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Welcome.
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This is Carp's Funnel Cake Brain, where I, Carp, alongside my funnel cake brain, are working on all manner of sobriety or staying sober, not just from substances, but staying sober from all manner of things that ail you mind viruses, ways of living, or substances, sure.
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I believe we all have something that we're dealing with.
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So uh this is the show.
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Uh at the outset, I want to say from last week, I did try a new microphone in a new room with a this boom stand.
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I tried to do the fancy thing and get a setup that looked like the shit I see on YouTube and it didn't work.
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At least as far as I could tell.
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There was some uh banging and it was picking up a lot of the room.
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So we're back to the basement, still echoey.
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Uh the Ace Rack runs in the background.
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It's it turned on 10 minutes before I was going to start recording, so hopefully it's not too overpowering through the mic.
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And again, these first few episodes, we're still working out the kinks here.
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Eventually, I know that what I talk about is mostly like my misgivings with trying to figure out how to podcast and my process.
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Eventually that's all gonna get worked out, but it's just gonna take reps.
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I'm two months into this and down about close to 20 now, uh, of which I've published five.
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And uh, it's just gonna take time.
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And so if these first ones suck, uh hopefully six months from now, we'll have uh our sea legs under us and things will make more sense.
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But I certainly want to bring in more references to the works of others, uh, whether in philosophy, spirituality, um psychology and things dealing specifically with addiction and sobriety, but also just more of the metapicture.
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And that's kind of where I've begun is this meta picture, not just of existence, but of how I'm dealing with this podcast, of kind of laying out the ills and as I adapt.
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Uh again, because this podcast is supposed to serve somewhat as uh a revealing of the inside workings of how I get to where I do, so that if it it in some way speaks to you, you can say, all right, I'm not the only one who takes extremely roundabout and circuitous ways to end up at very simple understandings of things, which in my life has been very frustrating most of the time.
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But when I eventually get to where I was aiming at, it's nice to have taken the long way because I have gained so much more experience and understanding in a lot of I don't know what you call it adjunct, but just adjacent sort of ways, the ancillary knowledge that comes along with not getting there immediately, which also goes against my addictive nature of instant gratification.
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So it does feel in a lot of ways like I'm always working against myself, but such is the nature of life.
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So uh last week with Doubt, we were talking about that bumping into the mic stand.
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I thought it was pretty apropos that when I brought up Ball and Moloch that I smashed into the mic stand, so it sounded extremely ominous.
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I was thinking about editing all that out.
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I'm terrified to edit, by the way, because I'm just afraid I'm gonna delete the whole podcast.
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So once I talk to somebody who knows what the hell they're doing, I'll have them show me.
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But I I can't afford to make the mistake of of deleting everything.
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I guess I could, I just redo it, but I don't want to, I'm afraid.
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So I um as listening back to all the the things on doubt and hearing about that, it led me into this idea of validating my experience.
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So this sort of the next logical place my mind went.
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With once I sort of work out of doubt, or I'm at least on firm enough footing to feel secure in the mental and emotional place I'm at, and then I achieve something or have an insight about something, or work out a process, I run into this issue of validation and what I see as meaningful or how it would land internally according to the way I'm validating it, whether against my own value structure or against my ability to prove it out to others.
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So, from my own mind, as I've worked it out over the years, a lot of times I am an unreliable narrator to myself, which creates a conundrum.
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That when I am focusing on internal validation, can I trust the voice that is validating of my own?
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Is it validating something good, bad?
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I almost feel the need to have external validation just to make sure that what I'm seeing is correct.
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I think a lot of that is born to from the fact that I wasn't raised with a lot of structure or people around me with mature worldviews that were helping guide me and kind of giving me these tent posts to stand upon or lean against to say, come back to these fundamental things.
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Uh, I had to find them myself.
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And the way I found them was through external validation, through comparison with others, through trial and error.
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And that in turn led me to overtrusting external circumstance and distrusting or lessening the trust I had in my own validating system.
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And what that's led to over time is, and this is part of what goes into back to the doubt thing and then the validating thing coming of it with this podcast, where even in this short period of time, these two months, the initial impetus and what I've talked about earlier on earlier episodes, is that this podcast for me was intended to just keep me sober and to give me something to work on to make sure that my spiritual life, my soul is intact, my my alignment with the thing that I recognize as greater than me, whether that be my family or God or my belief system, all of those things were in working order and aligned, and that I was doing something dutifully every day, week, uh, towards that end, and then having something to be accountable to.
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All of those things were intact and going well.
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So, where did the doubt come in that all of a sudden I was too worried about the technical aspects of podcasting?
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Or am I not um oh wow, how how would I how would I put this?
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Uh I'm just not entertaining enough.
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This isn't like as I listen back to some of these podcasts, I just go, all right, well, that was boring, I would assume, for other people.
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I don't know.
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It I enjoy listening to it because I like the sound of my own voice, and I also am agreeing with everything I'm saying.
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It's a weird masturbatory relationship I'm having with the podcast at this point.
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But it's it's been interesting to see the evolution and how quickly I went from appreciating this as an exercise and keeping me sober to something that I can then critique as it's not an entertaining enough product, or it's just not gonna work out well in the long run unless I change formats to accommodate whatever thing I'm thinking at the time and and paying like trying to listen to other podcasts as inspiration or see how they're doing it, and going, oh, see how much better that is than whatever the fuck this is, and that somehow I have to change it all and it's not good enough.
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And and there we come in with the the doubt, but also the validating thing is like, how am I going to validate all of this?
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And I lose sight of the fact that it was an the impulse to start was just to keep me sober, and that is going tremendously well because I don't think about drinking it all anymore, which if you told me that a year ago, I would have said impossible.
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But now I find myself so invested in this new thing that when something arises that either throws me off or makes me question it, I find myself back in a similar emotional state that would have led me to drink.
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But in this case, it's change the thing that's working or critique it, or there's always work that has to be done.
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And then on the validating side, it's well, when it what is good enough?
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Can I keep the bigger picture in mind where just staying sober should be validating enough for whatever this practice is?
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But then I need it to also have people that listen and then tell me how oh this helps, or you know, you're genius, or you know, whatever flattery I feel like I need to validate what I'm doing.
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And all of a sudden that becomes what was like a little secondary offshoot of like, wouldn't that be nice?
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To now I'm connecting to that as opposed to connecting to the main idea, which is just to focus on what works and then live my life afterwards.
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It's now becoming my life because I'm feeling myself wanting that validation, that external validation that tells me I either I'm on the right track or feeds my vanity and my ego.
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Some somehow that those roads, there's like a there's a fork in the road, and my ego just without any sort of thought or introspection will gravitate towards the one that's like, you need to make this better so that people like it, as opposed to you need to keep doing what's working for you, and who cares about the rest.
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And that really does show to me, anyway, the fork in the road that happens for your own authenticity and the struggle that happens, at least for me, in trying to be authentic when I rely so much on external circumstance to validate myself.
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And it all sounds like a kind of a big jumble of mental thought processes.
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Like a big you took a big handful of spaghetti out of the pot and threw it on the ground and said, see, that's how I ended up here.
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It's just a mess.
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It's a spaghetti bowl of shit.
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But to me, it makes sense as I unravel those spaghetti noodles of okay, this is where I started to deviate and feel it.
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I felt the dissonance internally of not appreciating what I'm doing.
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And for me, I'm using the example of this podcast, but it's it happens all over my life, many different things where something's going well, and I either change it or I start poking holes in it, saying it could be better, or it's serving one purpose.
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Why can't it serve two?
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Why can't it serve three or four or five?
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And to not appreciate the thing for being just the thing.
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And then it sort of makes sense too when you look at like the way I was using alcohol, or if you have any sort of addictive tendency, how it does tend to serve every function.
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For me, it was therapist, it was medicine, it was entertainment, it was a friend.
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Like I had used alcohol to cover so much ground that to me it makes sense that I would try anything that's working and go, Well, can this square peg fit in a round hole, in a triangular hole, in a star-shaped hole?
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And I'm using these examples because as I play with my son, I'm always trying to get him to put the right blocks in the right holes, and he doesn't.
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And it feels while as I watch that, I am reminded that I am constantly trying to put wrong blocks in wrong holes, and this is what comes of it.
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So to going back is this validating need, I suppose.
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And it's not just the validating need for my ego's sake, but some level of checking in with being on the right path, and how that can get conflated with the ego side of things of wanting validation for my own sake versus wanting validation to make sure the process is working, and trying to parse all that out, and it does sometimes I get into these thought loops and goes, Am I just overcomplicating life?
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And yes, obviously, I would I would like if to get to the point where this stuff can be done very simply, and it would be almost self-evident as opposed to these long-formed thought processes to get me essentially to the same place.
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And there again, I say the long road to me helps once I get there to look back and say I've learned so much about other things too.
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But the goal I'm I'm I'm trying to get to is to smooth out this path a little bit to my own understanding so I don't have to go through much and as much internal strife to get there.
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To get validation, to get certainty.
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Uh, and I I can hear the stoic philosophy agreement part of my brain going, you'll never get certainty, life is not certain, using external circumstances to try to get any sense of control over life as a fool's errand.
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I understand that, and I will I I'm trying to push that off for this moment.
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But it it does serve me in some way, and I need to keep in mind that these are useful tools, but not identify with them.
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Because right now I mean I am reading um Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.
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I'd it's probably the fourth or fifth time, and every time I read it, I forget that I even read it before because everything he says, I'm just like, oh yeah, that's genius.
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And it's like, yeah, I've already read this four times, and that's how quick that's why I got to reread all this stuff because I just forget it immediately.
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And that's a frustrating thing to come across these brilliant insights or things in life, and then just a small bit of time and my memory fades, and and that that does feel like I'm just pouring water into a sieve.
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Like everything I come across in life and eventually just spills out, and I forget, and I'm right back where I started.
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And there is a big feeling of that, and perhaps why this need for external validation uh is necessary because at least I can see what I'm thinking bouncing off something else solid and coming back to me is affirmation in some way, shape, or form.
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I can't quite make sense of it, and that's why I do the podcast to try to work this stuff out and to talk about the insights and understanding that I have come to, at least in this process.
