it's too uncomfortable.
And therefore we're missing out on connection, which we're hardwired for connection to bring
joy.
So we're self sabotaging.
Dude, I saw a comedian, like he was talking about, you know, like in his day when you
(09:32):
were on a bus, like everything's mindfulness these days, you know, and he goes, well, we
were on a bus.
Our entertainment was watching like condensation drip down the window and like move from the
wind.
Like that's mindfulness.
But like we used to do it all the time because there was nothing to distract us.
So we had to just sit with our own thoughts.
(09:54):
Yes.
And now it's like, dude, if you don't have something constantly giving you something
to think about, geez, their people's heads go like in the garbage can quick.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was listening to this one guy talk about how he doesn't go on his cell phone or any
(10:15):
screens in the morning for a couple hours.
And he said, I want to start my day on the offense.
And I thought, what an interesting word to use because a lot of the time we are on the
defense, it's like things are coming to us, right?
And we're trying to filter it out.
But like you just said, if you sit long enough, you will think wise thoughts, you will come
(10:38):
to clarity, you will.
But if you never give that to yourself, you won't access those states.
And so it really is offense.
It's coming out of you.
It's your play game for life.
And I think that's key.
And I've been really wanting to, I mean, I have boundaries with my phone where I have
(10:58):
long carry the time where I set it aside and I have like my focus set up so different people
can get through it different times, but I would love to start a morning routine where
I don't even pick up and look at my phone until I've had breakfast, worked out, taken
a walk, whatever it is that I need.
Yeah.
I've heard similar things before and I'm like, all right, I want to try that.
(11:21):
Because somebody was talking about like the first thing you do in the morning, that's
what's most important to you.
And for most of us, I know for me, like I woke up, rolled over, like unplugged my phone
and then started looking like, what did people comment?
What did people say?
You know what I mean?
Like all that stuff.
And there's almost like this sense of anxiety.
(11:43):
Like is it going to be comment or people are going to be saying I'm stupid or whatever?
You know?
And so you start off your day in this sense of anxiety based off of other people's opinions
of something, a video that you put up that you liked.
You know what I mean?
That's why you put it up.
You know?
(12:03):
So yeah, it's...
Yeah.
I think you've been taking a couple minutes in the morning and you wake up instead of
immediately grabbing your phone, thinking like gratitude thoughts or envisioning the day
you want to have.
Just slowing it down a beat, right?
Remember you to have some of that before you go right to allowing this to program your
(12:27):
thoughts and feelings.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like remember like you ever see like a baby when they wake up and they stretch and they're
just like all over the place, you know?
And it looks so comfortable.
Like just spending a couple minutes in bed, like feeling that.
And then at my age, stretching like that creates a lot of noise, you know?
(12:51):
So like everything is...
That's the first crack pop.
Yeah.
Like all the things like getting back into place and stuff.
But like just doing that and enjoying comfort, you know?
Enjoying those little things.
It's all those little things that become white noise that it's just lost in the background.
Yeah.
(13:12):
And that is being mindful or present, right?
And it's like, oh man, it feels so good in my body when I do this or oh, this tastes so
good or right.
So many of these sensations we just completely blot out when they're positive sensations,
right?
Oh, what it feels like to hug my husband, what it feels like to pet my cat, right?
(13:35):
We're surrounded by pleasures and yet not feeling any of them.
You know, like one of the practices of a Taoist that I follow, he's like from the 16th generation
of the guy that started Tai Chi in China, the Wudang Mountains.
(13:57):
He still lives in the same monastery that is like whatever, great, great, 100 times
removed like grandfather built, you know, years ago.
And he said the first thing you do is you wake up and you go outside.
It doesn't matter if it's raining, if it's cold, hot, you just wake up and you go outside
(14:19):
and you just breathe.
You just look around and breathe, you know?
And then he gets into like some stretching, you know, some morning stretches and stuff
like that.
But he said, you do that for 10 minutes, start your day out for 10 minutes just being outside
and breathing.
And I've tried that, it's just like, my God, dude, like the, the, it just feels so good.
(14:42):
Yeah.
It feels so good and it still requires so much discipline not to let the rubber band snap
back where you go straight to your phone in the morning and then you're on your computer
all day and then you watch TV tell us time to go to bed.
And that's life.
