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17. Interview: Matt Horsman
48 Plays3 years ago
Matt is a life coach and author of the new book “Don't Think of it as Mindfulness.” We discuss mindfulness as a practical way of checking in with yourself, and explore some of the benefits and philosophy of this idea amongst many other things.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Pursuit of Infinity'
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pursuit of Infinity, a podcast where we wade through the trenches of mind through meaningful discourse. Let's discuss a word that's overused and potentially misunderstood in today's quote unquote spiritual community.
Alternative Views on Mindfulness
00:00:16
Speaker
Mindfulness.
00:00:18
Speaker
This word has come to be associated with everything from California juice bars to deep spiritual awakening. Most times it's used to describe a form of meditation. But today's guest, the wise Matt Horseman, has a different way of looking at mindfulness. It requires no meditation and it doesn't intertwine itself with the notion of God or the universe at large.
00:00:43
Speaker
Matt is a life coach and author of the new book, Don't Think of It as Mindfulness. We discuss mindfulness as a practical way of checking in with yourself, and we explore some of the benefits and philosophy of this idea amongst many other things.
00:00:58
Speaker
Before we get to it, if you like what we do here and you want to support the show, the easiest way to do that is to subscribe and leave us a five star review on your platform of choice. And if you're feeling extra altruistic, you can visit our Patreon at patreon.com slash pursuit of infinity. We're also on Instagram at pursuit of infinity pod. We have some exciting stuff coming, including our YouTube channel. So stay tuned for that.
00:01:24
Speaker
And without further delay, thank you so much for listening and I hope you enjoy today's discussion.
Mindfulness Journey and Challenges
00:01:55
Speaker
Hey, Matt. Welcome to the show. Hey, Josh. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah, I appreciate it, man. Um, so mindfulness, big, big, broad topic. Um, and I understand that you have a slightly different view of mindfulness than popular culture might indicate. So can you explain a little bit what mindfulness means to you? Yeah, absolutely. So.
00:02:20
Speaker
My mindfulness journey, I think started like a lot of people do or people's stories did in the sense that mindfulness has just become such a buzzword. And it's, it's in popular culture now. And it seemed like something I should be doing, like the, the proven benefits sounded so amazing. And all you have to do is sit down and meditate for a few minutes a day. And this, all this great stuff will come to you. So.
00:02:46
Speaker
I dove in, but pretty quickly I got overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information available because it's such a popular topic. There's so many opinions on it and there's so many quote unquote, right ways to do it. And, uh, so I fell into meditation and I struggled for a bit, like most people do, but I eventually got kind of quote unquote good at it in the sense that even if I hadn't practiced for a few months, say I could sit down and within a few minutes, I could kind of empty my mind and
00:03:15
Speaker
And that was great, but I realized that it was great for the duration of my meditation. Like that felt amazing. And a few minutes afterward, like when you come out of a meditation, everything's kind of calmer and more still and say, okay, this is amazing. This is why I'm doing this. But then within minutes, you're right back into your life. Right. And I just realized like, man, I've been doing this for so long and all those proven benefits that I'm supposed to be kind of reaping from all this hard work. I'm not seeing them. So.
00:03:45
Speaker
I set out trying to find kind of, okay, what, what is mindfulness really? Because for me, I think a lot of people, mindfulness and meditation are the same thing. Where in reality, meditation is a form of mindfulness and mindfulness is kind of a broader topic. And after a lot of work, I realized that mindfulness, I mean, it can really be distilled down to two words, be present.
00:04:08
Speaker
Right. But, but understanding that isn't quite enough to just get it. You have to really experiment with that. And so I discovered the phrase, I mean, I didn't discovered, I'd heard it, but it really stuck is checking in. I thought that was a version of mindfulness that I could really kind of cling onto. And I realized that that's all it takes because we're on autopilot for so, such a large percentage of our days, right? And autopilot's fine. Like we need it to a certain degree.
00:04:36
Speaker
We can't be on all the time, but checking in was a way for me to just kind of snap out of autopilot for a few seconds. And I realized that's all it took was to just kind of look around and go, okay, I'm here right now.
00:04:49
Speaker
I can, I can think about, okay, what was I just thinking about? And just kind of take a second to be still. And then I can go back into my day and choose to go back onto autopod if I want to. But I realized that not a lot of people look at mindfulness in such a simple way. Like they get intimidated by all that. Well, I need to meditate for 20 minutes a day. And if that's not going well, I'm not doing it right. And it just gets all frustrating and, and you end up worse off than when you started. So it's something that I've really enjoyed talking to people about and teaching through my life coaching and.
00:05:23
Speaker
So when you were avidly meditating, what kind of spaces were you able to get to in your mind? Like, was it strictly a matter of quieting the chatter? Were you able to, like, project astrally? Because there are some, you know, there are a lot of spaces where you're able to get to in your mind.
00:05:39
Speaker
um, high levels of meditation that you can find, whether it be with Eastern traditions or, or others. So how far did you delve into the meditation aspect of mindfulness? Yeah, no, you're right. There's, there's so many ways you can go with meditation. And for me, the one I focused on by far the most was just emptying the mind, so to speak.
00:06:05
Speaker
So, I mean, at first it was obviously observing the thoughts. Like that was a whole revelation itself that you could do that. Right. Um, and then comes, I think for a lot of people comes the, okay, now I'm not thinking my thoughts, but all I'm thinking about is, Oh, I'm meditating. Am I meditating? Like that becomes the chatter. So after I quieted that, then yeah, I got, I got good at kind of really tapping into that kind of empty space and just kind of being fully present.
00:06:34
Speaker
And I'm not familiar with projection, but I know that something that happens for me often that I really love is all sorts of kind of visualizations, like in the sense of it could be something like in the span of a few milliseconds, like a collapse into like the smallest piece of anything and then expand into like the whole universe and just kind of really enjoying that. And I get kind of a rush, so to speak.
