June 26, 2025 • 22 mins
In this solo episode I open up about the quieter toll of chasing greatness. The way constant striving rewires my nervous system. The way presence slips through my fingers when every day feels like it has something to prove. Drawing from the writings of Alan Watts and my own lived experience, I explore the illusion of separateness, the myth of the “most important day,” and the addictive nature of achievement itself.
This episode is a meditation on ego, identity, and waking up from the trance of constant doing.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
We are back with another solo episode.
I really appreciate everyone whoreached out, sent me a message
on LinkedIn, through e-mail or through sub stack after the
first one dropped. I guess I have some mixed
feelings about the amount of people who are resonating with
my story. You know, in one way, it's nice
(00:33):
to be sharing openly and honestly and having so many
people relate to it. And then, you know, on the other
hand, it shows the state of our relationship to work and to
stress and how many people are really, really going through it.
So appreciate you being here. Appreciate you rocking with me
(00:55):
on this journey. I guess we'll start with a
little life update. So I've officially made it to
the first leg of my journey after a long 30 hour adventure
stopping off in Hong Kong for a 10 hour layover.
(01:16):
I did have some delicious dim sum.
If you ever make it to Hong Kong, there is a place called
Tim Ho Wan that's actually in a train station.
It's claim to fame as being the cheapest Michelin restaurant in
the world. Super good.
It's, yeah, literally in a a train station and there's a huge
(01:38):
line, but well worth the wait. Then took a tram up to the peak
for some beautiful city and mountain views before finally
landing in Bali. Taking a short drive to Uluwatu
where I'm staying at least for the next week.
Super beautiful here on day 4. Currently starting to settle
(02:03):
into a bit of a nice routine. I spent the first day at Uluwatu
Beach, which was gorgeous, and this first slide for me is
really about to getting my body really healthy again, worry
about the mind and soul in a little bit, but I want to just
get physically healthy again because I did quite a bit of
(02:26):
damage to my body. So I found a great gym with a
sauna, ice bath, recovery space.And so I've been hitting that
pretty hard this morning and every morning and then playing
paddle in the afternoon, which has quickly become my newest
obsession. And if you hang out long enough
(02:49):
and listen to this podcast, you'll learn pretty quickly that
I get obsessed with things. So that's my newest one.
I grew up playing a lot of tennis with my mom and my dad
and my brother. And so, yeah, it's my first time
playing, but I think I'm starting from a pretty good,
(03:11):
pretty good bass. And so picking it up quickly.
And it's, it's cool. It's kind of like it's much more
3D than tennis. I can feel like myself using
different synapses. You can bounce it off the back
wall. And it's, it's pretty cool and
kind of a cerebral game as well as a, a physical one.
And yeah, I've been trying to get up early, finding joy in my
(03:36):
mornings again. I used to kind of dread waking
up. Now I've been getting up at
about 7:00 AM, you know, doing some reading.
Currently reading the book by Alan Watts for the second time.
We'll get into that a little bitlater in this podcast.
I've been doing a little bit of journaling everyday, some breath
(03:58):
work, some light movement and a quick plunge in the pool and a
shower up and get ready for the day.
There is a beautiful coffee shopjust two minutes down the road
with healthy smoothies and bowlsand really good coffee.
So I've been posting up there. I posted up this morning, did a
(04:18):
little bit of writing. But yeah, certainly remembering
how important mornings are for me and I think for all of us
really, you know, when you go tobed thinking of a task and then
you wake up thinking about a task, for me, it's always been
really hard not to just immediately jump into that thing
(04:39):
right away. And then I find, you know,
you're immediately on the back foot.
You know, you go into this stateof reacting to life versus
acting on it intentionally when you createspace to think and
check in and connect with yourself.
(05:01):
I feel like, you know, for me, my day goes way, way better.
And certainly I'm not perfect and I've already got sucked into
wanting to harness the morning productivity bump that I
naturally get in the morning. But I am trying to make my
morning routine somewhat of a, asacred space, A non negotiable.
