Just Passing Thru

The first stage of resistance is trying to let go of something that was never yours. Join me for Episode 6, we'll honor the concept of the Fall season and explore the essence of what it really means to "Let Go." ⁠

If you've struggled with letting go in the past, this episode will serve you with a concept that makes it less complicated. ⁠

Read the transcribed episode here.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to the art of falling asleep.
I'm Derek Lacey and insomniacoach.
I created this podcast.
Insomniacs could have a space tocome and feel guided.
I feel like I know you couldshare some concepts that I wish
people had shared with me,concepts that integrate sleep
with every aspect of your life,physically, emotionally, and

(00:28):
spiritually.
I believe sleep is not mean anyother sleep exercise are the
oddest artifact in the sleep isyour canvas.
And I want to help you expressyourself using the insights from
my sleep coaching practice andmy own journey out of insomnia.
And by sharing transmissionsthat help you bridge the way you

(00:52):
experienced life, better sleep,happy, fall to you wherever you
are.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
I hope it feels like fall because I find this to be
such a beautiful sensation, thecrispness in the air and just
that inevitability that life istransforming, but I didn't
always feel this way.
I was always a summer person asa kid because, well, I hated

(01:30):
school, but my birthday was insummer too.
So, you know, I just loved beingoutside in summers.
I would do things until the suncame down.
And so I held on to summer sotightly, and this has carried on
into adulthood too, but I wouldhold onto things so tightly and

(01:55):
then start to get anxious aroundthe 4th of July.
That was always my marker forwhen I needed to start worrying
about summer ending.
So I literally stopped enjoyingsummer or started enjoying
summer less starting like onJuly 5th because I couldn't help

(02:16):
a focus on summer ending.
It ended up that I never couldquite fully enjoyed summer, much
less, totally embrace the fall,but it kind of all shifted
around the time that I startedsleeping consistently.

(02:37):
And so I think this is kind ofspecial as I record this today,
this wasn't by plan, but todayis technically the first day of
fall and right about now I'malways taken back to being a
kid.
And I really did not like fallit induced depression in me.

(03:01):
I know this happens to a lot ofpeople.
So even though I embrace it now,I still go through a big inner
environment shift of resistance.
And I'm guessing you might gothrough this yourself with, with

(03:21):
the seasons and, and obviously,uh, perhaps on a nightly basis,
but this resistance makes senseto me.
There's this threshold that'screated by the universe saying
that certain things must endbefore others begin.

(03:43):
And this makes sense becauseit's probably the most elemental
understanding of life.
So of course, it's going to posechallenges to people.
Otherwise life would be firstlevel of video game easy, and
we'd all get bored.

(04:05):
And this is why I thinkinsomniacs are special.
Not just because that's part ofmy story, but you know, I think
your hero's journey has insomniain there for a reason.
The wisdom that's going to comefrom breaking through is going

(04:26):
to be so immense.
It's going to feel so good thatas silly as it sounds, you'll be
able to look back.
Like I look back and say, yeah,I, I embrace what I went
through, which is different thansaying that was worth it, but I

(04:48):
couldn't ever go back and changeanything out.
That would be terrible.
It would, it would really beterrible.
You know, I'm just, I'm so gladthat I, I caught on to this, uh,
this moment that was presentedto me to record this episode on
the first day of fall and thenhow to conceptualize what's

(05:13):
happening here with fallingasleep, the resistance of the
seasons, perhaps the transitionwith the transition of the end
of the day and, and going intothe next one.
I noticed the other day, how Iwas resisting fall.

(05:37):
Again, we got our first littlecold front, which was refreshing
because I live in a very hotplace, but my initial response
was, Ooh, I hope we get anotherlittle wave of heat.
And I started thinking about howI wished I swam more and how it

(06:00):
was the first summer in 20 yearsthat I didn't set foot on a
beach.
And about some of the foods thatmy paleo diet wouldn't allow me
to eat once fall was here, how Iwas going to, you know, miss
mangoes and things like that.
And it literally felt likeinsomnia.