00:07:02
Speaker
Um, so when, so when that happens, I know like I'm really, really kind of blank, so to speak, but yeah, I just, I've never taken it past that. That was always my goal was to just empty the mind and be in that stillness.
00:07:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think a lot of people have trouble with the aspect of like you were saying, like, am I meditating? Am I doing this right? And I think that as far as what I found out is if you are asking yourself during a meditation session, if you're doing it right, then you are doing it right because you're identifying with the witness of your thoughts.
00:07:36
Speaker
And when you can realize that you aren't your thoughts and you aren't who you thought you were, I think that's the essence of that type of a meditation. So, um, most people use their breath as a starting point or like a home base. Is that where you started? And is that how you sort of grounded yourself within your meditation? Yeah, I think so. I think breath, there, there was all, there were all sorts of kind of.
00:08:03
Speaker
quick ways to center yourself, graphs onto most of them did revolve around the breath. But the thing I love about I talk about checking in is like a distilled form of mindfulness.
Personalized Mindfulness Practices
00:08:17
Speaker
I spend a lot of time talking about finding your own check in method, so to speak. And that's exactly what you're talking about with like using the breath kind of as an anchor, like that's one way to kind of still yourself or get after whatever you're after.
00:08:33
Speaker
For something for, for some people it's more kind of physical like you mean just feeling the fabric of your clothes for a second. Listening to the noises around you like really acutely and identifying and separating them like there's a million ways to kind of tap into.
00:08:51
Speaker
to kind of get out of your head, so to speak, and kind of into your body. And yeah, I've had a lot of fun talking to people about how they discover their own ways to kind of check in, right? And I know this is separate from the meditation, but I think it's something that's so powerful. Like for myself, I went out, I was on a vacation with my wife a couple of years ago. Our province was kind of,
00:09:19
Speaker
Saying, okay, COVID is kind of in a lull. We're going to give you some incentives to get out, kind of travel locally. So we went out and we came across this little kind of Alice in Wonderland, little gift shop on the side of the road. And the sign said open if we're home. I was like, okay, these sound like interesting people. I got to go meet them. And sure enough, we walked up and a guy came out and we started talking to him and he, we discovered he had a lot of hobbies. Woodworking was one of them.
00:09:47
Speaker
Um, and he also loved collecting kind of old broken things and repurposing them. And anyways, we had a lovely conversation with him and I noticed by the cash register, there was this box of wooden bow ties. And I thought they looked so neat. And I asked him about them. He said that his kids played sports growing up. They played competitively and.
00:10:06
Speaker
Um, there's a formal component to that, right? When you have like an official game, you're supposed to dress up before the game, wear a suit and tie and all that stuff. So he gave his son's teammates, wooden bow ties as a way to kind of have fun with that formal component. I thought that's so neat. So I grabbed one and I quickly realized that for whatever reason, I was keeping it in my pocket all the time. And that.
00:10:29
Speaker
unknowingly became kind of a way to check in for me. So where we talked about using the breath, like I didn't need that anymore. Like as soon as, like I have it with me right now, like this bow tie here. So I always put in my back pocket. So I'm annoyingly reminded when I sit down that it's there. So I pull it out and as soon as my hands are on it, it's kind of a reminder like, Hey.
00:10:52
Speaker
Just check in and that becomes akin to the breath, right? Like I'm immediately kind of centered. And then even for a few seconds, that's amazing. I can go from there. Yeah. I love the concept of checking in, in order to take yourself off of the rails of autopilot and take a look at what your autopilot is doing. So you can sort of jump back onto your autopilot rails and then continue in a more mindful way, quote unquote.
00:11:18
Speaker
Um, and I love the idea of feeling your clothes on your body or like I've heard someone described, like if you're driving to really feel the texture of the wheel under your hands and just to feel what it feels like. Um.
00:11:34
Speaker
to feel something, even though I said feel like five times. And even mindful eating, I find is is a big thing too, because most of us just sort of shove and stuff our faces with our food really quickly, living in this sort of really quick social environment where we have to eat real quick and get our stuff done. Most of the time I eat while I work, instead of taking like a normal lunch break. So I really do feel like mindful sense
00:12:03
Speaker
interpretation, like you were saying is very important. So are there any other ways aside from, uh, like feeling the clothes on your body and feeling that bow tie that you recommend to people in order to check in with themselves? Yeah. Well, I think the senses, any of them are a gateway. Um, like I said, just sitting down and noticing the sounds around you.
00:12:27
Speaker
Um, because usually we're so tuned into what we're doing that we suppress kind of the background noise, right? But if you sit down and really focus on it, you're like, Oh man, like I can actually hear like a garbage truck outside in the distance or hear some birds trimming or whatever. And, and you focusing on that is enough to take you out of your head.
00:12:45
Speaker
Um, smelling something like you've got some fragrances around your house. Um, I know that's really big form of, um, of tapping into that kind of mind frame for some people having candles and sets around just bury your face and some flowers just really, but really take like a really deep breath. And again, and that's the key word there is to be mindful. Um,
00:13:07
Speaker
I know that's kind of a loaded word and that's what I'm trying to kind of get away from with this whole, you don't need to meditate 20 minutes a day. Like if you want to, that's fine. It's not necessary to live a mindful life. Um, but yeah, being mindful, find out what that means to you, like experiment with a few different things and, and kind of check in with yourself and go, Oh man, like, okay, what I did just there, like I really got lost in it for a second in a good way. And if that's the case, then maybe that's something you should, should try again.
00:13:36
Speaker
So was there something about your meditation practice in particular that discouraged you or sort of drove you away from the meditation being the central aspect of mindfulness?
Shifting from Meditation to Practical Mindfulness
00:13:47
Speaker
Or were you noticing that the people you were coaching, the people that you were talking to were overwhelmed with the idea of mindfulness?
00:13:57
Speaker
Uh, it was both. I mean, it was me first, right? That's what kind of led me down this path was just becoming frustrated. Like I said, with, with the lack of results, I guess, there's the idea that I had always kind of hoped that, okay, if I put enough time in, I'm going to be able to look back one day and go like, man, I'm so glad this practice is in my life. Like I feel so much more centered and calm and.