(05:25):
And I think we'll get there overtime.
And yeah, milestones. I mean, yesterday was a big step
in my recovery journey. I actually hit 90 days sober
yesterday, which is pretty cool.I haven't talked too much about
my relationship with addiction and alcohol, but I'll get more
(05:50):
comfortable talking about that over time.
I certainly feel a lot more clear.
I feel a lot more like myself, but it's it's still challenging
and it's funny. You can see how your addictions
kind of flip into other things. I can see my caffeine
consumption has already gone up quite a bit since being here as
(06:13):
I kind of look to fill the gap that alcohol has left.
It's definitely a really big part of my social life for a
very long time, really since I was, I guess like 13, which is
kind of crazy. It was also something that I
(06:33):
used as a distraction tool to numb myself in my downtime to
kind of quiet the brain. So I've been on Instagram or
Reels way more often than normal, which is insane because
I'm in paradise. Everything I could possibly want
is right outside my door. But you know, taking it day by
(06:57):
day, keeping my eye on both caffeine and social media, my
intake on those. And I think, you know, awareness
is the biggest thing. So we'll scale those back as we
go. And you know, I'm also learning
through conversations I've been having both when I hit record
(07:19):
and offline, I've had lots of people reach out to me and just
chat about really incredible andhard things that they're going
through. And yeah, this vice,
particularly alcohol, tightens its grip on a lot of high
performing people as they look for ways to escape their intense
(07:45):
reality and the intense expectations that they've they
put on themselves. So if you are questioning your
own relationship with alcohol, you know, know that you're
you're far from being alone there.
And whether it's become a big problem or you're just curious
about what life would be like without it, there are a lot of
(08:05):
great resources out there. Maybe I'll throw some in my my
show notes, but one of the things quickly I'll touch on
that's kind of stuck with me is this idea that whether it's
addiction, alcoholism is a progressive disease.
So if it does become an issue for you, it's not going to
(08:28):
naturally fix itself. And if not checked, it will
progressively and sometimes slowly get worse and worse over
time and just slowly start sucking more and more of your
life away in a progressive fashion.
But we'll get more into that in the future.
(08:50):
I don't feel like I'm I'm ready to dive head first into that
today. But one of the things I wanted
to talk a little bit about was the book I've been reading.
And this is my second time reading the book by Alan Watts.
And you'll probably have noticedmaybe already that I'm a pretty
big Alan Watts fan. Read a lot of his his stuff.
(09:12):
And I don't know about you guys,but for quite some time I've had
a pretty color transactional relationship with reading.
Love reading. But somewhere along the way,
like many things in my life, I stopped enjoying the actual
process of reading, and I read to extract as much knowledge
(09:36):
from the book as I could, as quickly as I could.
And if I'm being honest, I started reading a book to finish
it as quickly as I could while trying to absorb as much as I
can. So lots of context and nuance I
think is lost when you're reading in that way.
(09:57):
And I've been intentionally going through it, this time much
slower, kind of reading a chapter at a time and then
reflecting on it. In the book, Alan challenges
this modern idea of the self as this separate, isolated ego
that's just trapped in a a bag of bones and skin.
(10:18):
And he kind of argues that none of us are separate beings.
You are the universe experiencing itself.
And that this illusion of separateness is really the root
of most of human suffering. And it's just really resonated
(10:42):
with me. Like, these are not overly new
concepts. But, you know, he puts it in
this way that just kind of makessense to me.
And he talks about from, you know, childhood, we're sort of
conditioned to see ourselves as isolated beings being moved
through a world of kind of other, other objects.
(11:05):
And that this narrative builds apersistent but false sense of
division. It's me versus you.
It's human versus nature. It's life versus death.
But he talks through that. That is an illusion.
And in truth, you are not in theuniverse, you are are the
(11:29):
universe. And he talks about life as sort
of this, this game of hide and seek.
I think he calls it the divine play.