And then you're like, why aren't I feeling fulfilled or happy?
(15:05):
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's not a recipe for happiness, right?
It's just not, you're never going to get that.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
I think that some of the things like we said, cultivating connection with other people,
having some kind of morning routine or like living on your terms, right?
(15:28):
Being mindful.
And I would also say if you're in relationship with people, which everybody is, you know,
husband, kids, friends, the idea, have you heard that saying like, would you rather be
right or would you rather be happy?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think putting that into play and recognizing that there's a lot of small conflicts in life
(15:53):
and if you, if you just rather be happy, you don't really have to pay attention to them.
You don't really need all of your energy.
And I think practicing that can cultivate more joy in your day to day life because you're
not setting off spirals, right?
Or little bombs.
Yeah.
(16:14):
Yeah.
Yeah.
That has helped me and Sandy out so much where, you know, she'll be working, you know,
because the beginning of the year, she works tons of overtime and gets tired and gets drained
and she'll be up.
I think one day she got home at like three in the morning and then they let her sleep
(16:36):
for a little bit and then she had to be back in at 10.
And it's one like the legislative session is in.
She deals with like basically like editing the bills and stuff like that.
So she comes home, she's wasted, get cranky, you know, hungry, all that stuff.
And if she would speak to me like in a tone that I was like, you know, what the, I would
(17:00):
take it personal.
Be like, what the hell, you don't talk to me like that.
Like just because you're tired doesn't mean you can take it out on me, you know, which
is done because I do the same thing.
If I'm tired or hungry or whatever, you know, I'll snap at her real easy.
And in my head, I'm like, you idiot, you know, just because you're tired doesn't mean
you take it out on her.
(17:21):
You know, I don't say that at all because of course I have the right to do that, you
know, but I noticed like that.
Well, that's all about me.
You know, it's, it's like me taking personally how she's feeling instead of thinking about
her and being like, she's been working so hard then having to come home and deal with
me and then like taking care of stuff in the house and stuff, you know, that I, that I
(17:48):
don't get to or whatever.
And she has a right to feel that way.
And when she's, when she snaps at me, it's not because she's pissed off at me.
It's because she's hurting in a way.
Yeah.
So I'm going to go up and give her a hug instead of take it personal.
Yeah.
You know, and I even put that out once.
I did a video on that and some of the comments were like funny because the guy was like, because
(18:13):
it's funny, like they take it to the extreme, you know what I mean?
Like, so one of the comments was, um, um, it's more important to be right.
If someone's going to try to tell me the sky is purple, I'm not going to get out.
I'm like, dude, who, who's saying that?
Like, you know what I mean?
Like who the hell?
Like yes.
If somebody tells you that like they own a giraffe, but they only, they actually have
(18:37):
a Chihuahua, you can say, well, that's not a giraffe.
Like that, that's cool.
You know, but we can, we can surpass so much bullshit just by like saying, well, that person's
in a bad mood.
You know, that sucks too bad for them, but it's not going to affect my energy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(18:57):
And again, that's hard work to do and you have to be aware of self and be able to recognize
that you're not your thoughts or your feelings.
But yeah, I mean, this bag of skin and bones likes to get offended.
I don't know why, but it doesn't serve me.
Like, so I have to kind of be bigger than that reaction.
(19:20):
Yeah.
And then the best, the greatest thing, because you can, everything like to me, like everything
comes back to us, you know, like even doing good, it makes us feel good, which is then
you know, a drive to be good, you know?
So when Sandy is like struggling with that, and if I can answer her snapping or whatever
(19:45):
and say, okay, well, she's just hurting for whatever reason, you know?
So I'm going to answer her snapping with love.
And so she's like snapping and she doesn't like me right now or whatever.
And I just come up and give her a big hug and I'm like, like, you know, I'm sorry, your
day was rough.
You know, what can I do?
Whatever.
Dude, I can ask for anything after that.
(20:07):
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like, so it comes back to you too.
You can be selfish about it.
Be like, yeah, it comes back to you.
Yeah, and when you're showing up being loving your experiencing love, when you're showing
up being compassionate, you're the one experienced compassion, right?
These are good things to feel rather than feeling outraged or victimized or.
(20:28):
Yeah.
And it goes to the same thing with happiness.
Like we're on this search, it seems, for constant happiness.
