Navigating Regret: Closure, Meditation, and Living Effectively - 203
May 28, 2024Episode 203
Sean Hansen
Ever wondered why it's so hard to let go of regret, even when we know better? Discover the profound impact of life's endings in our latest episode of The Reload. We examine the weight of closure in various forms, whether it's the loss of a loved one, the end of a career, or the dissolution of a relationship. Through personal coaching stories, I illustrate how high-achievers often wrestle with hyper-responsibility, especially in the face of betrayal or infidelity. Learn how these experiences shape our decision-making and challenge our perceptions of control.
Regret often ties us to the past, shackling us to circumstances we couldn't foresee or change. This episode breaks down why, despite our predictive capabilities, we still stumble into choices we later lament. By understanding why we fixate on past mistakes or future worries, we uncover strategies to live more effectively and fulfill our true potential. You'll gain practical insights into recognizing and mitigating the forces that lead us astray, enabling a more present and purposeful life.
Stress and poor self-care can lead even the most driven individuals to react in regrettable ways. Discover the transformative power of daily meditation as I share my personal practices that have helped manage stress and improve overall well-being. Reflecting on mortality and relationships, I offer exercises to create internal space for better decision-making, steering away from regret, guilt, and shame. This episode provides actionable advice to help you navigate life's toughest moments with grace and make empowered choices that align with your highest self.
Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.
Ever wondered why it's so hard to let go of regret, even when we know better? Discover the profound impact of life's endings in our latest episode of The Reload. We examine the weight of closure in various forms, whether it's the loss of a loved one, the end of a career, or the dissolution of a relationship. Through personal coaching stories, I illustrate how high-achievers often wrestle with hyper-responsibility, especially in the face of betrayal or infidelity. Learn how these experiences shape our decision-making and challenge our perceptions of control.
Regret often ties us to the past, shackling us to circumstances we couldn't foresee or change. This episode breaks down why, despite our predictive capabilities, we still stumble into choices we later lament. By understanding why we fixate on past mistakes or future worries, we uncover strategies to live more effectively and fulfill our true potential. You'll gain practical insights into recognizing and mitigating the forces that lead us astray, enabling a more present and purposeful life.
Stress and poor self-care can lead even the most driven individuals to react in regrettable ways. Discover the transformative power of daily meditation as I share my personal practices that have helped manage stress and improve overall well-being. Reflecting on mortality and relationships, I offer exercises to create internal space for better decision-making, steering away from regret, guilt, and shame. This episode provides actionable advice to help you navigate life's toughest moments with grace and make empowered choices that align with your highest self.
Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Reload, where we help unconventional leaders craft the life they truly want by questioning the assumptions they have about how life works. My name is Sean and I'll be your host on this journey. As a performance coach and special operations combat veteran, I help high-performing executives kick ass in their careers while connecting with deeply powerful insights that fuel their lives. All right, welcome back, and this is your first time listening in. Hopefully it's a winner, but if not, no worries, we will continue to press on. Today I wanted to talk about something that has been affecting my life and I mean the lives of all people on the planet at some point or another, and that is endings. And there are going to be a number of ways in which we attack this attack that sounds so aggressive approach about that, a number of ways in which we approach today's topic, but ultimately, it's going to be looking at where endings, such as death or job transitions or relationship endings, any manner of different ways that we reach a place of conclusion, reach a place of conclusion begin to affect our understanding of regret. So, if we look at death to start off with and why death? Well, because it grips the attention, grip is sorry. Death is one of those ultimate representations of closure, whether you wanted the person to die, which hopefully you don't have any of that in your life, but whether you did or you didn't, there is no going back. And so I think, oftentimes, when we think about closure and we think about endings, if we think about death, it is the one example that is immutable as far as we know Now. Is there an afterlife? Who knows? I certainly don't, but when we explore death, I think that is one way in which we are most capable of really tuning in to this sense that what was is now finished, never to return. Now, why would we want to explore how we have come to a certain conclusion, whether it's death or a breakup or ending a job, whatever?
Speaker 1:
Well, I think, at least based on the experiences that I have in the coaching sessions that I do, one such reasoning as to why exploring this topic in the first place is worthwhile is to begin to better assess the journey that we took to get to the conclusion that we reached, in order for us to hopefully be more effective, more powerful and I don't mean power in sort of a tyrannical way, but more in the sense of empowerment and also to hopefully limit or avoid regret. Now I have run into a select number of individuals who have told me that they don't see any point in regret and that they don't believe in regret. And if you are one of those people who truly, authentically, genuinely lives without any sense of regret, congratulations. I hope it stays that way.
