Hello, beautiful humans and welcome to the mental Wellness. Wake up, show a weekly podcast where growth minded creative people, come to learn, best practices from both spirituality and psychology that create lasting well-being. I am your host mental Wellness, expert improvised acting teacher therapist and Coach, Don McMillan. Let's get to it. It. Beloved humans. Thank you so much for being here to my returning, listeners, mwah, big kiss, and hug.
Thank you for coming back, to spend time with me. I honor you, and I cherish you, and to my new listeners. Welcome, welcome. I'm so excited to see how our community is growing across the planet. It's a delight and an honor and a pleasure that you would even stop by. So thank you for stopping by stick around. I I aim to be of service and I really appreciate you and your presence in my life. So please do continue to like, share and subscribe. It makes all the difference in the world.
We get to grow our little community, and that's just more people, elevating Consciousness, and spreading Joy on the planet. so, what I want to share with you today is it's okay to be okay. It's okay to be okay. What do I mean by this other than the adhan? Whatever? That's all B's. It's a tautology. It's okay to be. Okay. So first of all in recent years, we've had quite an uptick in people acknowledging. Their suffering, their struggles, their mental health
concerns. And so, you see a lot of, it's okay not to be, okay, and it is. All feelings are, welcome all experiences are valid. So on those days, those moments, sometimes those weeks, when I feels a little bit, like a slog, when your brain is not your friend, when your body is struggling, It's okay, not to be okay, you do not owe the world
positivity. American culture has created a sort of toxic positivity culture and I struggle against this a lot in when I was working in addiction because I would want to guide my client to relapse prevention strategies and much of the time, the strategy they wanted to use in the only one they wanted to use was To just think positive.
So, not only do we think that we should think positive and we have to think positive, we've come to believe that we owe to other people, positivity excitement, and cheerfulness at all times. So I honor and I embrace our understanding that sometimes things are not as okay as they might otherwise be. And so yes it is. Okay to not be okay. Okay, and it's okay to be okay. It's okay to be okay. We do not have to lean into our mental illness. We do not have to wallow in our
stress. We do not have to Define ourselves by our diagnosis. We can have our diagnosis, have our stress, have our tough mental, health, challenges, or physical challenges, and Be okay. It is okay. To be okay. it is okay to be okay, it is okay to notice All the suffering in the world. And be okay. Wait, what? Yeah Yeah. Yeah. You can notice and understand that. Sometimes there are terrible things going on in the world, you do not have to create your own suffering, because of that,
it's okay to be okay. It's okay to be financially, okay? When other people are homeless without homes, it's okay to be financially, okay? When a member of your family is, Not, it's okay to be physically, okay? When other people are unhealthy, it's okay to be mentally, okay, emotionally? Okay. When other people are ill, it is okay, to be okay, I'm giving you permission. To not be suffering. Now, some of you are like why are you hammering this home? Of course, it's okay to be okay,
I know it's okay to be okay. For you return to the. It's also. Okay, not to be okay. But it's okay to be okay. You can have your diagnosis and be okay. You can have bipolar disorder and be okay. You can be on the autism spectrum and be okay. You can have ADHD ADHD and be okay, you can have cancer and be okay. You can have less than a dollar to your name and be okay. You are not required to suffer in Buddhism. The analogy is pain, is like an arrow.
You get shot with an arrow. You experience pain. But we like to do is shoot ourselves with the second arrow and have suffering about our pain. We like to judge ourselves and other people, we like to resist the present moment if you like oh, this is happening and Hate it. There's another choice. This is happening. That's it. This is happening and I accept it. This is happening and I acknowledge it. And what's beautiful about this is happening, and the story or
this is happening. I accept and acknowledge it, is that if we're talking about suffering of other people, you are so much more effective in your wellness, and you are in your own suffering. Have you ever been in a bad spot? And someone comes along and they call themselves comforting you but they get so upset that then you feel like you have to start comforting them. You ever had that? I've seen that in them in grief,
right? The family members will be really struggling because they've lost someone and, you know, the, the co-worker will come and they'll be so devastated that the family members are comforting them, you're so much more effective in our in our well-being. And we are in our suffering and our whoa.
So if there's some part of you that feels wrong about being, okay, when someone else is not it's like oxygen mask thing, really, if you're on an airplane and the plane is going down and you're busy running around, putting on everyone else's oxygen mask. You're going to start to lose Consciousness and be very bad at it. You take a moment to put on your own oxygen mask in. There you are super effective. It's okay to be okay.
