Learning to Find Comfort in Discomfort with Light Watkins

episode is Light Watkins. He has been a meditation teacher and spiritual teacher for more than twenty years. He's the author of The Inner Jim Bliss, More and Knowing Where to Look, and also hosts a weekly podcast called The Light Watkins Show. Today, Eric and Light discuss his book travel Light Spiritual Minimalism to Live a more Fulfilled Life.

at battle. What is a good wolf which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparents. They say, well, which one wins? And the grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

cultural and doctrination, all of these voices. And what I encourage my followers and my readers to do is to split tests which one is the voice of their spirit, because that's the one that's going to encourage you to do the right thing when you don't feel like it. That's the one that's going to cheer you on when you want to give up. That's the one that's going to want to make you more compassionate, more generous, more empathetic,

et cetera. And if you follow that voice enough times, then that's how you turn the volume up so it's not just a still small voice, but it can actually become a loud and knowing voice. So it's kind of like that good wolf. You know, it's right in your ear, and it's louder than the bad wolf. And if you can hear it and experience it. In that way, it's easier to follow the good voice. The problem is we follow the voice of fear so much that that's the

default one that we oftentimes hear. And that's why it's easier to follow the fear voice than it is to follow the still small voice of your intuition.

to feel the most expansive. We want to feel the most creative. We want to be able to tell the best stories. Right. I think about it not in terms of what's happening right now, because I get that what's happening right now could be very chaotic and there are lots of things that need to happen right But let's fast forward and project to our final moments and maybe even beyond that. Let's go to our funeral, and let's say we're now in spirit form, we've left the body.

We're at the funeral, and we're watching people come up to the podium to talk about us and to report on their experiences with us, and what sorts of testimonials, what sorts of reports, what we be proud of at the end of our days when people go up there and talk about us. Do we want to hear people talk about how we always paid our bills on time, and how you know we got that promotion that one time.

Probably not. Probably we want to hear about how we were a good person, We gave people a second chance, We were the one that listened when nobody else would, you know, These kinds of more altruistic exchanges in dynamics, and so if we play that little game with ourselves, then we can just reverse engineer back to this moment where all this chaos is happening and there's not enough time to do anything, and then we have a clear idea of how we want to move through this moment.

So split testing is just another way of saying, don't put so much pressure on yourself to try to figure out which one is the good wolf or the bad wolf. Just follow the one you think it's the good wolf. And if you do that enough times, you're not going to get it right all the time. You know, the ego is really good at disguising itself as that good wolf.

But if you do it, say one hundred times or five hundred times, you have a pretty decent idea of which one is the voice that you ultimately want to follow. Because there's a feeling tone that's a so asociate it with it. There's a little sense of anticipation, there's a little bit of fear perhaps around what's going to happen next, because there's no certainty related to following that good wolf. But if you follow it enough times, you'll see that

on the other side of it. There's this feeling of expansion that is very consistent, and it's something that helps you sleep better at night. It's something that helps to make you wiser, and it's something that you ultimately will be proud of at the end of your days.

Your point is well taken. Sometimes it's confusing and on big, you know, confusing decisions. But there's a lot of feedback that I'm able to find pretty quickly, you know, after I do something like how okay, where do I feel inside? What I'd like to ask you is I find this idea of an authentic self inside of us a little bit of a confusing idea. And what I mean by that is you listed a lot of ways we've been conditioned. You gave a long list, and we could add to it.

We could spend the next hour right laying out all the factors that have conditioned us to be the person we are today. So that makes this idea of like an authentic self a little bit harder to tweeze apart, right, because we do have all this conditioning. Talk to me a little bit, you know in your mind about what that authentic self is? Is it different in me than it is in you when you get down to that truest, deepest level.

