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Live Your Labels or Live Your Life – a conversation with Zac Russell
0 Playsin 7 hours
Zac Russell is a life coach with a completely different approach to coaching.
In this episode of the Abeceder work life balance podcast Rest and Recreation Zac Russell explains to host Michael Millward how his approach to coaching is different.
You will be as enthralled as Michael by how Zac explains his approach.
Zac explains how the problems that his clients seek help resolving are created. The discussion includes descriptions of childhood experiences and how we learn to define the person we are.
When the end comes you will feel both relaxed and yet enthused to start a new life.
The time is always now!
Visit Abeceder for more information about Zac Russell and Michael Millward.
Audience Offers
Rest and Recreation is made on Zencastr, because creating podcasts on Zencastr is so easy, you can as well by visiting Zencastr and using our offer code ABECEDER.
Zac is based in Toronto Canada, listeners can travel to Canada and anywhere else in the world at trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, and holidays as members of The Ultimate Travel Club.
Health – York Test provides an Annual Health Test. An experienced phlebotomist will complete a full blood draw at your home or workplace. Hospital standard tests covering 39 different health markers are carried out in a UKAS-accredited and CQC-compliant laboratory.
A Personal Wellness Hub gives access your easy-to-understand results and guidance to help you make effective lifestyle changes anytime via your secure, personal Wellness Hub account.
Visit York Test and use this discount code REST25.
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Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abeceder is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think!
Being a Guest
If you would like to be a guest on Rest and Recreation, please contact Abeceder.
Matchmaker.fm introduce many guests to Rest and Recreation. Matchmaker.fm is where great hosts and even greater guests are matched, and fantastic podcasts are hatched. Use code MILW10 for a discount on membership.
We recommend that potential guests take one of the podcasting guest training programmes available from Work Place Learning Centre.
Thank you to you for listening.
We appreciate every like, download, and subscription.
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Transcript
Introduction to Rest and Recreation Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
on zencastr Hello and welcome to Rest and Recreation, the work-life balance podcast from Abysida. I am your host, Michael Middleward, the Managing Director of Abysida.
Overcoming Inaccurate Life Depictions
00:00:19
Speaker
Today, I am going to be exploring a methodology which has been developed by Zach Russell. which helps people to overcome inaccurate depictions of the reality of their life and move into a framework of peace, purpose and contentment, which enables them to live their best lives.
00:00:40
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, Rest and Recreation is made on Zencastr. Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then distribute distribute it to the major platforms like Spotify, Apple, Amazon and Google YouTube Music.
00:01:00
Speaker
Zencastr really does make making content so easy. If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr, visit zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abysida.
Podcast Tools and Travel Discounts
00:01:14
Speaker
All the details are in the description. Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencaster is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:29
Speaker
As with every episode of Rest and Recreation, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. Today's Rest and Recreation guest is Zach Russell.
00:01:42
Speaker
Zach is based in Toronto, Canada, a city I have visited several times and would love to go back. When I do go back, I will make my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where I can access trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays and all sorts of other travel-related purchases.
00:02:02
Speaker
You can also access the same trade prices on travel by joining the Ultimate Travel Club. There is a discount link in the description. Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make a podcast.
Zach Russell's Background
00:02:14
Speaker
Hello, Zach. Hello, Michael. Thank you very much for joining me today. It's going to be very interesting. I'm looking forward to it. But please, could we start by you just giving us a little bit of a potted history of who Zach Russell is?
00:02:27
Speaker
Well, I mean, Zach Russell is a human being that was born in Toronto, Canada, that's lived a very interesting, dynamic life like many people.
00:02:38
Speaker
I'm not sure what you'd like to know about me, Michael, but 40-some-odd years around this beautiful sun and this planet. I've had many experiences, many trials and tribulations like most folks, many highs, many lows, and I'm just sort of grateful and blessed to be here with you today.