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But one of the things I think was gonna help me, and something that in reading Meditations right now by Marcus Aurelius is the very first thing he does in the book is basically just pages upon pages of gratitude for specific people in his life.
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And I'm gonna tie this into how I think I'm gonna get this validation here in a second, but let's focus on the first couple pages of meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
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He starts From my grandfather Verus, I learned good morals and the government of my temper, from the reputation and remembrance of my father, modesty and a manly character, from my mother, piety and beneficence.
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I didn't know what beneficence was, so I had to look it up.
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And I'll read the definition here.
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I in my mind I was like, is beneficial, something good for you?
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But it is the ethical principle and quality of doing good, showing kindness, and acting in the best interests of others.
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That makes sense.
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But when I came across it, I was just it looked odd to me.
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Beneficence.
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So I wanted to know what that was.
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So from my mother, piety and beneficence and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts.
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And further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich.
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I'll stop there.
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He goes on for like 15 pages of this.
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I do think he gets down to some pretty funny ones, like Diagnetus, not to busy myself about trifling things, and not to give credit to what was said by miracle workers and jugglers about incantations and the driving away of demons and such things, and not to breed quails for fighting.
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It's funny to read things from other eras and be like, ah, that was a big problem for them, huh?
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Don't breed quails for fighting and don't listen to jugglers about demons.
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Oh, to live in that time.
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And to think of what what's going on now that people will think is funny when I'm like, you know, just don't give in to AI and stop using fleshlights and VR masturbation.
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So anyway, the the the reason I bring this up though, and the importance of gratitude is many fold.
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I will eventually make an entire episode on this as I think about it more, too.
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But one of the things I love about gratitude is that I crave novelty.
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I loved going to new places.
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I like I used to like to be on vacation all the time.
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Uh, I once wrote a book about nursing where I traveled the entire country from Maine to Southern California and everywhere in between, collecting stories from nurses I had known in nursing school and just uh their friends or people that uh they referenced me to to say go check them out.
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And so I got to just live out of a truck.
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I stayed at KOAs, like the campground of America's in my truck, and then went around the country writing this book in between um jobs I had had, and after the second time, was it the yeah, was the second time I had cancer?
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I don't know, these things all blur.
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So I had some time off, and I thought, well, who knows if the cancer is gonna come back or if I'm gonna die someday.
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I'd face my mortality, morality mortality, there it is, uh, for the second time.
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And I just thought, well, why wait?
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And so I just traveled and I loved the novelty.
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I love being on my own, being accountable only to myself, and seeing new things all the time.
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But eventually, at least in my life, I was called to settle down, establish roots, start a family.
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I wanted to pass along something to someone else.
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I don't say this as prescriptive advice that it this is the way to happiness or meaning, but it's just what I was called to do.
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And so, as I the difficulty in doing that, though, is I had been completely conditioned my whole life to be this sort of vagabond, to be always out there running and searching and experiencing new things.
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And then once I had established a good family, and I'm gonna call it tethered to it, I don't mean that in a negative way, but I'm tethered to this thing bigger than me.
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All of my individual impulses had to be registered, I suppose, but also couched.
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I mean, I had to take in everything I wanted to do with myself and put it through the filter of is it possible in light of all these other responsibilities I have?
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And I could start a week with a list of goals and by the end of that week have achieved maybe 4% of them.
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And there was a huge reckoning I had because at first I really resented this family I had, not the individuals, but the idea of I have to be accountable and responsible to this unit because I'm not able to self-actualize, is what my addiction is also of just I gotta keep searching, I gotta keep experiencing new shit.
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Like if I'm stagnant, I'm dying.
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And so to have this family in certain ways marked a spiritual death for me in my mind at the time.
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And so in the absence of novelty, then, uh at least of external novelty, one thing I found was that gratitude acted as a sort of static novelty.
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And what I mean by that is I didn't have to experience anything new, I didn't have to search or travel or find anything.
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I could look around at things that were already in my life that I wasn't noticing, and then just notice them and be grateful for them.
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And there's obviously like just the feeling of thankfulness that's nice, but also this idea to me, as I sort of transmuted, and this is me again using circular blocks and square holes, but it's something that I noticed.
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I could use in other areas of my life to make help my life make sense.
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But gratitude for me offered me the ability to have novelty in an unchanging environment.
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But the environment wasn't matter, it was just my focus.
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And so I could just look around and see something that I wasn't currently thankful for, be thankful for it, notice it.
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And it was as if I'm seeing it for the first time, or seeing it over again in a new light that made me feel a sense of I hate to say it, gratitude is the best I can come up with in this moment.
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And so um that's in reading this now with Marcus Aurelius, I was struck with this idea of can I do this, what he's doing, with the people in my life?
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Not just to recognize who's in my life and their gifts, but what are they contributing to me that I'm not currently grateful for or that I'm not currently noticing?
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Perhaps I'm grateful because that's why they're still in my life, and that we all make sacrifices for each other to lift everyone up.
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All boats rise with the tide.
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No one particular boat's just gonna shoot out of the water.
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That's what I felt like I should do.
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It was a, you know, if that metaphor or simile, whatever, of all boats rise with the tide.
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I thought what I needed to do is strap a rocket ship to my particular boat, shoot as high up in the air as I could with everyone else attached to cables and bungee cords, and then I pull them all out as I achieved my independent success would then bring everyone up with me.
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And it you can see the fault in that logic is I'm still operating out of a place of self-centeredness and egotistical stuff, whatever.
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And that was a sobering experience in and of itself to realize that my individual achievements sometimes could contribute in a way to the whole, but didn't affect the whole in the way that I thought it would.
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Because in order to bring all those boats up, I have to be oriented towards them as well.
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My own independent success isn't going to necessitate the rising of them, isn't going to cause the rising of all of them, unless they're involved in it in some way, which means a sacrifice from my end of my own internal wants and needs as they relate specifically to what I want.
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That's a lot of word salad, but I know that in life right now, there's examples, like with podcasters, comedians, things like that.
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You see these people get success, and then they start neglecting all the things in their life that either got them there or came with them, supportive, or even in communion, like the like a partner or a um someone they worked with, whatever it is, whatever the case may be.
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But there are so many instances of people losing touch with the the greater uh I guess context that they came up with, and then start getting drunk on the idea that I did this.
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This is because of me.
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And if I keep achieving, then that will benefit everybody else.
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But the focus has now become me.
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And so I saw myself, and that's an example I use because I'm starting to see it with some of the people that I've liked and followed for years, as they separate or as they separate from the people around them, but attach much more firmly to their own view of themselves.
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Uh, you can see it, it's so much easier to see this stuff from a distance.
00:25:39.039 --> 00:25:43.200
I think that's why it's so much easier to give other people advice than it is to yourself.
00:25:43.440 --> 00:25:49.039
But this is the case where I'm seeing it and then referencing it in my own life of where I've done that.
00:25:49.440 --> 00:26:16.240
And this being one of the cases of my family's like the easiest one because they're around me all the time, and it causes me the most internal strife as I battle my own ego because I'm constantly reminded that my ego is trying to get what it wants for itself at the expense of all of them, and then what I want to give them and myself in this unit is at the expense of my ego, and those two things are always fighting each other, so I gotta deal with that all the time.
00:26:16.480 --> 00:26:21.519
Uh, but it is easier when it's somebody else going through it, and I can look at them and see, like, see, that's what it looks like.
00:26:21.680 --> 00:26:23.759
Why can't I see that myself all the time?
00:26:24.000 --> 00:27:00.400
But this is the attempt at that, and so and being grateful for the people in my life, the way Marcus Aurelius is, it then also shows that other people's tides are raising my particular boat because when I am grateful for and recognize the characteristics and attributes and gifts that other people are giving me merely by their existence, but then their existence coupled with the fact that they've chosen me to be a part of their friendship or their life or network or whatever the case may be, now I'm starting to see a much bigger picture of life unfold in front of me.
00:27:00.559 --> 00:27:12.880
And it helps to dissolve that ego portion, but also again, gives a sense of novelty in gratitude that I have all this around me and my job is to just notice it.
00:27:13.119 --> 00:27:20.880
And so, uh, in thinking about going around all that way to all these people in my life, could I write a paragraph of what they give to me?
00:27:21.119 --> 00:27:24.079
And this is an exercise I'm going to keep doing going forward.
00:27:24.160 --> 00:27:25.200
It's not something I can.
00:27:25.279 --> 00:27:28.079
There's a lot of people and a lot I want to say that I'm I'm thankful for.
00:27:28.160 --> 00:27:41.920
And then the nice thing about that too is as I've embarked on this, it it's almost like re-establishing the relationship all over again of why you hung out with these people in the first place.
00:27:42.079 --> 00:27:56.559
Sometimes you forget or or with enough familiarity, they they say familiarity breeds contempt because over time we start to take for granted the gifts that they give us and start noticing all faults or things that annoy us or things like that.
00:27:56.720 --> 00:28:01.119
And I've noticed myself doing that with all the people in my life at one point or another.
00:28:01.599 --> 00:28:20.559
I'm not proud of that fact, but I figure there's a natural progression in relationship where that does happen if I'm not like constantly recognizing or reaffirming why I'm doing it by noticing the good and what I'm what these people are giving to me.
00:28:20.960 --> 00:28:38.960
And so um in practice of this, I then thought, well, all right, let's do more square peg, round hole, round peg square hole shit here and transmute that onto this validation exercise of can I do that for myself?
00:28:39.680 --> 00:28:42.559
Can I then be grateful to myself?
00:28:43.440 --> 00:28:50.720
And when I say I ran into a brick wall with that, it it felt physically like I was running into a brick wall.
00:28:50.799 --> 00:28:53.279
Like, I I don't take this kind of time for me.
00:28:53.359 --> 00:28:54.880
This feels foolish.
00:28:55.119 --> 00:28:57.519
This feels silly, I feel dumb.
00:28:57.920 --> 00:29:02.960
All right, let's write down a paragraph of all the things about me that I'm grateful to me for.
00:29:03.119 --> 00:29:10.400
And I run into this paradox of being so egotistical and full of myself and thinking I deserve all these wonderful things out of life.
00:29:10.720 --> 00:29:15.680
But then it feels so self-indulgent and kind of shameful to recognize it.