it generally speaking. Let's just say generally speaking, as a heterosexual man, right, we've all had the experience where you see a pretty girl out somewhere and it may be clear that she is not in a relationship, she doesn't never ring on or anything like that, and everything in the U says, go up and talk to her, Go up and say hi, go and strike up a conversation. Just take a leap of faith. Just see what happens, you know, say efitt or whatever. We're saying it in

our minds. And we've all had the experience of not doing it. And when you don't do it, what ends up happening? You think about it. It bothers you, right, and you keep playing the scenario out in your head over and over and over, maybe for hours, maybe for days. You're hoping you're going to see the person in the same place again. Now you're sort of stalking the place

hoping that she's going to walk in. In those moments, which are probably more rare, those moments where you did go up, you did say something, even if it doesn't materialize. In anything, you always feel like, you know, this sense of expansion. Yeah, and you feel so good that you at least did something, and it's easier for you to move on to whatever the next thing is and without thinking about whatever could have happened or should have happened

had you behaved differently. That would classify your authentic self as you making choices more in alignment with that expanded feeling where you knew that you did what was a little bit nerve racking, a little bit scary, a little bit you know, anticipatory, but it was something that made you feel like the best version of you, the story

that you ultimately want to tell. If you're the superhero of your life and you're just breaking your life down into these moments and the question is what would the superhero do in this moment, Well, the superhero would certainly go up and talk to the person. The superhero would certainly stand up for people who can't send up for themselves. The superhero wouldn't be in the room gossiping about anybody.

They'd be the person, you know, shutting down the gossip conversation and saying, hey, this person's not all that bad. You know, they have these and that great qualities. So when we think about our own personal hero, what the qualities are of that personal hero, those are qualities that we deep down want to embody for ourselves, yep, right, And so when we can operate in alignment with those qualities, that is our most authentic self. And that's different for everybody.

to be left in their little bubble? And I know that the best version of me does the kind thing, and if it isn't received well, then it isn't received well. But I know that I was acting from the part of me that knows that that's something I really value, right, is to try and be kind to everyone. And so I think, yeah, we all have this sense of expansiveness,

and I love that idea. I've often thought about just that very idea expansion versus contraction, you know, as a really good guide for how to make decisions and how to orient you know, does this feel like it makes me a bigger, more open, better version of myself? Or do I feel like this closes me down and causes me to contract? And for me, that's almost been the best way of thinking of certain things is in that sense of expansion versus contraction.

There's a time and place for a donut. But absolutely if you eat these things all the time because the idea of it makes you feel expansive in the moment, but then twenty minutes later you feel shitty, that's an indication that this is not taking you in the direction of your most authentic self. Eating these kinds of foods you know, going to work out may make you contract initially, but then after what happens. No one ever walks out of the gym or an exercise class having killed it

and feel like a smaller version of yourself. You feel like the superhero version of yourself. And so you know, you got to look at it in a broad spectrum of activity as opposed to how you're feeling in the moment. And then again, once you have enough of these types of experiences and you have a point of reference, then you can make those decisions easier and easier.

time time, and yet it's still difficult. No one has ever really satisfactorily been able to answer why that is. I think it just has something to do with an inbuilt wiring to conserve energy as a living being. I think we just have some degree of that. But it's funny. I could have that kind of track record one hundred percent success and still still have to talk myself into it.

what sort of challenge do I want today? And you know, maybe working out presents what seems to be a very steep obstacle for us, but we know that once we get to the other side of that obstacle, it's going to feel great. But do we want to take on that level of obstacle that day, or maybe there's a smaller obstacle that we're satisfied with because we know that it's not going to stop. It's going to just be the same thing the next day and the next day and the day after that, et cetera.

make that happen. And the opposite of that is what the Buddha and all of the stages and gurus over millennia have said, which is happiness. There's no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So, in other words, happiness is an inside out proposition and therefore it requires some sort of inner practice that will help to cultivate the happiness

that you ultimately want. And now you know, science has backed this up, and the research has said that in American society, at least beyond you, you know, having your basic needs mat and you making a salary of like seventy seventy five thousand bucks, making more money is not going to increase your baseline level of happiness.

