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Andrew Daniel - Overcoming a Victim Mentality... and so much more | Ep. #62
225 Plays1 year ago
Andrew Daniel is an award-winning and international bestselling author and director at the Center for Cinesomatic Development. His Cinesomatics® workshops are held internationally from Nashville to London, Tuscany to Switzerland—helping professionals see the elusive patterns that hold them back. This methodology leads the world in cinematic movement diagnostics and advanced intuition development integrating approaches from embodiment, shadow work, therapy, and spirituality.
His book, Awaken to Your True Self, is a gold Nautilus Book Awards recipient and #1 Amazon bestseller in the US & UK. In his early career, Andrew coded a particle and physics engine by the age of 18, which was used by top Fortune 100 companies over the seven years of his software business. His first teaching work, Holistic Sex (Mindvalley, 2014), provided the world with a new paradigm that bridged the divide between sexuality, spirituality, and the sexes. Andrew is also an advisor for the Alan Watts Organization.
In this episode you'll learn:
- Why is a victim mentality so “attractive”?
- Why are people afraid to let go of a victim mentality?
- How does somebody break out of a victim mentality?
- What does shadow work mean, and why is it so important?
- Can someone with a victim mentality have deep, meaningful sex?
- In what ways does our true self hide in the shadows?
- Where does our ego come from?
- What does “Ego death” mean?
- Why do people plateau or get stuck with self-development?
- Why is it important to have a holistic approach to connecting to your true self?
- Why is it important to have a holistic approach to connecting to your true self?
- What is Cinesomatics and how is it different from other approaches to connecting to your true self?
Links
Host: Josh Cearbaugh
Website: https://joshcearbaugh.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/joshcearbaugh
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshcearbaugh/
Online Course: https://www.jumpstartyourlife.com
Guest: Andrew Daniel
Website: https://andrewdaniel.org/
Website: https://cinesomatics.org/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Today's episode, we dive into some really interesting and hard-hitting topics. Things like victim mentality. How does that impact you? How does that deter and detract from your life? Why is it so attractive to have in the first place? Things like shadow work. What the hell is that? And what is that? How do we delve into that in a healthy way? Things like ego or sex and the self-development trap.
00:00:28
Speaker
And lastly, exactly what is synosomatics, something that my guest, Andrew Daniel, has specialized in and really helped people get a lot of freedom and not get caught in that self-development trap. And so we cover a wide range of things throughout the episode today. I think you're going to really like today's episode. If you haven't already, please take a moment. My ask is to take a moment and
00:00:55
Speaker
leave a review, whether it be on Spotify or Apple or wherever you may be listening. I read those reviews. I appreciate them. I love the feedback and selfishly, it helps the podcast be able to reach more people. And that is really my impact or my desire for the impact of the podcast is to spread the conversation of healthy masculinity to as many people as possible.
Meet Andrew Daniel
00:01:17
Speaker
So without further ado, let's dive into the conversation with Andrew Daniel.
00:01:21
Speaker
Men, we are not simple, chest-thumping, rock-smashing, fire-starting barbarians. We have depth. We intensely feel. We are scared, yet brave. We love to have fun. We're imperfect and make mistakes. We're compassionate and loving. We are multifaceted. Let's explore the reality of masculinity together.
00:01:50
Speaker
Alright, so believe it or not, today is actually the second time that we are trying to record this podcast episode with today's guest. I have a love-hate relationship with technology. I love it for everything that I get to do and coaching and the podcast, but where I'm at out in the sticks of Texas, sometimes we have a hard time with the internet.
00:02:12
Speaker
We're hoping that today's conversation gets recorded smoothly because we were just starting to get into some really good topics and conversation. As I've said to you before, if you've ever listened to the podcast, I love having people on that I can selfishly learn from and glean from.
00:02:30
Speaker
And I feel like today's guest is no different with what he brings to the table, as well as what he's really dedicated his life to. I'm really excited to get into some of these topics because I want to be challenged. I want to be educated. I want to evolve as a man. The whole point of this podcast is to have those conversations.
00:02:51
Speaker
And today's guest is right in line with that mission and that vision to help us better understand our inner world.
Exploring Victim Mentality
00:03:02
Speaker
And so, Andrew, thank you so much for taking the time to be a guest on today's podcast.
00:03:08
Speaker
Thanks for having me back. Yeah. Yeah. You're, you're, you're the first guest. That is the second time you're not on the podcast, but second time we're having a conversation. I don't know how that works, but either way. Um, it's good to be here.
00:03:25
Speaker
So I want to dive right in. It's actually a topic that I have personally wrestled with over the years. I definitely feel like I am better than I was years ago, especially in my 20s. But really what was modeled to me from my dad as far as how to be a man
00:03:47
Speaker
And that's the whole topic around a victim mentality. And I can get into the nuances and we could probably talk about the destructive nature of it. But I want to start by hearing your thoughts on why you think that
00:04:06
Speaker
a victim mentality for an individual is actually attractive or um is is something that that Men in general that's who we're talking to primarily but That they want to hold on to and have such a hard time kind of letting go of and embracing an empowered mentality Well, the first thing is Really the
00:04:34
Speaker
looking at the benefits that being a victim gets you, right? The secondary gains or primary gains. And I think the first one, which is ironically the way out of it, is advocating responsibility. It's just you get to point the finger at someone else. You're the one that doesn't have to change. They are.