And I think it's the marketing, social media, everything is designed to gather to grab our
attention for this moment so that we can feel happiness.
But happiness is not a constant state.
(20:49):
You know, it's an effect.
It's a byproduct of what we're doing.
You know, so.
Like, it's almost like you don't go out and be like, I'm going to be happy today.
You know, you go out and be like, I'm going to do good for me today.
I'm going to put in some work and it doesn't matter.
I'm not going to judge myself for what I don't get done.
(21:12):
You know what I mean?
And I'm going to enjoy what I do.
And if I have scheduled this, but like, I'm like, I don't want to do this.
I want to do this.
I'm going to do it.
Right.
And then I feel happiness.
Yeah.
For me, that, that baseline emotion I want to learn to live in is contentment.
Yeah.
And I think there's so many sort of dopamine hacks, right?
(21:37):
So if you wake up and you really do want to feel happy, well, yeah, go for a walk in
nature, exercise, eat healthy food, right?
Like there's so much science behind what will make you feel good.
It's just actually choosing it, right?
That is the challenge sometimes.
But yeah, you can hack your own brain chemicals on a day you're not feeling good, or you can
(21:59):
sit with it and learn something from those negative feelings.
Totally okay.
Whatever you want to do, right?
Yeah.
There's times I'll get into like a depressive mode or whatever where a last couple of days,
but I struggle with it at first, but when I relax into it, just be like, okay, this
is how I feel.
Like I feel contentment.
Yeah.
(22:20):
So I feel like I'm depressed, but I'm still happy at the same time.
Yeah.
It's so weird.
I know I get that way too sometimes.
And I actually find that that is like really rich fertile ground for me.
The states of being, right?
And so I don't necessarily want to chew them away.
(22:42):
The depression or the anxiety.
I want to know I'm okay during it, like you said, but it's serving me in its own way too,
right?
Yeah.
I mean, everything is a spectrum.
You know what I mean?
We have the light spectrum and we as humans see the visible light spectrum, even though
it's a lot bigger than just what we see.
(23:04):
You know, we have this like the sound waves.
And do you ever do that thing?
Like where you listen to things and it said like, it'll be like a button like where this
sound like people 30 and older can't hear it.
Oh yeah.
That's cool.
Like at a science center or something.
They have those little exhibits.
Yeah.
My daughter found one online once and she was doing it and my two daughters and my niece
(23:26):
were like, yeah, we hear that.
I mean, my wife were like, whatever, dude, you're just making this up.
There is no sound whatsoever.
So like there's a spectrum of sound that we hear and then as we get older, apparently
that spectrum gets shorter and shorter and shorter.
Oh, it's true.
Yeah.
There's a spectrum of something that I had a point and my brain just took a laugh because
(23:52):
I started thinking about the whole spectrum thing.
But yeah, there's that spectrum of like happiness too.
You know, and it's not to chase.
Yeah.
When do you think that when you think about like the happiest times in your life or chapters
of life or moment of life, what did they have?
(24:14):
Like what elements did they have in them?
The biggest thing is community.
There were people there that I was close with.
Yeah.
You know, that's when I felt the most confident, the most connected and the funniest parts
(24:44):
are like, because as soon as you said the happiest times, I went right to a time that
caused a lot of problems for me as well.
Which is our deployment into Bosnia.
But looking back on it, I'm able to see it from a different angle where I remember all
(25:12):
of this stuff that just makes me so happy.
Like we had to build guard shacks out of sandbags and it's the middle of winter in Eastern
Europe.
The sound was not very giving and we had to work so hard for days to build these little
shacks.
And one time me and my sergeant were in there and it must have been like three in the morning
(25:35):
and we're just watching through our night vision and stuff like just scan it.
And all of a sudden three wild dogs just came like ripping into this little guard hut fighting.
And here's these two grown dudes.
My sergeant was a sniper.
He had gone through sniper school and saw he was badass.
(25:58):
And we just picked our legs up off the floor.
We were just like screaming.
We were like, we had weapons, we got ammo like all over the place and we're just screaming
as these three dogs are fighting and it lasted about 10 seconds and they were gone.
And we just looked at each other and we were like, what the hell was that?
And that was it.
(26:18):
That was the end of it.
Like we've never seen these dogs again.