00:14:23
Speaker
happy and all the, all those great benefits that are supposed to come. But I kind of look backwards and went, man, I've been doing this for a few years at least. And I don't really feel any less hectic. Um, so I realized that, okay, there, there has to be a different way, but, but also there has to be another piece of the puzzle, right? That isn't mentioned in the popular culture conversation of, of meditation and everything that I'm missing.
00:14:53
Speaker
Um, and through coaching and through studying to become a coach, I did a lot of work, um, spending some time with your thoughts. Right. And, and exploring a lot of us, when we're on autopilot, autopilot, we don't even realize what we're thinking most of the time. Right. We're just kind of in a fog and just kind of in go mode. And meditation is a great way to recognize what thoughts are coming up for you. Um,
00:15:20
Speaker
But once you have that skill, it's like, okay, instead of just letting the thoughts go. Like, what if I can investigate those thoughts and kind of shine a light on what thoughts are running through my head most of the time. And that was the piece of the puzzle that was really missing for me to kind of start seeing results.
00:15:39
Speaker
And when I started using that with my coaching clients, then it became like a ding, ding, ding, like, okay, there's a combination here. One, simplify mindfulness to its very root. And two, use that as a foundation to do some work on investigating your thoughts and finding out what's holding you back and kind of what's under the hood, so to speak. Yeah. I think a lot of people, like you were saying, sort of get intimidated and overwhelmed by the idea of.
00:16:07
Speaker
practice, you know, like a consistent practice. It's almost the same with like exercising and working out. People often have a hard time sticking to like a particular practice. That's why I do think that the checking in aspect of your philosophy works really, really well. So were you seeing great results with people consistently? Yeah. And really quickly, um,
00:16:34
Speaker
Cause it's funny, you talk about being intimidated by the practice. It brings to mind in the, in the book, I talk about kind of this 80 20 principle. I'm sure you've heard about it in the statistics, like 20% of the drivers cause 80% of the accidents and all those kinds of trends. But when I talk about it in the sense of setting goals. And I found time and time again that.
00:16:59
Speaker
If you can find the basic, the most basic steps you can take towards a goal and you do those, then 20% of the work usually gets you 80% of the results.
00:17:09
Speaker
And then you need to do 80% of the work to get the last 20%. But what we do is we focus on a hundred percent right from the get go. We think about all the things we need to do and we get overwhelmed and say, screw it. I'm not even doing it. So like for working out, for example, it's okay. I need to have my meal plan dialed in and all my macro nutrients. I need to know exactly how long I'm going to be running and where, what I'm going to be lifting and all the weights and blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:17:34
Speaker
It's like, man, just don't eat junk food. Do any form of exercise, put that 20% of the work in, you're going to get 80% of the results. No problem. And it was the same for mindfulness, right? The mindfulness practice of, okay, I need to find the right meditation. I need to do it perfectly. I need to set the right environment and make sure I have candles around or sounds or whatever it is. And we get really lost in that romantic.
00:18:02
Speaker
visual of what meditation looks like. That's all 80% stuff, right? Just sitting down and trying it. Um, or just finding a quick check-in method, doing that once in a while, like that's 20% of the work that can get you 80% of the results. So when I introduced this, these concepts to clients, the quickest thing that was happening for them and it was huge was say they struggled with anxiety and they were always worried about the future or something.
00:18:31
Speaker
Finding this check-in habit and checking in a few times a day was enough for them to stop that train, right? Cause when you're an autopilot, you might succumb to that anxiety really quickly and go like in a loss of a flurry of thoughts, right? Of, okay, I need to think of this and you do that. You just kind of get carried away, but checking in, put some breaks on that train long enough for you to go, okay, I don't need to be thinking about this right now. And then moving on. So that, so that was the.
00:18:58
Speaker
the kind of the biggest result that I was seeing right out of the gate with this kind of distilled form of checking in. So aside from, from putting the brakes on, you know, while you're in the train of autopilot, are there any particular benefits that you saw aside from that, like practically in a person's life that changed?
00:19:20
Speaker
Yeah. So in, in the book, I focus on four areas in particular that I think are real kind of rabbit holes for time and energy. I talk about focusing too much on the past, like regrets and what ifs, uh, thinking too much about the future, worrying about kind of imagined outcomes. The third one is others, worrying about what others think of us or how we're being perceived. And then the fourth is media.
00:19:47
Speaker
news, social media, Netflix, just kind of getting lost in the rabbit hole there. And, and again, we don't want to avoid time in these areas completely, right, like that can be beneficial to learn from the past to plan for the future. Thinking about others teaches us empathy. Consuming media can be healthy as well we learn, but
00:20:09
Speaker
We know when we take a good hard look at our own routines, if we're spending too much time in one of those areas, or maybe all four of them, the key question becomes, is my time serving me? Is it serving me to be spending too much time in these areas? So the practical benefits right off the gate with this kind of checking in thing,
00:20:32
Speaker
is one, if you already know that you spend too much time in one of those areas, then checking in can be kind of a reminder to, okay, put on the brakes for a second, like I said. But when you check in so often, sometimes you don't know that you're spending too much time in one of those areas. Like for me, I had no idea how much time I spent every damn day thinking about the past. Until I started checking in, like I'm not lying, I'm going to say,
00:21:01
Speaker
upwards of 80% of my kind of free thought time. I was in some past memory regret, failure, whatever. And I was kind of beating myself up about it and kind of stewing in those what ifs. Right. So checking in, allow me to realize that. And then when you realize that it's like, okay, now I can ask myself some questions. Right. And I go into detail in the book, kind of what kind of questions you can ask yourself, but
00:21:28
Speaker
It's that realization, that noticing that, oh man, okay, here's a problem I didn't really know about checking in and allowed me to notice it. So now I can do something about it.