00:04:59
Speaker
I think for a lot of people, it's very seductive to say, oh, it's not my fault. It's up to them. It's the government. It's my dad. It's my mom. It's my wife. It's these other people. It's the economy. And that is a way out of actually having to do the work. So I think that's the biggest one. It's an easy out.
00:05:28
Speaker
from responsibility. Yeah. And I think without, I mean, so easy out for responsibility. I hear that. I understand that, but what may be a different way of asking that question is in what ways does a victim's mentality give them a false sense of security or safety?
00:05:57
Speaker
Oh, that's a great question. Well, I think the person that would be attracted to that idea would be someone that doesn't believe in themselves. What do you mean by that?
00:06:23
Speaker
Well, if you believed that you had the power and skill or capability that you were enough to keep yourself safe and to be in that responsibility, then you wouldn't feel the need to look to someone else to save you.
00:06:49
Speaker
And I think oftentimes the energy of the victim mentality, they're looking to be rescued. They're looking for someone to save them because they don't think they can do it themselves. That's a good point. That's a good angle.
00:07:08
Speaker
How would you say it are some of the identifiers and maybe it's just a matter of if you're always pointing to the different person instead of extreme ownership. But I know that I've worked with people and even when I was younger, like I said, especially in my 20s.
00:07:27
Speaker
I just wasn't aware, right? It was modeled to me. And so I adopted that kind of philosophy and mentality. And so I genuinely felt like, you know, I'm a good man, I have a good heart. And yet, I couldn't see the fact that the victim's mentality was so intricately woven into my internal philosophies.
00:07:56
Speaker
Um, how would you say that, you know, how would you help someone identify that they have it in the first place if they're just quite frankly oblivious to it? Well, one of the right away is blame, right? If you find yourself blaming other people, well, and here's the kicker or and yourself, uh, that is a very, very clear sign. I mean, it's really hard to blame anyone or anything, uh, without giving your power away.
00:08:27
Speaker
And so one of the booby traps is blaming ourselves. We beat ourselves up, we blame ourselves. But it's not really ourself, it's like an aspect of ourself. Oh yeah, this part of me that does this, or whatever it is, or oh it's my fault, which goes into poor as me. And I think if you are blaming yourself, or anyone else, just blame in general,
00:08:48
Speaker
And if you're looking for the external world to change, right, you're living at if you're living at the effect of your environment, the world around you, if you're saying, Oh, I'll be like this when x, y and z is like x, y, z.
00:09:05
Speaker
then that's another real clear sign rather than I am the cause of my life. If you feel like you're at the effect of life, that's another clear sign. And then also if you are waiting to be rescued in some sort of way, bailed out or all the different flavors of that. So those three things I think are really clear indicators. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. And
00:09:35
Speaker
So then that poses the next question, right? Which is, okay, somebody has those indicators, which I think is fairly easy to identify if you're brutally honest with yourself, which I guess you could say is the first step to the answer of my next question. But that is how do people move through that? How do people kind of break out of it, especially if it's become their norm and their default
00:10:00
Speaker
Um, obviously it's not a light switch. It's a process. It's a journey. However you want to phrase all of that, but how do you begin to shift that from, from a victim woe is me, you know, maybe it, maybe a different way of asking it is how do you shift from living a reactive or reactionary life to living a proactive and engaged in present life?
00:10:28
Speaker
Yeah, the first immediately thing is the awareness. You can't change anything unless you're aware of it.
00:10:35
Speaker
And so if you're just going through life like I was for 21 years, not even realizing I was a victim, not even realizing I was living at the effect of the world, you just don't know. So have that awareness. I mean, just if you're listening to this right now, you're already either there or you're about to be there, if this is you. And these questions we talked about, these questions we said, the blame, looking to be rescued.
00:11:04
Speaker
and being at the effect of the world, reactive. Another way to say it is, as you said, being reactive to it. So having that awareness. And then the second thing is a desire. You can be aware that you're like that and just say, well, it's true. I am a victim and I am waiting to be rescued and I can't do anything about it. You know, that sort of hopeless place. Yeah. So this actually brings a great point. I want to
00:11:31
Speaker
say here because this is going to be actually in a future book down the road, but it's also in my current book, Awaken to Your True Self, where I talk about the victim mentality and there's basically two ways people respond to being a victim.
00:11:47
Speaker
indignant or hopeless. And so, indignant is basically someone who's just rage, right? They get angry. And hopeless is someone who just can't do anything about it. So, responding to being a victim, which is really about being powerless, is really what the victim is. The victim is powerless. And in order to get that power back,
00:12:17
Speaker
They will employ indignation, rage, anger, attack, riots on the street, protesting in nasty ways, cancel culture. All of this stuff are from victims who are doing this indignant sort of way to feel like they have some sort of power. And then the opposite is just hopelessness. There's nothing you can do about it.
00:12:41
Speaker
And so being able to identify, all right, are you doing either of those? Are you getting angry, blaming and attacking other people? Or do you feel hopeless and you know, there's nothing you can do and you have to wait till the environment to change or to be rescued. So those are really good indicators. And in that place,
00:13:03
Speaker
you have to decide it's really hard to move from that hopelessness place because it's I mean, the big struggle with the whole victim mentality is there's nothing you can do about it. It's it wasn't your fault. It is not your fault. So how and why are you going to change? So the the desire to change in itself
00:13:28
Speaker
is part of the way out of the victim mentality. It's like you already have to be on the journey of saying, this isn't the life I want to live and thinking that there's something that can change that you can do about it. And so that awareness has to be there and come in and that desire has to be there. And then from there, it's a choice. You start making new choices. Choice means you have the power to change it.