And just thinking about those moments, the games that we would play with each other,
the things that we would do to each other, just to mess with each other.
I look back on that and I miss that camaraderie so bad.
(26:39):
But I feel so happy that I was once connected like that.
Yeah.
I think that's really, people find that really challenging to create as adults in the world.
I think everybody struggles with that.
Like unless you happen to be friends with people you went to college with or a family
or it's very different now that you're not getting married when you're 20 and it's just
(27:06):
about your family.
Most people are single into their 30s.
And so there's a lot more loneliness, I think.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, when I look back at my happy memories, they contain two things that we haven't talked
about yet.
One is health.
(27:27):
Like when my body was feeling great, when I was fit, when I was healthy.
And then the other one is like being connected to my purpose or feeling aligned or like aligned
contribution, aligned passion.
Those are my happiest moments when I look back, like when I felt like I was living life
(27:52):
the way I'm supposed to or wanted to, right?
I was on the right path.
For me, that's a really satisfying, joyful feeling.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's cool too because it's not like we were talking about it's not you going out
like the your focus is not I'm going to go out to be happy.
(28:15):
Your focus is just living in alignment, doing what you should be doing, all that stuff.
And then that happiness comes as a byproduct of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think those are all like, everything we're talking about takes work and dedication.
And scrolling Instagram or playing blocks on your phone is the like instant junk food
(28:39):
candy dopamine.
That's not really creating that like deep peace and joy.
It's creating that surface level.
I'm relaxing.
I'm happy, you know, but it's really not true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I gave a talk once at Central Connecticut State University and there was a girl there
(29:00):
that she said that when she's like at a family party or something, she gets overwhelmed with
all the people.
So she has to isolate herself to recharge.
So I was like, all right, cool.
What do you do when you recharge?
She's like, well, I go in my room, I shut the lights off and I scroll on my phone.
I'm like, okay.
And then how long does it take before you feel recharged?
(29:22):
And she goes, I never do.
So when I read this thing, neuroscience were talking about like when we do stuff with our
mind that's mindless, you know, just that mindless scrolling binge watching a TV, like
a TV show that we've watched millions of times or whatever, you know, our brain has a default
(29:42):
mode that is negative and slightly anxious because it's scanning for threats, you know,
and that's an artifact left over from our time as hunter-gatherers and our brain that
still runs.
And so when you're trying to recharge, when you feel like emotionally, you're just completely
(30:06):
emptied from wearing this mask of the person that you feel like you should be, and we go
and we do this mindless thing to recharge, we're actually draining more energy out of
ourselves.
And that was such an interesting thing to me.
Yeah.
And I think nowadays a lot of people don't even know anything else.
(30:28):
Like if you go like, no, what are your recharge activities?
Because like, what are you talking about?
People don't have hobbies anymore, right?
And that is negatively impacting us as people, as humans, I think.
Yeah.
(30:49):
Yeah, like Wednesday, I was exhausted.
I put in a lot of work, got a bunch of stuff done.
I was exhausted.
And where I play pool day on Wednesday nights, they have this drop-in eight-ball tournament
on Wednesdays.
Was that a yawn going on?
Yeah, I'm tired today, man.
Yeah.
We're going to, like this episode, we'll have to be calling it like chilling and resting
(31:14):
or something.
Oh, yeah, the yawning episode.
So I was like, I don't know if I'm going to go.
But me and my dad go sometimes.
So I'm like, he's going, all right, I'm going to go.
Because I know I'm going to have fun.
And when I get there, all of a sudden, all that tiredness goes away.
(31:39):
And now I'm surrounded by people, and it's all good people for the most part, having
fun, laughing, laughing at how bad I'm doing, whatever, but just having that fun.
And that produces energy.
Yes.
Yeah.
So like, I'm ready to fall asleep.
Like it's six.
(31:59):
And we start playing pool at seven and we get home at 1030.
And I'm like, all right, I'm still up.
Like, I'm not ready for bed.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, so I just don't know where I gain this energy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember someone told this great story once to illustrate that point.
And they said, you know, you're thinking about going to work or doing something.
(32:23):
And you just like, oh, I'm so tired.
Oh, I can't make it tonight.
You know, I'm supposed to go for drinks with friends.
I'm just too tired.
But then if you imagine that the person you would most love to have dinner with calls
you.
