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May 23, 2024 • 34 mins
What will you refract when the light passes through you? Will you broadcast your colors or absorb the light into your darkness? Life happens for you, not to you.
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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
You are the prism through which life will pass. I
think so much of our lives revolves around the things
that we believe are happening to us as opposed to
the things that are happening for us. A huge part

(00:34):
of stress and anxiety for me is the spiral that
I find myself when I believe that life is happening
to me and not for me. I've become consumed with
the idea that I've inherited some kind of curse or

(00:57):
deserve bad things to be happening because I'm being punished
for something something I did a long time ago, something
I did yesterday, something I must have done but am
not aware of. But regardless of having no knowledge of this,
I deserve to be punished because that must be the

(01:19):
law of the universe. Life must happen to me, because
I don't deserve for it to happen for me. That's
the negative headspace. That's this headspace that takes us further
down the rabbit hole of anxiety and depression that life
is happening to us. But I want you to think
of yourself as two things. And it's a challenge because

(01:46):
it's very contradictory, and you know, to a lot of
people or on the surface would make no sense, but
to me, and maybe in our thought experiment here to
you will make perfect sense. You are simultaneously the most
meaningful person in the universe and the most insignificant person

(02:07):
in the universe. Everything that you do matters, and yet
everything that you do matters. Not all of your actions
are causing effect. They have an effect. And yet if
we zoomed out on history on time fifty seventy five,

(02:28):
one hundred, two hundred years, one thousand years, no one
would ever notice you. How loud can someone's story really
be to be remembered for thousands of years? We study
these people in history, they exist, but there are now
close to eight billion people on earth, So how could

(02:49):
we possibly remember the life stories of that many people?
And it's unfortunate that a lot of the people what
we do remember who are that old, it's because they've
committed some sort of atrocity or done something terrible, or
done something terrible and we've reframed it to something heroic,

(03:11):
usually conquering a nation, killing a lot of people. It's
rare that the peaceful ones, the loving ones, the people
who do believe that life happens for them and not
to them. Are the ones who are remembered. They exist
also religious figureheads Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha, you know they're there.

(03:38):
But we don't study the past of peace. We study
the past of chaos because we have an inherent belief
that out of chaos, everything in existence must follow. I
think that's true and not true. The Big Bang, this

(03:59):
sort of energetic explosion at the beginning of time and space,
is inherently chaos, and everything that has followed since in
time and space has been an effect of that massive cause.
But there's this belief that because of chaos, we deserve

(04:22):
punishment because chaos is inherently bad, and I just don't
think that that's true. I think that for you to
be simultaneously the most significant and insignificant person gives you
an incredible amount of power and also an incredible amount
of peace. Because you are on the hook for everything

(04:45):
and nothing in your world, your universe. You must be
your own God. You are the center of your own universe.
Everything that happens to your daily life feels different, feel
different to you than it does to anybody else, because
it's not their life. That's why We always want people

(05:08):
to understand and feel our pain, because when it's happening
to us, we feel uniquely alone, because our experiences are
uniquely ours. But often the way to alleviate a lot
of that anxiety and stress is to take the step
back and zoom all the way out and look at
the experience from far away, from the top down. What

(05:34):
do we end up with. We end up with a
perspective of smallness, of looking at situations and problems with
a clear head and a clear mind, and an understanding
that none of it really matters. It does because it

(05:57):
does today, but it does because it won't tomorrow. These
moments in the present, always in the present, moving forward,
are the building blocks of the future. And when we
reach the future and look back on the past, we
see the structure that these building blocks have built, but

(06:18):
not the detail of the blocks themselves, not the initials
carved in the sides of them or the undersides of them.
We don't see any of the specifics of what the
pyramids look like up close. We just see the pyramid, right.
And so when we think of life as something that

(06:39):
happens to us as opposed to something that happens for us,
we get caught in the insignificant pieces of the pain
that tomorrow will likely mean or hold no value because
they're technically small. When I say you are the prism

(06:59):
through which life may pass, I mean that also as
in light as in the how should I phrase it,
the benevolent energy that is creation, I'll say it in

(07:20):
a spiritual sense. Everything exists. There has been some form
of creating in order to get to where we are today,
to get ourselves. Be you atheist or not, there's an
understanding that we live in some kind of creation, either
divine or man made or not. I think nature has