(06:22):
It was, it was so analogous toinsomnia.
And then suddenly the words cameover me, just let go.
So I found this ironic.
I'm usually not a fan of theconcept of letting go.
The only reason that I'm not afan of letting go is that I've

(06:45):
just noticed from probablythousands of conversations with
people that letting go is hardand the majority of people can't
do it.
So because of that, I blameletting go.
I don't blame you in the case ofsleep.
It's even harder because of theconscious and subconscious

(07:06):
partnership, because of the waythe brain works.
Your subconscious mind needs afocal point.
When you say, I need to let go.
It says of what I'm getting avisual of cheerleaders from one
of my high school pep rallies,where they're instructing the

(07:29):
crowd, how to cheer with them,right?
They're like, when I say this,you say that like, when I say
go, you say, Longhorns, go,Longhorns, go Longhorns.
That was my high school mascot,but maybe yours was tigers go
tigers.
Um, how's that four Hcheerleader impersonation.

(07:51):
One of the reasons that lettinggo is so hard is because it
automatically connects you to anechoed response from the
subconscious mind.
They, they can't be separate.
So as you try to let go, yoursubconscious mind thinks you are

(08:11):
instructing it to hold on,right?
Let go of what?
And then you can't stop thinkingabout that thing.
So the harder you try to let go,the harder it is to let go.
There was a comedian, the lategreat Mitch Hedberg, one of my
favorites of all time.

(08:32):
And he had a line that said hewas a, he was a one liner guy.
And he said, the depressingthing about tennis is no matter
how good I get, I'll never be asgood as the wall.
And I think this is the perfectvisual for a bad sleep concept
and what it feels like to go tosleep every night as an

(08:53):
insomniac, right?
The harder you try, the harderit gets, the better you think
you're getting the harder itseems.
And so with that said, I'm goingto do a bit of a one 80, because

(09:14):
I was intuitively inspired tojust let go.
So I, I wanted to get to thebottom of letting go.
I wanted to isolate the words,let go, in order to get a better
understanding and doing this,you know, it's pretty simple.

(09:36):
It's not like a fancy etymologyto let means to allow and to go
means to pass.
That's a more constructive wayof looking at it versus letting
go of something that you'reholding onto the concept of

(10:00):
allowing something to pass feelslike a river flowing by compared
to letting go, which feels likeyou have a tennis ball in your
hand with superglue attached toit, without thinking about it
this way, without making thisdistinction, the connotation of

(10:24):
letting go can trick you intothinking that you are trying to
let go of a branch that's off ofyour tree.
Like something that isinherently part of you.
But when you allow something topass, this creates an obvious

(10:46):
distinction that in order forsomething to pass you, it means
it's not you.
When I think of allowing thingsto pass, I think of, of a parade
or an ambulance, things that areindependent of me, that I see
approaching that I do not wantto impede their momentum things

(11:13):
that would yell at me so that Iwouldn't get run over.
But when I think of lettingthose things go, it's like, I
need to let go of the parade at,am I in the parade?
Am I being honored forsomething?
Did I do something incredible?

(11:35):
And if I have to let it go, thenI let it go.
Like, like it's mine or I havesovereignty over it.
Or I'm handing out permissionslips, like I'm the County clerk
or something.
Right.
And I'm making all of thesejudgments of what stays, what

(11:57):
goes like I'm the control tower.
And this is the first stage ofresistance thinking that you
have the power of havingdiscretion over something that
really isn't up to you to beginwith your body wants to sleep
badly.

(12:19):
And you are in a position ofpower.
You can deny it that sleep, oryou can support it in getting
that sleep.
And of course, you're not tryingto deny it.
You just probably haven'tthought about sleep as something

(12:43):
that you were working on behalfof, or that you are separate
from.
This is just a concept I'mintroducing to you so that it
could, it could be more helpful.
You know, as a kid, let's lookat it this way as a kid who was

(13:04):
I to not let the fall seasonpass through.
I love summer.
I love summer.
Therefore everybody mustexperience summer, all year
round.
I can't handle summer ending.
I want it to continue.
So everybody please enjoy thesummer with me.

(13:30):
That would have been great forme, but that's not how life
works.
I, I don't get to choose theEarth's relationship to the sun.
Therefore I would be betterserved to abide by the laws of
the universe and the planetearth in particular.