So whether that's Taylor Swift or the Dalai Lama or whoever, and goes, can you have dinner
tonight?
All of a sudden, you're not tired at all anymore.
(32:45):
You're like excited.
You're thrilled.
Right.
And so when you think about it like that, you're like, oh, I am a little bit more in
control of my feelings than I think.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's it's strange like how how we're able to create energy, you know, when we need that
(33:09):
when we're in like a higher vibrational emotion.
Energy can be created.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I absolutely believe that.
Yeah.
So is there anything this summer that you're particularly excited about that will bring
you joy?
(33:33):
So yes.
All right.
So I've been wanting to do something for a very long time.
In fact, it started this whole journey even into life coaching.
So when I first started using cannabis like in Connecticut before it was legalized recreationally
as well, I had to get a letter from my doctor saying I was being treated for one of the
(33:59):
causes that you in Connecticut you can get.
So I did that, started using it and before my doctor gave me the letter because he was
at the VA, the VA is, you know, more on the federal side.
So they're like, nope, there's absolutely no good that'll come of that.
And he gave me all of this, like these studies that'll show that one of two things will happen.
(34:21):
I'll either smoke and have a psychotic break and have more mental health issues than ever.
Or I'll just basically sit around my house never doing anything, you know, for the rest
of my life.
And I know both of those aren't true, especially the first one.
I looked at the study when they described the methodology, it was they looked at inner
(34:45):
city youth that had been arrested for a violent crime.
And then they looked at have they ever been arrested for marijuana possession.
And most of them have.
Right.
So they said, ah, see, if you use marijuana, you'll commit a violent crime.
Right.
But it's correlation, not causation, right?
(35:06):
Yeah.
Like, my God, like who couldn't be arrested?
Like, I even heard like a cop say, like, you know, when they have the quotas for the arrest,
said I can go out to a street corner and arrest like 12 people with marijuana, like right
now, like it's not hard to do, you know.
So I started watching Family Guy when I was when I was smoking.
(35:30):
And then when I got into the coaching, the way my mind works, like a lot of things that
were being said by like Peter Griffin that were just so stupid in a way can match up
with like the stuff that I was learning.
Like he had one time he had two angels, the angel and the devil on his shoulder told him
(35:51):
to do something and the angel just got fed up, grabbed the devil, Peter and like pulled
out a gun and put it to his put it or put it to real Peters had it was like, do it,
do the right thing, do it, you know, and I'm like, that's what it takes sometimes.
Like this angel just put his boot up our ass and being like, just get this freaking shit
done.
So I was like, and then what my background in in church, right?
(36:17):
So I started thinking one day and this was a complete cannabis induced thought, but Moses
was in the desert.
He wore a robe and sandals and he communed with the burning bush.
I'm not in a desert, but I spend most my time in my garage.
(36:37):
So and I wear sweatpants and sandals and I smoke a burning bush.
So could I be the prophet of Peter Griffin?
So I want to write this, this book based off of life lessons learned from Peter Griffin
(36:58):
on how to overcome PTSD.
And that almost like through this way of though, that I actually did have a psychotic break
and now I'm hearing the voice of God specifically through Peter Griffin.
So my for my birthday, my parents just got me this new journal.
Oh, so cool.
(37:19):
That's cool.
I can't imagine like it's all leather and then look at like the pages.
Oh, yeah, I love cool journals.
And I think that one is so neat because it looks like an old school log book or something.
Yeah, like someone you'd find like on a pirate ship or something.
Yeah, it's so cool.
So I'm like, this is going to be that that book that is going to be all of my notes for
(37:44):
this is going to go in here and I'm going to start figuring out how to put this thing
together because I haven't figured out how to like write it yet.
You know, I don't know.
That's like just it's it's like throwing me a curveball because I don't want to just put
like, you know, Peter Peter said this or whatever, you know, you know, I got to figure out like
(38:05):
a good way to write it.
But I'm just going to have fun with it and make it my goal is to make it as stupid and
foolish as I possibly can.
But to actually have, you know, like a legit message in there.
Yeah.
And it's fiction, even though it's mainly pulled from your life experience, right?
