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It’s not about "what" you do · Remember Why You Are Here

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The way we move through this world is important. That who we are is important,
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that it's so much less about what we do,
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and so much more about acknowledging that who we already are is the medicine
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that we need for this world.
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Hello and welcome back to Remember Why You Are Here-a podcast for
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seekers and sensitives where you can relax, receive,
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reconnect to yourself and remember the most important thing of all:
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why you're here. I'm Asia Suler, teacher, author,
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earth intuitive, and in this episode today,
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we're going to talk about something that's been really helpful for me for a long
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time, but especially recently.
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It's something I've been reminding myself of a lot,
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and that's this concept that it's not what you do,
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but how you do it.
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And I find that this concept is important for everybody,
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but is especially super important for other
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empaths and sensitives. Before we really launch in though,
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I just want to take a moment and say thank you to everyone who has left a
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rating or review for this podcast so far.
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I cannot express what it has meant to me.
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It has literally felt like y'all have sprinkled Remember-Why-You-Are-Here fairy
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dust over my life, to help me remember why I'm here.
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So thank you, thank you so much for that. And there's so many amazing reviews,
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but I just wanted to read this one excerpt of one that I read today that just
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made my day: Okay, this is from Valerie,
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and here's what she said "I'm absolutely delighted by this new offering of hope
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and compassion and clarity during a time that can feel anything but hopeful or
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clear.
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It'll be the first thing I listen to each week and after only three episodes,
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it already feels like a pivotal part of my personal journey, a handhold of joy,
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a roadmap back to myself. Valerie, thank you.
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Thank you for that reminder of why I'm here and thank you to everybody so far
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who has left a rating or review. Just such a gift, such a gift.
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Okay, so let's get into this episode together.
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So this concept of remembering that
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how you do something is so much more important than what
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you are doing,
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is something that has been so helpful for me throughout my life,
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and I think it's something we all-particularly,
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right now-really need this reminder of.
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Especially when it feels like there's so many inputs,
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so many cries for our attention,
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so many things that seem so critical that we be doing,
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and yet there's way too many of them.
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There's no way we're going to get to do all those things,
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and yet they all seem so critically important.
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And in this time where it can just feel like we're
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surrounded by "too muchness," just this too muchness of all the things that
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we're supposed to be doing, it's such a rewrite and reframe
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and resurrection to remember that the most important thing is
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not what you, do but how you do it.
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And a reminder of this really came in strongly for me when I was listening to
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another podcast called "Tell Me About Your Pain," by Alan Gordon and Alan
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Ziv in collaboration with Curable.
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The podcast is about chronic pain.
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Chronic pain has been a really big part of my life's journey.
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And in the podcast, which was a limited edition series,
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they're guiding people through exercises and reframes that are really
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helpful for releasing chronic pain.
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And this was one of the things that they highlighted,
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especially for people who are dealing with pain and who
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are really working on rewriting major
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patterns within their systems. Like chronic pain as a...
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often a neuroplastic type of pain,
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is something that lives in our nervous systems and our brains,
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and a lot of it is about learning how to rewrite deeply set
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patterns to release this holding pattern in your body.
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I wasn't surprised, but I was so delighted to hear them talk about this again.
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And in this context of remembering that "how" you do something is more important
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than what you do,
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in the context of literally healing pain inside of our
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bodies.
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I think that this reframe and remembrance is so important
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for sensitives and empaths and seekers,
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because what I have seen over my years of guiding so many different people,
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is that the folks that I tend to work with and that I feel like are drawn to
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this world of healing,
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we tend to be those who care a lot,
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and who really are dedicating ourselves to our own personal
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healing,
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to the healing of the world-and sometimes are very
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much overachievers,
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have built a life out of getting the homework done,
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out of understanding the assignment.
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And so it can become a pattern where we
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actually stack up way more on our to-do list than we could ever
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possibly accomplish. And we start feeling like this is our job,
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this is why we're here, this is what we have to do.
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And the doing of the thing is the most important.
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And sometimes it can feel like pressure and sometimes we don't even realize that
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we're creating that pressure on ourselves because we've kind of tricked
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ourselves into thinking, Oh no,
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but these are just all things I'm excited about doing.
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And while that may be true, ultimately if we tune into, often,
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our nervous system, the gentler sides of ourself,
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what we're finding is that we're feeling overwhelmed by the
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too muchness of all the things that we think we have to do.