00:02:57
Speaker
That's brilliant. I feel the same way. Thank you very
Roots of Zach's Methodology
00:02:59
Speaker
much. What was the so the genesis of this methodology? Where did it all start? Well, i mean, I think it was a culmination of a lot of years of, like I said, trials and tribulations.
00:03:12
Speaker
I've always been a very inquisitive mind, inquisitive soul. I've always liked to learn and try and figure things out. a lot of the time to my detriment, I think, sometimes of course to my benefit.
00:03:23
Speaker
But I think that the suffering that humans experience from the narratives and stories and belief structures that we have of the egotistical mind causes us an interesting dynamic and a lot of the time removes us from the experience of life.
00:03:42
Speaker
I think sort of that's where the methodology came from is My sort of movement through the illusion of time and creating beliefs and ideals that didn't serve me and wanting something different, wanting to sort of move through that or move out
Society's Impact on Personal Contentment
00:03:59
Speaker
of it. I wasn't sure really at the point wanting peace, presence and contentment, which many, many, many years later, um managed to culminate through this process, I suppose, of analyzing, learning, growing, evolving.
00:04:16
Speaker
And to the point that we are sitting here today. Yeah. Is what you're talking about the sort of, I think the process that we all go through where we want to be accepted by other people so we do our really best work to try and fit in?
00:04:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. we Acceptance is sort of a something that happens in early age, early childhood. beginning with our caregivers, with our parents, with our guardians. And absolutely, we want to be accepted. We want to feel safe. We want to feel secure.
00:04:53
Speaker
And a lot of the time, sort of part of my methodology deals with that is that we don't get that when we're at a very young age. And then to your point, we spend the rest of our lives trying to be enough, trying to fit in, trying to be accepted and loved.
00:05:09
Speaker
A lot of the time, i would say most of the time, much to our demise and the failure of it and our suffering. But I think the key thing is almost the realization that very often we can be, i want you say the word unhappy, but we can lack contentment because we're trying to fit in. We're trying to be accepted by other people.
00:05:35
Speaker
Whereas the route contentment is probably learning to accept ourselves in a genuine, authentic way.
Identity, Job Titles, and Authentic Living
00:05:45
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, 100%.
00:05:47
Speaker
Anytime that we're trying to be accepted, anytime that we're living from a state of being unhappy, as you say, anytime we think we need to, or we have to, or we should do things, that comes from a completely different thing than our authentic self.
00:06:03
Speaker
And I mean, our ah authentic self is who we are. it's It's our designation. it's our It's our life. It's our experience outside of scarcity and fear-based narratives of having to do things and having to fit in and having to be accepted yeah because before we started this i was asking you how would you like me to introduce you and you said well people call me zach and i said well yeah most of my guests on all of the abbasida podcasts but rest and recreation fit for my age the independent minds
00:06:39
Speaker
They all have a ah label, a title that explains who they are. But you so very politely so said well, um my name's Zach and that's what people call me.
00:06:51
Speaker
And it it's very quickly you made me think that actually the titles that we give ourselves, that we give other people, the job descriptions, know,
00:07:03
Speaker
whatever it is is, is part of creating that illusion of who we are and or who we think we are and who we want other people to think we are.
00:07:16
Speaker
So last week i was talking to people about retirement and what they were going to be doing in retirement. And one of the things that they said to me was that they didn't want to be describing themselves
Living in the Present Moment
00:07:27
Speaker
as a retired job.
00:07:29
Speaker
So I used to be this, now I'm retired. It's not what you were in the past or even what you're going to be in the future. But when you ask me who am i i can say my name and part of my name is, ah this is what I am doing. This is my purpose in the world.
00:07:49
Speaker
And for a lot of people, I suppose, those purposes are artificially imposed by other people's views of us or imposed by something like our job.
00:08:03
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, beautifully articulated, Michael, for sure. There's definitely a lot there. I mean, starting with the idea that the past and the future illusions in themselves. I mean, the past is an artifact of our mind and the future is ah an illusory construct of fantasy.
00:08:21
Speaker
The only thing we actually have is this present moment right here. And when people ask me, you know, what do you identify as, or who are you? Ironically, the only thing that you can say about yourself is who you're not.