00:29:15.759 --> 00:29:22.079
So I have this weird, like I don't want, and I'm sure there's a psychological phenomenon this is that I'm hitting on.
00:29:22.240 --> 00:29:25.200
I'll try to find it, or somebody's screaming it right now.
00:29:25.279 --> 00:29:32.720
I don't know what it is, but essentially that I think I'm amazing and I think I'm shit simultaneously.
00:29:32.960 --> 00:29:44.240
I have a really hard time giving myself praise because it feels gross, but I also think I'm a super genius other times, and it's this weird duality internally that happens.
00:29:44.319 --> 00:29:50.319
But can I just separate all that and look almost as a third party at myself to be grateful?
00:29:50.559 --> 00:29:59.119
And will the novelty of that gratitude give me some kind of validation because I've separated just enough, you know.
00:29:59.279 --> 00:30:00.640
Familiarity brings contempt.
00:30:00.720 --> 00:30:07.759
Well, I'm not I'm no more familiar with anybody than I am with myself, and boy do I have the contempt to show it.
00:30:08.079 --> 00:30:11.279
So, how about that exercise?
00:30:11.440 --> 00:30:12.960
I haven't gotten there yet.
00:30:13.039 --> 00:30:18.720
I'm still working on the friend side of things because why not build that muscle up first before we tackle the main boss?
00:30:19.440 --> 00:30:30.160
But it does seem to be something that's working my way towards a different form of validation than external circumstance.
00:30:30.559 --> 00:30:38.319
Not that I say that external validation or comparison should be thrown away entirely.
00:30:38.720 --> 00:30:41.359
I think that's incredibly useful, especially for me.
00:30:41.519 --> 00:30:45.759
If you're a person who doesn't need that, God love you and all the power to you.
00:30:45.839 --> 00:30:47.279
I'm hoping to get there someday.
00:30:47.440 --> 00:30:50.960
You should start a podcast so you can tell me how the fuck you got there.
00:30:51.440 --> 00:31:00.559
But for me, anyway, there is this comparison-validating internal, external nature is the way I make sense of the world.
00:31:00.880 --> 00:31:19.359
And so I would like to be able to do that with a little more refinement and clarity of thought because, in a lot of ways, I have to wait around to be validated externally until something I'm doing is either completed or can be put out for other people to give feedback.
00:31:19.680 --> 00:31:24.720
What happens in the absence of feedback using that form of validation?
00:31:24.880 --> 00:31:27.119
I'm just sitting around stewing.
00:31:27.359 --> 00:31:40.720
It's another common mantra I have of that where I speak of my inability to just accept things, is I always say to myself, how will I know how strong I am if I have nothing to push against?
00:31:41.119 --> 00:31:46.240
And in this case, it's how will I be validated if I'm not getting any feedback?
00:31:46.480 --> 00:31:50.559
And it's a really hard way to live because I feel like I'm always in stasis.
00:31:50.720 --> 00:31:57.920
And this goes back to a phenomenon I was talking about in an earlier podcast of hurrying up and finishing so that I can start.
00:31:58.160 --> 00:32:09.680
And I think it dovetails with this quite nicely, where it's I need to hurry up and get feedback so I know what to do next, as opposed to just keep doing what's working and don't worry about the rest.
00:32:09.839 --> 00:32:20.480
The details have this amazing way of sorting themselves out when you stay on the main storyline, the main path.
00:32:20.799 --> 00:32:42.319
We've talked about not getting lost in the side quests, but not just that, just don't take my eyes off of the main goal, which in this case for this podcast, to bring that back, is to stay sober, which I'm doing amazingly, and without a lot of effort on the sobriety side.
00:32:42.400 --> 00:32:49.680
There's a lot of effort on this other side of working myself out and sorting things out and all of that.
00:32:50.319 --> 00:33:04.000
But maybe that's where the effort was always meant to be going towards, and instead to distract myself, to not pay attention to my faults, or to not deal with the issues that were ultimately ruining my life and destroying my soul.
00:33:04.559 --> 00:33:12.480
I used all of that effort and energy towards an addiction to just keep it going because it kept me busy and it kept me distracted enough to not see.
00:33:12.960 --> 00:33:15.680
Uh, again, back to a biblical thing.
00:33:15.920 --> 00:33:23.920
Um you point out the splinter in someone else's eye while ignoring the log in your own.
00:33:24.079 --> 00:33:30.880
And that would be the case of this, where I just couldn't deal with looking at myself.
00:33:31.200 --> 00:33:36.160
And maybe, you know, let's take a funnel cake brain offshoot here.
00:33:36.400 --> 00:33:45.839
That is where the idea of being disgusted or shameful of myself while at the same time thinking I'm great is like, why would I even bother to look at the log of my own eye?
00:33:45.920 --> 00:33:52.960
I'm so good, I could deal with that later, or I don't, it's not inhibiting me as much as I believe it is, or something to that effect.
00:33:53.200 --> 00:34:08.400
But I think in the absence of dealing with my own issues, something that I might have done to overcorrect was make the noise of my own ego louder than the noise of my true nature yearning to just be fixed.
00:34:08.639 --> 00:34:18.960
And so the more I could turn up my ego and give in to that, the more it would drown out the desperate cries of my soul saying, please fucking help me.
00:34:19.199 --> 00:34:26.159
I'm down here, I'm drowning, not just in booze, but in sorrow and misery and neglect.
00:34:26.320 --> 00:34:28.400
And I just I want to come back to you.
00:34:28.559 --> 00:34:35.280
And I said, no, turn up the volume over here on the pleasure seeking side so as not to deal with it.
00:34:35.519 --> 00:34:44.000
Because what's worse than distracting, or yeah, not just distracting yourself, but ignoring the necessity is to be getting high in the face of it.
00:34:44.320 --> 00:34:49.679
Say, I'm not only am I neglecting my responsibilities, but I feel good doing it.
00:34:50.079 --> 00:34:58.000
And I think that's why a substance is so powerful in that case, because I wouldn't be able to do that with a clear mind.
00:34:58.159 --> 00:35:01.679
It had to, I had to use those substances to get to that place.
00:35:02.480 --> 00:35:04.719
Yeah, there's a lot of interesting insights there.
00:35:05.039 --> 00:35:09.679
But we'll circle back to this validating thing and then we'll be done for the day.
00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:25.199
Um I do tend to get caught up in the details, and I think one thing to note is in some way, I guess I could do the the post-it note thing.
00:35:25.280 --> 00:35:30.159
That's one of those funny pieces of advice where people are always like, put post-it notes up all over your life.
00:35:30.239 --> 00:35:37.519
And I used to have that where there's like this oval on my bathroom mirror, and I could just stand in the middle of it and look around it like a clock.
00:35:37.599 --> 00:35:39.440
And all right, you're great.
00:35:39.599 --> 00:35:44.559
Uh, you deserve good things, uh, do good in the world, just shit like that.
00:35:44.800 --> 00:35:50.400
And it's funny how things like that tend to feel so childish.
00:35:50.639 --> 00:35:59.519
Like I can't allow myself to feel serious in the face of positivity, but yet the gravity of negativity I take so seriously.
00:35:59.760 --> 00:36:05.039
And so I have to find a way to make these positive details work for me.
00:36:05.119 --> 00:36:25.519
I just don't know how to do it because it feels so frivolous and absurd and silly, and for some reason, negativity feels so severe and real and somehow hierarchically like more true or more important or something.
00:36:26.880 --> 00:36:30.719
But it sure leads to a miserable life.
00:36:31.119 --> 00:36:32.559
I guess that's true.
00:36:32.800 --> 00:36:40.320
You know, if you if you get stuck in negativity, you got a really good thing you can point at and say, see, I was right.
00:36:40.559 --> 00:36:42.880
Being negative is miserable.
00:36:43.280 --> 00:37:03.519
I don't know, that's um it does so that was a bit of an offshoot to get back to also my my love affair for a philosophical um I guess school of thought is stoicism.
00:37:03.679 --> 00:37:09.519
I'm I am attracted more to Stoicism than any other philosophy I've come across.
00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:12.719
And here's why.
00:37:13.760 --> 00:37:23.760
For me, Stoicism is a is not about turning off emotions or being completely disconnected, it's about not being attached to them.
00:37:23.840 --> 00:37:27.840
And there's a big difference between being unattached and being disconnected.
00:37:28.480 --> 00:37:35.360
Well, I maybe not literally, but basically loosening your grip on something versus completely abandoning it.
00:37:35.679 --> 00:37:45.280
And so for me anyway, stoicism, and this is why I get into Marcus Aurelius, another philosopher I really like in the same vein as Epictetus.
00:37:45.519 --> 00:37:51.760
Uh, if you ever care to get in, that's a those are really good entry points for a stoic mindset.
00:37:51.840 --> 00:38:00.079
But essentially, you just don't want to be cast aside or astray or about by the vicissitudes of life.
00:38:00.320 --> 00:38:10.159
And I think a lot of people misinterpret that as you're not gonna feel anything, you become sort of sociopathic, where it's like I'm just gonna disengage from all meaning.
00:38:10.320 --> 00:38:11.920
Uh, and that's not the case at all.
00:38:12.079 --> 00:38:24.800
It's it's essentially you just it's really about not being attached to outcome, and then realizing what the ultimate outcome is, which is death, and all along the way, everything is change.
00:38:24.960 --> 00:38:30.559
And so to attach to any one particular thing is going to eventually lead to misery, as that thing will change.
00:38:30.719 --> 00:38:53.679
And it's hard, especially I can say, with kids, to attach to the to not attach to the idea that like all my effort and energy is going to manifest itself in a good life for this human being because there are things that will happen outside of my control that maybe I'll have to watch this kid suffer or fall short, or God forbid, someday not like me as much as I hope he does.
00:38:53.920 --> 00:38:56.559
All of these things are completely outside of my control.
00:38:57.440 --> 00:38:58.880
How can I be okay with that?
00:38:59.039 --> 00:39:05.679
And this is the the philosophical uh school that helps to deal with that.
00:39:05.920 --> 00:39:10.880
And I think it's important to try all different things and see you know where it can work for you.
