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The Weight We Create · UNLOADED

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to our podcast unloaded.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is Michael Seahorn.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: And Shannon Morrow.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Glad to be back with our listening audience.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Shannon, how say you today?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, I say I am well.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: I like some of that old language, man.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: That old language is kind of neat.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: How say you?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'll meet you in a fortnight.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's just interesting how our language is.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: I have a theory about fortnight.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: What's your let me hear it, man.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a theory.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you know what a fortnight is?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm familiar with it, but please explain it for the length of time of fortnight.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: When you say I will see you in a fortnight.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that's a full day, correct?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe back in the time a week?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you're getting closer.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Two weeks.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: As I understand, a fortnight is Because you're going from one fort to another fort, which would be an extreme amount of distance.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's another theory.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Fortnite.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: I I caught 14 days.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Fortnight.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Fourteen days.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's just where my mind went.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I wonder if it's called a fortnight because it's 14 days.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I I don't know.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm probably making a fool of myself, right?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because anybody can look this up really easy and know exactly why it's called a fortnight and how long it is.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I might have just given a bunch of incorrect information, but I don't have the advantage of a computer sitting in front of me.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: I have a bunch of crazy theories.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: We can go on those all day.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to Google that right now.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to leave that for what it is and uh we'll just go with it.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I just enjoy some of the old language, that's all, man.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Very pleased.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't know about the vows, but for sure.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: But some of the language is kind of neat, and it's you know, it's cool, man.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, last episode I uh was sharing some things with our listening audience and with Shannon in real time.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Shannon is privy a little bit more information after the episode was over.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, as we sit here, uh, you know, starting a new new episode today, just I just keep going back to that breath of fresh air, man.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and it's it's nothing huge, but it could be something.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think uh sometimes it's just uh like I said, I think in the last podcast, man, it's just a little glimpse of light, but man, it's just refreshing to see the damn little glimpse of light.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: No matter how far the distance is, it just gives you kind of a a North Star, if you will, you know what I mean?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, maybe I am on my right path.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe maybe I am listening and I am doing action items in order to get farther, you know, to that light.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, even though getting further toward that light involves maybe some pretty dark passages, but when you're in that darkness, you know, like man, even just a little light way up ahead, it it it shines pretty bright.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it does.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and this'll this will definitely be a you know to be continued story, and I and you know, maybe in a couple episodes down the road I'll have I'll have some interesting news to share about, you know.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: As one says, we'll see what the we'll see what the journey brings, man.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: We will see.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um other than that, I think um Is there anything you've been thinking about as of late, Shannon, since our our our last uh recordings?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always thinking about stuff, right?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, I know you are, man.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate that.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: But anything of topic that you want to maybe throw out for today?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, since it we uh we do want to remain in topic, you know, and within the confines of this podcast, you know, unloaded, you know.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um the weight we carry, which we've uh spoken to so much, and you know, that we went into a little bit a couple episodes ago, the truth we speak, what does it mean to speak the truth?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: And um but let's go back to the weight we carry that we talk so much about, the how things so often can feel so heavy, the pressure of life, all the stress we're under.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I just I even want to um back out of that for a moment just to see it a little more clearly.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Just uh, you know, if I can yeah, very real, of course.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: We we feel a lot of pressure, a lot of stress, a lot of the weight in life of life and the heaviness.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and what what causes so much of that?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Why, what like hey, is is life as heavy as we make it out to be?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is it so much pressure and so hard and difficult and challenging?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, a lot of times it can be.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: It can really feel that way.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And um while also um, you know, there's there's a lot of power in um how we perceive things, the the narrative we are accustomed to.