00:08:35
Speaker
I mean, we don't actually know who we are, you know, depending on how deep you want to get with this and how esoteric, but anytime we identify with labels, anytime we identify with a job title, with a dogmatic structure, with a religion, with a political status, a socio-economical bias.
00:08:54
Speaker
Anytime we identify with anything and believe anything, we've limited ourselves. I mean, belief is almost like poison to the human intelligence
Limitations of Labels on Personal Freedom
00:09:01
Speaker
because once you believe something, you stop inquiring.
00:09:05
Speaker
So whether you're relating to something and identifying as something, and even saying, i don't want to be referred to as a retiree or somebody who had a job before.
00:09:16
Speaker
Both of those are inaccurate. I mean, even a retiree is just a story. I'm retired now. It's just another story. I mean, I identify as a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher. Those aren't who you are.
00:09:29
Speaker
Those are just constructs. Those are just things that you do in the physical world. And then you attach subjective narratives and labels to those things, you know, kind of the similar for most folks, but with the slight nuances for the individuals.
00:09:45
Speaker
Yes. I suppose those titles give us but what they give us or what they give other the people is like, it sets expectations that other people have of us.
00:10:00
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it definitely can for sure. expectations are the root of all suffering because I mean, how could you possibly expect anything? So it's beneficial to have titles, have things like a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher and to identify them as such so that we can differentiate things.
00:10:17
Speaker
Just like it's nice to have a name like Michael or Zach. I mean, i'm I am not Zach, but it's helpful if somebody you know calls out to me and says, hey, Zach, you know I look and oh, hey, how you doing, Michael? you know Away we go with the experience of life. So that's definitely beneficial. But Yeah, I mean when we have mean, when we put structures on top of identifying labels and then we have expectations of things, I think that's where it can get a little bit tricky for folks.
00:10:47
Speaker
How do you mean tricky?
Societal Expectations and Integrity
00:10:48
Speaker
Describe what tricky would mean, what it would look like. Well, I mean, if you if you have a label of something, and if you identify as you know an office worker or you identify as a fireman or a or a lawyer or a Christian or a president of a country and you identify that and you say that that's who you are, well, as you just so beautifully articulated, there's expectations from a lot of humans based on what you should and shouldn't do, how you should operate.
00:11:16
Speaker
And if you identify with that and that's who you think you are, that can get a little bit tricky for you. I mean, for other people, that's all their story subjectively of who you are anyways, but it can get tricky for you in terms of how you operate in the world and how you conduct yourself and sort of the integrity of your character because now you identify as this. So whatever you feel needs to be done and should be done has to be done.
00:11:43
Speaker
And if for some reason that doesn't work out, if you have an expectation for the illusion of the future and it doesn't come to fruition, then How is that going to affect you? If you don't identify with that and you just live your life in the experience of life as you are, then it doesn't matter. It's just water off a duck's back, as they say.
00:12:02
Speaker
But if you identify with that and then that doesn't happen, it doesn't come true. That's where it gets a little tricky for the psyche and for your experience of life and your health and well-being as as yourself.
00:12:17
Speaker
Yeah, so the big challenge, I suppose, then in life is to find out who we are as individuals without the labels. Yeah, I mean, that seems on the surface like it would be what we should do, but even just trying to find out who we are, we we actually can't do that, right? Because anytime we're in, that's more analyzing, that's more rumination,
00:12:43
Speaker
That's more lost in the
Awareness and Letting Go for Peace
00:12:45
Speaker
egotistical mind, in the construct of that. And we're not that. We're just the experience of life. So the more that we are lost in rumination trying to figure things out, the less we're actually in life, the less we're actually experiencing it because we're in a story and a narrative.
00:13:03
Speaker
So I wouldn't say so much that it's trying to figure out who we are as it is just being who we are, letting go. and I mean, that's that's the key is just letting go of the beliefs, narratives, stories, constructs that don't serve us, which is the majority of things, and living who we actually are, which we really can't say, other than the fact that we are experiencing life. We are the experience of life.