Speaker 1:
But the majority of people, the vast majority of people that I've known, whether it was professionally, in my coaching, work or anywhere else, have a different experience, and especially with my kind of client, the type of person that I tend to work with. I don't have a demographic per se. I work with men, I work with women, I work with straight people, gay people, I work with public sector people, I work with private sector people, I work with combat veterans. I work with all kinds of different people, but psychographically they tend to be very similar, no matter what their background is, no matter what their job title is, their role, their career history. They tend to be individuals who take a great deal on their own shoulders, a sense of responsibility, to the point where and I actually was having a conversation with a client today who is really struggling and this particular individual yeah, I mean they do hyper-responsibility more so than anyone else that I have coached, or at the very least, they're tied for first, and so my kind of client, psychographically speaking, tends to experience quite a bit of regret and as part of the work that I do and I actually do consider it a privilege to be able to have this as part of my job my profession is that I get to be there for people during some of their hardest and most trying times of their lives, whether they're dealing with potentially a workplace fatality that they never thought would affect them, meaning that it wouldn't show up, that it wouldn't show up, or whether it's a divorce or the loss of a loved one or, you know, in any number of ways, betrayals, even infidelities. Sometimes they're the ones being unfaithful, actually, which you might think to yourself well, screw them, they're the ones being unfaithful. Hmm, yeah, but it's still. It's still a very complicated situation and at least the individuals that I have been working with they're not evil people and they're not setting out to maliciously harm their partner. And in quite likely you know, in in at least the majority of the cases where I've had this show up in my client work, the partner did not know and, to my knowledge, to this day doesn't know, at least as of the date of this recording. So it's not that they are these evil people trying to hurt others.
Speaker 1:
There's often a tremendous swirl, complex swirl of emotions and various other I don't know aspects of disappointments that have come into this, but suffice it to say no matter what the individual is facing, part of what I get to do with individuals is to help them navigate these incredibly trying times, and so I often hear a phrase and it's not always worded the same, obviously, but I hear the gist or the meaning of this phrase. If I had known, I would have done it differently. If I had known, I would have done it differently, I would have made a different choice. And that expression, whether it's phrased exactly that way or there's other wording put in, is very frequently a function of regret. And for those who are new to the show, I love going to the dictionary because I think that we can learn so much about our place in the world by studying the language that we use to interact with that world.
Speaker 1:
Our language forms the topography of conceptual understanding. Quite often, until something has a label, it's very difficult for human beings to be able to conceptualize, let alone converse with another person. But once we have a label and we have some sort of shared understanding of, okay, this is what it means to feel regret. This is what it means to feel sorrow. This is what it means to feel sorrow. This is what it means to feel joy.
Speaker 1:
Right, I don't want to focus too heavily on the darker side of that spectrum, and this may not be your private little joy, but my private little joy is looking up on the internet various idiosyncratic phrases that belong to different cultures. And I guess I don't mean idiosyncratic. What I mean is unique, because every culture has an expression that is very difficult to translate in the language of another culture, even if you actually do speak both languages fluently. And that ties in with where it is that different people have a different shared sense of what the world provides. You know, when we look at the German word Schadenfreude, this notion of taking joy in another person's sorrows or pains, this notion of taking joy in another person's sorrows or pains and you know, I mean that may say that Germans have a particular outlook on life that perhaps you don't share. But you know, point being is we have this way all cultures do, of having some commonality of experience. But what's so fascinating to me is how different cultures vary in, you know, in some cases minute ways, but in other cases larger ways, the expression of what they're seeing and what they're latching onto. So kind of a little aside there, but I love going to the dictionary to be able to recognize okay, this is the framework in which we live and this is how our actual language has shaped, our interaction with the experiences that we have, the emotions that we feel and how we communicate about those things with others.
Speaker 1:
So when we look up the word regret, there are a couple different definitions here. One is to mourn the loss or death of. It doesn't say a person, doesn't say a thing, but just generally. There's also the sense of to miss very much. There's also the sense of to miss very much. I think it gets a little bit more interesting when we look down at the noun definition. So regret as a noun sorrow aroused by circumstances beyond one's control or power to repair. That to me is quite meaningful, because when I pair that with the expression or the sentiment, I guess is more. What I mean is the sentiment when people say if I had known I would have done it differently, I would have made a different choice and we butt that up against this definition of regret as a noun Sorrow aroused by circumstances beyond one's control or power to repair, and again marry up that with death. Now, whether it's actual death or whether it's sort of metaphorical death of a relationship or a job or what have you this notion that it's beyond our ability to repair and that we feel bad about that? So I wouldn't hopefully by now, I mean, especially for people that have been listening to the show for a while hopefully you recognize that I'm not going to bring up a topic that I don't think applies in a meaningful way to helping you live a more effective life.
Speaker 1:
And effective can sound so sterile, but I don't know exactly what it is for you that you want out of this life. Do you want a more joyful life? Do you want a more spontaneous life? Do you want a more adventurous life? Do you want a more joyful life? Do you want a more spontaneous life? Do you want a more adventurous life? Do you want a more empowered life? Do you want a more inspiring life, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and I don't know. So for me, when I say effective, I'm sensing more internally, like in my own lexicon here. How do I get you, dear listener, to begin to look at, yeah, what would make me more effective in my life? What are the parameters by which I'm judging this? What's been missing such that I want to rectify it? I want to be able to have a power to repair.
