Letting the World Come to You - A New Approach to Improving Your Life

Speaker A: 00:00:03

The Mindful Coach podcast. There is far too much going on in this culture about if you're not successful, then you're just not working hard enough.

And even if you are successful, you're still not working hard enough.

And unless you're the CEO, well, maybe you could be the CEO of three more companies, or maybe you could have a hundred billion dollars and have $500 billion if it just never ends. And at what point does it become a ridiculous pursuit of achievement that is never enough. You can never relax.

You can never take a moment to be present with the goodness that's right in your face. And what goodness is that?

Well, you might be surprised if you actually took the time to take a breath, connect to something inside of us that's a little more still and calm, expansive than our thoughts about what we're not achieving or what we're not getting done or thinking about the way things should have gone or how you were wronged. And yes, we do get wrong and things should go better for us. That would be fabulous. It doesn't always work that way. And then what are you going to do?

Live in a world where you're just constantly in a state of disappointment? Or I'm not achieving enough. I'm not doing enough. Another version of this is imposter syndrome.

It's like I don't know enough to actually be effective or useful or to speak up in a meeting where there are other people who might be a little more senior than you or know a little bit more. And so you dare not speak up because they are the ones who are supposed to know and have the big contributions. And so you hold back.

How do you organize yourself in a way to have a life, have a moment, have a day that isn't just full of what you are not doing yet. You know what I mean? Like thinking about, oh, I've got to do this, I've got to do this. Thinking about what you haven't done.

I did a whole podcast on living in the Gap. Take a. Take a. Listen to that. Because we talk about that extensively. What can you do? Well, I have some ideas about that in this episode.

One of the things you can do is simply learn to pause, take a breath, and just be still for a second with something that feels good. It can be as simple as a sky, a cloud. Right now I'm looking out my window here and there's a beautiful sunset. Love those pastels.

Infinite gradations of color. Amazing. If you just take time to look, you're not getting anything done in that moment, oh, my God. I'm not making. I'm not achieving anything.

But you are actually getting something very powerful done. You're connecting yourself to a nourishing moment, a moment of beauty, and letting yourself experience that.

And you can relax into that because it wants nothing from you. It's just there to experience. Now, this is a practice, very important practice, I call letting the world come to you. Letting the world come to you.

Instead of you going after an achievement and endless striving, take a moment and let the world come to you. And what you might find is quite beautiful indeed.

But you have to look beyond judgments and reactivity, snap judgments and your thoughts, to experience what's right in front of you. This is a true story about a client I had who was in it, in a small city and a stressful job. And he's a great guy. And he has this difficulty with.

Anytime he got bad news, he would immediately think about all the terrible things that could happen as a result of that. Oh, my gosh, I'm going to lose my job. They think I'm horrible.

They're going to tell this other person, all these terrible things are going to happen to me. It's the end of my career. That would happen. Whenever he got bad news, we call this crashing the plane. Like, it's not only that he's in a plane crash.

We worked on a way for him to take a breath and just notice that's what was happening and to pause and just think, you know, those are just thoughts. That's not what's happening. I'm just getting some feedback, what's true.

And so instead of being defensive to simply ask, tell me more, get all the details. And he would find usually it wasn't at all what he thought about or the bad things that he imagined.

It was actually something simple or something that was about a process and not him personally. The difficulty with this kind of a process is that it jumps too quick to the thought from the experience.

Like someone says something and boom, you imagine something is true, and you start thinking about it and putting yourself into that experience as if it were happening. So we worked on this exact assignment. Look at things that you feel good about, give yourself permission to pause and let yourself feel them.

Now, you might think those are kind of unrelated events. Like, that's. What does that one have to do with the other?

What does pausing and letting yourself feel something that feels good about something in the natural world? A flower, a. A face, a puppy, a child, a song, a smile, a sunset, a cloud.

What does noticing, letting yourself feel good about that have to do with not being reactive when someone says something to you? Has everything to do with it.

Because the circuit that we're trying to train here is the one that causes you to press pause or on your reactivity, what they call the default mode network in mindfulness work. So we're doing this work. And he reports one day, very excited, he says, oh, Brett, the most amazing thing happened. He was on a ferry boat.