00:13:33
Speaker
So we live life not despite the labels that we've been given or have adopted ourselves, but...
00:13:43
Speaker
without the best way to be is to live life without the labels just be you yeah absolutely i mean let people say and do what they're going to do i mean it's really none of our business anyway is what anyone else thinks of us so if they want to identify us and put labels on us then that's fine and everybody does for the most part because that's how they operate if they're not living just in the experience of life you know like i'm not putting a label on you I'm just grateful and fully present in this moment with you having a conversation.
00:14:13
Speaker
And that's the end of it. There's no label, there's no story, there's no structure that I'm creating around it. And to me, that's the most important thing in life. That's the most beneficial and peaceful thing in life is to just have experiences like that.
00:14:28
Speaker
That's not to say that we don't want to have goals and we don't want to pursue the things that we love. But coming back to what we said a few minutes ago about When we feel like we have to do things and when people have expectations of us and when we think we have to do this because of that and because of this, that's when things become really troublesome for us.
00:14:48
Speaker
And that's when we don't get to experience life. That's when we get lost in our mind. That's really interesting. Yeah. Tell me about the methodology itself. What does it involve?
00:14:59
Speaker
Yeah, so it just basically involves sort of what we've been talking about here. The number one thing is letting go, you know, being prepared to put the bag down, take the weight it off your shoulder and just drop it.
00:15:11
Speaker
And that involves becoming aware first, because we can't do anything about what we're not aware of, right? I mean, if we don't know, we don't know. But once we know, well, now we have a choice.
00:15:22
Speaker
Now we can choose whether or not this thing that we have recently discovered serves us or not. And if it does, great. Most of the time it doesn't. I would say almost all of the time it doesn't. So we can now choose to put it down.
00:15:35
Speaker
And that's sort of what I do in the methodology. We become aware of the 40 or so emotions that most human beings live by. Unaware, most are aware of them about four or five.
00:15:47
Speaker
um And those emotions are just sensations. They're just sensations designed to depict the experience of life. But we we tend to get stuck in the structure of those. We tend to narrate and create subjective realities based around those.
00:16:01
Speaker
And so in my methodology, we basically let go of that. We bring it into awareness. We let go of it. And now we live in peace and contentment.
00:16:13
Speaker
So I'm thinking about sticks and sticks and stones will break your bones. Names will never hurt you, which is not true. Names do hurt us. But you're saying letting go. Well, they don't have to.
00:16:27
Speaker
No, they don't have to. I agree with you that we do allow them to, but they don't need to. Yes. And what you're talking about is like the letting go of the labels, letting go of the things that define us.
00:16:42
Speaker
Yeah. rather Which is very challenging, I think, because that thats whole society is designed around, give you a label, then we're going to market this to you. If we give you a different label, we're going to market something else to you. We have to think about how you fit into everything.
00:17:01
Speaker
You're saying it's like the route achieving this peace and contentment and purpose and living your best life is to drop all of the labels that we've given ourselves and abandon all of the labels that other people have given us.
00:17:18
Speaker
How do people go about doing that?
Resistance to Change and Ego Narratives
00:17:21
Speaker
See, ironically, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. The issue is most humans don't want to do this.
00:17:29
Speaker
Because we get validation for complaints, for the structures and the labels and the beliefs that we have. We trauma bond with other people. We live as people pleasers or narcissistic individuals, either covert a lot of the time or grandiose on the spectrum.
00:17:46
Speaker
And we don't want to let go of that because our ego gets validation for it. So it's actually the easiest thing in the world to do. But the thing is, is you have to want to be able to do it.
00:17:56
Speaker
And a lot of people don't want to do it They want stay stuck in the structure that they're end because they get validation for it. It's the uncomfortable comfort zone, as you might say.
