Finding Peace Without The Pieces

Without further ado, here are our two bells, so I think we can think of our life as a puzzle having all of these different pieces. There's the piece with the job, there's a piece with the kids. There's a piece with the relationship, the aspirations, that childhood, the physical body, the house, the car, where you live, what you eat, all of these different pieces that come together to create your experience of life, your experience of you and when it comes right down to it.

Much of our moment to moment work in life seems to be about arranging the puzzle pieces in such a way that makes the picture look good, that brings it all together in the way that we imagine in our mind. It should be. This is the perfect relationship, the perfect job, the amount of money, the house, the retiring when you want to retire, the living where you want to live. The being surrounded by the people you want to be surrounded by family life, unfolding as you expect it to .

Much of our pursuit of happiness, of peace is about trying to make all of these pieces come together in the way that we think will give us what we want. And it's true. We can experience , uh , a great deal of happiness with all of those pieces coming together. I'm sure you've experienced it in your own life where you really want something to happen or you believe that when you get that thing , uh , there'll be a sense of happiness and then you get, and your life does transform in a certain way.

You're happier, you're more fulfilled. But if you also assess where you're at right now and the level of happiness you have in this moment, chances are if you're like most people, you're not as satisfied or fulfilled as you thought you might be.

And there's still this sense that there's some more puzzle pieces that need to be arranged, a gap in the puzzle, a puzzle piece that needs to be brighter, better, more colorful or fit in a different way to get to that moment where it will finally come together and then we can relax. Like, do you know that feeling? Do you have that feeling right now? Are there things in your life that you're looking toward with that sort of aspiration? It often feels very, very compelling.

I contend with this every single day of my life. I think this is like my biggest kryptonite to peace is that just like all of these ideas and visions I have for what my life could be and how wonderful it could be and how great I could make it and like a lot of enthusiasm to try to make that happen. And I've been very blessed over the years to um, have a lot of my goals and visions actually come to fruition and I'm very grateful for that.

I love the life I've built for myself, but if I'm being totally honest, you know, a lot of times when these great, wonderful things happen that I looked at with this admiring quality, if like I, if I just had that, then it would take my life to the next step. It really doesn't make that big of a difference. I mean, case in point just wrote a book for two years straight. The thought was like, man, once that gets out there, you know, everything will be good.

Or it'll like, there'll be some form of happiness that I haven't touched yet that I'll crack into. Once that happens, I think that's more realistic. It's not like while then life will be good. It's just like something really special will happen once that happens and, and now I'm here and it's great. I really enjoy that the book is out there and I'm sharing it with people and it touches my heart and it's warm, but it's my life that radically different. Not really.

I still have a lot of stressors that come with it. There's more agitation in some aspects of my life. Now that the book is out there and I'm still in a body that experiences pleasure and pain, it gets agitated at times. It gets hot, it gets too cold.

I have a mind that likes to think sometimes positive, sometimes negative, you know, these things are still here and I think that the trap we get into in life is forgetting that our happiness at the end of the day comes down to how our mind is able to relate to our moments and we work so hard to change the experiences of our life so that our relationship to them feels good rather than working on changing our relationship to life so that we can actually be settled in whatever experience is there.

Because if the conditioning you're creating in your mind, if the neuroses that you're reinforcing is this perpetual need to get something else or something better to be fulfilled, then whenever you get that something better, you're still going to have those neuroses that say, I need something better. To tie it back into my experience with the book, right?

All of that conditioning along the way that I was doing with my mind of like, once the book is done, you know , then something will be a little better, more magical. Well, now that I'm here, I still have that mind that is in that conditioned state that's like looking for something in the future. The happiness comes when we work with those neuroses and train them to be more okay with a moment that we might perceive as incomplete. In other words, being able to find peace without all the pieces.

Now how do we actually do this so that it doesn't just remain this nice philosophical idea? Well, fortunately this is actually something we can practice. It's at the core of almost any contemplative tradition and is also at the core of what we're practicing in meditation, but it can also be done outside of a meditation practice.

I think one of the best ways to work on this is to just start by catching yourself in those moments where you're caught in the idea of, I need to get out of this moment in order to be more fulfilled. Now we're not talking about extreme moments like life-threatening moments or really severe moments that you absolutely need to feel the energy to get out of. That's in a different category. What we're talking more of like the day to day stuff where it's kind of agitating. You're frustrated.

The feeling of like, God, I wish the kids would just grow up already so I could move on with my life. Those are the things we're working with now. It's in those moments where I want you to stop, take a breath and just see if you can settle into the moment. However it is. Relax your body, let your shoulders drop, loosen the tension in your hands and your belly. All of the physical and psychological things that seem to be pushing you out of the moment as it is.