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's even down lower in those subconscious realms.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if we are of the basic belief that, oh, life's hard, it's gonna kick our ass, it gets really heavy, there's a lot of pressure to endure, we just gotta uh grind it out, get through as but, you know, like the we create this narrative of all this weight we are carrying.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, uh again, I I want to honor a lot of that.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And my job as a psychotherapist, I I often flip things.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: I want to look at the other side, heads and tails.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like, huh, because wait a second, aren't we living in a time where there's like grocery stores full of food, and all you have to do is twist a little silver handle, and you get clean water coming out of the tap, and you flip a switch, and you have all this amazing magic of electricity, and oh, wait, now there's also this thing called internet that oh, and all this information that's readily available to us, and most of us have more clothes than we even want in our closets, and too much stuff, you know, like it's wait, if if life's if for 98 plus percent of uh human existence, 300,000 years of Homo sapiens, you know, it is literally like I'm hungry, I have to go find food.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and only very recently, you know, these more quote modern day problems of uh, you know, oh darn, I you know, uh I have to wait an extra 10 minutes in in the drive-thru line, and now I'm gonna be late for the start of, you know, whatever, you know.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um there it just is life so effing hard?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Is it so heavy?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Is it so or is it more our creating that?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Is it more our making it so?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what if we could just wait.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Could we choose to experience life in a little bit of a lighter way?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's a yes or no question.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: You keep starting to try to talk, and I'm now just I won't shut up.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're good.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not interrupting, man.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm letting you do your thing, man.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but I just wanted to, huh?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: What is this pressure, stress, heaviness of life, and how might we be able to, I don't know, maybe lighten it.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Not through a lot of the other stuff we've been talking about, but just our perception of it, our approach, our attitude about it, the narrative we create.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a I'm a very interested student in philosophy.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think you and I've talked about that a little bit.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh as I grow a little bit older in my years, I think philosophy resonates with me now more than ever just based on the last 12 years of being a better human being.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And um I find philosophy fascinating.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: But what I find more fascinating is the time and the era that some of these philosophers were, um, which goes back to Shannon's um um explanation here just a little bit ago about you know the time and place we live.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: We got information at our fingertips, I can call and have groceries delivered to the house, I have food in two hours, I could you know, order something today, have it here tomorrow.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Seneca, uh the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca, we suffer more in imagination than in reality.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what Shannon's really alluding to is um we human beings, as quote unquote as smart as we say we are, and this goes back to what our previous podcast was with me trying to explain where I was at and dealing with the things I was dealing with.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing exactly that.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: I did not want to allow my imagination to make it worse than it was.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And to your answer, yes, I think that there is a lot of power in being able to just have things a little bit easier in your life, man.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's possible.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: I know it, I've experienced it.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: But gosh bless America, man, like it surely is not easy to do.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, it's actually quite difficult because there is so much of the contrary.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: There is so much of the kind of may I say even the kind of that um negative bias, that that bad news narrative, the oh shit, oh shit, oh no, oh no, oh no.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's almost as if we kind of need that or thrive off it.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: We need shit going wrong.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: We need shit kind of bad for us to like, oh, you know, we we kind of need a fair amount of stress or distress or you know, drama to like, oh, just oh it's it almost turns into even some people's identity, like, you know, oh just you ask, you see, I mean, hey, how's it going, man?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm just so busy, oh I have this and that, oh rah, rah, rah, rah, rah.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people, man, it's easy to leave live your whole life.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Just, oh my god, oh my god, I can't wait to get just I just gotta get through this thing.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as I and and if I mean, I don't know, man, it doesn't I get it.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: I I I guess I'm very hypocritical in this moment because I do that a lot myself.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Just ask my wife and children.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like I, you know, a lot of days I'm rah-rah rah.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm grindy, I'm grumpy, I'm bitching about stuff, yeah, da.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and so it's um real easy for me to look at and say, oh, what if we just created a more positive narrative?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: What if we just perceive things?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: What if we could just be more grateful?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: What if we could just improve our attitude?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, what if that would that'd be rad?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: And to your point, it's way easier said than done.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: It definitely is, and I will tell you because Lord knows I've been trying this for a long time now, um there is a better way, man.