00:21:37
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the things that I struggle with personally is sort of the opposite of what you just said, how you sort of like found yourself looking back into the past and worrying about regrets and things like that. I tend to beat myself up about the future and say to myself, like, you're not doing enough, like you're not good enough, you're not going to accomplish what you want, this and that. So what do you tell people who have that type of an anxiety within them?
00:22:02
Speaker
So with the future, talking to my clients and doing a lot of work on my own, I settled on a key realization that I think has helped a lot of people have talked to.
Letting Go of Anxieties
00:22:15
Speaker
And something that the words letting go are kind of riddled throughout the whole book and a lot of my practice that's kind of.
00:22:25
Speaker
I think you and your brother were actually talking about it in the Paradox episode, that idea of you already have everything you need, right? And I grew up in the very entrenched, in the very Western mindset of you always need to be adding things and building ourselves up and adding more knowledge and figuring out who we are that way.
00:22:50
Speaker
And I was a self-improvement chunky all my life, right? But the more I quote unquote improve myself, the more I was just becoming more and more confused. And it wasn't until actually a couple of years ago, I really tapped into, I was listening to a podcast and this woman was on speaking about that kind of more Eastern philosophy of letting go. It's not that you need to build yourself up, it's that you need to let go of things that aren't you.
00:23:17
Speaker
Right. And so letting go has really become a central concept in my life and in my coaching philosophy. And the way I apply it to the future is I realized that in my own life, what I was doing when I was either hoping for something or fearing something, I realized that
00:23:40
Speaker
Okay. Hope sounds great. All right. And fear sounds bad. Like let's avoid the fear and let's focus on the hope. But I realized that there were two sides of the same coin because what they're doing is they're placing predictions on the future. Right. It can be really scary to think that the future is completely unknown to us and that anything can happen. So what hope and fear do, whichever path you choose, you're placing a bet on the future and
00:24:08
Speaker
you're predicting in a sense because it gives you a sense of control. And I was doing that all the time. And what happened when things didn't go as planned was I just got completely overwhelmed and frustrated. So I become so attached to those outcomes. So I talk a lot in the book about the idea of once you recognize that and you can really start leaning into things like surrender and trust and being open because
00:24:37
Speaker
When you do some work on recognizing that it's not, it doesn't have to be scary to realize that there's an infinite amount of possible outcomes. It can be completely freeing, right? When you focus on, instead on what's going to happen, just focus on, okay, who do I want to be, right? Focus on myself, let go of all the crap.
00:24:59
Speaker
Right. The things that aren't serving you, like the expectations placed on you that are negatively impacting you and who you think you should be. All those kinds of things. If you just dig all that stuff out and focus on who you are, you can stand tall and go, okay, whatever happens, I'm going to be able to handle it. I don't need to hope for something. I don't need to fear for something because.
00:25:21
Speaker
I'm not, I can't see into the future, right? So logically it's kind of, it really doesn't make sense to be doing that anyway. Um, but yeah, we can, we can really surrender in that openness and trust and it telling you, this isn't enough to make you get it, right? It's something that takes work, but, but at least teaching my clients that that's a possibility, I think has triggered a lot of light bulbs. And then from there we can kind of explore, okay, how does that work for you?
00:25:50
Speaker
Yeah. It seems like the goal is instead of being reactionary to be like actionary, not reacting so much to the stimulus around you, but more so acting within yourself in a way where whatever comes your way, you know, you can handle and like calm and productive way. Um, and as you had mentioned, you know, we did our episode on paradox and that's been on my mind recently a lot with this stuff.
00:26:15
Speaker
And one of the paradoxes that I think is interesting is in Buddhism, the first two rules, there's four noble truths of Buddhism and the first two are
00:26:25
Speaker
Inherent in life is suffering. And the second one is suffering is caused by attachment. So what that means to me is that also attachment is inherent in life. So the paradox between navigating life in a way where you're not feeling attached, you're not allowing your attachments to run your life.
00:26:47
Speaker
but also acknowledging that you can't help but have attachments is a very fine balance. So do you find that's difficult for you and for maybe some of your clients in the beginning?
Self-Compassion in Mindfulness
00:27:00
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And there, there's some key concepts that I try to introduce to clients right away. And one of them is self-compassion. Um, for me, that was a term that
00:27:16
Speaker
It just wasn't in my life until very recently. I had heard the word, but I never applied it. And it links back to when I had realized that I was spending so much time thinking in the past, what I realized was that when I was doing that, I was standing on top of a mountain, right? And I was looking down at all of my past selves.
00:27:38
Speaker
all the regrets and failures and specific incidents. And I was standing on top of that mountain with a megaphone going, you screwed up, right? You weren't enough. And I was like, man, this is terrible. I'm being so terrible to myself because I realized that I was standing on top of the mountain as my present self.
00:27:57
Speaker
Looking back, expecting that previous Matt had all the same knowledge and quote unquote wisdom that he does now, which is just illogical, right? So I was being completely unfair to myself and I was kicking myself while I was down. So all of a sudden I realized like, wait a minute, I have a megaphone already. Why don't, why don't I use this to be a little kinder to myself and the word self compassion for whatever reason popped into my head. Like I said, I never used it before.
00:28:24
Speaker
But for whatever reason, I just decided to say into the microphone to every one of those incidences that were taking up 80% of my thought time. Instead of saying you weren't enough, I said, I forgive you. Like whatever you did, you were only doing the best you could, and I forgive you like wholesale. It wasn't like, okay, should I forgive this one but not the other? And no, 100% total forgiveness.
00:28:48
Speaker
And I swear I started like floating. There was such a huge weight off, right? And the reason I bring this up is because when you talk about attachment in Buddhism, when you realize that attachment is suffering, your obvious next step is, well, detachment should be the root of joy, right? Of nirvana, of getting away from that. But like you said, attachment is inherent. It's gonna happen.
00:29:15
Speaker
And right off the bat with this whole practice, that's why I introduce self-compassion so early is because trying to detach yourself from certain things or even trying to check in more often, like you're going to screw up. You're going to quote unquote fail, right? You're going to forget to check in for maybe a week at a time and go, Oh crap. Like I was on autopilot for seven days straight.