00:39:10.960 --> 00:39:18.079
And it it worked especially well for me after having cancer the first time when I was 22.
00:39:18.639 --> 00:39:29.519
But when life is going along the best you can imagine, and everything is swept away, it almost forced me to search out stoicism because I was like, How could I make sense of this?
00:39:29.760 --> 00:39:39.119
Everything like I had literally peaked in life in every avenue of my life, athletically, academically, in relationships.
00:39:39.280 --> 00:39:44.559
I everything was falling at my feet without effort and in the best way imaginable.
00:39:44.719 --> 00:39:46.800
And then all of it came to a stop.
00:39:47.440 --> 00:39:53.679
And it I can cast no blame anywhere except to say the only thing I could do was accept.
00:39:54.000 --> 00:40:00.079
And then I sort of found this stoic philosophy in the wreckage of that.
00:40:01.199 --> 00:40:18.480
And I I say this now, understanding the nature of doubt and validation and the details and all of these different things that are constantly changing, and how I need to orient myself somewhere in the middle of all of that and not be pulled too far in any direction.
00:40:18.719 --> 00:40:34.719
But use those details or use all of these different exercises, my understandings, and taking the long route and seeing all these different variables as a way to inform and shape this sort of unwhat would you call that?
00:40:34.960 --> 00:40:37.679
It's like unflappable way of living.
00:40:37.760 --> 00:41:05.599
Where there's times in my life where I've come across people who don't have any seemingly outwardly either personality or successes or um circumstance, materially, anything in their lives that would justify their peace of mind when I'm looking at them from the judgmental aspect of needing external validation.
00:41:05.920 --> 00:41:16.800
And and that was a very jumbled up way of basically saying, Have you ever met a person who's just really happy or really content with themselves and they have nothing to show for it?
00:41:17.119 --> 00:41:19.519
I'm so jealous of those people.
00:41:19.920 --> 00:41:37.679
And I I I have a such a hard time figuring out either how to get there or how to be okay with how to make sense of a life of being okay with not achieving things, if that makes sense.
00:41:37.840 --> 00:41:41.360
I don't know, it's just there's some way to get there.
00:41:41.440 --> 00:41:52.320
I feel stoicism is a piece of it, and I feel like the characteristics that you build up as a result of this way of practicing get you closer to that person who's just perfectly content.
00:41:53.199 --> 00:42:04.800
And I didn't realize in this life of all the things I thought I would need, and of all the validation and of all the material possessions I would need to compare myself to others, to say, look, I'm making it somehow.
00:42:05.119 --> 00:42:23.440
Or by building up bigger mental models to look through the world through these shinier glasses, all of that would fall away with the idea that truly the one thing that I find myself yearning for more than anything in this life is peace of mind.
00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:26.400
And this seems to be the best way.
00:42:26.559 --> 00:42:34.239
I don't know if it is to get there, but once there, how not to be too easily moved off of it.
00:42:35.599 --> 00:42:40.559
So we will work more with Aurelius.
00:42:40.639 --> 00:42:58.639
I'll bring him into more discussions going forward, and more on these ideas of getting into topics or lines of thinking that will easily pull me away from my peace of mind and contentment and enjoyment of this wonderful life I have.
00:42:58.960 --> 00:43:00.719
Where first I need to recognize it.
00:43:00.880 --> 00:43:10.719
I need to look around and be grateful for the people and the things and the circumstances I find myself in, and not use that as like this is my new default.
00:43:11.039 --> 00:43:21.360
I think that's one of those cases where the familiarity also breeds this like idea that I have made it to this place and I'm never going beneath this again.
00:43:21.599 --> 00:43:26.079
Oh man, I can feel I can feel in my bones how wrong that is.
00:43:26.480 --> 00:43:27.760
Like, look at all this around me.
00:43:27.920 --> 00:43:30.639
I earned it, I deserve it, and we're never going back.
00:43:31.920 --> 00:43:33.119
Holy shit.
00:43:33.760 --> 00:43:35.519
Wow, what a scary thought.
00:43:35.760 --> 00:43:41.360
But you know, and and the best way to deal with that is to say, oh, I can I could go back.
00:43:41.440 --> 00:43:43.760
I'm not trying to, but it could happen.
00:43:44.079 --> 00:43:46.960
And what'll what will I do if if that is the case?
00:43:47.119 --> 00:43:50.159
How do I prepare myself for all possibilities?
00:43:50.480 --> 00:44:08.079
And the best way I could say is not to particular one thing I've done a lot in my life is pick out particular scenarios, almost like when you're laying in bed at night and you're like, man, if I just would have said this to this bully in in high school or middle school, all my whole life would have changed.
00:44:08.239 --> 00:44:15.039
I do that going forward where I think of all these horrible scenarios where like somebody confronts me when I'm with my child, I get to beat the shit out of them.
00:44:15.599 --> 00:44:19.119
And that's like practicing for specific scenarios.
00:44:19.280 --> 00:44:25.920
So I find it's what I'm trying to direct my energies towards these days is just work on being flexible, work on being strong.
00:44:26.079 --> 00:44:31.199
Not I'm gonna try to be flexible for a particular instance, but just be flexible.
00:44:31.360 --> 00:44:36.719
And then when that instance comes, whatever it may be, I'll be a little bit better prepared for it.
00:44:36.800 --> 00:44:53.119
Because also I've noticed if I start to do this like future thinking of all these various bad things that could happen to me that I must prepare for, I then put myself in a state of mind as if I'm in them, and then bring that state of mind into the present that is, you know, fully peaceful and normal.
00:44:53.360 --> 00:45:01.440
And that's also another thing that emotionally charges me out of nowhere, which makes no sense because I'm sitting there watching a movie with my family, and all of a sudden I'm like angry.
00:45:01.519 --> 00:45:02.880
You could feel the heat coming off me.
00:45:02.960 --> 00:45:08.320
And I'm like, oh, I'm just thinking about this person I'm gonna beat up at Costco next time we're there when they smush their card into us.
00:45:08.480 --> 00:45:15.440
It's like, where did this come from and why is it so important that I built this story that I then win somehow?
00:45:15.679 --> 00:45:16.480
I don't know.
00:45:16.639 --> 00:45:20.000
This is this is the funnel kick taking over.
00:45:20.239 --> 00:45:26.559
And so uh that's it for this week, uh, especially in validation and and going back a little bit to doubt.
00:45:26.719 --> 00:45:35.519
Hopefully, the audio was a little bit better as I have completely abandoned whatever the fuck last week was, and it will get a little bit better going forward.
00:45:35.679 --> 00:45:40.559
Uh so to that, I will say I bid you adieu, and we'll see you next week.
00:00:02.479 --> 00:00:03.600
Welcome.
00:00:04.320 --> 00:00:29.760
This is Carp's Funnel Cake Brain, where I, Carp, alongside my funnel cake brain, are working on all manner of sobriety or staying sober, not just from substances, but staying sober from all manner of things that ail you mind viruses, ways of living, or substances, sure.
00:00:30.320 --> 00:00:32.560
I believe we all have something that we're dealing with.
00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:36.240
So uh this is the show.
00:00:36.479 --> 00:00:44.240
Uh at the outset, I want to say from last week, I did try a new microphone in a new room with a this boom stand.
00:00:44.320 --> 00:00:54.159
I tried to do the fancy thing and get a setup that looked like the shit I see on YouTube and it didn't work.
00:00:55.280 --> 00:00:56.640
At least as far as I could tell.
00:00:56.719 --> 00:01:01.520
There was some uh banging and it was picking up a lot of the room.
00:01:01.759 --> 00:01:05.040
So we're back to the basement, still echoey.
00:01:05.519 --> 00:01:07.680
Uh the Ace Rack runs in the background.
00:01:07.760 --> 00:01:16.719
It's it turned on 10 minutes before I was going to start recording, so hopefully it's not too overpowering through the mic.
00:01:16.879 --> 00:01:21.200
And again, these first few episodes, we're still working out the kinks here.
00:01:21.920 --> 00:01:31.439
Eventually, I know that what I talk about is mostly like my misgivings with trying to figure out how to podcast and my process.
00:01:31.840 --> 00:01:35.120
Eventually that's all gonna get worked out, but it's just gonna take reps.
00:01:35.200 --> 00:01:44.480
I'm two months into this and down about close to 20 now, uh, of which I've published five.
00:01:44.879 --> 00:01:48.079
And uh, it's just gonna take time.
00:01:48.319 --> 00:01:57.439
And so if these first ones suck, uh hopefully six months from now, we'll have uh our sea legs under us and things will make more sense.
00:01:57.599 --> 00:02:15.520
But I certainly want to bring in more references to the works of others, uh, whether in philosophy, spirituality, um psychology and things dealing specifically with addiction and sobriety, but also just more of the metapicture.
00:02:15.680 --> 00:02:27.680
And that's kind of where I've begun is this meta picture, not just of existence, but of how I'm dealing with this podcast, of kind of laying out the ills and as I adapt.
00:02:28.479 --> 00:02:53.919
Uh again, because this podcast is supposed to serve somewhat as uh a revealing of the inside workings of how I get to where I do, so that if it it in some way speaks to you, you can say, all right, I'm not the only one who takes extremely roundabout and circuitous ways to end up at very simple understandings of things, which in my life has been very frustrating most of the time.
00:02:54.080 --> 00:03:22.000
But when I eventually get to where I was aiming at, it's nice to have taken the long way because I have gained so much more experience and understanding in a lot of I don't know what you call it adjunct, but just adjacent sort of ways, the ancillary knowledge that comes along with not getting there immediately, which also goes against my addictive nature of instant gratification.
00:03:22.400 --> 00:03:30.000
So it does feel in a lot of ways like I'm always working against myself, but such is the nature of life.
00:03:30.639 --> 00:03:36.240
So uh last week with Doubt, we were talking about that bumping into the mic stand.
00:03:36.560 --> 00:03:46.240
I thought it was pretty apropos that when I brought up Ball and Moloch that I smashed into the mic stand, so it sounded extremely ominous.
00:03:46.400 --> 00:03:48.479
I was thinking about editing all that out.
00:03:48.639 --> 00:03:53.120
I'm terrified to edit, by the way, because I'm just afraid I'm gonna delete the whole podcast.