00:13:55
Speaker
And how do you get the power to change it? Taking responsibility. So absolute freedom requires absolute responsibility. The more freedom you want in your life, the more responsibility you take and take on. And it's kind of the opposite. The victim thinks the opposite. They think responsibility is a burden. And the more responsibility they have and they take on or they take,
00:14:24
Speaker
the less free they are. And so this is kind of in a nutshell, a good starting ground. Yeah, that's good. I'm thinking of so many stories from my own life with my dad, how he used to always say to me, because I'm entrepreneurial and driven and kind of wired different than him in a lot of ways.
00:14:47
Speaker
We have a good relationship now and have reconciled in a lot of ways, but he used to say to me, you know, Josh, make sure that your output doesn't exceed your input. Otherwise your upkeep will be your downfall. And there's some wisdom to that, but he would use that as, as basically saying.
00:15:07
Speaker
as advocating the responsibility, right? Because it was normally he would say that in response to me saying, Oh, I'm, I'm getting ready to move my family or I'm launching this business or, you know, I'm, I'm launching this business and I'm having a kid or whatever it may be.
00:15:24
Speaker
And it was like this cautionary tale of don't take on too much responsibility otherwise you're gonna burn out you know be careful son yeah and again it was it was out of a place of love but it was out of a place of love for me from a victim's mentality.
00:15:41
Speaker
being afraid that essentially if I took on too much responsibility that I would crash and burn or that I would hurt myself or that I would lose things and and and so you know and that was kind of the the oversimplifying the lens of the advice that I got from him and then the
Impact of Victim Mentality on Relationships
00:16:01
Speaker
other thing that comes to mind is I was in uh living in California at the time having lunch with him
00:16:07
Speaker
And I remember saying to him, you know, dad, just from man to man, it makes me sad to see the man that is my dad be a victim to life. And I said that, and I'll never forget his response, which is, well, Josh, I have no other choice. The most I can hope for is to surround myself with people who are thriving and vicariously live through them.
00:16:34
Speaker
That's how much hopelessness he had around his ability to change and had just basically accepted it as this is my lot in life. And so I think you're hitting on those two primary things and yet I can't help but think of
00:16:55
Speaker
the two examples I have from my own relationship with my dad. And like I said, he may listen to this and it's fine. We've talked through these things and he's at a different place now overall in life. But that's why I'm always curious about people's take on the victim mentality and
00:17:14
Speaker
Realizing it confronting it challenging it moving through it is because it's again because of the way it was modeled to me it it has been something that I have had to wrestle with and very consciously change for me because it it just
00:17:32
Speaker
It's, it's always interesting to me how when, if I don't get good sleep or if I just can get into a negative head space, how, how attractive it is to fall back into that familial victims mentality and just go, I just want to check out what was me. I don't want to take that responsibility, et cetera. Um,
00:17:58
Speaker
question that might seem out of left field, but it was a springboard from the last time that we started talking. And because again, in this in this vein of victim mentality, what I have found is that
00:18:13
Speaker
having that victim mentality, it detaches you from so many things, your truest self, and also a certain level of intimacy. What I've found is that I could only gain a certain level of intimacy with my partner, with my wife at the time, with that victim's mentality, which poses the question, and I'm curious of,
00:18:39
Speaker
is can someone that has a deeply entrenched victim mentality have deep, meaningful, intimate, passionate sex?
00:18:51
Speaker
doesn't mean that, you know, can they come? Okay, maybe they can do that. But like that, that, that deepest essence of knowing the other person, do what do you feel is the capacity for somebody that has a victim's mentality, to be able to have that level of intimacy and connection, if that's their lens on so many things within life?
Understanding Shadow Work
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. To a point.
00:19:20
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, there's definitely going to be, you know, even if it's poor you, you don't take responsibility, you have this hopelessness or indignation, or when you're at the effect of the world, you can still have intimacy. However, it's
00:19:42
Speaker
probably not going to be the best. There's probably going to be a lot of suffering around it. It's probably going to be really hard because as you get more and more intimate, it requires you to see deeper into somebody else and to be able to hold that space with and for them and vice versa. You have to be willing for them to see in you and to surrender and open to that man or woman. And
00:20:14
Speaker
that takes a lot of responsibility. And if you're not willing to take that responsibility, if you blame them, if you start freaking out because they're tapping into your shadow, and you can say, Oh, you made me upset. How could you hurt me like that? Or, you know, all of this stuff. Yeah, you're just gonna close that it's just gonna go, you know, that wall is gonna
00:20:36
Speaker
build right up, you're gonna zip right back up, and so is your partner. So, I mean, the victim mentality is one of the biggest, most pervasive things, and it just, it taints everything. It filters life through all of it. And so it's less of intimacy itself that that blocks, that I would consider that more narcissism. Narcissism inherently prevents intimacy.
00:21:04
Speaker
Whereas I think this victim mentality is just going to create a lot of problems during intimacy, whether it's sexual or just person to person, because you're going to probably start blaming the other person for how they're making you feel in air quotes. Yeah. And that's just going to close things up real quick.
00:21:27
Speaker
Yeah, I've always said good sex brings up insecurities because it chisels away at those layers and it's the most vulnerable state, right? And so I love that aspect of it. Actually, you just touched on something that I'm really curious of because of the work that you do specifically.
00:21:52
Speaker
And that is shadow work, right? It's been talked about a little bit more in general, but as an overarching view, if somebody is like shadow work, what's it like walking in the sun? What the hell does that even mean? Right. Um, what, what is, well, like, what does shadow work mean? What does it mean to do work shadow work?