And it sort of manifests as individual forms, you, me,
nature, trees, animals, temporarily forgetting kind of
(11:53):
that unity just to rediscover itthrough the adventure of living.
And there's no final purpose, nocosmic, you know, To Do List.
The point is just to play. And instead of life being a
problem to be solved, it's more of a dance to be enjoyed.
(12:20):
And, you know, he goes on to talk about how this is kind of
taboo, this idea of remembering or knowing who you are Because
if we did that, a lot of society, religious and
institutions kind of depend on this illusion of separateness
(12:41):
to, you know, maintain control. And if people truly saw
themselves as inseparable from the world, you know, some
fundamental things like fear of death would dissolve greed and
competition and capitalism wouldlose their footing a little bit,
(13:03):
lose some of their power and obedience to external authority
would start to crumble down a little bit.
And some of the core takeaways, I guess, are, you know, this
fear, this seeking, this grasping, which we've talked a
lot about a lot of where my suffering came from.
(13:24):
He says it all comes from forgetting who you already are
and that death is not the end. It is a rhythm in the ongoing
song of existence. And then, you know, really
hammering home that life is not a problem to solve felt like it
was to me. But it's a dance.
(13:46):
It's a play. It's kind of a cosmic unfolding.
And the fact that you are not separate.
You are the universe playing, expressing, exploring itself
through you. Your job is really just to
remember that. And early on in the book, he he
(14:08):
highlights the absurdity of human life and kind of this
funny metaphor and story about tubes, which I reread a bunch of
times and I thought I'd share itwith you.
He goes. For there is a growing
apprehension that existence is arat race in a trap.
Living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which
(14:31):
put things in at one end and letthem out at the other, which
both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out.
So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new
tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at
the other. At the input end, they even
developed ganglia of nerves called brains with eyes and
(14:53):
ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for
things to swallow. As and when they get enough to
eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in
complicated patterns, making allsorts of noises by blowing air
in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups
to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an
(15:15):
abundance of attached appliancesthat they are hardly
recognizable as mere tubes, and they managed to do this in a
staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat
tubes of your own form, but in general there's a serious,
serious competition as to who's going to be the top type of
(15:36):
tube. All this seems marvelously
futile, and yet when you begin to think about it, it becomes
begins to be more marvelous thanfutile.
Indeed, it seems extremely odd. And this marvelous and futile
game does not seem so futile when you're in it.
(15:58):
I know it didn't for me really felt like the opposite of
futile. And for quite some time the
competition of trying to be the top type of tube dominated
really my entire existence. It felt like it was the only
game worth playing, kind of the only game and one that was worth
(16:21):
sacrificing everything else for.You know, whole point is to be
the top type of tube. That's what I I thought the best
way I can sort of describe this feeling.
I've tried to share this with a few people in my life is every
single day felt like the most important day of my life.
(16:47):
And that is a really strange wayto live your life.
It's a really heavy way to live your life that's filled with a
lot of anxiety. You know, every day was another
really important business trip, you know, meeting founders,
hosting investors. Every day had Zoom calls where
millions of dollars might changehands.
(17:10):
Every little minute decision hada huge impact on a lot of people
around me. So imagine waking up and
thinking today is the biggest day of my life.
You know, through that lens, nothing else really matters.
(17:31):
It doesn't matter how you're feeling mentally or physically.
Doesn't matter how much sleep you're getting, it doesn't
matter if you ignore things or people in your personal life
because this is it. This is the day, this is when
it's all happening. And if you nail this day then
you're set. But then repeat that feeling
(17:53):
every day for about 1500 plus days straight at obscures your
world view and makes it very myopic and self-serving.
And I still wake up even over here in in paradise with that
(18:15):
feeling, that feeling of something really important that
I have to do something that I have to nail, something that has
to go perfect. But you know, with some space,
I'm hoping that voice gets quieter and quieter because it
is just an illusion and also a little comical to look back at.
(18:39):
You know, I was not a surgeon. I was not saving lives.
And that crushing pressure that I felt was just all bullshit and
just a story that I had created for myself.