00:03:53.360 --> 00:03:56.879
So once I talk to somebody who knows what the hell they're doing, I'll have them show me.
00:03:57.039 --> 00:04:00.719
But I I can't afford to make the mistake of of deleting everything.
00:04:00.960 --> 00:04:04.719
I guess I could, I just redo it, but I don't want to, I'm afraid.
00:04:05.039 --> 00:04:17.920
So I um as listening back to all the the things on doubt and hearing about that, it led me into this idea of validating my experience.
00:04:18.160 --> 00:04:21.920
So this sort of the next logical place my mind went.
00:04:22.160 --> 00:05:02.079
With once I sort of work out of doubt, or I'm at least on firm enough footing to feel secure in the mental and emotional place I'm at, and then I achieve something or have an insight about something, or work out a process, I run into this issue of validation and what I see as meaningful or how it would land internally according to the way I'm validating it, whether against my own value structure or against my ability to prove it out to others.
00:05:02.399 --> 00:05:14.800
So, from my own mind, as I've worked it out over the years, a lot of times I am an unreliable narrator to myself, which creates a conundrum.
00:05:15.439 --> 00:05:24.480
That when I am focusing on internal validation, can I trust the voice that is validating of my own?
00:05:24.639 --> 00:05:26.560
Is it validating something good, bad?
00:05:26.720 --> 00:05:34.079
I almost feel the need to have external validation just to make sure that what I'm seeing is correct.
00:05:34.319 --> 00:05:54.399
I think a lot of that is born to from the fact that I wasn't raised with a lot of structure or people around me with mature worldviews that were helping guide me and kind of giving me these tent posts to stand upon or lean against to say, come back to these fundamental things.
00:05:54.560 --> 00:05:56.879
Uh, I had to find them myself.
00:05:57.040 --> 00:06:04.240
And the way I found them was through external validation, through comparison with others, through trial and error.
00:06:04.639 --> 00:06:16.240
And that in turn led me to overtrusting external circumstance and distrusting or lessening the trust I had in my own validating system.
00:06:17.839 --> 00:07:15.600
And what that's led to over time is, and this is part of what goes into back to the doubt thing and then the validating thing coming of it with this podcast, where even in this short period of time, these two months, the initial impetus and what I've talked about earlier on earlier episodes, is that this podcast for me was intended to just keep me sober and to give me something to work on to make sure that my spiritual life, my soul is intact, my my alignment with the thing that I recognize as greater than me, whether that be my family or God or my belief system, all of those things were in working order and aligned, and that I was doing something dutifully every day, week, uh, towards that end, and then having something to be accountable to.
00:07:16.160 --> 00:07:18.560
All of those things were intact and going well.
00:07:18.720 --> 00:07:25.439
So, where did the doubt come in that all of a sudden I was too worried about the technical aspects of podcasting?
00:07:25.600 --> 00:07:32.319
Or am I not um oh wow, how how would I how would I put this?
00:07:32.639 --> 00:07:35.040
Uh I'm just not entertaining enough.
00:07:35.199 --> 00:07:42.240
This isn't like as I listen back to some of these podcasts, I just go, all right, well, that was boring, I would assume, for other people.
00:07:42.399 --> 00:07:43.040
I don't know.
00:07:43.120 --> 00:07:48.959
It I enjoy listening to it because I like the sound of my own voice, and I also am agreeing with everything I'm saying.
00:07:49.199 --> 00:07:54.399
It's a weird masturbatory relationship I'm having with the podcast at this point.
00:07:54.959 --> 00:08:34.720
But it's it's been interesting to see the evolution and how quickly I went from appreciating this as an exercise and keeping me sober to something that I can then critique as it's not an entertaining enough product, or it's just not gonna work out well in the long run unless I change formats to accommodate whatever thing I'm thinking at the time and and paying like trying to listen to other podcasts as inspiration or see how they're doing it, and going, oh, see how much better that is than whatever the fuck this is, and that somehow I have to change it all and it's not good enough.
00:08:34.799 --> 00:08:40.000
And and there we come in with the the doubt, but also the validating thing is like, how am I going to validate all of this?
00:08:40.080 --> 00:08:54.799
And I lose sight of the fact that it was an the impulse to start was just to keep me sober, and that is going tremendously well because I don't think about drinking it all anymore, which if you told me that a year ago, I would have said impossible.
00:08:55.200 --> 00:09:10.320
But now I find myself so invested in this new thing that when something arises that either throws me off or makes me question it, I find myself back in a similar emotional state that would have led me to drink.
00:09:10.480 --> 00:09:16.960
But in this case, it's change the thing that's working or critique it, or there's always work that has to be done.
00:09:17.279 --> 00:09:20.960
And then on the validating side, it's well, when it what is good enough?
00:09:21.120 --> 00:09:30.879
Can I keep the bigger picture in mind where just staying sober should be validating enough for whatever this practice is?
00:09:32.080 --> 00:09:44.720
But then I need it to also have people that listen and then tell me how oh this helps, or you know, you're genius, or you know, whatever flattery I feel like I need to validate what I'm doing.
00:09:44.879 --> 00:09:49.919
And all of a sudden that becomes what was like a little secondary offshoot of like, wouldn't that be nice?
00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:57.440
To now I'm connecting to that as opposed to connecting to the main idea, which is just to focus on what works and then live my life afterwards.
00:09:57.600 --> 00:10:08.480
It's now becoming my life because I'm feeling myself wanting that validation, that external validation that tells me I either I'm on the right track or feeds my vanity and my ego.
00:10:09.200 --> 00:10:35.519
Some somehow that those roads, there's like a there's a fork in the road, and my ego just without any sort of thought or introspection will gravitate towards the one that's like, you need to make this better so that people like it, as opposed to you need to keep doing what's working for you, and who cares about the rest.
00:10:35.759 --> 00:10:54.639
And that really does show to me, anyway, the fork in the road that happens for your own authenticity and the struggle that happens, at least for me, in trying to be authentic when I rely so much on external circumstance to validate myself.
00:10:55.039 --> 00:11:00.240
And it all sounds like a kind of a big jumble of mental thought processes.
00:11:00.320 --> 00:11:06.320
Like a big you took a big handful of spaghetti out of the pot and threw it on the ground and said, see, that's how I ended up here.
00:11:06.799 --> 00:11:07.840
It's just a mess.
00:11:07.919 --> 00:11:09.519
It's a spaghetti bowl of shit.
00:11:09.759 --> 00:11:18.960
But to me, it makes sense as I unravel those spaghetti noodles of okay, this is where I started to deviate and feel it.
00:11:19.039 --> 00:11:23.279
I felt the dissonance internally of not appreciating what I'm doing.
00:11:23.440 --> 00:11:39.600
And for me, I'm using the example of this podcast, but it's it happens all over my life, many different things where something's going well, and I either change it or I start poking holes in it, saying it could be better, or it's serving one purpose.
00:11:39.679 --> 00:11:40.639
Why can't it serve two?
00:11:40.799 --> 00:11:43.039
Why can't it serve three or four or five?
00:11:43.519 --> 00:11:48.559
And to not appreciate the thing for being just the thing.
00:11:49.519 --> 00:12:00.240
And then it sort of makes sense too when you look at like the way I was using alcohol, or if you have any sort of addictive tendency, how it does tend to serve every function.
00:12:00.320 --> 00:12:07.919
For me, it was therapist, it was medicine, it was entertainment, it was a friend.
00:12:08.320 --> 00:12:22.799
Like I had used alcohol to cover so much ground that to me it makes sense that I would try anything that's working and go, Well, can this square peg fit in a round hole, in a triangular hole, in a star-shaped hole?
00:12:22.879 --> 00:12:29.200
And I'm using these examples because as I play with my son, I'm always trying to get him to put the right blocks in the right holes, and he doesn't.
00:12:29.279 --> 00:12:39.679
And it feels while as I watch that, I am reminded that I am constantly trying to put wrong blocks in wrong holes, and this is what comes of it.
00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:47.840
So to going back is this validating need, I suppose.
00:12:47.919 --> 00:13:16.320
And it's not just the validating need for my ego's sake, but some level of checking in with being on the right path, and how that can get conflated with the ego side of things of wanting validation for my own sake versus wanting validation to make sure the process is working, and trying to parse all that out, and it does sometimes I get into these thought loops and goes, Am I just overcomplicating life?
00:13:17.120 --> 00:13:34.000
And yes, obviously, I would I would like if to get to the point where this stuff can be done very simply, and it would be almost self-evident as opposed to these long-formed thought processes to get me essentially to the same place.
00:13:34.159 --> 00:13:42.960
And there again, I say the long road to me helps once I get there to look back and say I've learned so much about other things too.
00:13:43.679 --> 00:13:56.559
But the goal I'm I'm I'm trying to get to is to smooth out this path a little bit to my own understanding so I don't have to go through much and as much internal strife to get there.
00:13:56.879 --> 00:14:00.080
To get validation, to get certainty.
00:14:00.480 --> 00:14:14.320
Uh, and I I can hear the stoic philosophy agreement part of my brain going, you'll never get certainty, life is not certain, using external circumstances to try to get any sense of control over life as a fool's errand.
00:14:14.639 --> 00:14:20.879
I understand that, and I will I I'm trying to push that off for this moment.
00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:29.200
But it it does serve me in some way, and I need to keep in mind that these are useful tools, but not identify with them.
00:14:29.519 --> 00:14:34.639
Because right now I mean I am reading um Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.
00:14:34.720 --> 00:14:42.639
I'd it's probably the fourth or fifth time, and every time I read it, I forget that I even read it before because everything he says, I'm just like, oh yeah, that's genius.
00:14:42.720 --> 00:14:48.799
And it's like, yeah, I've already read this four times, and that's how quick that's why I got to reread all this stuff because I just forget it immediately.
00:14:49.360 --> 00:15:06.399
And that's a frustrating thing to come across these brilliant insights or things in life, and then just a small bit of time and my memory fades, and and that that does feel like I'm just pouring water into a sieve.
00:15:06.639 --> 00:15:14.080
Like everything I come across in life and eventually just spills out, and I forget, and I'm right back where I started.