Because in my area in Seattle, they have these ferries and they go between cities on some islands in Seattle, he was on his way to work the ferry, and there are seagulls that fly right by the ferry. And it's really interesting because you're out over Puget Sound and the water, and it's really pretty gorgeous, actually.

So peaceful out there on the water. And the bird flying right next to the ferry, well, he looks at the seagull and he goes, oh, that bird. That's a shit bird. It's just everywhere.

They're all over the place. They make noise. They're dime a dozen, nothing special, and they're actually noisy. What the heck? And he just walked away kind of in disgust.

And then he thought for a moment and stopped. I remembered connecting to something that's natural. And he turned around and he looked at the bird again.

And seeing past his judgment, he noticed it's actually pretty graceful and unusual to see a bird FL pacing a boat in the middle of Puget Sound, exactly at the speed of the boat and elegantly floating in space in this very rhythmic sort of motion as it flies through the sky exactly parallel to the boat. And when he saw that, he began to notice the beauty and the grace of it.

Now, consider that just a minute ago, he was in connection with not such a great experience. He's going, oh, my God, this is a crap bird. I hate these birds walking away. And what's the feeling of that?

It's not such a great feeling, but the same guy with a slightly different point of view, mindset, if you will, looks at the bird and goes, wow, that's really special, and feels something much nicer. Which of those worlds would you rather have in the same exact moment?

Would you rather be walking away disgusted, or would you rather feel, oh, wow, this is beautiful? Same bird, same experience, two different realities in terms of what you walk away with. And here's the key thing. He was at choice.

He got to make the decision to just simply look and see what naturally was. He wasn't looking at the bird just to see. I'm Going to make it special. Said I'm just going to see what's there.

And this just naturally emerges that's letting the world come to you.

Using your eyes and your senses to be present with your experience of these natural and beautiful phenomena in a way where you can experience these things directly and personally and. And it's effortless. You look at something beautiful and go, wow, it's beautiful.

There's no effort involved except to get out of your thoughts, out of the way.

And that's really not an effort, it's actually a relaxing because you instead of using your energy to imagine or think about what you're going to do next and things you've got to get done and how, how the sequencing that you have to do to plan to get somewhere and the next meeting you've got to have or what someone just said. Instead of your attention being driven by those thoughts, you take a breath and you let that go.

Not saying you ignore it or that they're bad, but you just let it go for a moment, long enough to let that beautiful moment that walked right up to your life be present in your awareness. Letting the world come to you. There's another way you can use this same philosophy, the same practice. Letting the world come to you.

It's one thing whenever you see something lovely and beautiful and you say, oh, I'm going to pay attention to this and see what happens. It's another thing also to let the world remind you to be present. And you might asking, well, how does that work? I'll tell you a story.

I was walking down the Boulder Mall one day and I was. Beautiful place, like a late summer evening. Spectacular. If you've ever been to Boulder, Colorado, you know what I mean? There's actually a.

There's a famous saying or legend if you will. It's called Chief New Watts Curse in Boulder.

And it's that any man who visits Boulder, any person who visits Boulder must move there because it's pretty special place. And that's exactly what happened to me. I visited it when I was like in my early teens and then my mid-20s.

I wound up moving there just like Chief Niwat said I would. So there I was. And I had been doing some work with a man named Phil the Prince. Amazing how come?

Me trainer and I saw him coming down the Boulder Mall from one direction. I was coming in the direction I saw him about 40 yards out, quite a ways away.

But I saw him and walking towards him and we get to near him and I say, oh hi Phil, how's it going? And he stops and he pauses and he looks inside. You can tell that look when someone likes checking in with themselves.

And he just kind of finds out, like, oh, what am. What is it like for me? And he says, well, you know, Brad, I'm really not doing that well. And of course, you know, I'm sad to hear that.

And, you know, Phil's a very well integrated human being, and so I don't need to, like, take care of him or go, oh, tell me all about it or let me help, or maybe none of that needs to happen. Instead, I just say, oh, man, I'm sorry to hear that. I. I hope things get better soon. And of course, he's like, oh, thank you.

And then we continue on our way. Now, that took no more than a minute or even less, but the impact on me was really quite profound because I.