Story that sort of justified my existence, my actions, and I
(19:00):
guess my chosen suffering. So I'm trying to reframe that
feeling and what if instead of thinking this is the most
important day of my life, I switch that to what if this was
the last day of my life? You know, when I spend it
(19:21):
chasing a goal that I'll never realize or what I spend it
trying to notice every beautifullittle thing around me and
experience as much richness as Ican, connect as deeply as I can
express as much gratitude for the people I love as I can like
(19:44):
everything. There's so much duality in life,
and we often have to hold two things to be true at the same
time. And one is the only constant is
change and that every moment is fleeting.
And then on the other side of that is.
There is only ever an eternal now.
(20:08):
We can and will only ever experience the current moment.
So how you feel right now as you're listening to this podcast
is the best reflection of how your life really is and how
you're feeling about it. So one could argue that today is
the most important day of your life, but not because you're
(20:29):
going to accomplish some things that set you up to be happy in
some future that doesn't exist now.
It's the most important day of your life because this is it.
There will only ever be a seriesof endless present moments, and
if you miss it, you can't get itback.
(20:51):
So maybe your job is not to create, build, accomplish as
much as you can, and to show people how endlessly clever you
are. It's instead to notice and
breathe in as much of the momentthat's in front of you as
possible. And I thought I'd maybe wrap
(21:12):
this up by sharing a poem that my grandfather carried with him
in his his wallet his whole life.
And when he passed, my mom passed it on to my brother and
I. And it's right in the same vein.
He was a smart guy, says There are two days in every week about
which it is useless to worry. One is yesterday, with its
(21:36):
mistakes and blunders. The other is tomorrow.
It, too, is beyond our control. Tomorrow's sun will rise, either
in splendor or behind a mask of clouds, but it will rise.
That leaves today. And usually our present trials
are easier to bear than remorse for what happened yesterday or
(21:57):
dread of what tomorrow may bring.
Let us therefore journey one dayat a time.
Smart guy, wise guy, and going to try and live by those words
more. Carry that with me now.
But if you're going to leave it there for now, there's an
(22:18):
important day in front of me then I need to go be present
for. And thank you again for being
here. I'll see you all next week.
We are back with another solo episode.
I really appreciate everyone whoreached out, sent me a message
on LinkedIn, through e-mail or through sub stack after the
first one dropped. I guess I have some mixed
feelings about the amount of people who are resonating with
my story. You know, in one way, it's nice
(00:33):
to be sharing openly and honestly and having so many
people relate to it. And then, you know, on the other
hand, it shows the state of our relationship to work and to
stress and how many people are really, really going through it.
So appreciate you being here. Appreciate you rocking with me
(00:55):
on this journey. I guess we'll start with a
little life update. So I've officially made it to
the first leg of my journey after a long 30 hour adventure
stopping off in Hong Kong for a 10 hour layover.
(01:16):
I did have some delicious dim sum.
If you ever make it to Hong Kong, there is a place called
Tim Ho Wan that's actually in a train station.
It's claim to fame as being the cheapest Michelin restaurant in
the world. Super good.
It's, yeah, literally in a a train station and there's a huge
(01:38):
line, but well worth the wait. Then took a tram up to the peak
for some beautiful city and mountain views before finally
landing in Bali. Taking a short drive to Uluwatu
where I'm staying at least for the next week.
Super beautiful here on day 4. Currently starting to settle
(02:03):
into a bit of a nice routine. I spent the first day at Uluwatu
Beach, which was gorgeous, and this first slide for me is
really about to getting my body really healthy again, worry
about the mind and soul in a little bit, but I want to just
get physically healthy again because I did quite a bit of
(02:26):
damage to my body. So I found a great gym with a
sauna, ice bath, recovery space.And so I've been hitting that
pretty hard this morning and every morning and then playing
paddle in the afternoon, which has quickly become my newest
obsession. And if you hang out long enough
(02:49):
and listen to this podcast, you'll learn pretty quickly that
I get obsessed with things. So that's my newest one.