(38:26):
Yeah, yeah, because it's going to be filled with so the stuff in my life, which that that's
not going to be the page turner part of this thing, you know, but mixed with actual science
from physicists, quantum mechanics, psychology, from some of the more like, I don't know what
(38:50):
you call pop psychology, like, like Joe dispensa type stuff, but also from legit psychologists
like Victor Frankel, Edith Edgar, Bessel Vander Kolk, and really just kind of put all of that
together to take the things that Peter says and then explain them in the scientific light
(39:12):
and how I apply them to my life in a stupid way, you know what I mean?
But it made things better for me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you feel a lot of joy when you're writing?
I get lost.
Yeah.
When I went to school.
Yeah.
I went to school for anthropology and my minor was creative writing because I noticed that
(39:42):
academics write for each other.
You know, there's been so many books that like I've tried to read and I'm like, I'm
not smart enough like to read this book.
Like, I'm going to have to look up every other word in a dictionary because it's like 18
syllables and stuff, you know, and I'm just like, no.
(40:02):
But there's such cool stuff coming out of the academic world that is not filtering down
to us.
Yeah.
You know, like one of the things that there was a dude just on the Joe Rogan podcast,
I'm going to forget his name.
(40:23):
He's an actor.
He was like in the one of the first Iron Man movies.
He was a colonel and he was talking about how like science is completely wrong.
You know, so when I hear that, I'm like, all right, here's another idiot that thinks he
knows more than like people that have been studying this stuff for years and years and
(40:46):
years of their lives.
But he's coming up with some pretty weird stuff.
But I don't know how I'm sure it's like with his his fame and his money and stuff.
He's able to use Princeton supercomputers to model stuff.
So he rebuilt Saturn on this on this program with with taking out gravity as an element
(41:12):
in the universe.
Wow, that's crazy.
It worked perfectly.
He has like 97 patents, came up with a new method of flight.
And I don't I'm just hearing sentences.
So I don't know what I'm talking about.
But like that stuff is so engaging to me, you know, and when I and that's the stuff
(41:35):
I like to I like to go.
So like when I'm writing, I just get lost in my head in those words, especially after
I smoke like when I smoke, I feel like my mind is like that journal, like this old ancient
book that just opens up and the story just comes out of the pages and exit out in front
(41:57):
of me.
And it is the greatest feeling in the world to me.
I love that.
That is so cool.
Yeah, I think everybody needs to find their activities that make them feel that way.
Right.
Lost in the flow sort of blissed out giddy.
Yeah.
(42:17):
Yeah.
Yeah.
This thing.
I'm not going to remember his name either, but there's this documentary called.
I'm not going to remember this dude.
My mind is like, it's a tired, yawning.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The most low key episode.
Damn.
(42:40):
So he was the first Alex Humble.
I think his name is.
So he was the first person to climb El Capitan with no ropes.
And he did it like in three hours.
This dude is like a climbing savant.
Like, I mean, he does stuff that nobody else would do.
(43:01):
And he had a thing.
He was saying it's all about that level of focus where you get into a zone where everything
else falls away and only tunnel vision.
You only have the tanks get here.
And he said that moment of absolute perfection that lasts for a second.
(43:24):
That's what he lives for, you know, and, and for me, like when I look back at my writing,
I love printing out the first draft and then ripping it apart with a pen on the paper and
then writing up another one and then ripping out, ripping it apart.
And like that to me, those are my moments of perfection.
When I take something that's bullshit and then turn it into something that when I pick
(43:48):
up a year later and read it, I'm like, I wrote that.
Like I did that.
And I'm like, you know, like that's, that's what I love.
Yeah, that's beautiful.
Yeah.
I feel that way sometimes when I'm writing, I can get into that flow space.
And then also when I'm doing crafts or artwork or, you know, something like that, actually,
(44:15):
this is really silly, but you know how there's those guys that paint like the little figurines?
Yeah.
We got a Lord of the Rings game that has all sorts of like figurines.
And I thought, you know, I bet I would enjoy painting those because that's the kind of
focus where it's like you have to be focused enough to be doing this small artwork so that
(44:37):
your brain is actually resting, right?
Because you're in that like focus flow space.
But there's so many things that, you know, people can do to get to that space, but that
space is known, right?
There's research behind your brainwaves when you're in that state and how healing they are
to your body and your nervous system and how imperative they are for learning, like to
(45:00):
learn whatever you had previously taken in the week before.
So I think that, yeah, those activities are so key to joy and commitment.