Even if no one else you know is It's okay to be okay part whatever 23 911. It's okay to be only okay you don't have to be exceptional. You have to be the best. You don't have to be thrilled, you don't have to be happy, you don't have to be whoo-hoo enthusiastic and with to be cheerful, you just be okay. You can be content, you can be fine, we live in a culture, their positive positivity culture, where a you're supposed to be positive all the time.
And the opposite of that is to liberate yourself from toxic positivity by being miserable a lot. What about that? Golden mean as Aristotle would say, what about balance? What about the middle path? You don't have to be running swinging through the branches. I don't know what the analogy is going to be jumping up and down on couches, excited and joyful all the time and in order to be a good person or to have a good life, nor do you have to be willing around in a pit to show that?
You understand other people's suffering, you can be okay, you can be fine, you can be content and I ask this of you. if you strung together a series of moments that were like, okay, that be okay. Part of the reason we suffer so much in this culture is because we're so addicted to exchange the extreme of excitement. We want that dopamine hit, we want to be thrilled, we want to be happy. We want to be excited. We want to be over the moon that we lose sight of. This is good.
This is cool. I'm content. You know, when I was on my walk today, when I let go of problem solving and just allowed myself to be in the present moment, I'm like, this is good. Wasn't ecstatic. I wasn't miserable was like it's good. It's fine. I'm okay. This is lovely. This is nice. So, I invite you to be okay. You can be content, you can be a piece, you can be in the middle, not overly thrilled, not overly
terrible, you can be fine. And the more we allow ourselves to be in the golden mean mean being average, that's what Aristotle is talking about is, you know, between courage and cowardice? Is the golden mean the middle spot, the Goldilocks spot if you will the middle path. the more we can accept, okayness, The more we can stop being addicted to the extremes, the better life will have.
Overall, one thing I learned from the book dopamine nation is that there's a self-correction that often happens. I do a lot of theater and there's a understanding and theater about the post to show depression or the post-show let down, right? You do a run of a show. The adrenaline is pop in the audience is having a great time. You spent all these months with these really cool creative people and then bada-boom bada-bing, it's over. It's the life. Does that in a lot of ways big
through big low? And so, when we allow ourselves to stop chasing the thrill, we often free ourselves from the big low. Many of us are addicted to the dopamine hit. We cannot stand any feeling other than whoo-hoo, and when we're not, woohoo, you think there's something wrong. So, I'm inviting us all one to stop, stop being addicted to our suffering.
There's a form of narcissism called covert narcissism, and that's the version of narcissism, which decides, Which experiences itself as I am so special, because no one has suffered like I have suffered and no one understands my suffering. Well, you know, we're all accustomed to the grandiose narcissist.
It's like I'm the most special person, and the best, and smartest of the cutest of the whatever, but some of us are giving in, to this narcissistic tendency to be the most uniquely diagnosed suffering person that ever lived. So, on the one hand, I'm super special, I have the most likes on the cutest on the best on the other hand on the worst and because of the way, our culture set up, some of us are vacillating between the two. If I'm not the Best.
I'm the worst. I'm not the most special, I'm the most meaningless. What if it's okay to be okay. What if it's okay to be okay. What if you what, if it's okay to be like the other girls? But if it's okay to be like the other guys, what if, it's okay to have a pleasant time but if it's okay to be content, what if it's okay, to be okay. so in this moment, I just want to invite you to tune into your okayness if you're feeling really good.
Awesome. Allow that to exist and also tune into your okayness the contentment underneath it. And if you're upset, are feeling some kind of low mood, where is okayness available to you. For example, often, my dog makes a ton of noise when I'm trying to record a podcast, they just over there, you know, do a little dog thing. That's okay. Contentment, peace. And I think a lot of those spiritual teachers that We admire the ones who give you that true sense of.
Wow. That's so that person is tuned into something and I want a piece of that. In my language. They have a certain quality of okayness to certain peace in the okayness that I'm talking about. It's not running around all over the place. It's not wallowing. Is there's just a sense of Here. Now. Okay. Okay. You're okay. Your whole you're perfect, you're complete. Just as you are. Just as you are, you don't have to be any more special than you already are.
You don't have to be any less special than you already are. Right now, your complete and I invite you to have a life too, feels pretty darn good. Most of the time and let that be okay. And if you would do me the courtesy of coming back again, sometime I would be thrilled because I really enjoy spending this time with you, see you next time.