00:18:08
Speaker
Yes, I can see that people don't like change. He said that's a sweeping statement. I'm sure there are lots of people who do like change, but generally change is the process of change which causes the problem for people, not necessarily just the change itself or the outcome change. For sure. Yeah, I mean, people don't like change because it's not so much that people don't like change, it's that the ego doesn't like change.
00:18:38
Speaker
The ego likes things to be concretized. It likes things to be the way that it are. it likes to be in control of things. And if something changes, then the structure that has been built around that, that subjective narrative that the ego has, that talking voice in the head, the visual auditory, that is now compromised. That is a threat.
00:18:58
Speaker
And that is why we don't like change. Change is the most wonderful thing. As a matter of fact, change is the only thing in life that is congruently all the time.
00:19:09
Speaker
Change is always happening. It's just the ego doesn't like that. And so we in turn put that into the structure of change is difficult. And then we believe that.
00:19:21
Speaker
And again, back to the beliefs, right? I mean, once we believe something like change is difficult, then it is. and But if we believe that change is welcome and enjoyable and fun and something that we can do, then we're starting to reposition change within our mindset.
Abandoning Labels for Peace
00:19:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. we if If we believe that, then we don't even need to reposition it. It just is ah belief that it is easy. And that's kind of where it gets a little bit nuanced too, because even that belief now, although it seems benevolent at greatness, it's it's still a belief structure and we're still now in our head believing that change is welcome, believing that change is wonderful, believing that change is all-encompassing. And now that we're believing that,
00:20:09
Speaker
we're still out of the experience of life. Yeah. So, I mean, the idea is just to drop the beliefs, drop the narratives, drop the structures, follow your love, follow your passion.
00:20:24
Speaker
lot of people don't know what that is because it's gotten clouded over with a bunch of so narratives over the years. But that's the thing is once you let go of all that stuff, then the true essence of you just shines, the love just shines. And then Now, when you do things out of love, it's a completely different thing than doing something out of and necessity in your own mind or the idea of having to do something.
00:20:48
Speaker
and this I'm sort of thinking that if you abandon everything that you know in the belief or the desire to change, because change is good.
00:21:01
Speaker
I just have this fear that you're going to end up with ah an empty hole. For sure. know Absolutely. and i mean ah like i understand when you say the methodology focuses around leaving lots of things behind in order to discover who you genuinely are.
00:21:19
Speaker
Once you've done that, you can then identify what your purpose is and be happier in life and living your
Childhood and Ego Development
00:21:27
Speaker
best life. I i get all of that. the There is this feeling that I have there that like you embark on the abandonment of all of the things that are artificial.
00:21:40
Speaker
And then there is this hole. How... how do you get from that point to living your best life what's the what's the process that's involved is the leaving things behind and and growing things something that happens in parallel so you don't have that whole or do you need to give up all the old things first before you can start building the best life what what which way does it work Yeah. So, I mean, it's a little bit different for most folks, but the issue is when we're living in fear, our mind is constrained, right?
00:22:15
Speaker
So we're pumping. When you say living in fear, but what are people scared of? Well, people in themselves are scared of everything on their narrative, but more importantly, they're scared of life itself.
00:22:30
Speaker
Now, if you ask a human being what they're afraid of, sometimes they'll say, I'm not afraid of anything. But if you talk to them for five or 10 minutes, They'll very clearly tell you seven, eight, nine things that they're perturbed by, things that they're concerned with, things that they're worried about, right?
00:22:44
Speaker
So, and that's just the superficial stuff. What we have to do, and that's why this methodology works so well, is it gets underneath the thoughts. It sees the emotions, brings them to the surface outside of the analyzing, outside of the rumination.
00:22:58
Speaker
And that's when we become free and free our minds. Once our minds are free and we put down the baggage, We don't have a whole per se, because the idea of a whole is the ego and its structure saying, don't put this down, because if you put this down, you'll have a gigantic hole and you'll be empty.
00:23:18
Speaker
So, and it all, it all starts with childhood, essentially, like usually when we're about four to seven years old and the ego comes online and we experience a fight or flight and a fight or flight reaction is either what it says, either we're prepared to fight because we're in danger of dying.