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: There is.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: You and I have talked about it for endless hours over the last decade, man.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not easy, it's not.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: I I I mean, I told I you know, I was honest with our listening audience last episode.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: I did not want to come last episode, I did not want to do our recording, and that tells you the gravity of where I was internally, right?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: But to Seneca's point, if I allow my imagination to make it worse than it really is, I wouldn't have came here.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: I would not have re I I would have just texted Shan and said, Hey man, I'm gonna take a little mulligan.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who don't know what that is, go look it up on the internet.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's about golf.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to redo.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I can't do it this week.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: We'll just we're gonna have to do it next week, man, and uh we'll figure it out.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't allow that to happen.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: I went back to the current moment, back to the present time.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: I get asked a lot about I don't understand what you mean by just being the present moment.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's a it's a valid question, and I honor the question.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: The only way I can explain it to people is that time is uh the the clocks are a a man-made construct, we know that, right?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Human beings created the clock.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: But when I was up on a mountain in Colorado, which we've been talking about on and off for quite a while, and we'll get there at some point, I did not have my phone, I did not have a watch, I didn't have a clock, I didn't have a radio, I had no modern convenient things during the seven-day stay at the monastery.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I will tell you this, I didn't need an FN time piece on my wrist or in my pocket to tell me.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Weirdly enough, when the sun came up, I was awake.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: When the sun was directly over the place that I was staying in, it was hotter than you know what, and I was sweating, I figured it was probably about high noon, one, two o'clock.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: And shockingly enough, guess when I went to bed.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Once it got dark.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, once it got dark.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, what I mean when I say try to come back to the present moment, it's just that I don't it doesn't matter if I if I'm sitting here at a conference room table at Shannon in my office, in my car, at my house, it doesn't matter where you are.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you need to recenter yourself and you need to come back into the moment of the present time, I've talked about it.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Close your eyes for five seconds.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't take a lot, just close your eyes, turn off your music, whatever you're listening to, close your eyes, take in one good breath.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't even have to be more than one, just one good breath.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Focus on that breath going in.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Use your stomach, man.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like get it from down deep, not just through your chest, like get it from your belly, right?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Pull that air up, hold on to it for one second, and then as you exhale, man, just let it out slow.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, just don't, you know, not like you're blowing up a balloon where you're just trying to get it to go quick.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Just nice controlled exhale, man, and get it all out.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Open your eyes.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: You're in the present moment.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: The way I heard it in the the Buddhist tradition is when we're breathing in, you're breathing in the present moment, right?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're sucking in the present moment.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as we are at that natural pause between inhale and exhale, that pause is the most present moment in our life.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then as we're breathing out, it's represented that we are breathing out our past, right?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because that inhale came from when two seconds ago.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's your past.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now you're breathing that out and you're moving on.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's very powerful if you just practice that once in a while, man.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: It helps a lot.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: It really helps a lot, man.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you for explaining that.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: And um what has helped me a little bit, um, because I really appreciate how you're you know just really describing the value of being present versus not being present.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's even huh, how do you differentiate and da-da-da.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: But similar to that, and I don't want to make this all so binary, present, not present, you know, um, internal, external, and it kind of seems that when we're more focused or paying more attention to our internal environment or like our actual, not like what's going on in our body, but more what's going on in our mind and our emotions.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like these things, like our emotions will really get our attention.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Man, when we feel afraid, when we feel angry, when we feel sad, we it really gets our attention.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Similarly, thoughts really get our attention, man.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: That we we we start, we get that thought that we start worrying about and start getting all anxious, and thoughts and emotions are very tied, and so you got these two really powerful things within us, thoughts and emotions, and and the the pool they have at us, and the often the control they take of us, and and yet, wait, wait, are these I mean they're very real in our internal experience, and but wait, hold on.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: When we can then choose to break that and return like turn outward, like, oh, return to what's real going on out here in this physical realm, like, oh wait, huh?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: What's the nature of the light in the room right now?