greater purpose in your life. And what's also been shown to increase the happiness is cultivating more of the chemicals that are responsible for happiness, serotonin, dopamine, oxtetosin, etc. And the practices that can do that very effectively are gratitude and meditation. So the thing that stops us from feeling happier than we would be at that threshold, that seventy five thousand dollars threshold primarily lack of those chemicals. And so what does the body do that prohibits us from

feeling those chemicals. It reacts to demands, pressures, and changes of expectation. So that's another way of saying stress. It's experiencing stress. Stress depletes the body of serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin, so it makes us want to run away from whatever the experience is or fight that experience. Meditation gratitude helps to create those chemicals, which makes us feel more present, more fulfilled, and happier inside, more content with whatever it

is that we're experiencing. Just to put a definition to happiness, because a lot of people think happiness is me walking around with a big smile plaster on my face all the time, and that's not the reality of what happiness is. Happiness is being in a state where you don't need other things to be happening to make you feel more fulfilled as a person. That's what true happiness actually is.

So when we can get the body addicted to those happy chemicals, then our body will respond by making us crave those experiences that are responsible for those happiness chemicals, which makes us wake up in the morning. You know how some people wake up they can't wait to have their coffee, or you know, they can't wait to turn the television on, or they can't wait to start scrolling

on social media. Well, those are not arbitrary experiences. You've programmed and conditioned your body to be dependent upon the chemicals that are associated with those experiences. And the good news is that the same thing can happen with more positive experiences like meditation, like gratitude, like being of service, like operating from a purpose. And so as you go throughout your day, your body is actually prompting you, Hey, hey, Eric,

is time to sit down and meditate? Or hey Eric, you haven't really thought about anything you're grateful for in a moment. What are you grateful for right now? You know? And you start having these kinds of experiences from the inside out, and you fulfill yourself being more present and more fulfilled, and as a result, you're not sitting there thinking to yourself. Oh, I'm very present right now. I'm very happy, I'm very fulfilled. No, you're just completely engaged

in whatever the activity is. And as you're walking around, you're noticing things. You're noticing the birds, you're noticing the sounds, you're noticing the colors, you're noticing the breeze on your face. And when a demand is placed on you, you don't jump right into scarcity go oh my god, I don't have time for this. No, you're able to be present with that and to be the person that stops and helps the old person across the street because you have

the time. In fact, you're a time billionaire because that's what presence does. So it's not that you need to even be aware that any of this is happening. It becomes who you are, and that's what that means. The more of those happiness chemicals you gets kind of like that's the true wealth that you're actually looking for. And the more stress you have, it takes away your ability

to feel that. And that's why we want to start to see stress as a debt, as a liability, and not this thing that we need in order to find our edge or whatever it is that we're telling ourselves.

And we know there's a paradox of choice out there that if you have way too many options you get overwhelmed. But even well, short of that, I think you're talking about, you know, short of that, So why is less options often more beneficial for us in a spiritual minimalism sense.

of one hundred. And at the same time, let's say for whatever reason, we're not in a situation where we can be well, we don't have what it takes, we don't have the money, we don't have the resources, we're in a weird physical location where we can't get access

to care right. So then there is a freedom that is associated with that, And what that means is that we can either focus on what's not happening, which again yanks us out of the present moment and it actually makes the body sicker, it doesn't heal the body to be in that mindset, or we can accept where we are and what's happening, provided we've done everything we could right and this is where we are, so we accept that. Now, just through share acceptance, we're able to anchor ourselves more

in the present moment. And then it's through that present moment awareness that we're going to be able to see and detect and feel things that we would not have

had access to otherwise. One of my spiritual teachers used to say, if you want to know what's going to happen tomorrow, then you better get present today because the richest information about what's happening tomorrow is only found in the present moment right now, So otherwise you have to use speculation and guesswork to try to figure out what's going to be happening tomorrow. So both of those things

can be true. You know, I like options, and I'm recognizing that I don't have a lot of options for whatever reason, and so I'm just going to do the best that I can right now. If you have time, I'll tell you a little story about that.