00:15:14.320 --> 00:15:30.879
And there is a big feeling of that, and perhaps why this need for external validation uh is necessary because at least I can see what I'm thinking bouncing off something else solid and coming back to me is affirmation in some way, shape, or form.
00:15:31.360 --> 00:15:45.039
I can't quite make sense of it, and that's why I do the podcast to try to work this stuff out and to talk about the insights and understanding that I have come to, at least in this process.
00:15:45.279 --> 00:16:04.480
But one of the things I think was gonna help me, and something that in reading Meditations right now by Marcus Aurelius is the very first thing he does in the book is basically just pages upon pages of gratitude for specific people in his life.
00:16:04.720 --> 00:16:15.440
And I'm gonna tie this into how I think I'm gonna get this validation here in a second, but let's focus on the first couple pages of meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
00:16:15.600 --> 00:16:32.000
He starts From my grandfather Verus, I learned good morals and the government of my temper, from the reputation and remembrance of my father, modesty and a manly character, from my mother, piety and beneficence.
00:16:32.240 --> 00:16:34.799
I didn't know what beneficence was, so I had to look it up.
00:16:34.879 --> 00:16:36.159
And I'll read the definition here.
00:16:36.320 --> 00:16:40.000
I in my mind I was like, is beneficial, something good for you?
00:16:40.320 --> 00:16:48.159
But it is the ethical principle and quality of doing good, showing kindness, and acting in the best interests of others.
00:16:48.399 --> 00:16:49.279
That makes sense.
00:16:49.440 --> 00:16:52.639
But when I came across it, I was just it looked odd to me.
00:16:52.799 --> 00:16:53.840
Beneficence.
00:16:54.000 --> 00:16:55.279
So I wanted to know what that was.
00:16:55.360 --> 00:17:02.639
So from my mother, piety and beneficence and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts.
00:17:02.720 --> 00:17:07.440
And further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich.
00:17:07.599 --> 00:17:08.319
I'll stop there.
00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:10.640
He goes on for like 15 pages of this.
00:17:11.039 --> 00:17:29.039
I do think he gets down to some pretty funny ones, like Diagnetus, not to busy myself about trifling things, and not to give credit to what was said by miracle workers and jugglers about incantations and the driving away of demons and such things, and not to breed quails for fighting.
00:17:31.119 --> 00:17:35.920
It's funny to read things from other eras and be like, ah, that was a big problem for them, huh?
00:17:36.079 --> 00:17:40.000
Don't breed quails for fighting and don't listen to jugglers about demons.
00:17:40.240 --> 00:17:41.519
Oh, to live in that time.
00:17:41.599 --> 00:17:52.240
And to think of what what's going on now that people will think is funny when I'm like, you know, just don't give in to AI and stop using fleshlights and VR masturbation.
00:17:57.519 --> 00:18:04.799
So anyway, the the the reason I bring this up though, and the importance of gratitude is many fold.
00:18:05.039 --> 00:18:09.440
I will eventually make an entire episode on this as I think about it more, too.
00:18:09.519 --> 00:18:14.240
But one of the things I love about gratitude is that I crave novelty.
00:18:14.559 --> 00:18:16.160
I loved going to new places.
00:18:16.319 --> 00:18:18.960
I like I used to like to be on vacation all the time.
00:18:19.119 --> 00:18:35.839
Uh, I once wrote a book about nursing where I traveled the entire country from Maine to Southern California and everywhere in between, collecting stories from nurses I had known in nursing school and just uh their friends or people that uh they referenced me to to say go check them out.
00:18:36.079 --> 00:18:38.559
And so I got to just live out of a truck.
00:18:38.720 --> 00:18:54.240
I stayed at KOAs, like the campground of America's in my truck, and then went around the country writing this book in between um jobs I had had, and after the second time, was it the yeah, was the second time I had cancer?
00:18:54.400 --> 00:18:56.000
I don't know, these things all blur.
00:18:56.319 --> 00:19:02.640
So I had some time off, and I thought, well, who knows if the cancer is gonna come back or if I'm gonna die someday.
00:19:02.720 --> 00:19:08.000
I'd face my mortality, morality mortality, there it is, uh, for the second time.
00:19:08.079 --> 00:19:10.319
And I just thought, well, why wait?
00:19:10.720 --> 00:19:13.519
And so I just traveled and I loved the novelty.
00:19:13.599 --> 00:19:20.240
I love being on my own, being accountable only to myself, and seeing new things all the time.
00:19:20.720 --> 00:19:27.359
But eventually, at least in my life, I was called to settle down, establish roots, start a family.
00:19:27.440 --> 00:19:30.400
I wanted to pass along something to someone else.
00:19:30.640 --> 00:19:38.799
I don't say this as prescriptive advice that it this is the way to happiness or meaning, but it's just what I was called to do.
00:19:39.039 --> 00:19:50.079
And so, as I the difficulty in doing that, though, is I had been completely conditioned my whole life to be this sort of vagabond, to be always out there running and searching and experiencing new things.
00:19:50.400 --> 00:20:00.559
And then once I had established a good family, and I'm gonna call it tethered to it, I don't mean that in a negative way, but I'm tethered to this thing bigger than me.
00:20:01.039 --> 00:20:08.400
All of my individual impulses had to be registered, I suppose, but also couched.
00:20:08.559 --> 00:20:20.480
I mean, I had to take in everything I wanted to do with myself and put it through the filter of is it possible in light of all these other responsibilities I have?
00:20:20.799 --> 00:20:30.880
And I could start a week with a list of goals and by the end of that week have achieved maybe 4% of them.
00:20:31.359 --> 00:20:55.680
And there was a huge reckoning I had because at first I really resented this family I had, not the individuals, but the idea of I have to be accountable and responsible to this unit because I'm not able to self-actualize, is what my addiction is also of just I gotta keep searching, I gotta keep experiencing new shit.
00:20:55.839 --> 00:20:58.400
Like if I'm stagnant, I'm dying.
00:20:58.640 --> 00:21:06.720
And so to have this family in certain ways marked a spiritual death for me in my mind at the time.
00:21:07.279 --> 00:21:21.200
And so in the absence of novelty, then, uh at least of external novelty, one thing I found was that gratitude acted as a sort of static novelty.
00:21:21.680 --> 00:21:32.799
And what I mean by that is I didn't have to experience anything new, I didn't have to search or travel or find anything.
00:21:33.119 --> 00:21:43.279
I could look around at things that were already in my life that I wasn't noticing, and then just notice them and be grateful for them.
00:21:44.240 --> 00:21:59.759
And there's obviously like just the feeling of thankfulness that's nice, but also this idea to me, as I sort of transmuted, and this is me again using circular blocks and square holes, but it's something that I noticed.
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:04.240
I could use in other areas of my life to make help my life make sense.
00:22:04.480 --> 00:22:11.759
But gratitude for me offered me the ability to have novelty in an unchanging environment.
00:22:12.079 --> 00:22:14.799
But the environment wasn't matter, it was just my focus.
00:22:15.039 --> 00:22:22.160
And so I could just look around and see something that I wasn't currently thankful for, be thankful for it, notice it.
00:22:22.240 --> 00:22:36.960
And it was as if I'm seeing it for the first time, or seeing it over again in a new light that made me feel a sense of I hate to say it, gratitude is the best I can come up with in this moment.
00:22:37.359 --> 00:22:53.519
And so um that's in reading this now with Marcus Aurelius, I was struck with this idea of can I do this, what he's doing, with the people in my life?
00:22:54.000 --> 00:23:02.559
Not just to recognize who's in my life and their gifts, but what are they contributing to me that I'm not currently grateful for or that I'm not currently noticing?
00:23:02.720 --> 00:23:10.400
Perhaps I'm grateful because that's why they're still in my life, and that we all make sacrifices for each other to lift everyone up.
00:23:10.559 --> 00:23:12.400
All boats rise with the tide.
00:23:12.720 --> 00:23:15.200
No one particular boat's just gonna shoot out of the water.
00:23:15.279 --> 00:23:17.039
That's what I felt like I should do.
00:23:17.279 --> 00:23:23.599
It was a, you know, if that metaphor or simile, whatever, of all boats rise with the tide.
00:23:23.680 --> 00:23:38.960
I thought what I needed to do is strap a rocket ship to my particular boat, shoot as high up in the air as I could with everyone else attached to cables and bungee cords, and then I pull them all out as I achieved my independent success would then bring everyone up with me.
00:23:39.200 --> 00:23:47.359
And it you can see the fault in that logic is I'm still operating out of a place of self-centeredness and egotistical stuff, whatever.
00:23:48.000 --> 00:24:00.240
And that was a sobering experience in and of itself to realize that my individual achievements sometimes could contribute in a way to the whole, but didn't affect the whole in the way that I thought it would.
00:24:00.640 --> 00:24:05.680
Because in order to bring all those boats up, I have to be oriented towards them as well.
00:24:05.920 --> 00:24:24.079
My own independent success isn't going to necessitate the rising of them, isn't going to cause the rising of all of them, unless they're involved in it in some way, which means a sacrifice from my end of my own internal wants and needs as they relate specifically to what I want.
00:24:24.400 --> 00:24:33.359
That's a lot of word salad, but I know that in life right now, there's examples, like with podcasters, comedians, things like that.
00:24:33.440 --> 00:24:50.720
You see these people get success, and then they start neglecting all the things in their life that either got them there or came with them, supportive, or even in communion, like the like a partner or a um someone they worked with, whatever it is, whatever the case may be.
00:24:50.799 --> 00:25:07.200
But there are so many instances of people losing touch with the the greater uh I guess context that they came up with, and then start getting drunk on the idea that I did this.
00:25:07.440 --> 00:25:09.039
This is because of me.
00:25:09.279 --> 00:25:14.160
And if I keep achieving, then that will benefit everybody else.
00:25:14.319 --> 00:25:16.559
But the focus has now become me.
00:25:17.279 --> 00:25:34.720
And so I saw myself, and that's an example I use because I'm starting to see it with some of the people that I've liked and followed for years, as they separate or as they separate from the people around them, but attach much more firmly to their own view of themselves.
00:25:35.039 --> 00:25:38.960
Uh, you can see it, it's so much easier to see this stuff from a distance.