It was a teaching moment for me and one I teach to all of my clients. When someone asks you how you are, that's another example of the world coming to you.

It's a prompt from the outside in to say, be mindful, be present, Connect to your senses. Notice what's actually happening for you. Oh, I'm tired. Oh, I'm excited. I'm stressed. I have a pain. I'm worried. I'm feeling sad.

Whatever's true, we're not here to say. It has to be a certain thing. Just notice what is so.

And then according to the circumstances and the person that you're with, as appropriate, you can respond from a place where you are more connected to what is true for you because you took a moment to connect. Maybe you were in your thoughts about something. Someone says, how are you? Oh, thank you. In my heart, it's like, thank you. Yeah, okay.

Oh, man, there's a lot going on. And maybe you don't say anything. This is, you know, another conversation about, what do you say? I'll just say, you know, respond accordingly.

Someone who you don't know well, then you don't necessarily want to share something personal. But if it's somebody who you have comfort, comfort with and you're safe with, you can say something a little more authentic in this. Can.

In this regard. I love this practice because how many times a day to someone do you meet someone? They say, oh, how are things going? A lot for some people.

And so here's a way that you can learn to take those moments and connect to yourself in a powerful way. And it doesn't have to be a big drama. It's not like someone says, hey, Brett, how's it going? Let me consider my inner world.

Please bear with me for a moment while I explore the vast territory of the rich inner landscape of my life. And then, you know, two minutes later, you come back with some pithy statement, or you just go, I see. Yes. Yeah, it's. It's. It's.

There's a lot happening. Don't make it a big deal. It can be almost completely transparent. Hey, Brett, how you doing? Pause, check. Oh, I'm doing fine, thanks.

Can be really fast. The key isn't to go deep.

The key is to just take a moment, to be intentional about noticing in this way, just like in the other example of the bird, and, like, paying attention to beautiful moments that just come your way. You're relaxing into the flow of experience and letting the world come to you to help you be more mindful and present with your experience.

And if you do this enough times, it will change your neurology in such a way that whenever something really kind of unpleasant happens, you get under stress. You'll have a circuit already wired up that lets you press pause and go, wait a second.

I'm feeling really reactive, and, like, I want to just snap back. And, you know, I might be justified in that, but it might not be the smartest move here.

But the key is to make a choice, to develop the capacity within yourself to be a choice about what you say. That's so powerful. So powerful.

And so that's the practice, letting the world come to you, letting yourself learn to say yes to the moments that just bring themselves into your. Another one is, I really like the way this worked out. I really like the way you did something. I really appreciate you. That's the world coming to you.

Once again, I have to literally say, oh, thank you. Hold on just a second. Marshal all my resources and relax and go, oh, you know, it's like a virtual hug. It's like.

It feels really good to feel appreciated. You know, somebody liked what I did. You know, that feels. Yeah, there's a. Oh, man, that feels so nourishing, so good.

It's like I get to live my life's purpose by putting out content and connections and words that I hope help people. And when I get that back, I have to make an effort to go, oh, let myself feel appreciated. A lot of people I know are in the same boat. It's like.

It's just a. It's a habit. Like, someone says, hey, I really like that. Oh, thanks. It was nothing. Don't do that.

It was something that's why they're telling you it's something we say, oh, it was nothing. What you're really saying is, I don't want to feel it. I don't want to feel appreciated. Why wouldn't you want yourself to feel good?

It's not about ego. It's not like, oh, I'm so good, I feel so. It's not that.

It's a simple letting yourself have the embrace the appreciation, letting yourself feel connected for a moment to the goodwill that someone else is sending you. Saying yes to that moment, for me, that's a. That's an effort. And I invite you to try. I invite you to try.

So all of these things, letting yourself, letting the world come to you, amazing practice. It's really radically changed my life for the better. And I hope it can for you too. My name is Brett Hill. I am the Mindful Coach.

You can find me@themindfulcoach.com if you're interested in this.

I have a whole 8 week sequence that I take people through and it will rock your world full of these kinds of exercises and practices and tune them up just for you. I would love to do that. So reach out to me if you're interested and I'll talk you through it. Blessings to you. Stay present.

The Mindful Coach Podcast is a service of the Mindful Coach Association.