they were coming in. And I've done this, you know, hundreds of times. There was never any traffic, and one morning I get in my car, and I'm well, you know, right within the timeframe that I always gave myself, and there was all this traffic on the main road going in the direction of the studio. So like any good LA driver, I zigzagged my way down to the next street, and I hit another pocket of traffic. And this is highly unusual. There's never traffic on one of those streets,

much less both of those streets. So now I'm recognizing that I'm going to be late, and I hate it being late, but there was nothing I can do about it. So I tried to like breathe and calm myself down as I'm inching through this traffic. And then I finally get to the main intersection that crossed both of those streets. And if there was going to be anything causing this traffic, it would have been at this intersection. But I didn't

see anything. I didn't see anything struction. I didn't see the obstruction, no accident, There was no reason why there would have been traffic on those streets. And then eventually the traffic just kind of spontaneously cleared up. I arrive at the class ten minutes late. I'm embarrassed, right because now I'm sending the message that it's okay to show

up late to my class. And as I walk into the room, the actual room, I have flip flops on, and I feel all this crunching underneath my flip flops, and I look down and there's like there's a million shards of broken glass all over the floor. And I look up to the front wall, which is a wall of mirrors, probably about ten feet tall. Each pane of mirror was about three feet four feet wide, and in the very middle of the room there was a missing panel ten feet tall by four feet wide. There was

no mirror there. And so what it happened was apparently about ten minutes before I came in the room, right at the top of the hour when the class was supposed to start, that panel of mirror somehow dislodged and came crashing down right where I would have been sitting had I arrived at the class on time. So evidently that phantom traffic jam that I was secretly cursing on my way there was actually saving me from having a

very unlucky start to my day. And the reason I like that story is because it tells the flip side of the freedom of choicelessness, right, which is when you're being rejected from something, when you're losing something, and you think to yourself, oh my god, if only I had done XYZ, If only I left earlier, if only I hadn't made friends with this person, if only I had put more money into it, then it would have worked

out better. That's how we play it out in our minds without realizing that although the situation was bad, it could have been a lot worse and I would have had a very unlucky start to my day had I gotten there when I wanted to get there. So the universe or nature, whatever you want to call it, was gifting me with a freedom of choicelessness. And after that happened,

whenever I'm inconvenienced, it doesn't bother me anymore. When I miss a flight, when there's traffic, when someone's not texting me back as quickly as I think they should be, I think back to myself, phantom traffic, jam, broken mirror. Okay, you know this is not what's meant to be happening now Again. It doesn't mean I'm sitting on my hands waiting for things to happen. I'm still doing everything I

can do. But when the thing is not happening beyond that, then I have an easier time saying, you know what, this is fine? Let me keep focusing on what I can control and let go of what I can.

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up for this free guide right on our homepage. It's always seemed to me there are situations in which there's something I can do about this, and I absolutely do it, or there's nothing I can do about it, so I let it go. And then there's all that middle ground where we're like, you know, I don't you know, I don't quite know. You know, I've got a job that I don't love. You know, Do I accept that? Because by accepting it, I might start to like the job more.

And I'm not resisting it. You know. It's that middle ground that's always so so confusing, and like we talked about, you know, there's an art to finding, you know, what's the right response and what situation.

than I found them. So that gives you a different point of focus in these moments where the outcome isn't what you think it should be, and therefore you can now become more process oriented and guess what the value that you ultimately want from the experience is going to be found from the process of it versus from the outcome of it. Going back to our earlier example of you know, going through Hell Week as a Navy seal. Sure, it's wonderful to say that you're a Navy seal, but

let's say you had to hook up Eric. Let's say you know somebody in the Navy who could just make you a Navy seal without you having to bother with Hell Week? Right? Would anybody want that? No self respecting person would want to have Navy seal status without going through all of the things that you have to go through, which is advertised it's hellish. It's just going to be hell to go through these things. But that's what makes you into the person, that's what gives the experience is

inherent value. And so as a Navy seal, you're the kind of person that does things beyond the point where most people give up. You'll go through whatever you have to go through to make sure you protect your fellow seals. You're the kind of person that doesn't come up with excuses about why you can't make things happen. Instead, you find solutions. So when you put yourself through that experience, you actually become that person, and then twenty thirty fifty

years later when you look back, that's what you remember fondly. Yeah, I didn't give up, right, and yes I went beyond where most people would quit. And yes I do protect people, you know, just because I expect them to protect me, et cetera. And that becomes a part of who you are, and that shows up in everything you do, and you realize, yeah, it was the journey, it wasn't the destination. That was the most valuable part of the whole experience.

good all purpose intention. It's one of my fallbacks.