00:25:39.039 --> 00:25:43.200
I think that's why it's so much easier to give other people advice than it is to yourself.
00:25:43.440 --> 00:25:49.039
But this is the case where I'm seeing it and then referencing it in my own life of where I've done that.
00:25:49.440 --> 00:26:16.240
And this being one of the cases of my family's like the easiest one because they're around me all the time, and it causes me the most internal strife as I battle my own ego because I'm constantly reminded that my ego is trying to get what it wants for itself at the expense of all of them, and then what I want to give them and myself in this unit is at the expense of my ego, and those two things are always fighting each other, so I gotta deal with that all the time.
00:26:16.480 --> 00:26:21.519
Uh, but it is easier when it's somebody else going through it, and I can look at them and see, like, see, that's what it looks like.
00:26:21.680 --> 00:26:23.759
Why can't I see that myself all the time?
00:26:24.000 --> 00:27:00.400
But this is the attempt at that, and so and being grateful for the people in my life, the way Marcus Aurelius is, it then also shows that other people's tides are raising my particular boat because when I am grateful for and recognize the characteristics and attributes and gifts that other people are giving me merely by their existence, but then their existence coupled with the fact that they've chosen me to be a part of their friendship or their life or network or whatever the case may be, now I'm starting to see a much bigger picture of life unfold in front of me.
00:27:00.559 --> 00:27:12.880
And it helps to dissolve that ego portion, but also again, gives a sense of novelty in gratitude that I have all this around me and my job is to just notice it.
00:27:13.119 --> 00:27:20.880
And so, uh, in thinking about going around all that way to all these people in my life, could I write a paragraph of what they give to me?
00:27:21.119 --> 00:27:24.079
And this is an exercise I'm going to keep doing going forward.
00:27:24.160 --> 00:27:25.200
It's not something I can.
00:27:25.279 --> 00:27:28.079
There's a lot of people and a lot I want to say that I'm I'm thankful for.
00:27:28.160 --> 00:27:41.920
And then the nice thing about that too is as I've embarked on this, it it's almost like re-establishing the relationship all over again of why you hung out with these people in the first place.
00:27:42.079 --> 00:27:56.559
Sometimes you forget or or with enough familiarity, they they say familiarity breeds contempt because over time we start to take for granted the gifts that they give us and start noticing all faults or things that annoy us or things like that.
00:27:56.720 --> 00:28:01.119
And I've noticed myself doing that with all the people in my life at one point or another.
00:28:01.599 --> 00:28:20.559
I'm not proud of that fact, but I figure there's a natural progression in relationship where that does happen if I'm not like constantly recognizing or reaffirming why I'm doing it by noticing the good and what I'm what these people are giving to me.
00:28:20.960 --> 00:28:38.960
And so um in practice of this, I then thought, well, all right, let's do more square peg, round hole, round peg square hole shit here and transmute that onto this validation exercise of can I do that for myself?
00:28:39.680 --> 00:28:42.559
Can I then be grateful to myself?
00:28:43.440 --> 00:28:50.720
And when I say I ran into a brick wall with that, it it felt physically like I was running into a brick wall.
00:28:50.799 --> 00:28:53.279
Like, I I don't take this kind of time for me.
00:28:53.359 --> 00:28:54.880
This feels foolish.
00:28:55.119 --> 00:28:57.519
This feels silly, I feel dumb.
00:28:57.920 --> 00:29:02.960
All right, let's write down a paragraph of all the things about me that I'm grateful to me for.
00:29:03.119 --> 00:29:10.400
And I run into this paradox of being so egotistical and full of myself and thinking I deserve all these wonderful things out of life.
00:29:10.720 --> 00:29:15.680
But then it feels so self-indulgent and kind of shameful to recognize it.
00:29:15.759 --> 00:29:22.079
So I have this weird, like I don't want, and I'm sure there's a psychological phenomenon this is that I'm hitting on.
00:29:22.240 --> 00:29:25.200
I'll try to find it, or somebody's screaming it right now.
00:29:25.279 --> 00:29:32.720
I don't know what it is, but essentially that I think I'm amazing and I think I'm shit simultaneously.
00:29:32.960 --> 00:29:44.240
I have a really hard time giving myself praise because it feels gross, but I also think I'm a super genius other times, and it's this weird duality internally that happens.
00:29:44.319 --> 00:29:50.319
But can I just separate all that and look almost as a third party at myself to be grateful?
00:29:50.559 --> 00:29:59.119
And will the novelty of that gratitude give me some kind of validation because I've separated just enough, you know.
00:29:59.279 --> 00:30:00.640
Familiarity brings contempt.
00:30:00.720 --> 00:30:07.759
Well, I'm not I'm no more familiar with anybody than I am with myself, and boy do I have the contempt to show it.
00:30:08.079 --> 00:30:11.279
So, how about that exercise?
00:30:11.440 --> 00:30:12.960
I haven't gotten there yet.
00:30:13.039 --> 00:30:18.720
I'm still working on the friend side of things because why not build that muscle up first before we tackle the main boss?
00:30:19.440 --> 00:30:30.160
But it does seem to be something that's working my way towards a different form of validation than external circumstance.
00:30:30.559 --> 00:30:38.319
Not that I say that external validation or comparison should be thrown away entirely.
00:30:38.720 --> 00:30:41.359
I think that's incredibly useful, especially for me.
00:30:41.519 --> 00:30:45.759
If you're a person who doesn't need that, God love you and all the power to you.
00:30:45.839 --> 00:30:47.279
I'm hoping to get there someday.
00:30:47.440 --> 00:30:50.960
You should start a podcast so you can tell me how the fuck you got there.
00:30:51.440 --> 00:31:00.559
But for me, anyway, there is this comparison-validating internal, external nature is the way I make sense of the world.
00:31:00.880 --> 00:31:19.359
And so I would like to be able to do that with a little more refinement and clarity of thought because, in a lot of ways, I have to wait around to be validated externally until something I'm doing is either completed or can be put out for other people to give feedback.
00:31:19.680 --> 00:31:24.720
What happens in the absence of feedback using that form of validation?
00:31:24.880 --> 00:31:27.119
I'm just sitting around stewing.
00:31:27.359 --> 00:31:40.720
It's another common mantra I have of that where I speak of my inability to just accept things, is I always say to myself, how will I know how strong I am if I have nothing to push against?
00:31:41.119 --> 00:31:46.240
And in this case, it's how will I be validated if I'm not getting any feedback?
00:31:46.480 --> 00:31:50.559
And it's a really hard way to live because I feel like I'm always in stasis.
00:31:50.720 --> 00:31:57.920
And this goes back to a phenomenon I was talking about in an earlier podcast of hurrying up and finishing so that I can start.
00:31:58.160 --> 00:32:09.680
And I think it dovetails with this quite nicely, where it's I need to hurry up and get feedback so I know what to do next, as opposed to just keep doing what's working and don't worry about the rest.
00:32:09.839 --> 00:32:20.480
The details have this amazing way of sorting themselves out when you stay on the main storyline, the main path.
00:32:20.799 --> 00:32:42.319
We've talked about not getting lost in the side quests, but not just that, just don't take my eyes off of the main goal, which in this case for this podcast, to bring that back, is to stay sober, which I'm doing amazingly, and without a lot of effort on the sobriety side.
00:32:42.400 --> 00:32:49.680
There's a lot of effort on this other side of working myself out and sorting things out and all of that.
00:32:50.319 --> 00:33:04.000
But maybe that's where the effort was always meant to be going towards, and instead to distract myself, to not pay attention to my faults, or to not deal with the issues that were ultimately ruining my life and destroying my soul.
00:33:04.559 --> 00:33:12.480
I used all of that effort and energy towards an addiction to just keep it going because it kept me busy and it kept me distracted enough to not see.
00:33:12.960 --> 00:33:15.680
Uh, again, back to a biblical thing.
00:33:15.920 --> 00:33:23.920
Um you point out the splinter in someone else's eye while ignoring the log in your own.
00:33:24.079 --> 00:33:30.880
And that would be the case of this, where I just couldn't deal with looking at myself.
00:33:31.200 --> 00:33:36.160
And maybe, you know, let's take a funnel cake brain offshoot here.
00:33:36.400 --> 00:33:45.839
That is where the idea of being disgusted or shameful of myself while at the same time thinking I'm great is like, why would I even bother to look at the log of my own eye?
00:33:45.920 --> 00:33:52.960
I'm so good, I could deal with that later, or I don't, it's not inhibiting me as much as I believe it is, or something to that effect.
00:33:53.200 --> 00:34:08.400
But I think in the absence of dealing with my own issues, something that I might have done to overcorrect was make the noise of my own ego louder than the noise of my true nature yearning to just be fixed.
00:34:08.639 --> 00:34:18.960
And so the more I could turn up my ego and give in to that, the more it would drown out the desperate cries of my soul saying, please fucking help me.
00:34:19.199 --> 00:34:26.159
I'm down here, I'm drowning, not just in booze, but in sorrow and misery and neglect.
00:34:26.320 --> 00:34:28.400
And I just I want to come back to you.
00:34:28.559 --> 00:34:35.280
And I said, no, turn up the volume over here on the pleasure seeking side so as not to deal with it.
00:34:35.519 --> 00:34:44.000
Because what's worse than distracting, or yeah, not just distracting yourself, but ignoring the necessity is to be getting high in the face of it.
00:34:44.320 --> 00:34:49.679
Say, I'm not only am I neglecting my responsibilities, but I feel good doing it.
00:34:50.079 --> 00:34:58.000
And I think that's why a substance is so powerful in that case, because I wouldn't be able to do that with a clear mind.
00:34:58.159 --> 00:35:01.679
It had to, I had to use those substances to get to that place.
00:35:02.480 --> 00:35:04.719
Yeah, there's a lot of interesting insights there.
00:35:05.039 --> 00:35:09.679
But we'll circle back to this validating thing and then we'll be done for the day.
00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:25.199
Um I do tend to get caught up in the details, and I think one thing to note is in some way, I guess I could do the the post-it note thing.
00:35:25.280 --> 00:35:30.159
That's one of those funny pieces of advice where people are always like, put post-it notes up all over your life.