I grew up playing a lot of tennis with my mom and my dad
and my brother. And so, yeah, it's my first time
playing, but I think I'm starting from a pretty good,
(03:11):
pretty good bass. And so picking it up quickly.
And it's, it's cool. It's kind of like it's much more
3D than tennis. I can feel like myself using
different synapses. You can bounce it off the back
wall. And it's, it's pretty cool and
kind of a cerebral game as well as a, a physical one.
And yeah, I've been trying to get up early, finding joy in my
(03:36):
mornings again. I used to kind of dread waking
up. Now I've been getting up at
about 7:00 AM, you know, doing some reading.
Currently reading the book by Alan Watts for the second time.
We'll get into that a little bitlater in this podcast.
I've been doing a little bit of journaling everyday, some breath
(03:58):
work, some light movement and a quick plunge in the pool and a
shower up and get ready for the day.
There is a beautiful coffee shopjust two minutes down the road
with healthy smoothies and bowlsand really good coffee.
So I've been posting up there. I posted up this morning, did a
(04:18):
little bit of writing. But yeah, certainly remembering
how important mornings are for me and I think for all of us
really, you know, when you go tobed thinking of a task and then
you wake up thinking about a task, for me, it's always been
really hard not to just immediately jump into that thing
(04:39):
right away. And then I find, you know,
you're immediately on the back foot.
You know, you go into this stateof reacting to life versus
acting on it intentionally when you createspace to think and
check in and connect with yourself.
(05:01):
I feel like, you know, for me, my day goes way, way better.
And certainly I'm not perfect and I've already got sucked into
wanting to harness the morning productivity bump that I
naturally get in the morning. But I am trying to make my
morning routine somewhat of a, asacred space, A non negotiable.
(05:25):
And I think we'll get there overtime.
And yeah, milestones. I mean, yesterday was a big step
in my recovery journey. I actually hit 90 days sober
yesterday, which is pretty cool.I haven't talked too much about
my relationship with addiction and alcohol, but I'll get more
(05:50):
comfortable talking about that over time.
I certainly feel a lot more clear.
I feel a lot more like myself, but it's it's still challenging
and it's funny. You can see how your addictions
kind of flip into other things. I can see my caffeine
consumption has already gone up quite a bit since being here as
(06:13):
I kind of look to fill the gap that alcohol has left.
It's definitely a really big part of my social life for a
very long time, really since I was, I guess like 13, which is
kind of crazy. It was also something that I
(06:33):
used as a distraction tool to numb myself in my downtime to
kind of quiet the brain. So I've been on Instagram or
Reels way more often than normal, which is insane because
I'm in paradise. Everything I could possibly want
is right outside my door. But you know, taking it day by
(06:57):
day, keeping my eye on both caffeine and social media, my
intake on those. And I think, you know, awareness
is the biggest thing. So we'll scale those back as we
go. And you know, I'm also learning
through conversations I've been having both when I hit record
(07:19):
and offline, I've had lots of people reach out to me and just
chat about really incredible andhard things that they're going
through. And yeah, this vice,
particularly alcohol, tightens its grip on a lot of high
performing people as they look for ways to escape their intense
(07:45):
reality and the intense expectations that they've they
put on themselves. So if you are questioning your
own relationship with alcohol, you know, know that you're
you're far from being alone there.
And whether it's become a big problem or you're just curious
about what life would be like without it, there are a lot of
(08:05):
great resources out there. Maybe I'll throw some in my my
show notes, but one of the things quickly I'll touch on
that's kind of stuck with me is this idea that whether it's
addiction, alcoholism is a progressive disease.
So if it does become an issue for you, it's not going to
(08:28):
naturally fix itself. And if not checked, it will
progressively and sometimes slowly get worse and worse over
time and just slowly start sucking more and more of your
life away in a progressive fashion.
But we'll get more into that in the future.