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And this can come up so profoundly on the healing journey.
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And I can attest to this very strongly myself as someone who's dealt with
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chronic pain and chronic illness,
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that there's a part of me that always wants to be the "A student." I'll do all
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the exercises, I'll do all the things. And what I've noticed,
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and actually what they spoke to in this podcast was that that mentality
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itself can actually be a contributor to continuing or
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worsening symptoms-in my case of chronic
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pain and chronic illness, but for you, it might look like something different.
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And so I really started to notice this,
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and you might notice it too, the more that I talk about it.
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So here's a good example from my life.
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I have dealt with some form of insomnia in my entire life.
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I don't really remember a time when I didn't have some sort of trouble falling
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asleep, ever since I was very, very young.
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Something my mom has talked about a lot.
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My poor mom dealt with a lot between me and my sister and lack of sleep.
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And when I became an adult,
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I really got into trying to figure this out.
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How can I combat insomnia?
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How can I do all the things to make sure that I get to bed?
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And I did all the research and I read the books and I was listening to the
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podcasts, and it actually wasn't getting any better.
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And I had this whole routine-I still have this routine-where before bed,
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I lower the lights, I stretch,
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I meditate, I write in my journal,
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and I slowly downgrade the lights and the stimulation over this time,
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till I'm literally just reading by a red light headlamp.
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And there's nothing wrong with this routine. In fact, it is very helpful for me.
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I need an hour transition time. This is something I've realized for myself.
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But what I noticed is that when I got very into "the
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doing" the checklist of the things,
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there was a certain amount of intensity behind it.
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And that intensity actually was antithetical to
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the energy that I needed in order to relax,
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to downregulate my nervous system enough that I could sleep.
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And for me, in my experience with insomnia, this is really the key.
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It's all about the nervous system and it's all about whether I am in an
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activated mode or whether I can feel safe enough to start going into a more
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down-regulated space.
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And I realized that even though I was doing all the things,
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it wasn't working because of how was doing them.
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And I saw this a lot over the years working with different
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clients and students,
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that we can do sometimes all the things.
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And it can be so frustrating, right? Because we're like,
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we're doing all the things. I'm doing all the things.
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Why am I not healing?
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And it's because it's the way that we're doing it.
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It's because there's a certain amount of intensity behind
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what we're doing that is actually antithetical to what our bodies,
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our psyches, our spirits are needing in order to heal.
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And so this is really important for the healing journey,
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but I also think it's really important for our life in general:
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how we live into our mission,
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how we live into our purpose here on this planet.
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One thing that I see over and over again with sensitives, intuitive seekers,
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is that we're often really hard on ourselves. I mean,
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just blanket statement: hard on ourselves.
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But also hard on ourselves when it comes to our purpose.
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There's this deep intense push inside of ourselves
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to find our purpose, to be on our mission,
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to understand why we're here.
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And so there's this constant drive, this seeking,
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of what is the mission? What is the purpose?
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How do I know when I'm on it?
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I want to live up to my soul's potential in this lifetime.
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That's something I've always felt really deeply,
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and I know a lot of you feel that too:
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this really strong desire to live up to our soul's
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potential, why we came here.
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And the funny, paradoxical, like, the universe laughs,
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kind of deal with this,
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is that often when we come at it from that level
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of intensity-like, I'm going to take this workshop,
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I'm going to read this book,
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I'm going to make this practice a part of my life-it almost feels
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like that purpose keeps slipping through our fingers,
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or we keep having to do the next thing.
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And that's just part of the culture we live in too, where it's almost like,
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there's always this push to be doing the next thing,
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consuming the next thing, buying the next thing...
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Consuming in every way, including reading something or producing something,
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you know, making something a part of our life. There's just this,
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sort of this constant input.
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And yet the reality is that it's
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so much more about how we're doing things. We could be doing way less,
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actually,
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than we often think we're supposed to be doing if we just pay attention to
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how we are doing it.
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And this can be challenging because when we slow down
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to pay attention to how we're doing something,
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that's when all the feelings can arise-including
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sometimes the feeling of frustration of,
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Why isn't this happening more quickly?
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Why am I struggling so much?
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I want to be at this place,
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I want to be at point C, but I'm still at point A.