And what I mean by that is, you know, if anybody could say these things about you, they didn't show up to the meeting that I set up for them, and they never notified me, or they broke up with me over text message, or they ghosted me, or they didn't do what they said they were going to do, so I just stopped screwing around with them. You know, these kinds of little things to us, they're like little things. They can become these really big moments that we get

known for if we do it enough times. And you know, when people are gossiping, usually they're not gossiping about the first they're gossiping about your final impression. How you left the situation, you know, and then you start to hear the grapevine version of how you left. This is never

it's never like what actually happened. It's the exaggerated version of what happened that you have to then give context for the rest of your life and have to explain for the rest of your life, and it could be distracting, and people don't want to have anything to do with you because now it's blown up into this whole thing, and these would be, you know, ridiculously simple situations to correct, maybe just by giving a little bit of clarification, maybe

giving an apology, maybe just giving someone a chance to feel seen and heard, you know. And so I try to remember that in my day to day life, everyone that I'm encountering, that's an opportunity for me to leave a positive final impression. And that could just be listening. That could just be acknowledging what someone just said or

what they're going through. I've experienced this recently. I don't want to make this, you know, time sensitive, but you know, there's some international conflicts that are happening right now, as they almost always are. There's something happening somewhere in the world. But you know, having these conversations, especially if you feel strongly about one side or the other side, is really

easy to dismiss someone who doesn't agree with you. And I think that that's an opportunity from a spiritual minimalism point of view, to help people feel as seen and as heard as you would like to feel, even if you think they're wrong, even if you feel like they're misguided, they're not seeing the full thing. Well, guess what, they probably feel the same about you. Yeah, So, at the

end of the day, who's right who's wrong? We don't know because we're all being propagandized, we're all being indoctrinated by whatever our echo chamber has been conditioning us to believe. And that's been repeated throughout history, where we thought things were one way but actually turns out or a different way. And so just exercising the benefit of the doubt, giving people the benefit of the doubt is a really good

way to leave a positive final oppression. And if you want to have influence over how that person is seeing a situation, guess what, You're going to have way more influence if you help them feel seen and heard versus the person who cuts them off, dismisses their point of view as nonsense and makes them feel stupid because nobody

wants to feel those ways. So some very powerful work that we can be doing on a daily basis, And that's what that principle of spiritual minimalism give what you want to receive actually means.

talk a little bit more about this. You know, give what you want to receive. When I turned forty, I had an epiphany. I was like, man, I'm not really going out very much. And I reflected on that, and I realized the reason I wasn't socializing was I had stopped drinking when I was about twenty five twenty six drinking alcohol and I never had a problem.

And so I never missed it, and I just stopped. I just stopped drinking over the course of like six months, and then I just didn't really think about it much. But yeah, when I turned forty, I thought, okay, well I want to be more social. But then I was thinking, you know, well where would I go? And all the places that I was thinking of were places that were centered around drinking, either directly or indirectly. So I thought, well,

maybe I'll create an experience. There's got to be other people out here who also want to socialize without having to feel pressure to drink. So I started hosting these gatherings once a week at this little dance studio in West la It was costing me fifty dollars each week to rent this place out for like an hour, hour and a half, and I would be in my kitchen making honey lemon ginger tea, which I really loved from

when I visit India. I would have a question of the night because one of the things I hate is going to a social event as an adult and you don't know anybody and you feel like everyone's in there little click, and then you have to kind of get out of your shell. So I was like, how can I create an experience where people feel naturally inclined to approach other people? Right? And I said, Oh, let's do this. Let's have a question of the night, something like who's