(13:51):
I don't know what the seasonsare like on other planets, but
on earth we have no choice, butto let things pass.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
So how is this any different for me when I'm
falling asleep?
If I'm in partnership withsleep, just like I'm in
partnership with the rest of thepeople on the planet.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
[inaudible],

Speaker 2 (14:19):
If I'm in partnership with sleep to deprive sleep of
what it needs, because I ampersonally resisting something
is out of concept with earth andall the laws that are governing
our time here.
But when I shift from theconcept of letting go to

(14:43):
allowing something to pass, allof a sudden, I'm not the
possessor of my stresses, myname isn't on the title.
Instead, they are just anambulance that's coming through.
And then out of respect forsleep, I just have to get out of

(15:06):
the way so that these things canpass.
At this point, allowing thesethings to pass is almost like
using basic manners, manners toyour stressors, getting out of
the way of them and mannerstowards your sleep.

(15:33):
Just like it's not up to me tolet go of summer.
I don't have the Liberty ofdeciding to let go of my stress
or not.
Because according to the laws ofcircadian rhythm and the
universe, I have no choice, butto allow everything to pass, it

(15:55):
is bad manners to stand in theway of these things.
Instead of just stepping asideand allowing them to pass like,
like a good Samaritan, lettingan ambulance by when you hear
the sirens, right?

(16:17):
Your instinct is just to pullover.
When I allow my day to pass,it's just me being a good
Samaritan towards sleep.
So it's helpful.
I think when you think of sleepas something that you were being

(16:40):
held accountable to now, there'smotivation, right?
With accountability, there'smore motivation.
And then when there ismotivation, there's an automatic
distribution of emotions.
In fact, I would even argue thatnot being able to let go of

(17:03):
something, not being able to letgo of something is the result of
no accountability.
Because you think that there'snothing to be accountable to.
You actually think that you haveextreme privacy, right?
It's like your little privatemoment where you get to think
whatever you want.

(17:23):
And nobody notices.
You can think anything you want.
And there's nobody to say, Oh myGod, I can't believe, I can't
believe you're thinking aboutthat right now.
So if you are brooding over aparticular topic and felt like

(17:45):
you couldn't stop doing that,but I put a microphone to your
thoughts or gathered like theclose captioning of your
thinking.
And I put it on YouTube.
Like if you knew that I wasgoing to do that, I guarantee
you, you would be able to letthat thing go immediately.

(18:06):
When you realized that yourthoughts would be broadcast
publicly, you would be extremelymotivated to think of anything
else, allowing something to passmakes letting go easier.
But thinking about beingaccountable to sleep brings in

(18:26):
motivation, which makes lettinggo are really easy.
So if you think about thethoughts circulating around your
mind, just remember that you arenot by yourself.
Sleep is in the back seat.
Will you please move out of theway and let those things pass?

(18:50):
The reason that we like thephrase let go is because it
feels actionable.
And this is, this is actuallyimportant.
And this is why I prefer theconcept of releasing and why
release is step three in the artof falling asleep, because

(19:16):
releasing marries the twoconcepts of letting go and
allowing while still leaving youin a state of action, releasing
gives the mind and the bodycontrol over the situation while
conceptually it's also moreaccurate.

(19:39):
And then metaphorically, itgives you more options because
releasing anything, releaseseverything.
If I release a little bird frommy hands, I can't help but
release any emotion.
I'm also holding onto that.
Isn't helping me, but I also gethow being in bed feeling like

(20:04):
it's an uphill battle just toget to sleep.
May not feel like the time torecall some fancy concepts.
So I wanted to simplify this andjust introduce you to the, the
feeling of allowing something topass, because it was never

(20:28):
yours.
Once you realized these thingswere never yours, then you can
allow them to pass.
And this just makes it a hell ofa lot.
Easier to the subconscious.
When you were holding ontosomething, that's keeping you
awake.
It's just like being in anantique shop where you pick up a

(20:50):
vase and then the owner of theshop screams at you because
you're not supposed to touch it.
You wouldn't argue with them,but I want to, um, no, you're,
you're gonna, you're going toput that thing down.
You're gonna let go of itbecause it's just good manners.
Right?

(21:13):
I realize that sometimes it'sjust a matter of letting go,
letting go does make sensesometimes.
But by acknowledging that youneed to let go.
You are also acknowledging thatthis thought or feeling is in
yours.
And to me it makes sense and itfeels really good.

(21:37):
It feels like the relief ofgetting a Weinstein out of my
white couch.
I hope you feel this way too.
And I hope you enjoy the fallseason and as always have great
sleep,[inaudible] falling asleeppodcast has been brought to you

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