00:29:39
Speaker
but we need to bring self-compassion in immediately. Because if your reflex is to beat yourself up to go like, damn, I failed again and start that flurry of negative thoughts, like, I don't know if I can do this and this is too difficult and blah, blah, blah. Just start right off the bat by forgiving yourself. And you're gonna find that the whole journey is so much easier because you're never taking those two steps back, right? You're only ever inching forward.
00:30:08
Speaker
Now you mentioned self compassion, which I think is super important and it's essential for this kind of work, but so I, I got into this kind of work via, um, like strong, heavy psychedelic experiences. And one of the first things that.
00:30:26
Speaker
mushrooms in particular psilocybin taught me was Essentially like and in a very brutal way was like you don't know shit, you know And yeah, I feel like there was such an important lesson in understanding that as well Because you can definitely have self-compassion and you absolutely must but I think one of the first steps of having self-compassion is really realizing that you don't know shit and when you start from a baseline that is
00:30:55
Speaker
void of hubris in a way where like you're projecting your supreme knowledge on the universe. I think that is very beneficial in beginning to realize that you can have compassion for yourself because when you look at yourself as some kind of like all knowing being that you put a lot of pressure on yourself in that way.
00:31:16
Speaker
Um, but understanding that you start from the same base level knowledge as everybody else. And you know, we all are really just kind of mingling around this, this planet, trying to figure everything out. I feel like it allows you to have compassion for yourself as well as compassion for others. Um, part of this work that I think has been really beneficial for me is compassion and service to others as work on yourself. So.
00:31:41
Speaker
Do you think that is a common, like successful theme when approaching mindfulness? Yeah. I mean, it's a great point and it's funny you mentioned that I very much remember.
00:31:57
Speaker
in high school, I'm sure you went through the same phase where you meet a group of friends and you start having really deep conversations about God and spirituality and the way the universe works and all this stuff. And you start to be really attached to these theories, right? And you go like, man, I got this shit all figured out. And then overnight, it's like you wake up and you get slapped in the face and you realize that, okay, man, I just went from thinking I knew everything to realizing I know nothing.
00:32:28
Speaker
So the same kind of experience with psychedelics for you, right? That you don't know shit. And to me, it's very similar to when you asked about anxiety, about looking towards the future, right? It's that same, okay, when you're hoping or worrying for something, you're placing bets and you're making predictions because you're trying to have some control, right? Because the unknown for whatever reason is scary to you.
00:32:53
Speaker
And the same solution applies with what you said about realizing that you don't know anything. Like if you can learn to relax into that and to really open yourself up to, again, how freeing it is to take that pressure off yourself, like you said. And really that's a common theme when I talk to coaching clients is helping them realize how much damn pressure they are putting on themselves.
00:33:21
Speaker
How many expectations, whether they're explicitly put on them. Sometimes that's the case, right? Like, um, I married into a family business. My wife grew up in one and that's what I started with was life coaching was people who grew up in a family business. And man, what a particularly aggressive arena for expectations, right? You have the legacy sometimes generations deep of a business. And I met people who their parents explicitly told them.
00:33:51
Speaker
You've got to carry this thing forward. And that's a huge weight. And I've also met people who, their parents explicitly told them it doesn't matter. Like you do you, they gave them full pass, right? But they still felt the weight just the same, right? So it can be imposed on us or we can impose it on ourselves. So once you realize that, how much weight you're carrying around that you don't need to, right? It's getting back to that letting go and that healthy detachment.
00:34:20
Speaker
can be so freeing. So, so yeah, it's just like you said, realizing that you don't know anything. Like if you can just fall back into that, like just surrender. And it takes so much pressure off of, I mean, I remember, um, feeling like I had imposter syndrome because my whole life growing up, people kept telling me I was a smart kid in class, right? I was the intelligent one. And then as I got older, I'd meet more people and they seem to know so much more than me.
00:34:49
Speaker
And I realized that.
00:34:51
Speaker
Okay, well, I'm hanging out with people that don't have the same interests that I do. So naturally, I'm not as curious about the things that they know about. So I haven't educated myself as well. And that's why I feel so kind of lost in their conversations. And when I found my own tribe, so to speak, that's when you start realizing, okay, like, it's not a race to know more than the other person, or it's more lean into what you love. And you're naturally going to be curious about that. And all that kind of expectation is going to fall away.
00:35:21
Speaker
There's all sorts of little ways that we do it to ourselves. And if we can learn to notice that, then we're on a path to feeling that freedom, for sure. Yeah, as Joseph Campbell said, follow your bliss. I think that's the same message that you're conveying here. But going back to some of the concepts of your book,
00:35:42
Speaker
This constant engagement with external material, whether it be Netflix or social media or just anything on the internet, I find that's the, one of the biggest problems and one of the biggest things that takes us out of the present moment is you can feel that you're, that you're present and you're in the moment and you're happy and you're having a good time like scrolling on your phone, but you're not present within yourself. So.
00:36:07
Speaker
Do you find also that that is one of the biggest issues with most people is just, you know, mindlessly scrolling social media.
Mindful Media Consumption
00:36:16
Speaker
Um, that's a tough one because I find that for whatever reason, the people that I usually work with in a coaching capacity, um, they don't seem to be as affected by that, or at least they don't kind of let me into that part of their lives.
00:36:33
Speaker
Um, but outside of coaching, just being a human in the world and, and my own personal experience. Yeah. I mean, I I've suffered from that time and time again, being glued to the phone and getting that dopamine rush whenever you hear a notification and, and, and all that kind of stuff. Um,
00:36:53
Speaker
But yeah, and going back to this idea of checking in, that's again, another quick solution to at least stem or stop the bleeding, I should say, is sometimes like in the book, I talk about passive versus active choices, right?