your personal hero? Or where would you like to go on vacation next? Or what's a book that changed your life? And instead of writing their name down on a name tag, write the answer to the question of the night on your name tag and wear on you. And that way, when people come in and they write their answer, you're going around and you're seeing everybody's answer and it's a natural conversation starter. So we said we did that, and then I led a meditation because I thought, why not

have meditation at a social event. And we had someone else come in and give like a quote's ted talk. So I would have like my SASA teacher come in and talk about like the principles of teaching SASA. And I had like someone else come in as a coach, a life coach come in and talk about that, and it was a really cool little experience. You know, we only got like twelve thirteen people coming out, and it was a free event for them. But it just it really lit me up inside. And I didn't know what

was going to happen with it. I was just happy to have something to do every Wednesday. It was like a purpose driven thing for me. It wasn't even about making money. But then I had this volunteer and one day she said, as we were straightening up afterwards, she goes, why don't you start taking up a collection. Since you're paying for it out of pocket, just take up a collection and just you know, at least you can pay yourself back or use that to pay for the rent

of the space. So the next event, we took up a collection and there were probably thirteen fourteen people there, and we collected fifty five dollars. So now I was a little disappointed, honestly, Eric, because I was thinking, Man, fifty five dollars, that's it. After all this work I'm putting into this. It's like I got to see how the market value this experience, and it wasn't as high

as I was hoping. And so I got home that night, and I had my fifty five dollars in cash, and I thought to myself, you know, I could spend this fifty five bucks paying for the next rent, I said, Or I could give it to somebody at the next event, and I could task them with the mission of using it to help somebody in some positive way, and then have them come back and share what they did with

the fifty five dollars. Obviously it's not enough money to make a huge difference in someone's life, but that's the point, Like, you don't need a lot of money to make a positive impact in the world. So let's see what someone creative can do with fifty five dollars. So we randomly awarded someone at the next event the fifty five dollars. They come back to the following event and they say, yeah,

I put this kid through a summer art camp. I added fifty bucks of my own money, and this is the kid's name, and this is how the summer camp worked. And everybody was so inspired, and I was like, oh my god, this is the missing component of the event. And so that night, we probably still had fourteen people, but we collected like one hundred and twenty something dollars. So the donations went up, and that became a sort of pivotal moment where we saw hockey stick growth in

the amount of people who were coming. Because when people would share the story of what they did with the money, everyone was inspired. And I would tell people, you don't have to win the money. You have fifty five bucks in your checking account. Probably pretend like you want it, and go and do something about it, and come back and tell us what you did, and we'll share the story together. And so it got to the point where

we were getting hundreds of people. Man, we had events with like three hundred and four hundred people coming six months later, and we had to charge because we started serving food. It became this whole thing. We were doing them in New York, we were doing them in London, We're doing them in Germany. They were all over the world, and we started getting written up in the New York Times and NBC and all the different outlets. And I ended up getting a girlfriend from that experience, you know,

because she was volunteering. So basically everything that I was lacking in my life came into my life as a result of that event. I got my first publishing deal which was like a six figure publishing deal, and even though I didn't make a dime on the event directly, But that's the message behind giving what you want to receive instead of sitting around thinking about how no one is doing what I think they should be doing, and

you know, this world is screwed up. You give that, Give that to people in whatever small way you can, and if it's authentic and if it's an integrity with you know, whatever your heart is having you do, people

will respond to it and they'll come to it. And so on my own podcast today, I just launched the episode of me with one of my childhood friends who's become the mayor of Montgomery, Alabama, where I grew up, and he has a wonderful story of being an outsider and you know how that all worked with him getting into politics. But I think that's another area that people complain about a lot and criticize a lot. It's like, well,

these are just people just like you and me. So if you want to see something different, throw your hat in a ring and you know, give it a run and see if you can make a difference if you feel like no one else can.

things have to be grandiose to be meaningful. And that's a trap.

my intention wasn't like built this big event. My intention was just to create an experience that I actually wanted to have that I wanted to see and it grew from that and in the process, you know, it forced me to have to be a leader, because leading people who are getting paid is one thing. Leading a bunch of volunteers is a whole other skill set. And you have to keep a motivated and inspired all the time.

you're good at. You stay away from the ones that you know you're you're weak in those areas. You know you're weak because you don't like feeling weak. Nobody likes feeling weak. Nobody likes feeling like they can't do something. So left up to our own devices, probably we're going to do more exercises that we feel stronger in skill.