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Why is that? And what I have found,
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and the way I've described it before is almost like there's a river
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or a creek or stream-a spring-fed stream-that you're here to
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drink from.
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And that stream is actually your own center of self.
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It's this place of calm and peace and
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wellbeing. And that's all you actually need to fulfill your mission in
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this life. And to know what the next right step is,
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is to be able to drink from that river.
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And yet in order to drink from that river,
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we have to walk through this line of fire.
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And that line of fire is what's going to come up for us
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when we slow down enough to pay attention to "the how,"
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when we slow down enough to really feel ourselves.
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And for most sensitive people,
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we love being with ourselves. We want more time with ourselves.
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We love relaxing and downtime and peace and all of those things.
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And so it can be confusing to us sometimes of like, well,
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why can't I slow down then? Why can't I give myself that time?
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And it's because it's that little wall of fire.
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I almost see it as a little brush fire between you and the river,
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or between you and that spring-fed creek from which you can drink.
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And we have to be willing to walk through it.
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And the intensity of it, the discomfort of it won't last.
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But to be able to slow down enough to be with it
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is how we then get to that creek, are able to drink,
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and are able to really start to feel into our bodies,
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our nervous systems,
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of How am I actually doing this thing?
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Because oftentimes when we are doing something,
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it can be coming out of this place of fear or
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this place of lack or this place of striving.
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A lot of us have programs around "doing" and feel very safe in
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"doing." I know I do.
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I was literally a straight A student in high school.
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It was very much for me...
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like I conceived of getting good grades and being able to get into whatever
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college I want,
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as my ticket out of a very difficult situation in my
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teenage years, a difficult time in my life.
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And so I had a lot of overlapping programs around "doing" as
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being something that keeps me safe, busyness as sort of a trauma response.
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A lot of us have this,
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and so the slowing down to feel "the how,"
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there might be a level of discomfort that comes up with that.
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But if that happens, no, you're not messing it up.
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You're not messing up "the how" It's like we have to feel that first layer of
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whatever part of us is saying, Oh, this is scary. This is scary to slow down,
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this is scary to do less. What's going to happen?
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Is everything going to fall apart? And to just be with that part of ourselves.
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Sometimes it's helpful to even imagine that part,
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to give a face, a body, to that part. Maybe it's a part of you,
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a different point in your life. Maybe it won't look like you at all.
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Maybe it'll be an animal or somebody else.
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But to just imagine that part, and just sit with them,
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and hear them out, and say,
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"That makes sense." Whatever they're telling you about why this is scary,
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to just say,
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"That makes sense." And often if we're sitting with the part of
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us that is scared of slowing down, if we sit with them long enough,
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they'll feel seen and heard and safe enough that we can continue to walk to
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that stream. In a lot of ways,
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this is an invitation to be in our bodies.
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Like, "how." When you think about "how," the invitation of "how..." instead of
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"what?" how is a very somatic word.
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I can literally see bodies in motion when I say "how." It is this invitation to
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be in our bodies and that invitation will bring stuff up.
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But that's the journey. That's the secret, right? Is that's the journey:
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is we're coming here as souls on a mission on this planet.
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We're coming here to be in a body. That was the delight,
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that was the opportunity.
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And so the more we get into our bodies and explore "how," the more we're
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just naturally fulfilling this mission. It's almost this concept of,
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what if the whole mission was just you being in the "how?"
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What if that was the whole mission, right? Of you just getting into a body,
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having a life experience and really being attuned to how you are
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doing things.
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And what I have found is that when we can connect to "how," it
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ripples out these effects in every other area of our life.
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If we give ourselves permission to slow down enough to be
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in the "how" in one area,
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maybe it's in our work life or in our relationships,
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that will ripple out into all these other places and it will ripple out into
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other relationships, into our career, into our creative projects,
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into our healing journey, into how we see the world.
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So when we ground in "how" it's like we're really grounding in
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our soul's perspective of this life.
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And that's something that I think is important for us to remember-especially as
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we're inside of this podcast,
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"Remember Why You Are Here." And its whole purpose is to help you reconnect to
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and remember that-is that our missions in this life are not so much
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about "what." I really don't think they are.
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I think that "what" is like a pretty package that can change over time.
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You know, what role you're playing, what job you're in, it's like fun,
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fancy dress up clothes. But on a soul level,
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it's so much more about the "how." That's what we came here to learn, is how.