00:23:33
Speaker
or we need to run because we're in danger of dying. And a child is not designed to experience fight or flight. The child is designed to be taken care of by the mother. The same way a baby bear will follow a mother across the rapids for fear of abandonment.
00:23:49
Speaker
And the same way a mother bear will fight for the safety of the baby bear until one day when the baby bear grows old, it just wanders away and lives its life. Well, that's the same thing for human beings.
00:24:02
Speaker
The problem is, The baby bear is not designed to be in fight or flight, just like the human is not designed to be in fight or flight. So when the human being is in fight or flight at the age of five to seven, usually when the ego comes online, because we're sentient and we can think now that human, that child looks at itself.
Raising Children Without Fear
00:24:20
Speaker
The circumstances are irrelevant as to why it was in fear of fight or flight, but it looks at itself. It looks at the emotions. It looks at the physicality of it, of itself. And now it thinks that it's not good enough.
00:24:31
Speaker
Now it feels abandoned. Now it feels this way. And that's the fear base that we essentially adopt belief structures around and live our lives from the majority of human beings, especially in our cultures.
00:24:45
Speaker
And so as we grow through that, as we live through that, we keep compounding more and more of the same idea behind this. And we live more and more fear.
00:24:56
Speaker
We become more and more perturbed. The more perturbed we are, the more that we feed this, the more that we validate it, the more that it concretizes in our reality. And then we get all kinds of different pathologies from physical disease to mental disease, different kinds of therapeutic modalities that try to help and try to reconstitute childhood trauma and visualize. And every time we do that, we're just moving that narrative forward. We're just experiencing more of that fear.
00:25:27
Speaker
And that's the underlying fear. That's the the essence of it that we can't let go of because we're not aware of it. Yes. But what should we do then with children that we're not doing already to help them not get into this situation with their ego, etc.? what What should we do? How we should we change the way in which we raise children?
00:25:54
Speaker
Yeah, right. So we have to change the way in which we raise ourselves first. So if somebody is a parent who's compromised, they're going to put that compromised personality onto that child.
00:26:06
Speaker
I mean, children, as they grow up, um become larger versions of their programmer. And when I say a programmer, I mean their parent or their guardian, whoever's in charge of that child. So in order for that child to grow up not living in this state, they need to not be in a fight or flight, fear-based narrative at the age of five to seven.
00:26:30
Speaker
We need to keep the children safe from that. And a lot of the time, the fear-based narrative comes from the narcissistic parent. It comes from something as simple as the child heard the parents arguing in the other room.
00:26:41
Speaker
And so if the parents are yelling at each other in the other room, why are they yelling at each other? Well, because they're in the rumination, they're in the narrative of the ego. You did this to me, i did that to you. You shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that.
00:26:56
Speaker
things that I'm saying in my coaching to let go of. So if we have parents that don't have those constructs, if we have parents and guardians who can live in the present moment, free, peaceful and content, well, now they can raise that child just like the mother bear.
00:27:12
Speaker
The mother bear doesn't stigmatize the child. If it doesn't, the little baby bear, if it doesn't cross the river, If it falls down when it climbs over a tree stump, the mother goes over and grabs it by the scruff and picks it up.
00:27:25
Speaker
She doesn't judge it. She doesn't put a bunch of narratives into its mind. She doesn't make it feel like it's not good enough. So that's sort of the ideal way to raise a child. And that does happen, but very, very, very rarely in my opinion.
00:27:40
Speaker
So never tell a child that they're stupid would be one key. No, absolutely.
Self-Love and Understanding Others
00:27:45
Speaker
Absolutely not. For sure. I mean, that they're stupid. no one Exactly. Exactly. And let go of the idea that someone's stupid to begin with, it right? Because, I mean, stupid would mean that your intellect is low, if you were to say objectively what that is.