(08:50):
I don't feel like I'm I'm ready to dive head first into that
today. But one of the things I wanted
to talk a little bit about was the book I've been reading.
And this is my second time reading the book by Alan Watts.
And you'll probably have noticedmaybe already that I'm a pretty
big Alan Watts fan. Read a lot of his his stuff.
(09:12):
And I don't know about you guys,but for quite some time I've had
a pretty color transactional relationship with reading.
Love reading. But somewhere along the way,
like many things in my life, I stopped enjoying the actual
process of reading, and I read to extract as much knowledge
(09:36):
from the book as I could, as quickly as I could.
And if I'm being honest, I started reading a book to finish
it as quickly as I could while trying to absorb as much as I
can. So lots of context and nuance I
think is lost when you're reading in that way.
(09:57):
And I've been intentionally going through it, this time much
slower, kind of reading a chapter at a time and then
reflecting on it. In the book, Alan challenges
this modern idea of the self as this separate, isolated ego
that's just trapped in a a bag of bones and skin.
(10:18):
And he kind of argues that none of us are separate beings.
You are the universe experiencing itself.
And that this illusion of separateness is really the root
of most of human suffering. And it's just really resonated
(10:42):
with me. Like, these are not overly new
concepts. But, you know, he puts it in
this way that just kind of makessense to me.
And he talks about from, you know, childhood, we're sort of
conditioned to see ourselves as isolated beings being moved
through a world of kind of other, other objects.
(11:05):
And that this narrative builds apersistent but false sense of
division. It's me versus you.
It's human versus nature. It's life versus death.
But he talks through that. That is an illusion.
And in truth, you are not in theuniverse, you are are the
(11:29):
universe. And he talks about life as sort
of this, this game of hide and seek.
I think he calls it the divine play.
And it sort of manifests as individual forms, you, me,
nature, trees, animals, temporarily forgetting kind of
(11:53):
that unity just to rediscover itthrough the adventure of living.
And there's no final purpose, nocosmic, you know, To Do List.
The point is just to play. And instead of life being a
problem to be solved, it's more of a dance to be enjoyed.
(12:20):
And, you know, he goes on to talk about how this is kind of
taboo, this idea of remembering or knowing who you are Because
if we did that, a lot of society, religious and
institutions kind of depend on this illusion of separateness
(12:41):
to, you know, maintain control. And if people truly saw
themselves as inseparable from the world, you know, some
fundamental things like fear of death would dissolve greed and
competition and capitalism wouldlose their footing a little bit,
(13:03):
lose some of their power and obedience to external authority
would start to crumble down a little bit.
And some of the core takeaways, I guess, are, you know, this
fear, this seeking, this grasping, which we've talked a
lot about a lot of where my suffering came from.
(13:24):
He says it all comes from forgetting who you already are
and that death is not the end. It is a rhythm in the ongoing
song of existence. And then, you know, really
hammering home that life is not a problem to solve felt like it
was to me. But it's a dance.
(13:46):
It's a play. It's kind of a cosmic unfolding.
And the fact that you are not separate.
You are the universe playing, expressing, exploring itself
through you. Your job is really just to
remember that. And early on in the book, he he
(14:08):
highlights the absurdity of human life and kind of this
funny metaphor and story about tubes, which I reread a bunch of
times and I thought I'd share itwith you.
He goes. For there is a growing
apprehension that existence is arat race in a trap.
Living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which
(14:31):
put things in at one end and letthem out at the other, which
both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out.
So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new
tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at
the other. At the input end, they even
developed ganglia of nerves called brains with eyes and
(14:53):
ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for
things to swallow. As and when they get enough to
eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in
complicated patterns, making allsorts of noises by blowing air
in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups
to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an
(15:15):
abundance of attached appliancesthat they are hardly
recognizable as mere tubes, and they managed to do this in a
staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat
tubes of your own form, but in general there's a serious,
serious competition as to who's going to be the top type of
(15:36):
tube. All this seems marvelously
futile, and yet when you begin to think about it, it becomes
begins to be more marvelous thanfutile.