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How to be in a body, how to remain connected to ourselves,
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how to remain connected to love, as we do the things that we do.
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Over the years, I've loved listening to near-death experiences or NDE
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experiences.
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I first started being fascinated by near-death experiences in my
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teen years.
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I think I was probably 14 years old when I read Raymond Moody's
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book about near-death experiences, and Elizabeth Kubler Ross.
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And I just remember thinking like "this." Not only
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do I love these stories of dying and going home,
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dying and remembering your purpose, dying and seeing the wider picture,
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but it brought up this full body wave of remembrance inside of me.
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And it was a very somatic experience of just like,
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I remember this, I remember what this was like.
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And so I've always been fascinated by NDEs and people's accounts if their
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NDEs. It's one of the things that I do when I'm struggling with life on
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earth, is I'll listen to some NDEs.
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I find them to be very uplifting and such a good reminder.
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But one of the things I see over and over again in accounts of near-death
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experiences is people talking about exactly this,
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that they die and have these life review experiences where
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they're overlooking their whole life and they realize all along it was never
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about what they did, it was entirely about how they did it.
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And that's such a reframe for our culture that we live in,
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where there's just so much pressure on what you do.
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And it seems like that pressure comes from all sides, right?
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It's like we might've had a certain kind of pressure from our family or our
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society, our community, growing up of what the right kind of "doing" looks like.
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You know, what kind of achieving, what kind of doing.
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But then we move into other worlds, maybe healing worlds,
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maybe creative worlds, maybe worlds of activism,
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and then there's other layers of what we need to be doing,
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different kinds of things. But it's still a list of what we need to be doing.
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What if the most radical thing of all, is reframing all of that?
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It's actually not at all about what I do, but how I do it.
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And it reminds me of this one time when I was traveling in Japan,
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I got to sit in a Japanese tea ceremony.
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And I'd never been in a Japanese tea ceremony before.
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And I was really struck by how simple
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the ceremony actually was,
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but how powerful it was because there were so much
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intention,
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there were so much emphasis on the "how" in every single
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movement: like the picking up of a whisk and the putting back down of that same
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whisk. It was poetry,
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it was pure poetry watching this tea master operate.
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And it was entirely out of the space of paying such exquisite
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detail to the "how." Such exquisite detail.
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And so while the slowing down into our "how" can bring up
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sometimes unprocessed feelings and emotions and stuff,
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ultimately, and you might be feeling this right now in your nervous system,
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ultimately, it's relieving.
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Isn't it relieving to remember that like, Oh,
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I actually could never fail,
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because it's not about what I do or don't do. It's about how I do the thing.
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And the "how" is this evolving process:
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it's like as long as I'm paying attention to it,
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as long as I'm really paying attention to "how," I'm
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doing it right.
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Because ultimately what we would like is to be
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doing things out of a place of peace and love
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and compassion and openness and centeredness,
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but we might not always feel that right away.
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But us just paying attention to how we are feeling,
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is how we get there. It's almost like the road we can't help but travel down,
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our natural state as spiritual beings, as souls,
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is one of love, acceptance, openness,
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freedom, centeredness.
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And so anytime we just pay attention, actually,
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to what's going on inside of us,
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anytime we pay attention to the "how," it's like it naturally just leads us
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to that place. And it might not be right away,
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but that's always where every single road is going, every single path is going.
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That is always where you're going. It's where you come from.
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It's where you're going.
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It's the ultimate reality that surrounds you at all times.
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And so I invite you today to
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really think about the things that maybe you want to do in your
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life. And I'm sure you have a list. I have a list.
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I have a long list.
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But to ask yourself with the things on that list,
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And how do I want to do them?
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Because I've seen this over and over again, I've seen this in my business,
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that when I do something because I'm trying to
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get it done and I am crossing it off the list,
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and it feels urgent in some way, that thing only goes so far.
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But when I do something from this
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almost fluid flow-I think about someone
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practicing a martial art-that kind of energy behind
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something. When I'm really in tune with how I want to be doing it,
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how I want to be feeling when I put it out into the world,
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it goes so much further.
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So you're amplifying anything you do by just paying
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attention to this "how," giving yourself permission to let go of all
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the "what," all the things on the to-do list,
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and just paying attention to the "how." And so asking yourself maybe today,
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out of that list of things,
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what is the most important thing that you want to do?