00:22:15
Speaker
Great question. My definitions of things are a lot more intense than other people's. Good. This is one of the things I do in my book. I actually redefine shadow work, narcissism, and a lot of these things because what most people think of this stuff
00:22:38
Speaker
It just really isn't. It's just so superficial or surface level. I've actually had clients come in that were shadow work people and they couldn't handle what I did. I'm like literally your job is doing shadow work with people.
00:22:57
Speaker
when you come on and do it with me, it's too real. It's too shadowy. And I always find that really interesting. So why am I saying this? What is even shadow or shadow work, all this stuff? Well, the shadow is essentially the parts of ourself
00:23:15
Speaker
that are actually the best parts of ourself that the ego has relegated to the trash bin. The parts of ourself that we judge, hate, despise, want to cut out, want to get rid of, want to fix,
00:23:33
Speaker
The things about ourselves that we wish were not true, or we wish were different, and also in the world. When we look out into the world and we see all of the evils and darkness in the world, all of the judgments, all the flaws, all of the guilt and shame, all of these things
00:23:52
Speaker
the really dark, taboo, uncomfortable, unpleasant things about ourselves and humanity that we don't want to face that we don't want to look at. And so we take all of that psychic, mental, emotional, physical opinions, views,
00:24:10
Speaker
And we just shove it away. We throw it in the basement. We dissociate from it. Everybody has their own sort of strategies. And in the work I do, we kind of figure out what those strategies are to disown it, to get rid of it. But the really most important thing is to realize is that it's not what we think it is. So our shadow is all of these things about ourselves that we can't integrate, that we don't want to be true about ourselves. However,
00:24:39
Speaker
they are us. And in oftentimes it's only our
00:24:45
Speaker
interpretations or distortions of these qualities of ourself that then become shadow material. You know, for instance, I think a very, very stereotypical one is women in their bodies, that they have, you know, they're this amazing creature, they bring life into the world, they're sensual, they're sexy, they have amazing bodies, and just beautiful. And for some reason,
00:25:15
Speaker
what happens in their life, traumas, abuse, misjudgements, misinterpretations, they take their body and they start hating it. Or they take their sexuality and start hating it. Men as well too. So I guess it's not even just with women.
00:25:31
Speaker
men as well, our sexuality, our shame, our guilt. Right now in our culture, our culture is just so, in the West, in America, just completely distorted about femininity and masculinity. And there's literally a war on
00:25:50
Speaker
masculinity and femininity. No one's safe now. Before it was just kind of a war on femininity, which was awful. But now it's pretty much just a war on all of it. And now nobody knows what a man or a woman is. And it's just literally people gone insane.
00:26:07
Speaker
But this is because they're out of relationship with this shadow material. They judge and misinterpret parts of themselves and life and consciousness and humanity, and they try to dissociate from it. So shadow work, so that's the shadow. So shadow work is how do we start looking at these things? How do we start facing these? How do we start facing our demons, our dragons, our shadow, our flaws, our self judgments, judgments of other people?
00:26:37
Speaker
Things that we wish were different. Even fixing, right? How do we look at the addiction to self-help and improvement and fixing ourselves? Because we just don't think we're enough or we're broken. And so shadow work is not just writing cute little things down or saying the four things that you don't like about yourself and putting it in little paper and lighting it on fire and saying, oh, you're fixed now.
00:27:04
Speaker
Sure, fine process. But this is really about grabbing ourselves, looking at it and saying, these are the things that I've dissociated from in my life. These are the things that I've spent the past 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years of my life trying to change, trying to get rid of, dissociating from.
00:27:28
Speaker
and starting to integrate those, starting to face those. I didn't say fix, but to face, to address, to go into, to actually start to reclaim these betrayed, suppressed, and abandoned parts of ourselves so we can regain those resources.
00:27:47
Speaker
Because a shadow aspect may be our ability to hurt, to kill, right? Killing is a terrible, awful thing. However, if we're not in relationship with that, what happens when we need to protect ourselves or protect the people that we love? Our wife, our family, our kids. And if you're out of relationship with that warrior, with that killer aspect of yourself,
00:28:13
Speaker
you're gonna be unable to do that. You're not gonna have access to the qualities and character and strategies that you'll need to employ in order to protect yourself and the people you love. And from recognizing that, all right, we face our shadow, we look at this, we address it, we go into it, to reclaim these aspects of ourselves, but also to feel it.
00:28:38
Speaker
So this work is not just intellectual, you actually have to feel these things. You actually have to go inside your body, go down and feel this stuff. Allow yourself to face and feel this stuff. And as you do that, that's shadow work. And as you do that, you begin to heal, you heal the trauma, you become more functional, you become more integrated, you become more whole. And it can be very terrifying and extremely confronting
00:29:07
Speaker
But it actually gets results. It actually like permanently resolves those things. You're not just putting a band-aid on it. Just dealing with a symptom. You're actually addressing these things for life.
00:29:24
Speaker
So I'm curious because of the beginning of our conversation and maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying. Like I love what you're saying, but I think maybe an area that I have a disconnect from what you're saying is, you know, using your example of the things that we don't like about ourselves. So I'm going to use me as an example.
00:29:47
Speaker
the victim mentality. Like I said, I've wrestled with it, I've had to learn how to take ownership, but I still, I don't like that it can be attractive. I don't like that when times feel hard that I want to avoid, that I have to consciously kind of fight to not check out or to run or hide or avoid those kinds of things.