(07:43):
been around long before humankind and will be long be
around long after, and so it's difficult to say that
humans are responsible for the greatest creations if at least
we can claim the fact that we're starting to ruin things,
So maybe we shouldn't claim any of that. Something that

(08:07):
I wonder when it comes to my well being, especially
my sobriety and my day to day thinking, is that
constant question of is life happening to me or happening
for me? The benefit of reframing the difficult situations of
I've heard a lot of other people say this, so

(08:27):
I'm paraphrasing and stealing. But it's not that I have
to do this, It's that I get to do this.
I have to work out, I have to go to work,
I have to write, I have to record a podcast. Right,
that's the same mindset of as life is happening to me,
I'm out of control. I have no choice but to

(08:51):
respond to what must be done because life is happening
to me. I have to do this because if I don't,
life will run me over. But it's not true. If
we think about our bare needs, our basic needs, sort
of on the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we
have what food, shelter, airwater, sex, sex can be a

(09:13):
toss up depending on who you are. Food, shelter, air, water,
we'll call those the true bases. How many of us
have those basic needs met? The understanding that everything else
that occurs after that is simply icing on the cake,

(09:34):
even problems. One of the biggest reframes for me, in
addition to some of this is life happening to me.
Your life happening for me is looking at problems as
if they were benefit, as opposed to a curse, or
as opposed to something bad. Everything in life is an

(09:58):
opportunity to learn and grow and change, and so when
we're presented with a problem, we are in a unique
position to look at that problem as something that is
a benefit to us because we have room to grow.
We get scared because we don't know, and we think
this is bad. This problem is bad because I don't

(10:20):
have the skills yet to get me to where I
need to go. But then that would defeat the entire
purpose of living life, of gaining the tools and the
skills to get you to where you need to go.
Life is not designed or interested or something that is
to be mastered, or that you must be born with

(10:42):
a particular skill set without having to learn it that
makes life easier or more perfect for you. I think
the easiest thing that comes to mind when we think
about this is money. Money is access. Love of money
is the root of all evil. But at the end
of the day, it's something that we have, it's something

(11:02):
that we have to work with, and it's a representation
of power. It's not real. We invented currency because we
needed to invent the dialogue that had to be have
for an exchanging of goods and services, and so we
create currency we create money, but unfortunately, when it comes
to people who are good at manipulating, are either talented

(11:24):
leaders become corrupt leaders. The power corrupts absolute. Power corrupts absolutely.
But the people who are in these positions of power
find themselves in positions of money and find themselves in
positions of influence, not necessarily because what they represent is
a good thing, but because they have the thing that
everybody wants, not needs, food, shelter, air, water. If you

(11:47):
have those things, what else do you need? Everything beyond
that is a want. We want more money because we
want to be more comfortable. We want to be more
comfortable because we think that life is happening to us
and not for us. We think that the problem is
the curse and not the benefit, and so we think

(12:08):
money would fix this. I could buy my way out
of this problem because I'm too broke, I'm too poor.
The fact that I'm too poor means that when I'm
in this position of disenfranchisement, life keeps happening to me.
I am powerless. Is what that translates to. If you

(12:29):
believe that life is happening to you, you are admitting
that in those search situations and those circumstances, you have
no power when you presented with a problem if it
scares you and you say, God, I don't have the
toolset to solve it. I'm afraid I can't do this.
You are saying I have no power, But that's not true.

(12:52):
You just haven't developed the discipline it takes to look
at these things from the opposite point of view, because
you're a the mindset that from everything that is chaos,
the effects are negative, not positive. The Big Bang seems
like and it's an easy example, which is why I
keep using it seems like a violent event. We can

(13:15):
only imagine it, right, an explosion of fucking space and
time and particles and energy. Who knows. I'm not a scientist,
but it's interesting and I like it. It works for me.
But because it seems so violent, we think that the
aftermath of such a violent point in time must be negativity.