00:37:10
Speaker
So a passive choice is when you come home from work and you're tired and all of a sudden you're three episodes into a show. Like you didn't, you didn't come home and go like, what should I do with my time? It just kind of happened. It's part of your routine or whatever. You still made a choice, right? Like you weren't literally a zombie in those moments. You still made a choice, but it was likely a passive one. And so checking in allows us to make active choices. So we can get home from work, check in no matter how tired we are just for a couple of seconds.
00:37:40
Speaker
And we can ask ourselves, okay, do I want to watch a season of a show because I'm tired? Maybe the answer is yes. Like maybe that is what you need right now. And that's fine, but you're miles ahead. If you actively chose that versus just kind of getting swept in.
00:37:57
Speaker
And I talk about like how many social media platforms have enabled autoplay by default now, right? Because we're in that rabbit hole. Like I actually looked it up in YouTube's manuals. They say that they want to encourage a lean back experience. That's their quote. So they press the play button for you. Like, okay, how nice of you.
00:38:21
Speaker
But we all know when we're in that rabbit hole moment or in that passive kind of decision or choice moment that we're getting sucked into that and we don't take a second to check in and go, okay, do I want to watch another episode? So checking in can really help with that. And another thing that I've found is
00:38:40
Speaker
I've never heard the term doom scrolling before. Have you heard this? I have. Yeah. Yeah. It's something that I've been hearing a lot in the past few weeks. I've never heard before. Um, but especially with things like what's going on in Ukraine, for example, like that's a huge one where it's such massive news for, for everyone in the world. Right. But say people here in the West that are fairly removed from it.
00:39:05
Speaker
I know a lot of people, myself included, that just got completely sucked in to following that story day in and day out, right? And I find that, again, when I mentioned a while back that it's not that you need to stop thinking about the past, future, others, or engaging with media, it's that you need to ask if it's serving you.
00:39:27
Speaker
So to engage in media and doom scroll and always be having these negative images flash before your eyes time and time again, you need to step back and ask yourself, okay, is this serving me?
00:39:42
Speaker
Like, is it doing anyone else any good for me doing this? And is it doing me any good? And the answer is usually no, right? Like it's different if you go, okay, I really want to help out in Ukraine and you find some charity to donate to or whatever. But usually we just get hooked into the news cycle and it's just, it's downright depressing, right? And we like to think that as soon as we shut the phone off, that depression stays with the phone, but it lingers.
00:40:10
Speaker
Right. It stays with us. So I think we need to be cognizant of that too. Like how much of an effect are those kind of negative images and those rabbit holes really having on us. Yeah. And it seems that the algorithms sort of favor things that.
00:40:27
Speaker
Promote engagement and a lot of the things that promote engagement in our minds subconsciously is outrage So that's I think why you see a lot of these You know, you see a lot of shootings and police brutality and you see so so much Do you think that is sort of like off topic a little bit? But do you think that? We're just seeing more violence and more of this stuff because social media is here or do you think that it's increasing in the world?
Local vs Global Focus
00:40:58
Speaker
To be honest, I have no idea. But I find it interesting as something I've talked to people close to me a lot is I feel like I mean, and I know that it's a very recent phenomenon that we're so connected globally, right? Like you think back to our grandparents generation and being in a small town or a farming
00:41:23
Speaker
community most likely, right? And they knew the people within a whatever kilometer radius, and that was their whole world, right? We weren't plugged in to the whole world. And I think evolutionarily that we just never evolved the capacity to take on so much suffering or happiness or whatever it is, but to just care about so many people, it's just exhausting.
00:41:50
Speaker
And I feel like we go through, at least I go through these kinds of cycles of guilt, right? Of going like, oh my God, I know this is happening and I'm not doing shit about it. Like I'm a terrible person. How dare I go back to my privilege, right? But it's just, it gets to a point where your mind just kind of checks out, goes like, okay, I can't compute this anymore. And so to answer your question, I have no idea.
00:42:18
Speaker
And that's the terrible thing about statistics now is that you can find a million different statistics about the same thing and interpreted a million different ways. So I don't know if anyone really has the answer. Um, but I definitely could see that. Yeah, it's just in front of our eyes more often. And that leads us down that path of, oh man, the world's in a shithole. But if you can find some, like there are resources out there, like there's a website called positive.news.
00:42:46
Speaker
Right. Like if you can, if you feel a need to still check in on things, right. And what's going on around the world.
00:42:53
Speaker
Maybe try getting off of Reddit or getting off of Twitter or whatever it is that favors those algorithms, right? Because I think you're right that that does happen in the background without us realizing it. So yeah, just kind of check what sources you're using and you can still, if you choose to focus, right? Make an active choice to focus on the good that's happening. There's still a shit ton of good happening.
00:43:19
Speaker
As you were saying, the balance between appreciating your privilege and understanding that there's just endless suffering in other parts of the world, I think is super important as well. Um, a common theme that I think I think about is that sort of everything is perfect in a way. Um, the amount of suffering that happens in the world is
00:43:51
Speaker
It's hard to say it's perfect because when you think about it, you know, it, it really does bring you mental anguish and pain to think about the fact that like I'm, I can sit here in front of a computer and I have food in my refrigerator and I can go to Starbucks down the road if I want to. And there's people in other countries who are starving and can't get medicine and this and that, but.
00:44:10
Speaker
It seems to me that an important part of having the privilege is appreciating the privilege and using it to the best of your ability mindfully. And again, that word mindfulness keeps coming up. So how do you suggest that people think about the suffering in the world in a mindful way that it doesn't just cripple them? Right. Well, the first thing that comes to mind for me, honestly, is
00:44:37
Speaker
Especially when we're talking about if the consumption of this news and being on social media too often is a problem in your own life. I think that's something you really got to zoom out on. Right. And go, okay. What about the people around me? Right. Because I know like as a parent, um, I have a two year old son and that was the first time I realized like, man, like it's.
00:45:04
Speaker
not actively harming my son, that I'm on social media so much, right? But those are moments that, first of all, I'm not gonna get back, like he's gonna grow up. And second of all that, okay, I'm sitting here engaged in some conflict that's going on how many thousands kilometers away that I have no real say on. And not only that, I don't really know the truth of what's happening because there's just so many sources and conflicting reports and everything.