00:30:15
Speaker
So and again, maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying but How how is it then that I can lean into that using me as an example The the areas of me because because if I'm honest with you and and my listeners like I don't like that part of me like I don't like that my propensity is that I want to avoid that
00:30:38
Speaker
I want to be able to have the response where, you know what, I'm gonna lean into this, but everything in me, self-protective, little Josh, whatever it may be, is saying, ah, I should run and hide from here.
00:30:52
Speaker
How do I, how do I lean into that and begin to embrace that and explore that and use that as a strength? Because in my brain, the way that my chronologically hearing you say that is, well, if I lean into that, then I'm learning how to embrace avoiding in a sense. Does that make sense? Yeah. So the difference is not going to be, um,
00:31:15
Speaker
Yeah, part of the shadow material is your judgment of it and of yourself. Okay. Which would probably come down to you feeling inadequate, feeling like a coward, you know, a certain lack of masculinity, right? Like, oh, well, I'm less of a man because I'm doing this victim stuff. Okay. Well, good to know you understand.
00:31:40
Speaker
Well, do you judge yourself for it? Do you beat yourself up with? When you act like a victim, when you play a coward, do you beat yourself up? Does it bring up more self-hatred or loathing? Got it. And if it does, that's what we look at. So can you look at yourself being a coward?
00:32:06
Speaker
and still love yourself. Can you look at the cowardice in you and say, this is a part of me. I wish it weren't true, but it is. And I can look that man in the eye and love him. Then everything starts moving forward. But what happens is we think we have to hate these things about ourselves in order for them to change. We feel like we have to say,
00:32:37
Speaker
We feel like we have to push away or against the shadow in order to motivate ourselves to do something different or else, oh, well, great, I'll be a victim. Oh, I'll be a coward. Yay. And then our life doesn't work. We have this fear that if we were to actually accept and allow these parts of ourselves, then they would consume us, then they would overrun us. And that's just who we would be.
00:33:05
Speaker
In reality, having the awareness and having the choice and the desire to stand for something greater is actually going to move you forward more than pushing away from that because if you
00:33:22
Speaker
are beating yourself up and you have the self-loathing or the self-judgment, that's what you're standing for rather than love, compassion, courage. It probably takes tremendous courage to love yourself being a coward. Sure.
00:33:41
Speaker
And so that's kind of the really deeper shadow work where it's not like, oh, I'm fixing myself. No. Can you love yourself despite all of these flaws and shortcomings and move past that? And as you do that, you stop fighting against yourself and then, ironically, to love yourself being a coward requires courage.
00:34:06
Speaker
And you end up not being a coward. Okay. Got it. Yeah. That's really helpful. Running away from the cowardness. Yeah. Yeah. And exerting the energy to try to suppress it, but learn to love it, which then releases it and moves it and gives it a sense of empowerment instead of draining. Is that fair to say?
00:34:33
Speaker
Yeah, but it's not this cheesy, oh, I'll just love it away kind of thing. It's like, sure. Can you really look at yourself in the mirror and see yourself as a coward and let that annihilate you? Looking yourself at the mirror and say, I am a pathetic piece of shit. And can you open your heart to that while you look at yourself? And it is terrifying.
00:35:01
Speaker
But so how do you how do you I've done that and had my clients do it they've had tremendous healing and transformation How do you look at that honestly without perpetuating more self-hatred? Well Fantastic question Well it in my experience
00:35:26
Speaker
You need feedback in the beginning because it's really easy to con yourself. It's really easy to trick yourself in saying,
00:35:40
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah, I love myself. Okay. You just walk away. But actually getting feedback and getting an input from the external world that actually says, yeah, you know what, you're actually feeling that you're actually facing that you're actually in that
00:35:57
Speaker
that openness. That's been really important. It's not I don't think it's 100% because I can do that myself and people can do it ourselves themselves. But until you know what your
00:36:17
Speaker
ego strategies are, you might con yourself. And so it just requires a diligence. It requires putting the truth above everything else. Are you being honest? Are you actually doing this? Do you even really want this?
00:36:33
Speaker
And so I think for many people, that's why rock bottom is such an important thing because they just had enough. Their ways of being just can't sustain it anymore. And so I get, unfortunately, that tends to be a lot of clients. I see, unfortunately, because
00:36:51
Speaker
I could help a lot more people if they came in before rock bottom. Until you hit rock bottom and nothing else works, then you start to surrender. Then you start to say, all right, I'll do this weird movement thing. All right, I'll go into intimacy, which sounds stupid.
Role of Ego in Personal Development
00:37:09
Speaker
Or, all right, I guess I'll start feeling this stuff that I spent my whole life thinking wasn't important.
00:37:15
Speaker
Yeah, there's nothing else I have. I can't do anything else. So if you find yourself conning yourself or tricking yourself or doing all this stuff, you know, how bad do you want it? How? How? How? You know, how bad do you want to wake up? How authentic do you want to be? How value? How much value does the truth have for you? And unless it's everything, you're going to find ways to weasel out
00:37:44
Speaker
Yeah, I have found that whether it be with myself or with clients that when an individual hits their rock bottom, which is different for everybody,
00:37:56
Speaker
Um, it, it almost, it creates even be momentarily, right? Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't mean that you're in prison and you've lost your family and you're a million dollars in debt, right? Like it, it can, it, from an emotional standpoint, but it almost creates a desperation and a, and that desperation creates a willingness of action. Whether that action is, like you said, trying something different or seeing things different or being honest with yourself, it,
00:38:25
Speaker
It's almost fuel for that required responsibility of creating something different than what got you to where you are in that rock bottom place.