What happens when you hire a trainer. Yeah, when you hire a trainer, the reason you're hiring a trainer is to push you beyond whatever your comfort zone was, and so that trainer may immediately see, oh, you're weak in this area that area after doing their little diagnostic assessment with you. And yet they're listening to your goals. You know, I want to have a stronger back, I want to have a bigger butt, whatever the goal is, and trainer is like, Okay, well, this is what you have to

do if you want to achieve those goals. And probably the reason you haven't achieved those goals is because you haven't been doing the kinds of exercises that you need to do in order to achieve those goals. And that's going to make you very uncomfortable. So the moment you start getting uncomfortable, now you're moving towards your growth zone.

And the growth zone is almost always uncomfortable. So if we want to grow in whatever area of our life, then that means we have to start making friends with discomfort. And that's what finding comfort means in discomfort, is that is an essential part of the process of getting stronger, accessing more of our potential, becoming the person that we ultimately want to be, etc.

It's very rigid, it's very formal, you know, like you do these exact things a certain way, which is against my very nature. But the fact that I just give myself to the form I just here it is stop your endless debate about how you want things to be this is how you're going to do them for this period of time. I find that helpful. But this idea of discomfort is it's hard to keep pushing yourself outside

your comfort zone. And like we've talked a bit about in this conversation, right, there's an art to finding like how far outside your comfort zone you can go and still maintain it and continue to do it. You go too far and you're like huh huh, huh uh, you run back in. So but no, you don't go far enough.

You don't grow. And that's what a good trainer does, right, a trainer, a good one knows I can push him to hear anymore than that and he's going to you know, he's not going to come back right and push him to hear. And so I think that's the other piece of this is finding like what way outside of our comfort zone and how do we maintain being there?

you end up getting the pendulum effect. But as you become more spiritually mature, you understand the value of discomfort, but you also understand the value of taking the tortoise approach as opposed to the hair approach, and so that becomes the new gauge through which you approach change because you realize that everything is just different forms of change. You're changing, they're changing, circumstances are always changing, and there's less of the whole binary this is good, this is bad.

There's a good and everything, and there's you know, negative aspects to everything depending on what perspective we're looking at it from. And so if we can kind of condition ourselves to stay engaged in the process, and that's where the discomfort really is. I think the greatest is being just in the process and maybe not understanding how it's all going to turn out, but just knowing that being in the process is the goal. It's not about reaching

the outcome, it's not about the destination. The destination will be whatever it is. But again, the more process oriented we were, the more we will extract the value from

the experience. And I have this thing that I've written as well, which says, you know, when you're seeking advice, should you seek advice from people who've done what you want to do, or should you seek advice from people who haven't done and they've lived with the with the regret, with the pain of regret from not having done it. Who should you seek advice from? And I say, seek advice from the person who has been the most consistent.

They've consistently put themselves out there with whatever they were trying to do, and sometimes they've succeeded, and sometimes they haven't, but they keep going back again and again and again. And if we can just adopt that approach of being consistent, even if it looks like it's not going to happen, or if it looks like it's a sure thing, we're still showing up as if it's not going to happen. Right, That's the ultimate habit that we're cultivating is consistency, which

means I'm not attached. I'm not rigidly attached to the outcome. Sure I have preferences, Sure I would like for it to go in this direction or that direction, but I understand that the real value is just me showing up every day and I'm giving my best and I'm letting the chips fall where they may, right, so the outcome will be whatever it is. But if we have the consistent ability to show up. Then we can apply that to anything.

deep internal satisfaction of supporting something that you love. You can go to one you feed dot net slash join and become a member of our community. Light Thank you so much, such a pleasure to have you on and I've really enjoyed our conversation absolutely.

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