00:45:33
Speaker
And I'm getting sucked into this, and here's my two-year-old son who needs my love and attention. So while I'm going down that guilt trip of not doing enough to alleviate suffering for other people, which I have no real logistical way to help, I'm sitting here and essentially neglecting the human that's beside me. And I know that's kind of a stark way to put it, but I think that
00:45:59
Speaker
That would be the first step for me is zoom out and go, okay, who are the people in your life that matter to you? And are you giving them enough tension or attention? Are you spending enough time with them? Like how, how can you more productively increase the, the joy and decrease the suffering of the people that are around you right now in your community?
00:46:22
Speaker
Yeah, it seems starting from where you're at is a good way to approach it. Going back to the way that you got into this particularly, you said you married into a family business. So I understand that you started
00:46:39
Speaker
coaching people who were in the same situation as you, right? So they were sort of entrepreneurs, people who were in business, people trying to like live up to that legacy. So I guess it's inherent that your experience inspired you to start there. Um, so what issues or what problems, uh, were you noticing that were coming up within yourself? And we're also consistent among your clients who were in the same situation.
00:47:08
Speaker
Right. That got me into the mindfulness and everything. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, the, when I started, I mean, first of all, when I was in the family business, I was at a point, this is, I mean, early 2021.
Transition to Life Coaching
00:47:23
Speaker
So just over a year ago, um,
00:47:27
Speaker
I'm kind of quote unquote climbing the ladder at the job and I've got a successful position. And I say successful in the traditional terms, right? Like I was making a decent amount of money. I was married. I had a kid at a house, like all the kind of checklist things that if you're following a script in life, that's what's supposed to bring you all the happiness in the world. And I realized that that was bullshit, right? Like that doesn't mean anything necessarily. And
00:47:56
Speaker
So I was kind of, I was growing more and more discontent with what I was spending the bulk of my life doing, the bulk of my hours. And I always knew I wanted to help people, but I never really took enough time to introspect on what that meant. Like what that meant to me and how it could actually fulfill that kind of unshaped desire, if you will.
00:48:19
Speaker
Um, and I'm working at the job at the business and I listened to a podcast one day that I never listened to. And there was this woman on there as a guest. Her name is Martha Beck. I don't know if you've ever heard of her. I have not actually. Yeah. But she, uh, she was the one who introduced me. Like we talked about a while ago to that kind of Eastern philosophy, that way of letting go, right? Instead of building up and adding and adding and adding.
00:48:43
Speaker
And that was a huge light bulb for me like I'm sure you've had experiences like that where it's like the person's talking directly to you. It's like they opened up your face they're staring right into your soul and they're saying the exact words you need to hear. And it was, it was literally life changing for me that because it sparked a whole new adventure. And the more I looked into letting go letting go and that's what
00:49:05
Speaker
I looked up this Martha back and she's a life coach and I'm like, Hey, I didn't even know life coaches existed. I didn't know that was a thing. And the more I looked into it, the more I read about it, it was just ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Like everything I wanted to do, this is the perfect way to do it.
00:49:20
Speaker
And I fell into it very quickly and fell in love with it and felt, found that it was, I was naturally good at it. Right. Like it was kind of, um, I'm a musician as well. So I, I talk about like a flow state, like when I'm playing an instrument, like you just get lost in it. Like I recognized pretty quickly that coaching for me was a flow state.
00:49:39
Speaker
Like I could sit down with a person, I'd have no idea what they wanted to talk about, but they'd bring an agenda to me and we'd just go from there. And I kind of get into the flow state of helping them kind of discover their own solution, right? So it just made sense at first for me to get into the family business thing. Cause it was something that was so, like you said, it was so prevalent in my own life and it was kind of an underserved population, right? A lot of people think that not just family business, but a lot of people think that they're the only ones going through something.
00:50:09
Speaker
And it can be extremely liberating to let them know they're not alone, right? You get stuck so often thinking, okay, I'm uniquely terrible at life. It's like, no, that is not true. There's so many other people struggling with the same thing. When you can connect with that, that's a way out.
00:50:28
Speaker
As I continued coaching clients in the family business realm, I realized, first of all, that we were spending maybe 5% of our time actually talking about family business because they're humans too, right? They have a whole different sides to them. Family business is just one aspect, no matter how large it is.
00:50:48
Speaker
And I realized the more and more I thought about it, that mindfulness was creeping in to every one of our conversations and the clients I had, I was asking them about their experiences with mindfulness.
00:51:01
Speaker
because one of them was extremely well-versed. Like she had gone and done 10 day silent retreats and all that kind of stuff, but she couldn't find a way to practically use it in her life still. And I had another client, for example, that after we had an hour long conversation and we're getting all these light bulbs and she went, wait a minute, is this mindfulness? Like, are you talking about mindfulness right now? I'm like, yeah, this is it. And she's like, oh my God, like I've always wanted
00:51:29
Speaker
to look into it, but I've been too intimidated or whatever. And so after hearing more and more of those experiences of, okay, I like the idea, but I don't know how to start, or I'm very familiar, but I can't figure out how the hell to use it in a practical way. I was like, okay, I got to get my thoughts together on this. And I never intended on writing a book. It just kind of came to me. I really had no choice to be honest. The words were just kind of coming out and I was like, okay, I got to follow this.
00:51:58
Speaker
And, uh, yeah, it was the perfect timing for me and for my clients and for everyone to put all these thoughts into one concept and kind of go from there. Um, little off topic, but, uh, what instrument do you play or what instruments do
Music as Mindfulness
00:52:15
Speaker
you play? Never off topic with me. Uh, my home is drums. Okay. But I play a little bit of everything because I chiefly love composing and you can only get so far composing a song on drums. So.
00:52:28
Speaker
Guitar, bass, keys, everything else. Yeah. Talk about mindfulness, man. That seems to be like maybe even where you began your journey on mindfulness, uh, sort of subconsciously. How, how long have you been playing music? Uh, I first started playing guitar. I formally took lessons for a month or two when I was eight.