00:38:41
Speaker
Yeah, there's a great Zen story. Basically, there's a student in the master and the student asks the master, you know, how, you know, when am I ready for illumination? You know, how do I get there? You know, when is my time? When will it come? You know, to have awakening for illumination.
00:39:05
Speaker
And the Zen master grabs the student, shoves his head underwater, and does it until he's flailing and panicking, and he pulls his head up and says, what thing did you want most more than anything while your head was underwater? And he was like to breathe. And he says, you'll have illumination when you want it that bad.
00:39:25
Speaker
Um, yeah. And, um, that's, that's kind of another way to talk about that rock bottom. That's what it was for me multiple times. Yeah. Um, yeah. So I have dedicated my life to it and that's why it worked. Yeah. Um, where does ego fit into all of this?
00:39:51
Speaker
everywhere. Yeah. Well, okay. So actually, so similar, I guess it's similar to shadow work. Uh, first, because your definitions are different than some, right? What, what is your definition or kind of your approach to the understanding of the ego and how does that fit into whether it be shadow work or creating sustainable transformation in a positive direction? Yeah. The ego. Oh gosh.
00:40:26
Speaker
Well, there's a couple ways. The traditional way here in the West we talk about it is arrogance, pompous. You've got a big ego. You're full of yourself.
00:40:39
Speaker
And that's, I mean, that's very surface level. And then you have just sort of this idea of ego, of the identity. This is the self, the id, the you, you're this little ego thing. And then there's the sense of spirituality, the ego as a spiritual vehicle.
00:41:07
Speaker
And that ego is essentially the separate self rather than the non-separate self, the whole, the all, the totality, the oneness kind of self, the non-dual oneness self. So I kind of focus on the latter two of how somebody's being ran by their ego, which is this headspace, it's these strategies, it's the
00:41:38
Speaker
trying to get one up on the universe and life, always strategizing, figuring out how to replicate things, building a persona, some narcissism, all of these sort of very practical ways of dealing with the ego, the thing that is just
00:42:00
Speaker
running the ship that shouldn't be running the ship. Yeah. And then also getting into more of the spiritual aspects of, you know, what's the ego in relationship to awakening and spirituality and all that stuff. Okay. So then what does ego death mean or death of your ego or, you know, because at least I've been hearing that more and more, right? Letting your ego die
00:42:27
Speaker
Um, or some people that have, you know, psychedelic experiences, there's a death of ego that happens, that kind of thing. Um, what can, are you able to articulate kind of, uh, what, what people go through? Is that, is that a sense of like letting go of that protective mechanism or what is that death of ego?
00:42:53
Speaker
Well, I think let's start just kind of with the experience of ego death, like in a psychedelic. You know, it's that moment where you cross over from essentially duality to non-duality, from being a separate individual thing to not only seeing, but experiencing and feeling
00:43:21
Speaker
that being gone. So imagine being a raindrop and you're just like, I'm this beautiful, amazing, special raindrop and you're falling from the sky into the ocean.
00:43:41
Speaker
and you're looking down into the ocean, and you're thinking, Oh, my God, I'm gonna die. And you plop into the water and you're you're no longer a raindrop, you cease to be. But you're still there, but you're there as the ocean. Yeah. And so what part at what point does individual raindrops cease or start to be the ocean or the water? And so
00:44:10
Speaker
This is really cool intellectually, but I think when you, not I think, it's been my experience, when you have these ego death moments, your sense of being in this little dot inside your skull goes away. And so it's called a death because it literally feels like you're dying.
The Self-Improvement Trap
00:44:29
Speaker
And so the way into that is by letting go and surrendering, rather than fighting it. You know, if you're screaming, if you're the raindrops screaming and panicking and freaking out all the way down to the to the ocean, you're gonna have one hell of a life. Whereas if you can go and you can surrender, you become the ocean, you end up being all you're the entire thing. Yeah, but while you were drop, you forgot about it.
00:44:58
Speaker
God, that makes sense. So we've touched on actually kind of almost hotbox several different topics, but I'm curious, you know, the self-development trap being, let's say that, you know, at least for me, like I said, in my early 20s, sounds like it was similar for you.
00:45:23
Speaker
you start to kind of wake up to some of these things. And so you start to take ownership and you start to delve into your inner world and you actually see some progress, right? You start to see some changes, etc. But then people, at least in what I've experienced tend to either plateau
00:45:44
Speaker
or they get stuck in this self-development kind of trap where, in a sense, their identity becomes their ability to naval gaze and to work on themselves and to be constantly improving.
00:46:00
Speaker
and letting go of that is almost as scary as letting go of victim mentality or letting go of these other self-protective mechanisms. And so I guess first and foremost, I'm curious for you, what exactly is kind of a self-development trap and how do people fall into that? And then also how do they like break out of that? I know that's three questions in one, but I'm just curious as far as your overarching thoughts on all that.
00:46:31
Speaker
Well, this is one of my specialties. And because there's very few people out there in the personal development industry that say, you're stuck in personal development. Stop, stop self-help. And so it's kind of this, you know, people have this like, wait a minute, you're in this industry, but you're telling people not to do it, but yet you're still charging people all this money to help them. Like what, wait, what? It's like, yes, but why, how?