(13:39):
Negative energy comes from violence, because violence almost seeks to
tear things down, strip things away. But if you think
of the beginning of time as the beginning of potential
and not the beginning of something terrible, then you have
nothing but possibility in front of you. Life is not

(14:01):
happening to you life is happening for you. You are
the prism through which life may pass. Because you mean nothing,
but at the same time, because you mean everything, life
must be lived. If you have no purpose, then what
are you doing. You're wandering aimlessly, You're wondering what the
purpose may be. The purpose at its base level is

(14:23):
to live. Think about breathing. When you breathe, you can
do it both intentionally and unintentionally. You can consciously think,
I take a deep breath in if I blow the
breath out, meditative states, practices, things that we use conscious
breathing for to change our frame of mind. We can

(14:46):
think about breathing, But then breathing also is something that
just happens, and so breathing is one of the only
things on earth that's a physical representation of both something
that happens because you choose and something that happens because
you do not. And if it ceased to be, so

(15:06):
would you. But just because you stop thinking about doing
it doesn't mean that it stops happening. And so in
this way you're also bound, whether you like it or not,
to the state of nature that happens both to you
and for you. Breathing happens to you, But breathing happens

(15:29):
for you. It keeps you alive. You mean everything and nothing.
You are significant and insignificant all at the same time.
You think about doing things, and so you do them.
You don't think about doing things, and things happen to
you because you weren't paying attention, like breathing, or on
the negative side, like problems. But if you are a prism,

(15:53):
if you have a purpose here as a person, as
an individual, to experience life and to put positivity into
the universe through your experience, then you also have to
have the understanding that just by you are existing, you
are a benefit to yourself and you are a benefit

(16:14):
to other people because none of this could work without you.
But at the same time, when we zoom out, all
of it works without you because no one will remember.
It's sad and freeing at the same time, no matter
what you do, it has great consequence, and yet no
matter what you do, nobody cares. It seems to not

(16:38):
have great consequence. But it only has consequence because it
contributes to the building blocks of the pantheons of time,
of the zooming out, of seeing the structure from a
distance like a painting. When you walk through the museum
and you look at paintings, and you see everything from
a distance, you see sort of the complete picture. You
see how things are supposed to be. You walk up

(17:03):
close and get as close as you can. You study
the brushstrokes. You consider the brushstrokes as individual pieces and
steps towards the creativity of the solid piece, of the
complete piece. Imagine the painter doing each of these things individually,
and if at any point in time the painter walked
away from the painting and left it incomplete, you wouldn't

(17:27):
see a full picture. You would still see though the brushstrokes,
the individual things, the time that went into the piece
until it was given up on. And so in order
to in my opinion, as I sort of work through
a lot of these things, these days of trying to
free myself of all of the things that I believe

(17:51):
are happening to me versus the opportunities I'm getting that
are happening for me, I have to understand that I
am simultaneou the most significant person in the universe and
the most insignificant person, and also that I have unique
gifts and skill sets that benefit both myself and the
rest of the world that must be shared. I have

(18:16):
I have. I am here for a reason. I have purpose.
I am the prison through which life may pass, through
which light may pass. Think about what the prism is,
Think about what the prism does. Refracts light, creates rainbows,
and these things exist. We can make them by hand,

(18:38):
they you know, man made things, or they exist in nature.
How do we get a rainbow in the sky? Light
refracting off of water, creating an incredible array of colors
that broadcasts across the sky. Life light in this scenario

(19:02):
passes through this prism, and on the other side of
that experience is color is almost an inherent creativity. Everybody
stops when they see a rainbow because it's interesting. I
don't think you'd be hard pressed to find somebody that

(19:25):
noticed that a rainbow was going across the sky and
didn't take the second at least to register Wow, that's
pretty cool, because one it doesn't happen all that often,
and two, there's an understanding in that moment that what
they're seeing is nature coming together in an interesting way
in communication with the I guess I could say spirit

(19:48):
of the universe without getting religious about it. But the
energy of the universe, the sun shining through something that
inherents exists, broadcasting something brand new that looks pretty and interesting,
and we get to receive it, We get to observe,
we get to let it change us. In this moment,

(20:10):
life happens for us and not to us. We're given
a little gift here. This is sort of a free painting.
You can't get it close because as you do, it
starts to disappear. Life happens for you, not to you.
If life was happening to you and you were the prism,

(20:32):
then you would just melt. That would be the end
of it. You wouldn't refract anything. But the truth is
is that you matter enough simply by existing that when
you are hit by light, and we can use light
both literally and metaphorically in this context, what you broadcast

(20:53):
back to the world is a reflection of what's happening
underneath within your prism. How does the light get refracted?
Is it in a positive or negative way? Or do
you absorb all the light and it just gets sucked
up into darkness. I think a lot of people feel
that way. They couldn't see a blessing if it bit

(21:17):
them in the ass, because when the light shines they're
so consumed with the fact that they believe that life
is happening to them that they suck up all the
energy and they put nothing good back into the world.
They put nothing in but negativity, and the light disappears.
The possibility for potential disappears, the possibility for beautiful potential disappears.

