Latest / SECOND CLOCK™ / SEASON 6 | JUST BREATHE

Transcript

SEASON 6 | JUST BREATHE · SECOND CLOCK™

• 0:01
  I've heard it said that people can change, but only if they
• 0:04
  want to. So what would it take for you to
• 0:07
  try it? Change the way you think, feel,
• 0:10
  relate and experience situations.
• 0:13
  For me I wanted to find the truth and little by little I did
• 0:17
  become different and old conditionings gone.
• 0:22
  Then I set a new course. I refer to that as the second
• 0:26
  clock. Join me, click follow like and
• 0:29
  subscribe and let's see where this leads.
• 0:32
  Shit fuck ow Oh my God this hurts so much.
• 0:39
  How could I walk right into it? I feel like these kind of things
• 0:43
  always happen. I just finished organizing this
• 0:47
  room and now this. Those were the thoughts that
• 0:51
  were flooding through my head in a millisecond as I walked
• 0:55
  directly into my son's workout bench where there was exposed
• 1:00
  metal and it went directly into my knee.
• 1:04
  It hurts so much. And in an instant, my old way of
• 1:09
  thinking rushed back in. That internal voice that
• 1:13
  questions everything. Points, fingers, judges,
• 1:17
  accuses. I had no time to stop those
• 1:22
  thoughts. They were instant.
• 1:26
  And then I caught my breath. And in that moment there was
• 1:32
  space and just enough that I could let awareness come in.
• 1:39
  Awareness to the situation. I had hurt myself.
• 1:43
  It was unfortunate and it was painful.
• 1:47
  And those thoughts, they weren't helping.
• 1:51
  So to get more space and more time to stop thinking, I took a
• 1:57
  breath and I focused on breathing in and breathing out.
• 2:04
  And just like those thoughts came in, they left, and so did
• 2:09
  the pain. After that situation ended, I
• 2:14
  realized, could it have always been that simple?
• 2:18
  Could just stopping and taking a deep breath in a situation fix
• 2:25
  things? I sat with that thought for
• 2:29
  another hour or so, and I kept reminding myself how quickly the
• 2:34
  pain went away when I stopped thinking about all the things
• 2:40
  that I was thinking of at first. How none of those thoughts were
• 2:44
  at all beneficial to the situation.
• 2:48
  And then I remembered what they tell women that are in labor.
• 2:51
  Just breathe. Whenever the contractions come
• 2:54
  on, breathe through them. So if that's the best advice we
• 3:00
  have for women in labor, then maybe that's the best advice we
• 3:04
  have to get through things in general.
• 3:07
  So I decided to test the theory. I decided that what if every
• 3:11
  time I got frustrated, annoyed, felt some sort of injustice
• 3:18
  occurring, or felt legitimate pain, I just breathed.
• 3:25
  That's it. I took that idea on the road.
• 3:29
  I had a little bit of a cold and I boarded a plane.
• 3:33
  That's not a good combination. My congestion settled in my ear
• 3:38
  and about 30 minutes before descent, having my Airpods in
• 3:43
  started to hurt. I took them out but my ears
• 3:46
  still kept hurting. At this time I started getting
• 3:50
  hot. Like really hot.
• 3:53
  Which is interesting because normally I'm always really cold
• 3:56
  and especially on airplanes I'm freezing.
• 3:59
  So much so that on the flights I bring along extra clothes.
• 4:04
  A jacket, a sweater, I've even packed a pashmina and here I am
• 4:10
  boiling and I'm down to a shirt. So I reached up and opened the
• 4:16
  vent that controls the cold air. I directed it at my face and I
• 4:21
  sat up as tall as possible, waiting for that tiny gust of
• 4:25
  cold air to hit me. That feeling of getting hot.
• 4:30
  It wasn't helping the situation. Now I had three things to dwell
• 4:34
  on. My ear hurts.
• 4:36
  I'm hot and I have 30 minutes ahead of me and there was
• 4:39
  nowhere for me to go. So I thought, let's focus on
• 4:44
  what I can focus on. Let's tackle the heat problem
• 4:47
  first. I've taken off every garment I
• 4:50
  can. I've put my temperature control
• 4:54
  on my face. Now I've got to shift the way I
• 4:58
  think and feel about this. So I started to tell myself that
• 5:03
  I wasn't so hot. I repeated it to myself again
• 5:07
  and again and again that I actually started to feel a
• 5:12
  little cooler, just cool enough to focus back on my ear.
• 5:18
  And when I did the pain, it was still there and it felt like
• 5:22
  time was standing still, so I focused on my breathing.
• 5:28
  I started rubbing my ear because at this point I wasn't sure if
• 5:32
  my eardrum was going to burst. I know it can happen, but I
• 5:37
  didn't know if it was happening to me and as far as I was
• 5:40
  concerned, it could have been. So there I was, rubbing my ear,
• 5:47
  deep breathing and trying my best to stay cool.
• 5:52
  I did that until we reached the ground.
• 5:55
  I learned from that experience that I did the best I could in
• 5:59
  that situation. That breathing calmed me.
• 6:04
  I knew that whatever was going to happen was going to happen,
• 6:08
  so the only thing I could do was the best that I could do.
• 6:12
  I walked away from that experience realizing just by
• 6:15