00:47:01
Speaker
you're authentic, you're telling the truth, but what is this little piece? How do I do this? Well, in my book, I have a whole chapter, it's called Stop Fixing and Start Living. And I experienced this too. I'll quickly share my realization of this. I remember in my late 20s,
00:47:21
Speaker
I was doing something called, well, something similar to EFT or tapping. Okay. And it's an emotional limiting belief, releasing, clearing healing practice.
00:47:34
Speaker
And so I was doing this and I was just gung-ho, man. I had notebooks filled with all my negative emotions, all my limiting beliefs, the traditional Chinese meridians that were attached to it, you know, how far back they went, the origin point. Like I was in it. You were in it, yeah. And it was amazing. Yeah, it was amazing. It helped a lot.
00:48:01
Speaker
And I did that for a few years and I had tremendous healing But eventually there was this one evening where I'm looking at my notebook. I'm going through it. I'm going through it and I Start turning the pages and I'm going through this and I'm like I
00:48:21
Speaker
I'm adding to this list a lot faster than I'm taking away from it. And so I started getting this backlog of all my negative emotions and limiting beliefs that I had to clear and heal. And I started going through it and I'm like,
00:48:43
Speaker
This is never gonna end. By the time I catch up on all this, it's gonna be 10 more years, and within those 10 years, I'm gonna have some traumas or stuff that has happened in that time. Oh my God. This is never gonna realize peace. This constant fixing myself,
00:49:06
Speaker
until I'm ready to go and live my life, to have a relationship. I was so addicted to this. I remember I would be on dates and talking with women out at a cafe or wherever it was and stuff would come up and I'd say, or excuse me, I would go to the bathroom and I'd start doing this healing thing and coming out and being like, okay. So I mean, this was something that I felt like I had to
00:49:35
Speaker
do until I was enough to enough for having a business or whatever. Yeah, to get the results I wanted in your life. And so that realization of Oh my god, this is never gonna end. All of this fixing helps. But it doesn't lead to peace. It doesn't lead. There's no end. And
00:50:01
Speaker
There was a distinction that eventually I figured out there's a difference between, you know, a growth and, you know, a constant growth, expansion, healing, transformation mindset, where you just surrender and understand you're just growing through your whole life. You're always learning, you're always growing, you're always changing. This is happening. Yeah, you don't have to put your life on hold.
00:50:26
Speaker
because it's until you get there because you're never there, you're always doing that. And at the same time, the energy of fixing came from this inherent place of being broken. And so it was like the more and more that I was fixing myself, the further I was getting away from my true self, from who I really was. Because yes, I fixed myself,
00:50:54
Speaker
but that fixing inherently reinforced the lies that I was broken to begin with. And so getting to that core premise and actually healing that sort of core thing of I'm broken,
00:51:14
Speaker
That in itself ended the need to work on myself from a fixing perspective. It didn't mean I never learned anything more, that I never grew or healed more or anything else. It just meant that my addiction to fixing myself so I didn't feel broken and not enough and unlovable
00:51:34
Speaker
That ended, that stopped. And so that is what led me out of suffering and illumination, rather than more fixing, more fixing, more fixing, more fixing, more fixing, more fixing. Sure, sure. Because it just took me further away from the truth, even though it was helpful. So one of the big important things here is that this is not something I'd recommend to a beginner, to someone who's just realizing, oh my God, I've been a victim.
00:52:00
Speaker
Good. Good. Yes, you have. All right. Now do something about it. Oh my God. Yes, I can do something about it. We'll start doing something about it. Great. Because what happens is if you tell a victim what I'm telling you now, you just say, Oh, okay. Well, see, literally there's nothing I can do about it because there's nothing wrong with me. So I'm just going to sit here and do nothing and their life stays the same. Yeah. So that's, that's not the energy you want in that beginning. You want that.
00:52:26
Speaker
I want this as bad as I need to breathe. Oh my God, I can do something. I can change. The problem is so many of us that have been victims that have been at the effect of the world realize that's not true, that we don't have to be. So we start power tripping and say, Oh my God, I'm a creator of the universe and I can control everything. And then we start controlling more and more and more. And we start saying, I can do everything about everything.
00:52:50
Speaker
And then, oh, self-improvement, I can do more and more and more. I read 100 books in a week and retain nothing. All of this stuff, we get addicted to that because of this high that, oh my God, we can fucking change our life.
00:53:06
Speaker
then you realize, as you said earlier, there's an upper limit to that. You reach up certain plateau, that strategy no longer serves, and then you come to me or read this book or figure it out or whatever, and then you do and break through some of the stuff that I was just talking about. So it's not a one size fits all at every point of your journey. What works for a beginner might exactly be the opposite as what the expert needs.
00:53:34
Speaker
I love that. Yeah. One of my favorite kind of homework assignments for people that I feel are kind of in this place is because oftentimes they essentially are performing for love, right? Is what it boils down to where I need to continue to evolve and continue to do better to find love, whether it be for myself or from others, et cetera.
00:54:01
Speaker
But is I'd say, OK, this week you don't have homework. You you're not allowed. Like, don't meditate, don't journal, don't remove everything. And then they just spiral out. Right. Like, wait, wait, wait, what? What? I need something. I need something to work on, you know. Yeah. And learning that acceptance is and I love what you said in the sense of it being it's not for everyone. Right. And not there is no cookie cutter fits all. But
00:54:31
Speaker
I think that's a great point where if you find yourself at that place where you've gotten really good at finding your faults so that you have something to work on to maybe pause and do an honest assessment of that and see if maybe you are kind of in that self development trap. Um, so one of the, you know, the approach is that, oh, go ahead.