(21:38):
Because they're so caught up with the fact that they
believe that they are victims of existence and not victors.
Life doesn't exist to be easy. Things don't happen, and
challenges and problems don't exist in order to test whether
or not you're a good person. If life was about

(22:02):
having all the tools without doing any of the work,
there be no purpose to living it. Ask yourself, if
do you believe that you are pushed by the past
or pulled by the future, because those two frames of
mind represent the direction that you're receiving energy from people

(22:24):
who are caught up on the past, on having not
been good enough, or having been in trouble for something,
or having made mistakes, or having been the victim of
something and being caught in the wave of life happens
to me. Therefore, I am pushed by the past, I'm
shoved by the energy of all the things that have

(22:47):
already happened, and I am barreling forward technically but out
of control, towards a destination I do not know, and
that is terrifying, because being pushed by the past, my
past is in control. But those who understand and believe

(23:10):
that they are being pulled by the future means that
they have been tethered by the energy of what is
yet to come, and that that energy of possibility and
potential of the future, not technically being written yet, is
pulling them into the future and away from the past.

(23:31):
This is the relief, you say, I understand that these
events have happened to me, that sometimes I am in control,
sometimes I am out of control. But life doesn't happen
to me. Life happens for me, and so it's throwing
a lasso around me and pulling me forward out of
my problems. And as I'm pulled away from the past,
as I'm pulled away from my problems, I can trust

(23:54):
that as I move towards what's going to happen, as
I move towards potential, I will have the understanding and
the discipline to start to do the work, to gain
the tools so that way. When I reach the future,
who knows when or what it will be, I will
be prepared because I didn't keep going forward thinking that

(24:15):
I was out of control. I went forward going I
don't have the answers yet, but in my acknowledging that
I do not, I am saying I am in control
of being powerless in this moment, and I will rise
above being powerless because I don't like to be powerless.
I will gain control, I will gain tools, and I
will become stronger and better, and I will arrive in

(24:37):
the future prepared, determined, strong, tall, whatever it may be.
You don't go to the job interview going I probably
won't get it. I never get it. I never get
anything that people don't like me. I get nervous in interviews.
I've just I failed every interview. Here you are the
past is pushing you. And if you have an opportunit

(25:00):
unity and you're still being pushed by the past, that's
what you're going to believe. Life is happening to me.
Life is not happening for me. I don't have opportunities.
I have curses. I'm a victim. It is not fair
to say that people are never victims. Certainly I think

(25:22):
that's something we can all acknowledge. But even for people
who have had horrible things happen to them, part of
the therapeutic work of getting better is understanding that as
they move into the future, they do not have to
continue to be victims of the past. They can have

(25:44):
been victims in the moment and it has changed them unquestioningly,
and now they will be unfortunately or fortunately somebody else.
But if they believe that the past is pushing them,
then they are not changing, and they are staying where
they were, and they continue to be victims. But if

(26:08):
you let yourself be pulled by the future, be pulled
to something greater than you are saying. I desire to
be removed from this, something will take me away from this,
not because I deserve it, but because I don't desire
to stay. There's nothing for me here anymore. The pain

(26:33):
has been caused. Why cause myself greater pain by staying.
That's something that I do often to myself. I tell
myself a lot of things, see a lot of negative
self talk. I imagine all the things that other people
must be saying, or thinking or doing about me. Forgetting
the fact that most people are too busy living their

(26:54):
own lives to give two shits about me, and not
in a bad way. It's not that they don't care
about me as a human. It's just that I don't
matter in their day to day because they are the
centers of their own universe, and as they move forward,
either pushed by their past or pulled by the future,
they do so in thinking that they are their own God.