Indeed, it seems extremely odd. And this marvelous and futile
game does not seem so futile when you're in it.
(15:58):
I know it didn't for me really felt like the opposite of
futile. And for quite some time the
competition of trying to be the top type of tube dominated
really my entire existence. It felt like it was the only
game worth playing, kind of the only game and one that was worth
(16:21):
sacrificing everything else for.You know, whole point is to be
the top type of tube. That's what I I thought the best
way I can sort of describe this feeling.
I've tried to share this with a few people in my life is every
single day felt like the most important day of my life.
(16:47):
And that is a really strange wayto live your life.
It's a really heavy way to live your life that's filled with a
lot of anxiety. You know, every day was another
really important business trip, you know, meeting founders,
hosting investors. Every day had Zoom calls where
millions of dollars might changehands.
(17:10):
Every little minute decision hada huge impact on a lot of people
around me. So imagine waking up and
thinking today is the biggest day of my life.
You know, through that lens, nothing else really matters.
(17:31):
It doesn't matter how you're feeling mentally or physically.
Doesn't matter how much sleep you're getting, it doesn't
matter if you ignore things or people in your personal life
because this is it. This is the day, this is when
it's all happening. And if you nail this day then
you're set. But then repeat that feeling
(17:53):
every day for about 1500 plus days straight at obscures your
world view and makes it very myopic and self-serving.
And I still wake up even over here in in paradise with that
(18:15):
feeling, that feeling of something really important that
I have to do something that I have to nail, something that has
to go perfect. But you know, with some space,
I'm hoping that voice gets quieter and quieter because it
is just an illusion and also a little comical to look back at.
(18:39):
You know, I was not a surgeon. I was not saving lives.
And that crushing pressure that I felt was just all bullshit and
just a story that I had created for myself.
Story that sort of justified my existence, my actions, and I
(19:00):
guess my chosen suffering. So I'm trying to reframe that
feeling and what if instead of thinking this is the most
important day of my life, I switch that to what if this was
the last day of my life? You know, when I spend it
(19:21):
chasing a goal that I'll never realize or what I spend it
trying to notice every beautifullittle thing around me and
experience as much richness as Ican, connect as deeply as I can
express as much gratitude for the people I love as I can like
(19:44):
everything. There's so much duality in life,
and we often have to hold two things to be true at the same
time. And one is the only constant is
change and that every moment is fleeting.
And then on the other side of that is.
There is only ever an eternal now.
(20:08):
We can and will only ever experience the current moment.
So how you feel right now as you're listening to this podcast
is the best reflection of how your life really is and how
you're feeling about it. So one could argue that today is
the most important day of your life, but not because you're
(20:29):
going to accomplish some things that set you up to be happy in
some future that doesn't exist now.
It's the most important day of your life because this is it.
There will only ever be a seriesof endless present moments, and
if you miss it, you can't get itback.
(20:51):
So maybe your job is not to create, build, accomplish as
much as you can, and to show people how endlessly clever you
are. It's instead to notice and
breathe in as much of the momentthat's in front of you as
possible. And I thought I'd maybe wrap
(21:12):
this up by sharing a poem that my grandfather carried with him
in his his wallet his whole life.
And when he passed, my mom passed it on to my brother and
I. And it's right in the same vein.
He was a smart guy, says There are two days in every week about
which it is useless to worry. One is yesterday, with its
(21:36):
mistakes and blunders. The other is tomorrow.
It, too, is beyond our control. Tomorrow's sun will rise, either
in splendor or behind a mask of clouds, but it will rise.
That leaves today. And usually our present trials
are easier to bear than remorse for what happened yesterday or
(21:57):
dread of what tomorrow may bring.
Let us therefore journey one dayat a time.
Smart guy, wise guy, and going to try and live by those words
more. Carry that with me now.
But if you're going to leave it there for now, there's an
(22:18):
important day in front of me then I need to go be present
for. And thank you again for being
here. I'll see you all next week.
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