  shifting the focus to breathing, you can really get through
• 6:20
  things. Shortly after that situation, I
• 6:24
  was listening to a podcast. This specific podcaster
• 6:28
  interviews all different experts and the range of topics is fast.
• 6:33
  And on this occasion, he was talking to somebody that was a
• 6:36
  master meditator, and the interviewer kept saying, it's
• 6:41
  really hard for me to meditate. My thoughts keep wandering.
• 6:46
  It's hard for me to focus on just being present.
• 6:50
  The interviewee said, just focus on your breathing.
• 6:55
  Start there. It'll redirect you back to the
• 6:58
  present moment. Here I was hearing it again.
• 7:03
  The answer is to just breathe. Breathe through those thoughts
• 7:06
  that rise up and frustrate, annoy.
• 7:11
  Breathe through conversations that are irritating.
• 7:14
  Breathe through debates you don't want to be in.
• 7:17
  Take deep breaths when you're in traffic and you're stuck.
• 7:21
  Breathe when you're reading emails that aren't kind.
• 7:25
  Breathe through painful situations.
• 7:29
  The list of places to implement and practice can go on and on.
• 7:35
  And recently I was talking to my son and I found the perfect
• 7:38
  opportunity to practice. He's a teenager.
• 7:43
  I have to say I hit the jackpot with him.
• 7:47
  He's not difficult at all, but yet he's still a teenager, which
• 7:52
  means there are going to be those moments where he's going
• 7:54
  to test me, he's going to debate things, he's going to push and
• 8:00
  push and push. On this recent occasion, we were
• 8:04
  talking and I thought the subject was pretty simple and
• 8:08
  straightforward. But that's when he decided to
• 8:11
  test my patients, test how I was going to respond, when he was
• 8:17
  going to say no again and again and again, regardless of what
• 8:22
  reasoning I was putting forth, I decided to practice breathing.
• 8:28
  I needed to bring in that space, that space for my thoughts to
• 8:34
  settle, for me to see the big picture, understand the messages
• 8:39
  that my responses were going to give.
• 8:42
  See, when you're talking to somebody in a heated
• 8:43
  conversation, the stakes can get high if you don't choose your
• 8:48
  words carefully, if you don't pace yourself.
• 8:53
  You can't control the other person, what they're going to
• 8:55
  say, how they're going to deliver it, how they're going to
• 8:59
  respond. So it's important to take a
• 9:03
  minute to pace yourself, and I did.
• 9:07
  I felt like I was in a tennis match with him back and forth
• 9:10
  and back and forth until I just slowed it all down.
• 9:15
  Every time he said something that I could do, a quick
• 9:18
  comeback, I decided there's no need.
• 9:21
  No need to speed this up, no need to create momentum in a
• 9:26
  conversation which could easily go sideways.
• 9:31
  I kept my focus on the point. The point is, I didn't think
• 9:35
  this was a big deal, but I saw that he did and I needed to hear
• 9:40
  him. I needed to understand what was
• 9:43
  making him so ready to debate. I spent a lot of time deep
• 9:48
  breathing in that conversation and it paid off.
• 9:53
  He came to his own conclusion, which was more or less aligned
• 9:58
  with mine and we got off the phone and I had no regrets on
• 10:03
  anything I said or did. That's the thing, these
• 10:08
  conversations, they don't just happen with your teenager.
• 10:12
  They happen with Co workers, friends, family, clients.
• 10:17
  They happen all the time. You get involved in things you
• 10:21
  didn't plan on and you find yourself irritated.
• 10:26
  That inner voice provoking you to defend.
• 10:31
  But more and more, I find that quieting that inner voice, it's
• 10:35
  what it takes to think clearly, to get that space, to see past
• 10:41
  the current situation, past the immediate frustration,
• 10:46
  aggravation, pain. Just breathing brings in that
• 10:52
  awareness. The awareness of the situation
• 10:55
  is most likely not going to matter or be remembered as
• 10:59
  significant in an hour, a week, a month, a year, and to give too
• 11:07
  much energy to it can create future problems.
• 11:11
  Forget about disrupting your peace, you could be disrupting
• 11:15
  your day, a relationship, a job and so on.
• 11:21
  So I keep that perspective. Who would have thought that by
• 11:25
  me walking into gym equipment, I would walk into the answer?
• 11:30
  That in that situation, when the pain struck and I let my
• 11:34
  thoughts take hold of me, even just for a moment, I would
• 11:38
  remember how I used to operate. And then I'd remember that I
• 11:42
  didn't need to do that anymore. That I could see the situation
• 11:46
  for what it is and I could decide where to put my focus and
• 11:51
  all that. It could be done by just
• 11:55
  breathing. Thanks for listening.
• 12:01
  These episodes are unscripted. They're my free flowing thoughts
• 12:04
  as I reflect back on past conversations, experiences, what
• 12:09
  I've learned would like to do better, and what's next.
• 12:13
  Join me on Thursdays for new episodes and catch up on past
• 12:15
  episodes. Click Follow, Like and subscribe
• 12:19
  and let's see where this leads.