00:28:00
Speaker
But a lot of people would say someone's stupid when something happened in the physical world, per se, that didn't even have anything to do with that. Like it could have, it could just been an arbitrary experience and someone would call someone stupid. So yeah, absolutely. Never call anyone stupid. Don't call yourself stupid.
00:28:17
Speaker
That's the problem too, is the the human that's calling someone else stupid is just showing that they call themselves that too. Yeah. Understand yourself first before you pass judgment on other people.
00:28:31
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, depending on how deep you want to go with this, even passing judgment is is lost in your mind again too, right? I mean, It's no one's a opinion. it's it's It doesn't matter what someone thinks of you and what label they put on you. And that's the same way from you coming out.
00:28:47
Speaker
Why would you label somebody and judge somebody too when you have no idea about their life or their existence? And even if you did, theoretically, what purpose would that serve anyways other for you to now have a negative connotation about another human being?
00:29:02
Speaker
Yeah. Surprising how many people do have negative opinions about other people though, isn't it? It's like we all we can always great find a word to criticize someone, but it can be quite difficult for us to find words to praise people or even praise ourselves.
00:29:27
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. i mean, self-love is the most important thing and The majority of people that I ask if they love themselves, they squirm a little bit before they either lie to me or they say no and speak the truth. And so absolutely, I mean, we can only give what we have.
00:29:43
Speaker
So if we don't have love for ourselves, then we can't give love to somebody else. You know, a lot of people will say, I love you if, I love you when, I love you but, and that's not
Consumerism and Material Happiness
00:29:55
Speaker
love, right? that's That's something else.
00:29:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's a fascinating topic, Zach. Really, it's very, very interesting because really what we're talking about is all of the things that happen that enable people to believe that they're unhappy.
00:30:16
Speaker
And when I was actually wasting is it's not about adding things to our lives in terms of material things in order to become happy.
00:30:27
Speaker
It's about understanding who we really are and then surrounding ourselves with the things that help us to become happy rather than the things that we might have in order to impress other people or even impress ourselves.
00:30:45
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's the consumer-based model is more, more, and more, right? Yeah. and People are smart. They know how to create fear. They know how to structure marketing and they know how to create scarcity and they know how to present things in such a way that somebody who's lost in their mind, looking for contentment and peace, even though they might not know that and they might not word it that way,
00:31:09
Speaker
via trying to buy more things, trying to impress upon other people. You know, when I get this next job, when I get that new fancy thing, when I get this that's better, I'll be happy.
00:31:19
Speaker
I'll be happy when someday I'll be happy in the future. And the future never comes because there's no such thing as the future. There's only right now. And then when we
Finding More About Zach's Work
00:31:29
Speaker
finally get those things that we think will make us happy, a lot of the time we wind up more miserable because we achieved what we thought was going to be great And now we don't feel anywhere close to what we thought.
00:31:41
Speaker
So that weighs heavy on us too. And the more that we perpetuate that cycle, you know the more we wind up suffering and the more we wind up lost and disconnected from what we actually are.
00:31:52
Speaker
Yeah. Wow. If people are wanting to find out more information about it your work, what's the best place to to find you? best place to find me would just be on my link tree, which linktree and my names, backslash Zach Russell.
00:32:12
Speaker
There they can read up on my coaching. They can find some of my social media platforms. They can contact me if they're interested and find out a bit more if they feel so inclined. Yeah.
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah. Zach, you're the most laid back person I think I've done one of these podcasts with. But I feel laid back. as well. Thank you very much. I've really enjoyed our conversation today. It's been fantastic. Thank you.
00:32:39
Speaker
Beautiful. Thank you, Michael. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. Thank you. In this episode of Rest and Recreation, I have been having a conversation with Zach Russell, the creator of a methodology for helping people live their best lives.
00:32:55
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us at abeceda.co.uk. There is a link in the description. I'm sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of Rest and Recreation as much as Zach and I have enjoyed making it.
00:33:09
Speaker
So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abusida is not to tell you what to think.
00:33:24
Speaker
We do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of Rest and Recreation, thank you for listening and goodbye.