And it's so cool too, because when we get into that flow state where when they do brain
(45:22):
scans of people that are in that state, they find that there is a lot of activity going
on in the frontal lobe.
Right.
So the frontal lobe is the latest diversion of our brain to evolve, you know, or the
part of our brain to evolve.
So it's the newest part of our brain.
When we're doing tasks that are routine, our frontal lobe is like basically shut off.
(45:46):
It's dark, you know, and all of the older parts of our brain are doing it because we
don't need to spend time thinking about, I'm going to do that.
Like I don't have to think about making my bed and folding lawn because it's all routine,
you know.
When I'm doing that, a lot of times my thoughts will just kind of go off into something and
(46:07):
of course they always go negative because it's natural for them to do that.
But when you're in that flow state, when you're doing something new, which requires more of
a level of concentration, your frontal lobe lights up.
And that's where like I'm trying to learn to live my life from that, that part of my
(46:28):
brain.
Yeah.
You know, we're experiencing everything as if it's brand new and focusing completely
on things.
And it is such an amazing feeling that comes out of that.
You know, I don't even know what emotion to apply to it besides I just feel good.
(46:51):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I totally get that.
I feel good just like complete content, right?
All those things.
Yeah.
There was a day last week, finished up all the stuff I wanted to do and I spent like
(47:12):
a good portion of my day like in that flow and I was just standing in my kitchen and
looking outside and I was like, that's a cool tree.
That tree got to be like a hundred feet tall and Sandy's like, what are you doing?
And I'm like, I don't know, but I can stand here for like another hour and be the happiest
(47:34):
person on the earth.
I just feel so content and good right now.
Yeah.
There's a word that comes out of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what do you think if someone's listening and they're not feeling any of the joy and
contentment and stuff?
And we obviously gave a lot of ideas, but like in your opinion, what's the number one
(47:59):
thing that shifts towards a more content, happy lifestyle?
The number one thing?
We're up there, right?
Like what are the top things?
Like if somebody could do one thing today to start changing the way they experience the
(48:19):
world so they have more joy, what would you say that it's a good tool?
Okay.
So and this comes to me from the beautiful cannabis flower.
This like, I was like in a tunnel yesterday with my thoughts and this thought like came
to me and I'm like, ah, it's so cool.
(48:41):
So at a certain level, like we've talked about before, everything is a binary choice.
So one or zero, it's up or down, left or right, right or wrong, on or off, black or
white, you know, like there's all these variations, but at a certain level, we can just look at
the two extreme sides of it.
(49:06):
And also with a coin, you have two sides of every coin, yeah, heads and tails, right?
So when we're not feeling that our brain, number one is focusing on how bad we're feeling,
which then drives more of our focus to that feeling, which means we're going to feel it
(49:28):
more.
Then our language is going to, I know for me, it goes, why are you feeling like this?
You should know all this stuff.
Why are you feeling anxiety?
Why are you feeling depression?
Like you're supposed to be a life coach.
Like you're supposed to teach people how to deal with this.
You suck.
You have to do it.
You got to disband everything and just like live under your house or something, you know,
all this stuff.
(49:50):
So the language then pushes you further down that way as well.
And again, that's natural.
So when that happens, that means your mind is working exactly the way it's supposed to
work.
It's not a disorder, right?
It's a negativity bias.
So when that's working, your mind is good.
It's calling me a piece of shit.
(50:10):
I'm good.
Right?
I'm good.
But we have to remember that even in our lives, there's two sides of that coin of who we are.
So I'm a guy that, if I let my brain run free range, I'm a guy that got out of the military,
(50:33):
worked in a prison for a while, got hurt, retired, gained tons of weight, graduated from
school that did nothing, you know, and, and so that whole time, that 20 year period, I'm
calling myself every day worthless, a bum, I'm a coward.
(50:53):
Even when I realized it was PTSD that I was dealing with, like, why did I have PTSD?
It was Bosnia.
It wasn't Iraq, wasn't Afghanistan.
I'm a bitch, you know, all this stuff.
So which is making me feel more and more and more.
But even though I am that guy, I am also the guy that at 18 at 210 pounds of pure chub
(51:16):
joined the military, had a great reputation in the military.
Towards the end, I, to me, I lost that a little bit when I started having trouble with the
PTSD, got out of the military, had a successful career in, in, in the prisons, had to leave
that because I got hurt.