00:35:30.239 --> 00:35:37.519
And I used to have that where there's like this oval on my bathroom mirror, and I could just stand in the middle of it and look around it like a clock.
00:35:37.599 --> 00:35:39.440
And all right, you're great.
00:35:39.599 --> 00:35:44.559
Uh, you deserve good things, uh, do good in the world, just shit like that.
00:35:44.800 --> 00:35:50.400
And it's funny how things like that tend to feel so childish.
00:35:50.639 --> 00:35:59.519
Like I can't allow myself to feel serious in the face of positivity, but yet the gravity of negativity I take so seriously.
00:35:59.760 --> 00:36:05.039
And so I have to find a way to make these positive details work for me.
00:36:05.119 --> 00:36:25.519
I just don't know how to do it because it feels so frivolous and absurd and silly, and for some reason, negativity feels so severe and real and somehow hierarchically like more true or more important or something.
00:36:26.880 --> 00:36:30.719
But it sure leads to a miserable life.
00:36:31.119 --> 00:36:32.559
I guess that's true.
00:36:32.800 --> 00:36:40.320
You know, if you if you get stuck in negativity, you got a really good thing you can point at and say, see, I was right.
00:36:40.559 --> 00:36:42.880
Being negative is miserable.
00:36:43.280 --> 00:37:03.519
I don't know, that's um it does so that was a bit of an offshoot to get back to also my my love affair for a philosophical um I guess school of thought is stoicism.
00:37:03.679 --> 00:37:09.519
I'm I am attracted more to Stoicism than any other philosophy I've come across.
00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:12.719
And here's why.
00:37:13.760 --> 00:37:23.760
For me, Stoicism is a is not about turning off emotions or being completely disconnected, it's about not being attached to them.
00:37:23.840 --> 00:37:27.840
And there's a big difference between being unattached and being disconnected.
00:37:28.480 --> 00:37:35.360
Well, I maybe not literally, but basically loosening your grip on something versus completely abandoning it.
00:37:35.679 --> 00:37:45.280
And so for me anyway, stoicism, and this is why I get into Marcus Aurelius, another philosopher I really like in the same vein as Epictetus.
00:37:45.519 --> 00:37:51.760
Uh, if you ever care to get in, that's a those are really good entry points for a stoic mindset.
00:37:51.840 --> 00:38:00.079
But essentially, you just don't want to be cast aside or astray or about by the vicissitudes of life.
00:38:00.320 --> 00:38:10.159
And I think a lot of people misinterpret that as you're not gonna feel anything, you become sort of sociopathic, where it's like I'm just gonna disengage from all meaning.
00:38:10.320 --> 00:38:11.920
Uh, and that's not the case at all.
00:38:12.079 --> 00:38:24.800
It's it's essentially you just it's really about not being attached to outcome, and then realizing what the ultimate outcome is, which is death, and all along the way, everything is change.
00:38:24.960 --> 00:38:30.559
And so to attach to any one particular thing is going to eventually lead to misery, as that thing will change.
00:38:30.719 --> 00:38:53.679
And it's hard, especially I can say, with kids, to attach to the to not attach to the idea that like all my effort and energy is going to manifest itself in a good life for this human being because there are things that will happen outside of my control that maybe I'll have to watch this kid suffer or fall short, or God forbid, someday not like me as much as I hope he does.
00:38:53.920 --> 00:38:56.559
All of these things are completely outside of my control.
00:38:57.440 --> 00:38:58.880
How can I be okay with that?
00:38:59.039 --> 00:39:05.679
And this is the the philosophical uh school that helps to deal with that.
00:39:05.920 --> 00:39:10.880
And I think it's important to try all different things and see you know where it can work for you.
00:39:10.960 --> 00:39:18.079
And it it worked especially well for me after having cancer the first time when I was 22.
00:39:18.639 --> 00:39:29.519
But when life is going along the best you can imagine, and everything is swept away, it almost forced me to search out stoicism because I was like, How could I make sense of this?
00:39:29.760 --> 00:39:39.119
Everything like I had literally peaked in life in every avenue of my life, athletically, academically, in relationships.
00:39:39.280 --> 00:39:44.559
I everything was falling at my feet without effort and in the best way imaginable.
00:39:44.719 --> 00:39:46.800
And then all of it came to a stop.
00:39:47.440 --> 00:39:53.679
And it I can cast no blame anywhere except to say the only thing I could do was accept.
00:39:54.000 --> 00:40:00.079
And then I sort of found this stoic philosophy in the wreckage of that.
00:40:01.199 --> 00:40:18.480
And I I say this now, understanding the nature of doubt and validation and the details and all of these different things that are constantly changing, and how I need to orient myself somewhere in the middle of all of that and not be pulled too far in any direction.
00:40:18.719 --> 00:40:34.719
But use those details or use all of these different exercises, my understandings, and taking the long route and seeing all these different variables as a way to inform and shape this sort of unwhat would you call that?
00:40:34.960 --> 00:40:37.679
It's like unflappable way of living.
00:40:37.760 --> 00:41:05.599
Where there's times in my life where I've come across people who don't have any seemingly outwardly either personality or successes or um circumstance, materially, anything in their lives that would justify their peace of mind when I'm looking at them from the judgmental aspect of needing external validation.
00:41:05.920 --> 00:41:16.800
And and that was a very jumbled up way of basically saying, Have you ever met a person who's just really happy or really content with themselves and they have nothing to show for it?
00:41:17.119 --> 00:41:19.519
I'm so jealous of those people.
00:41:19.920 --> 00:41:37.679
And I I I have a such a hard time figuring out either how to get there or how to be okay with how to make sense of a life of being okay with not achieving things, if that makes sense.
00:41:37.840 --> 00:41:41.360
I don't know, it's just there's some way to get there.
00:41:41.440 --> 00:41:52.320
I feel stoicism is a piece of it, and I feel like the characteristics that you build up as a result of this way of practicing get you closer to that person who's just perfectly content.
00:41:53.199 --> 00:42:04.800
And I didn't realize in this life of all the things I thought I would need, and of all the validation and of all the material possessions I would need to compare myself to others, to say, look, I'm making it somehow.
00:42:05.119 --> 00:42:23.440
Or by building up bigger mental models to look through the world through these shinier glasses, all of that would fall away with the idea that truly the one thing that I find myself yearning for more than anything in this life is peace of mind.
00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:26.400
And this seems to be the best way.
00:42:26.559 --> 00:42:34.239
I don't know if it is to get there, but once there, how not to be too easily moved off of it.
00:42:35.599 --> 00:42:40.559
So we will work more with Aurelius.
00:42:40.639 --> 00:42:58.639
I'll bring him into more discussions going forward, and more on these ideas of getting into topics or lines of thinking that will easily pull me away from my peace of mind and contentment and enjoyment of this wonderful life I have.
00:42:58.960 --> 00:43:00.719
Where first I need to recognize it.
00:43:00.880 --> 00:43:10.719
I need to look around and be grateful for the people and the things and the circumstances I find myself in, and not use that as like this is my new default.
00:43:11.039 --> 00:43:21.360
I think that's one of those cases where the familiarity also breeds this like idea that I have made it to this place and I'm never going beneath this again.
00:43:21.599 --> 00:43:26.079
Oh man, I can feel I can feel in my bones how wrong that is.
00:43:26.480 --> 00:43:27.760
Like, look at all this around me.
00:43:27.920 --> 00:43:30.639
I earned it, I deserve it, and we're never going back.
00:43:31.920 --> 00:43:33.119
Holy shit.
00:43:33.760 --> 00:43:35.519
Wow, what a scary thought.
00:43:35.760 --> 00:43:41.360
But you know, and and the best way to deal with that is to say, oh, I can I could go back.
00:43:41.440 --> 00:43:43.760
I'm not trying to, but it could happen.
00:43:44.079 --> 00:43:46.960
And what'll what will I do if if that is the case?
00:43:47.119 --> 00:43:50.159
How do I prepare myself for all possibilities?
00:43:50.480 --> 00:44:08.079
And the best way I could say is not to particular one thing I've done a lot in my life is pick out particular scenarios, almost like when you're laying in bed at night and you're like, man, if I just would have said this to this bully in in high school or middle school, all my whole life would have changed.
00:44:08.239 --> 00:44:15.039
I do that going forward where I think of all these horrible scenarios where like somebody confronts me when I'm with my child, I get to beat the shit out of them.
00:44:15.599 --> 00:44:19.119
And that's like practicing for specific scenarios.
00:44:19.280 --> 00:44:25.920
So I find it's what I'm trying to direct my energies towards these days is just work on being flexible, work on being strong.
00:44:26.079 --> 00:44:31.199
Not I'm gonna try to be flexible for a particular instance, but just be flexible.
00:44:31.360 --> 00:44:36.719
And then when that instance comes, whatever it may be, I'll be a little bit better prepared for it.
00:44:36.800 --> 00:44:53.119
Because also I've noticed if I start to do this like future thinking of all these various bad things that could happen to me that I must prepare for, I then put myself in a state of mind as if I'm in them, and then bring that state of mind into the present that is, you know, fully peaceful and normal.
00:44:53.360 --> 00:45:01.440
And that's also another thing that emotionally charges me out of nowhere, which makes no sense because I'm sitting there watching a movie with my family, and all of a sudden I'm like angry.
00:45:01.519 --> 00:45:02.880
You could feel the heat coming off me.
00:45:02.960 --> 00:45:08.320
And I'm like, oh, I'm just thinking about this person I'm gonna beat up at Costco next time we're there when they smush their card into us.
00:45:08.480 --> 00:45:15.440
It's like, where did this come from and why is it so important that I built this story that I then win somehow?
00:45:15.679 --> 00:45:16.480
I don't know.
00:45:16.639 --> 00:45:20.000
This is this is the funnel kick taking over.
00:45:20.239 --> 00:45:26.559
And so uh that's it for this week, uh, especially in validation and and going back a little bit to doubt.
00:45:26.719 --> 00:45:35.519
Hopefully, the audio was a little bit better as I have completely abandoned whatever the fuck last week was, and it will get a little bit better going forward.
00:45:35.679 --> 00:45:40.559
Uh so to that, I will say I bid you adieu, and we'll see you next week.