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: What colors am I seeing?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: What are the shapes of the like what am I hearing?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: The traffic going by, or the or the birds, or what's what's the sky look like?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: What's what's the weather doing right now, or how's how's this furniture supporting my weight, or you see, or even how's the breath entering and exiting my body?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: And when we just return to good old-fashioned the senses, what am I seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, touching, what like, oh, this stuff out here is way more like real, real than all that shit going on in there that is mostly being manufactured by the psyche, the way down there in the subconscious, you know, and a lot of that, a lot of a lot of our thoughts are not true, are actually quite problematic.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of our emotions are blown way out of proportion, or again, generated from this core stuff that we're not even very aware of, and they can these emotions can also create things that um are not as beneficial to us.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like, yeah, these thoughts and emotions within us really clamor at us, and we of course give them a lot of our attention, but when we can uh break that and return uh out here and to what is real in just this present moment, it is kind of um there is a I think kind of a relationship between internal and external, because internally is a lot more about the past and the future, and but when we can turn our senses back to what's real, like, oh, what am I paying attention to now?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's huh, that's a pretty cloud, you know, and it it I guess it's also been often described as mindfulness, you know, being mindful of the moment out here, and just with just acceptance, just with without judgment, without trying to be the tricky trying to be as free of association as possible, and just like huh.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: You just looking at it for what it is and without really any critique or judgment, or you just say, huh, interesting, and just um that is presence, mindfulness, and you're and that really calms the mind, it can really help settle the emotions staying out here.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well said, man.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: I I'll give you an example of not being present.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: So last week going through this, um I apologize, this week going through this thing that has occurred, Wednesday was a very important day.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: And Wednesday I was dealing with all of this in the morning, did my morning practice stuff, came back to center mostly.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I was pre-centered, still in the mind, still processing some thoughts about what was what has occurred and what used to occur, some things like that.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Got caught up in it, ended up leaving the house.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Got to the office.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Got to the office about an hour in.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: I went to sign a piece of paper with the date, and the date clicked in my head, and I was so ever present in that moment because I forgot that I needed to tell somebody something on their special day, and it was completely out of sight, out of mind, because I was not present.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And in that moment of time, I was very present.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I almost forgot so and so's so I picked up the phone, called them, I I apologize.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Apologize, I did not acknowledge that this was your day.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: I it's my bad.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was just I was in my head, I was in my thoughts, and I was not present obviously, right?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's a good example to Shannon's question, is that sometimes that is when we are here, but we are not present.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're just here because we're up in our mind dealing with all the things going on, or whatever we're dealing with, or whatever is going on up in our amazing brains, you aren't present.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're physically here, but you're not presently here.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a good example of a real world thing that just happened to me, you know.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then like I said, as soon as the date hit the paper, man, it was I was it was like somebody smacked me in the head with the bat.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was very present.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like damn it, man.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a good reminder uh for me too.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's like that's why I try as hard as I have been trying over the last 12 years to get to the point where I'm very present all the time, is because that's the space I want to be in.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's the base that I want to live in.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to be everly present and enjoying the moments, man.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, man, but that is so unrealistic, man.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: When you say all the time, when you say ever present, the bad news is us poor effing human beings have this prefrontal deformity or prefrontal cortex that you said it a couple minutes ago, man.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Are these beautiful brains of ours or amazing brains of ours, however, you said, like that is their job is to predict things, to work things out, complicated functions to communicate language, right?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: These prefrontal cortex are not very content just hanging out watching the clouds, right?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Most of our mammalian brethren are, right?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like most people have dogs or cats, or even I I have birds and fish, chickens to be exact.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: I've chickens and fish, and you know, I've had dogs and cats and stuff, and they seem mostly present most of the time.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: They they don't seem too lost in thought or too like you know, um oblivious to what's going on around them.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: They're usually pretty damn situationally aware, they're pretty damn observant, they're dropped into the here and now most of the time because they don't have these big fat deformities on the front of their head that drive them crazy.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is again both sides honoring.