Didn't, I wasn't content to just change state jobs and like count traffic cones for the
(51:42):
rest of my life, you know what I mean?
So went, got my degree.
And now here I am trying to run my business, trying to do things that I'm passionate about
because I lived in a way that allows for me to do that right now without having to worry
about our bills paid or, you know, everything is taken care of.
So I'm the guy that got back with Sandy after we got divorced, fixed my relationship with
(52:10):
my kids.
So all of that is true at the same time.
The guy that gained, you know, 300 pounds, you know, from going knee deep in Doritos every
other day, you know, I'm still this guy.
Yeah.
So it's, which one am I going to choose to let my focus go to my focus naturally will
(52:31):
go to the negative side.
So I think one of the greatest things that you can do is choose in that moment to remember
good things about yourself.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, if we don't start off with loving ourselves and feeling good with ourselves,
like my, I think I've said this before, like my church background, like one of my favorite
(52:56):
verses in the Bible now is when they asked you just what's the most important commandment.
He said to love thy neighbor or to love the Lord, thy God, and then to love thy neighbor
as I self.
And if you like look at that verse backwards, if you don't love yourself, you can't love
your neighbor, I mean, because everything is going to be like a threat and like, oh,
what's going on or whatever, you know, and then if you, if you can't love your neighbor,
(53:17):
you can't love God.
So hating yourself is natural.
And then we want somebody else to love us.
We want somebody else to give to us what we can't provide for ourselves.
Yeah.
But when we can love ourselves and I'm not talking about like, I am the most handsome
(53:38):
guy in the world.
Like, I mean, now if I lived in the land of Oopa Loopa, dude, I am a model in that land,
you know, but like, I'm not talking about, but I'm just talking about you like, you know,
I made some bad choices, but I've handled my shit.
Yeah.
Proud of that.
Yeah.
(53:59):
I agree.
100% agree with you that like managing yourself, talk and learning to be kinder to yourself
and to love yourself is absolutely the foundation.
And then the second thing I would say is just slow the fuck down, like slow down.
You can't find joy and peace in the hustle or like this frenetic energy that a lot of
(54:23):
people live in.
And it's like, if you slow down and start talking kinder to yourself, you're going to
be amazed at the changes in your life.
Just doing those two things, I think, because they're huge.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like I knew a dude that he was like, like big into like the hustle.
I'm going to change the world and like work and like crazy and stuff.
(54:48):
And he's big into wolves.
And he's like, I'm going to, I'm the wolf, you know, and I never understood like, why
I'm wanting to be an animal, you know what I mean?
Because like they live outside.
I want to be a human being, you know, like a cool couch and a TV.
And if I was going to be an animal, I'd want to be a manatee man, like just lasening, grazing
(55:11):
dude, like just floating in the warm waters in Florida, you know, like that's what I want
to be.
But like he wants to be a wolf.
But like a lot of times, like with that frenetic energy, you're a chihuahua, you're just this
little thing that's not doing anything and just shaking off.
I got to move.
I got to move.
I got to move.
Like wolves chill out.
Like I just saw a video of a coyote and a golf course playing with a golf ball, you
(55:36):
know, like throwing it up in the air in its mouth and then like prancing around like a
dog would, you know, like, and this is just a wild coyote.
And I'm like that seed, like that's the thing.
Like these animals know when to rest.
Yeah.
They know when to work.
They know when to fight.
They know when not to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Responding appropriately, right?
(55:57):
Yeah.
We're just told it's always like go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, like no.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, even though this was been a tired yawning episode, I still think that we came out with
some really good nuggets.
Yeah.
Maybe we should have add that into our like, like stack of videos that we do like, like
(56:20):
every once in a while we'll do the ones on the mushrooms.
Yeah.
Just do one like low energy and just see where it goes.
Who knows?
Oh, all right.
And that a big yawn and a stretch and goodbye.
Time to take a nap.
Thank you for listening to the Chasing Thoughts podcast.
(56:40):
Please support us by liking, subscribing, or leaving a review or comment.
We would really appreciate it.
If you'd like to be a guest, we would love to explore life and what it means to be human
with you.
And if you'd like to see more of us, please email us at chasingthoughtspodcast at gmail.com.
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