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And then ask yourself, how, in your ideal world, would you want to do it?
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How would you feel inside of yourself?
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What would that feel like in your body to do it that way?
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To get specific if you can,
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with sensations that you would want to be feeling in your body.
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How would you want to feel in your body?
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How would you want to feel in your life?
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How would you want to feel in your relationships?
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How would you want to feel at the end of the day when you're going to bed?
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And like really feel this right now, if you can, if you have a moment,
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and the time, and now that you've felt it,
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reframe it and realize that that's actually what you want to do,
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is you want to feel that way.
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You want to do things in a way where you're able to feel that way,
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to connect into the "how." And you have the ability to do this,
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because this is your birthright. This is just who you naturally are.
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It's allowing who you naturally are to be inside of everything that you do.
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And so to ask yourself in this moment,
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in what ways can I protect my "how?" Because we
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do live in a world where there is so much pressure, there's a lot of fear,
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there's a lot of urgency,
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and it makes sense why it's there. It makes complete sense.
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And we will have to continually do this work of
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protecting how we want to do things,
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of reminding ourselves that it's important,
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this "how" is actually super important in this
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world. Because at the end of the day,
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it's not what you do that will help heal the world,
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it's how you do it.
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And we can see this in every single facet of the
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world. I think about, for example, gardening,
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and the idea of building soil, rebuilding soil.
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It's not like "what" I produce in my garden. Ideally, sure,
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I'd love to be able to feed myself from the garden and sort of exit some of
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these global food systems that we're a part of that are just... not good,
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not sustainable, not going to last, not beneficial pretty much for anybody.
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And yet when we get so focused on "the what" we're producing in this
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garden, we can really forget the "how," the process,
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the slowing down enough that I'm actually building soil,
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this is regenerative,
27:49
I'm feeding the earth as I do it.
27:53
We've forgotten the energy of "how" in our world today
27:58
and the energy of "how," that energy, where we're invited to slow down,
28:03
connect to ourselves, be aware of our inner states,
28:08
that's what's going to shift the world.
28:11
And so every time you're willing to connect back into your "how," to give
28:15
yourself permission to realize that it is how you do something,
28:19
and not what you do, that's the most important. You are healing the world.
28:25
So thank you for tuning into this podcast today,
28:29
for spending this time to be in your "how," to attune to your
28:35
inner environment. It's such an honor to be here with you.
28:39
It is such a reminder for me of why I'm here,
28:43
and it's been such a delight.
28:45
And a reminder that I have a voicemail
28:49
now, so you can leave me a voice message if you just go to
28:52
AsiaSuler.com/remember,
28:56
you will find my voice answering machine there.
28:58
You can leave me a voice message.
29:00
I have been getting messages that have been so fun so far.
29:04
And one thing I'm going to be doing is sharing some messages here on the
29:09
podcast, possibly doing some Q and A this way,
29:11
expanding on topics that people want expansion on,
29:15
and also having some feedback or follow-up information on the things that are
29:20
really lighting people up.
29:21
So in my intuitive reading for March this year,
29:25
somebody asked me to share my recipe for bee balm pesto.
29:30
And so I did that over on my newsletter. So that's another really great thing:
29:34
if you want all the updates that I will be doing as I get these voice
29:38
messages, all the auxiliary recipes, info,
29:44
just the gathering that happens there,
29:46
then definitely come on over and sign up for my newsletter.
29:50
That sign up is on the website.
29:52
You can go to asiasuler.com/innercircle and it'll take you right
29:57
there. And that's really one of my favorite ways to keep in contact and to be in
30:02
connection with you. So thank you for being here.
30:06
Thank you for taking time out of your day to sit in this moment with me,
30:10
to remember our "hows," to remember that the way we move through this world is
30:14
important, that who we are is important,
30:17
that it's so much less about what we do,
30:19
and so much more about acknowledging that who we already are is the medicine
30:24
that we need for this world.
30:27
So I am going to be tuning in next time with a really exciting announcement of
30:32
something that I've been working on for so long.
30:34
So tune in for that next week.
30:38
I have butterflies in my stomach just talking about it,
30:40
but I'm so excited I cannot wait to just spill the beans.
30:45
So with that, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day,
30:48
and I'll see you next time on Remember Why You Are Here.