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh wow, we have these big brains with this crazy executive functioning that while is very useful for building cities, um at the same time can torment us when we, you know, start overthinking things or you know, the yadda.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so okay, yeah.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh back to Seneca's quote, yeah, we create most of our distress within our mind.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: But we can't just chuck the mind.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: We have a mind, it's going to do we're going to uh thought is just a part of our experience, the thinking experience, we're not getting rid of that.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so, okay, cool.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: But when the thinking or the thought really starts to uh outweigh or even hijack just um daily life, just the experience that more we want day-to-day, you know, that we can, oh wow, this is this is a good meal.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, let's sit down and enjoy food together, you know.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: But if the when we should just be enjoying a good meal together, but though we don't even taste it or notice what we're eating because we're so spinning on whatever happened earlier in the day, you know, it's just I want to be more present with this yummy food.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: I I want to be more present on my drive home, you know, just ah, that's kind of some pretty scenery.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I haven't noticed that before, you know.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we're not gonna get rid of thought.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: We're not going to be able to be mostly present like our dogs, right?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: They they are just better at that.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: But we we're humans, we have to think, and we have these pesky things called emotions.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: So understand like allowing for, recognizing, honoring, uh, accepting, yeah.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oof.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: I I get spun out sometimes.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: I man, I just went down that rabbit hole.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oof, that was a dark thought.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh, man, I've been thinking about that for too long.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Or man, this emotion, I'm still so pissed off.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Why am I still so pissed off?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's okay.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're human.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is kind of in our operating sense how our m minds and our psychology works.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Acceptance.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then how can can am I able to like improve upon it a little so it's a little easier, a little more enjoyable?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: Do I have does it always have to feel so heavy to me?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: Does everything always have to stress me out so much?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Is everything uh do I have to grind so or can I huh.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, yeah, all that's there, honoring all that, while at the same time, I just want to kinda be mostly present this evening and just kind of have a chill, relaxing time with my people.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're gonna most likely have to leave most of this as a cliffhanger.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we're approaching our 29-minute mark.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: How's that a cliffhanger?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that question, I guess it ended with a question mark.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Then it's it's very rhetorical.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, there's there's some quite there's some good questions in there, and I think that we could definitely uh revisit some of those because I think as Shannon eloquently put, there's you know, there's always two sides, right?
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I have a vastly different opinion just because of the practices that I've done over the last, you know, uh for sure the last six years since 2020.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I I do have a different perspective, and uh, you know, we'll have to now the cliffhanger, you just introduced the cliffhanger.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you ooh, ooh, there's a conversation here.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely there's a conversation I think we'll have.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I do have a vastly different perception just based upon the things I've done over the last six years, and uh, I think it's it's probably well worth a uh a revisit.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And um like I said, it's gonna we're gonna leave it on a little bit of a cliffhanger.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh gonna have to tune in on the next episode uh so we can pick up this.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's gonna be an enjoyable conversation for the perfect perfect.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the conversation will be about our different perspectives on being able to be present while also honoring the natural noise uh and chatter of the mind.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly right, man.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's been uh uh it's been a wonderful episode.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm glad Shannon had some time to um explore some of the things that we've been talking about over the last 32-ish episodes um about the weight, because I think a lot of times we do talk about it.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we need to get a little bit more in the weeds just to get some more clarity in it.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like it down here in the weeds.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Clarity's good uh for sure, man.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate that, Shannon.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like always, I appreciate all of our listeners out there um tuning into Shannon and I once again.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um 988 is out there for you.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh call or text if you are feeling the need.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh look up with your local providers.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: I hope everybody has a great weekend this weekend.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but as for me, man, this is Mike Seahorn.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Shannon Moore.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll sign off and catch you on the next episode.