00:54:57
Speaker
Yeah, I was gonna say, one of the other remedies I have for that, it's a whole chapter in the book and I say it all the time to my clients and myself, just stop.
00:55:09
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, but I need to do No, stop. Yeah. Well, I'm not stop. Yeah. But if I don't stop. So
Introducing Synosomatics
00:55:19
Speaker
stop all the neurotic compulsion need to fix yourself. And then sit with that, as you said, all right, well, what happens if I'm not doing anything?
00:55:28
Speaker
Uh, well, then all that stuff that's coming up, as you said, spiraling out of control, that's all the stuff you're using self help to avoid. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so one of your, like a core approach and I'm curious.
00:55:46
Speaker
I think I said that right. Is that right? Okay. Synosomatics. What the hell is synosomatics and why is it effective and different?
00:56:01
Speaker
Yeah, so, synosomatics, I'll just start with the word. Synna, as in video, cinematography, cinema and movement, and somatics of the body, working with the body.
00:56:16
Speaker
So basically what we do is we use video to record people moving in their body. And then we play that video back for them and myself and facilitators to then give them feedback about all of the stuff we've just been talking about. Okay. Using the video and their movement in their body to show them where they're being a victim, where they're abandoning themselves, where they're blaming, where they're manipulating all their shadow, their plateaus, their blocks, are they in their head? Are they feeling?
00:56:46
Speaker
all of these things, not through just a word or a conversation, but through the body. And then so clients get to get this feedback from myself and I'm telling them this stuff. It's not advice, it's not coaching, it's not my opinion or interpretation. I'm literally feeling what they're doing, moving in their body,
00:57:12
Speaker
giving them feedback on it about the stories that are running their body, which means they're running their life, and then they get to see that in themselves in their own body. They get to look at the video and see their movement and see them manipulating, see them hiding out, see them being a coward, see them being a victim, see them
00:57:31
Speaker
or even light things. It's not even all shadow. It's, wow, do you see how much beauty is coming through? Do you see how lovable you are? And then having to also look at ourselves and see our own beauty and lovability, that's often for most people harder than looking at the things that they hate about themselves.
00:57:51
Speaker
And so thematics is one of the approaches that I use to help illuminate, to help people see all of this unconscious material that runs their life. Okay. Fascinating. I almost want to sign up for a session because I, you know, I've done a lot of work, but I've actually never done that approach. So I was curious as to what exactly that was. So yeah, it's very,
00:58:23
Speaker
No, go ahead. Oh, no. It's very something. Go for it. Oh, yeah. It's very confronting because not only are you getting the feedback, you're seeing it in yourself.
00:58:39
Speaker
How you do one thing is how you do everything. That's the whole premise of why this even works. What does your movement have to do with how you have sex in your bedroom? What does your movement have to do with how you run a meeting in your business? How does the way you walk in your body translate to the relationships you have in your life? How does shaking your hands show us
00:59:03
Speaker
your mother and father's relationship when you were a child. It's because how you do one thing is how you do everything. As above, so below. As you move in your body is as you move through your life. And I've seen this thousands of times. I've worked with hundreds and hundreds of people.
00:59:24
Speaker
And there hasn't been a single time. It hasn't been true. It hasn't been a single time. I've seen and felt the way someone showed up in their movement in their body that didn't also affect their bank account, their relationships, their health, or their life. Wow. Yeah, that's fascinating. Well, I
00:59:46
Speaker
Love the conversation.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
00:59:48
Speaker
We need to wrap it up. But I love to end. Oh, it just got to the best part. I know. I know. Well, we'll definitely so you'll be back for a third recording second time at some point, I'm sure. OK, great. But I love to to wrap it up every time. Just I'm always curious and fascinated by this question, which is you get one billboard, one billion people see it. What is on it?
01:00:24
Speaker
I mean, the first thing, I don't know if this is my final answer, but my first answer is something around the truth. Either tell the truth, start telling the truth, or make truth the most important thing. Something like this, where it's like, if a billion people all started telling the truth, this world would look very, very different.
01:00:48
Speaker
Um, because I would normally, you know, love is a great thing, but the problem I think a lot of people have with love is A, they don't know how to do it. There's all these distortions. People have different meanings of it. Love for one person looks different than another.
01:01:03
Speaker
and some people confuse abuse with love and all this stuff. So this is why even though love I think is the highest order of everything, truth is right there with it, either equivalent or just a micron below it.
01:01:19
Speaker
Um, and it's much more attainable. It's really easy to tell that. Well, it's very simple to tell the truth. There you go. And it's very clear. So that's what I would put. I think that would, that may not be the final thing, uh, in the world, but for a billion people to see this right now, I think it would change the world very drastically.
01:01:41
Speaker
Don't worry, it's not a contract, so it's a hypothetical. Awesome, Andrew. Well, what do you have going on? Where can people find you, connect with you? Obviously, we'll have some information in the show notes, but what do you have going on? Yeah, I think the biggest thing, if people are interested in any of these topics, because all of them I address in my book, awaken to your true self.
01:02:10
Speaker
Uh, you can get that pretty much anywhere you want to buy a book. Um, and if you want to connect with me personally, learn about Senna somatics, learn about my work or book a session, uh, you can visit andrewdaniel.org and you can learn all about everything from that one spot. Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. And I, I mean, I got a lot from it. I'm sure that people will that are listening to it as well.
01:02:37
Speaker
Thanks Josh, I'm glad we got to do round two. Yeah.