(27:14):
They are the prism through which life passes. They are
the most important to themselves. They have to be, must be.
And if I want to do this to myself, then
I have to stop the negative talk of believing that
people don't like me, that people judge me, that people
think that I'm weak, that people think that I'm silly
or frivolous or stupid, or that what I love or

(27:37):
care about doesn't mean anything. None of that's true. It
may be true to them, and even if it were,
that wouldn't change who I was. But I let myself
be pushed by the past when I start. When I
continue to think that way, and I let myself be
pulled by the future, when I continue to think that
life is happening for me and not to me, everything

(27:59):
is an opportunity unity, not a death sentence or not
a sentence period. Everything that is happening is opportunity, not
a punishment. It's a better way to phrase it. Do
you believe that you're being punished simply for your own existence,
or do you believe that life happens for you, that

(28:19):
you inherently deserve good things, that you deserve blessings. I
think that's always been my issue with the religion I
grew up in, and part of one of the many
reasons I left and have trouble with a lot of
world religions is the inherent implication that you are not enough,
that there was original sin, that you were born a sinner,
and no matter what you do, you will never be

(28:41):
good enough to overcome it, because you will always be
small in the eyes of God. But that's not true.
You are massive in the eyes of God because in
your own life you must be your own God. You
must be the center of your universe. You must be
the most meaningful thing in existence, because we all know that,
as we zoom out, were the most insignificant thing in existence.

(29:06):
So what will you do with that time when it matters?
If you know that your individual breaststrokes lead to the
creation of some beautiful painting that when we step back
and view from a distance, will paint a complete picture.
Then what you do does matter. It gets lost in
the details when we get the distance. But that's okay.

(29:32):
That's not a reason to quit, and that's not a
reason to continue to be bullied by your past, because
you deserve to refract light in an interesting, beautiful way.
You are the prism through which life will pass must pass.
You have no choice. You're alive. Consider your existence as

(29:52):
a benefit not just to yourself, but to all of
the others around you. Humans, plants, animals, anything in your
space receives and responds to you. I could knock over
a vase of flowers. It's an inanimate object, but it
moves and changes and becomes something else because I pushed
it over. The water spills, the vase breaks, the flowers fall,

(30:16):
the petals fall off. Objects at rest will remain at
rest until acted upon by an outside force. Right that
can be you. You can be the object at rest,
or you can be the outside force, or you can
be both. You are both. In your response to being

(30:39):
acted upon yourself by outside forces, you then also react
you become the force and the direction that that energy
is both received and expelled. The state of mind of
whether or not life is happening to you or for
you is the difference between believing that you are being
pushed by the past or pulled by the f and

(31:00):
if you are hoping to make something more of your
life and of yourself, then it's important that you understand
that you are infinitely valuable beyond belief. I want you
to know that you are not pushed by the past,

(31:21):
you are pulled by the future. Imagine what it is
that you want. Imagine where you want to go, Imagine
who you want to be. Imagine all the things that
you want to do, Skills you want to have, even
if it's vacations, you want to take money, sure, imagine

(31:42):
your best life and find the ways in your day
to day life to let yourself be pulled in that
direction to the point where then you start to develop
the discipline of what it takes that it feels effortless.
Your life suddenly seems to be coming better and better
and better because you're being pulled into the future, because

(32:04):
you've changed your mindset and you believe that you deserve
good things and bad things will happen along the way.
That's part of the process, but you can't let them
control you. Sometimes you think about breathing. Sometimes breathing happens
and you don't think about it. In fact, most times

(32:24):
it happens and you don't think about it. Let your
problems be the unconscious breathing that you do every day.
They happen, they come in, they go out, You keep moving.
You don't think much about them at all. If at all,
you keep moving forward because the things that are happening

(32:46):
to you are simply a result of your existing, But
the things that are happening for you are infinite. Because
you are a person of great power and potential, and
you are letting yourself be pulled into the future. You're beautiful.
This can't be overstated enough. You are the prison through

(33:08):
which life must pass. Who and what do you want
to be on the other side when light shines through you?
If you can answer that question honestly, then I think
you'll start to find that life is a lot more
worth while when you let yourself be pulled into the

(33:29):
future and not pushed by the past. Don't be bullied
by yourself, be uplifted by your promises,
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