See if you can soften and relax all of that and even try to find something that you could appreciate in the moment. Maybe the fact that you're breathing, maybe just laughing at the total chaos of your life or just appreciating like, you know, all of these moments are going to pass and life has a finite amount of moments and the more we rushed through them, the more the quicker they pass by.

And even just that recognition can give us a certain kind of appreciation for something that might have otherwise felt really overwhelming and frustrating. And the more that you do this, the more you're reconditioning your mind to not be so caught up in that grasping cycle of trying to get all the pieces to come together in a way in order to find your piece . And this is especially true with the difficult stuff, right?

The good stuff kind of tricks us cause we can all be super present and mindful when all the puzzle pieces are perfectly arranged and there's no frustrations is no drama. Things sort of seem good in our life. Those are the moments where we really like mindfulness and we're like, Oh yeah, I can totally be present for my life. This is so easy. I don't get what everyone's struggling about with this whole meditation thing. It's just nice. Inhale, walk around and joy , right?

That's when life is good, no problems there. It's when things get a little bit more difficult that we really get to to test ourselves like how have we actually trained our minds so that the test of a person's happiness in my opinion can uh , can never be evaluated just in those good moments. It has to be evaluated in the uncomfortable moments and how we relate to them when the pieces are not altogether in the way we want them to be.

Now it's important to remember that when working with some of this uncomfortable stuff or the really agitating, stressful anxiety provoking moments, the minds, biological tendency, neurological tendency is going to be to want to get out of those moments quickly. So where we're working against some very deep conditioning in the brain and it will feel frustrating in those moments to try and take a deep breath and relax into it. There might be a little voice that comes up and says, this is stupid.

This isn't working. Corey doesn't know what he's talking about. Why would I want to be in this moment? I don't feel anything changing. You have to trust the logic of this, that even if nothing radical shifts this practice of not fighting so hard what is here and relaxing into it. Even if it's like a little uncomfortable to relax into it and it might be uncomfortable to relax into it.

That is setting you up for longterm wellbeing instead of just this little dopamine hit that you might get from hating this moment, pushing out of it and then finding some relief when you're in the car and you know nobody needs anything from you anymore. That's a cycle where usually on hate this moment push to get out of it. Oh, finally the kids are away. I get to have a beer. I can relax. Oh, now I can be mindful, but that's the trap. That's the trap.

That's what the mind is used to doing to try to get its wellbeing tension, relieve the tension. Then I feel good tension again. We leave the tension. Then they feel good. We have to work in those moments of tension and not reinforce that pattern. The more moments we do this, the more we're setting ourselves up for a much more stable, much deeper and much more profound sense of peace, a peace that can exist without all the pieces. So I'm practicing this right alongside you.

I think it's one of the hardest things. It's one of the things that I constantly have to catch myself on, but it's also one of the things I know to be true that if I chip away at it, it's really going to have big implications in my life. So my encouragement to you today in your day to day moments or in your meditation practice or both, is to practice meeting those moments of discomfort, taking a breath and just relaxing into them.

You can even say to yourself, what if this were the last moment of my life? Would I be fighting it so much? If this were the last Mount of a moment of my life, how would I relate to it? And most likely you'll see your relationship to it change. It's an ongoing practice, but little moments of that accumulate over time. And eventually we recondition our mind for greater peace. And wellbeing.

I hope that makes some sense, a little bit of a longer episode, but it felt important to go into some of the details there. As always, let me know your thoughts on Instagram or social media. I'd love to hear how this is landing for you. I'll talk to you tomorrow and until then, continue practicing cumin and take care. Hey, before you go, few announcements in the after party.

First, if you want some followup resources, guided meditations, book recommendations, app recommendations, just text your email address to 1631337829, eight and you will get an automated email to your inbox with all of those resources in my resource library. Second, if you're not part of the Facebook group, make sure you search for practicing human on Facebook. Join our group and we have a lot of conversations going on there. Third, my book is out.

Stop missing your life, how to be deeply present in an unpleasant world. If you're enjoying the podcast, I think you'll really enjoy the book. It goes into all of these concepts and in more depth and touches on a lot of topics I can't touch on in the podcast because under contract I'm not allowed to talk about many of those topics. So you can find that , uh , really most bookstores, especially the bigger ones on Amazon, audible, hardcover, Kindle version, it's all out there.

Stop missing your life, how to be deeply present in an unpleasant world. And lastly, if you are enjoying this podcast and you feel inspired to leave a review on iTunes, it is so very much appreciated. I read every single one of them. A smile creeps up on my face when I do. We don't have ads for this podcast. The only thing as a give back is just sharing your, your thoughts, your words and honest review, cause it really long way. So that is all for today.

I'm looking forward to talking to you tomorrow until then, have a day and take care.