00:52:47
Speaker
And I didn't like the lessons, but the guitar stuck. So I just kind of taught myself from there. So yeah, I was lucky to grow up that my father plays a little bit of guitar and I had an older cousin. He was like six years older than me. And he would, I would sneak into his room and listen to Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and Nirvana and all those kinds of popular grunge. So that really got me into my taste of music. And, and from there, yeah, it's just been, it's been a huge part of my life for sure.
00:53:16
Speaker
Yeah, music is a beautiful way to, um, exert energy, keep your mind focused. And like I said, it seems to be, um, a great way to practice mindfulness. My brother is a musician. He plays bass mostly. Um, and I mean, he, he squares by it. It's a, it's a great way to, uh, you know, get that artistic ability onto paper, quote unquote, um,
00:53:43
Speaker
So back to your book, uh, when does that come out and in what formats, um, and like, where is that available?
Book Launch and Future Plans
00:53:51
Speaker
Yeah. So as we're speaking right now, uh, I'm in soft launch mode and I'm doing a full launch next Tuesday, but by the time this comes out, it'll be fully available. Um, right now it's essentially just a PDF that is available as a free resource.
00:54:08
Speaker
I want to get this out to as many people as possible and use that kind of as an introduction because I will be building a course around the book and obviously coaching is always available based on the practices in the book. But yeah my dream to be honest is to build up a community around this and I'd love to eventually publish a printed version once I
00:54:33
Speaker
this is out in the world. And I can hear back from more people about how they interpret it and stories of how they find their own check-in methods and kind of how it works for them and flesh the book out a bit. But yeah, it's for to start out for sure. And it's going to be a free resource that will be available. Have you had any setbacks or pitfalls in this project that you can speak of? It's funny you mentioned that the
00:55:01
Speaker
we just talked about playing music and kind of being lost in the zone and having that as an outlet, right? And like I said, I never intended on writing the book. It just kind of started happening without me knowing. And I realized one day, like, oh, shit, I've got a lot of material here. I should start to try to shape it. But the only downside was that I got too lost in it.
00:55:25
Speaker
And it's really funny, like connect this with music because I don't know if you ever heard of the movie soul. It's an animated. Yes. Yeah. I love that movie. Okay. You've seen it. Yeah. So there, there's a scene there where the main character who, for anyone who doesn't know the show, he's a pianist, right? He's a jazz pianist and he knows the flow state very well. He knows what it feels like to get lost in his piano playing.
00:55:51
Speaker
And there's a scene in the movie where they're kind of in this astral plane or whatever, they're kind of up in this different plane of reality and he has a guide with them. And he looks around and he notices all these people kind of floating in bubbles. And he goes like, who are they? And his guide tells him like, those are people in the zone. Like they're so in the zone, they kind of lose themselves. And it's not just music, right? It could be playing sports or doing something like woodworking, something with your hands, like something you really get lost in.
00:56:22
Speaker
And it's a beautiful image because the main character knows exactly what he's talking about. But then he looks down and he sees these kind of angry, disturbed blobs and shapes of people. And he says, well, who are they? And he says, well, those are people who have become detached from life in some way, right? Either through depression or whatever. They're just kind of separated a bit from reality and they're in a lot of suffering.
00:56:46
Speaker
But the key point that his guide made here that I'd never thought of, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. He said, you know, people in the flow state are not so different from people who are disassociated with life. Like if, if getting in that flow state becomes too much and you do it too often and it kind of takes you away from reality, then you end up detached, right? And that can cause you suffering.
00:57:12
Speaker
And I realized that was happening. It's happened before in my life, but it was happening again with this project that I got so drawn into it and it was pouring out so quickly that I started to check out from the rest of my life. Like I said, I have a wife and a kid, right? And my wife has.
00:57:33
Speaker
has become aware of this happening because it used to happen. Like when I was, when we first started dating, I was into computer programming and taking classes and I'd get really lost in it. And we only had one car at the time. So say, for example, she called and go, okay, I need you to come pick me up from work.
00:57:49
Speaker
I go, yeah, okay, fine. Bye. And I would essentially leave myself at the laptop. Like I would physically get in the car, go pick her up, but my mind was completely elsewhere. But no wonder she started getting frustrated with me. Like I'd be in the car and I'd be like, yeah, okay. Well, I didn't want to talk. I just seemed completely shut off. And like, I wasn't interested in being beside her at all. So naturally she started becoming very aware of when I got lost in these states and
00:58:18
Speaker
Yeah, it happened with the book as well. So again, that's when I realized, okay, shit, I'm already checking in. So this is something I should be checking in about like once in a while, whenever I pull the bow tie out, right? Is go, okay, am I lost in the book? Like, should I be paying more attention to the people around me and kind of the rest of my life? And often that did save me from kind of getting lost in the woods there. Yeah. Yeah.
00:58:44
Speaker
Well, we're at about an hour here and I'd like to be respectful of your time. So as we wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to get out there to the listeners? Anything else you want to promote any plugs?
00:58:56
Speaker
Uh, no, not really. I mean, I'll give you the link for the book that, like I said, once this is up, it'll be available already as a free resource. Um, but yeah, if there's any takeaways, like I said, it just remember if you're frustrated with mindfulness or meditation or anything like that, it can be as simple as you let it be.
00:59:17
Speaker
it doesn't need to be this big concept that's intimidating and you need to get perfect. Like I never want to hear people ask like, am I doing mindfulness incorrectly or am I doing it enough? Like those questions shouldn't exist. So just try to remember to relax and have some fun with it. And I hope that reading the book can give you more than a few ways to kind of get started on that journey and kind of start to see the rewards.
00:59:43
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely plan on reading it and, um, I will share links and all of that stuff in the show notes here. Um, so yeah, Matt, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. I really appreciate it. It was a very insightful conversation. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks, Josh. And I loved your, your podcast so far and I look forward to future episodes too. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate it.