Speaker 1:
Going back to this notion of if I had known, I would have chosen differently. One logical question that I think stems from that is well then, why don't we do it differently? To start, you might think to yourself ah, sean, you dunce, you simple-headed, simple-minded idiot. If we had known, we would do it differently. But we don't know, so that's why we don't do it differently. Ah, ah, ah, I gotcha Okay. So what you're telling me there is, we're all mortal creatures. Humans don't see the future. Therefore, we can't know that something might have a bad ending. We can, you know, we can definitely sort of make forecasts and predictions, and, in fact, the human mind spends most of its time in the future or in the past.
Speaker 1:
And just think about your own daily experience. How often are you actually really truly present? And if you think you were, if you're like, oh, I think I, you know, like yesterday, I think I was like pretty present Then you weren't. All of the people that I've worked with, and my own experiences on top of that, and all the books that I've read about meditation and being present, all of these different sources have indicated that when you are present, you know deeply. There is a markedly different sensation inside of us when we are present, as opposed to when we are either ruminating about the past, which is often known as depression, or suffering anxiety about the future. So to really think down deep inside yourself yeah, how many times have I actually really truly been present? So then it's not that far of a stretch to say, well, yeah, we probably spend most of our time thinking about the future, whether it's what you want to eat, what TV show you're going to watch tonight, what are you going to do this weekend? Where are you going to go on vacation in a few months? What are you going to do for Christmas, whatever.
Speaker 1:
But human minds, I should say human minds have tremendous skill and facility in thinking about the future. Else, why would human evolution have gone from hunter-gatherers to individuals who have put people in outer space, if we had just purely been living in the moment, hand to mouth, with no further capacity for forward thinking. I am willing to put a decent amount of money maybe not all my money, but a decent amount of my money on the fact that we probably wouldn't have gotten this far from a technological complexity, sophistication point of view. So this notion of regret tied to not being able to anticipate or project that a relationship, project, job, etc, whatever seems false. So this notion that I can only do it differently if I know how it's going to end before it ends, doesn't seem to hold very much water. Now there's some other reasons why maybe human beings don't do it differently from the start If, when they reach the conclusion, they have sorrow and regret about how it ended.
Speaker 1:
And for this, I don't know, fill in the blank with whatever difficult relationship you have encountered whether it was personal, professional, familial, doesn't matter and just think, you know. Think about something that didn't go well. Think about something that didn't go well, something that ended with one or both parties feeling pain and realizing where it was, that you did not show up in a way that your better self, your higher self, whatever you want to call it, your angelic self, would have wanted or would have been proud of, for instance. And what kept you from acting that way? What kept you from being that higher self, being that higher self?
Speaker 1:
Some of the common ones that my clients get to sort of rehash when we go through our conversations are they're distracted, distracted by the imminent stressors of their day, all of the I have to's, which is part of the reason why, on so many episodes, I just rail against the notion of have to, because I think we can do a lot more in our world. We can be far more empowered if we focus on get to and want to, and that we really truly own our want to and we don't make excuses about oh well, I have to do this and I have to do that. And that may not sound very compassionate or very forgiving, but I think we can step up to a higher level of performance. We can step up to a higher level of performance, we can step up to a higher level of responsibility when we own our want to. But so frequently we end up allowing ourselves to be distracted by this notion of have to and it creates a sense of stress for us.
Speaker 1:
I don't want to do this thing, but I have to because it's my job. Well, you want your job? No, I don't. Do you want the paycheck that comes from your job? Well, yeah, I guess Do you want the stuff or the experiences that you buy for yourself or others that comes from the paycheck that comes from your job? Now, sure, there are probably aspects of one's job that are not very pleasant or boring or contentious, but owning the entirety of that chain and staying connected to the rewards that come with the job that has certain aspects that you don't like actually allows you to stay connected to oh yeah, well, actually, I've made a choice. I've made a choice to have this job because I want the things that it provides. Now, is that saying that you have to stay at that job for the rest of your life? No, of course not. And if it really truly is that distasteful, well, you can probably find a different job that still provides a paycheck. Maybe it's a little bit smaller, maybe it's a lot smaller, who knows?
Speaker 1:
I've had clients that felt that they had amassed enough financial security in their life that they then chose a job that paid way less than what they were making before, but it had amazing, amazing gosh, I cannot talk today. It had amazing trade-offs in terms of time, in terms of freedom, schedule freedom and they were no longer as concerned with the money, but again they had to own it. But in the meantime, as long as we are stuck in all of our have-tos, we feel this sense of imminent stress. I have this deadline that I have to meet, doubling up on your have-tos there. I have this deadline that I have to meet, doubling up on your have-tos there.
Speaker 1:
Another reason why or at least as far as what people cite is I didn't act differently towards this person because I was caught up in a sense of mistrust. That can be really difficult, especially if there is a history of conflict in that relationship, specifically breach of trust conflict. You know, sometimes it's romantic, meaning infidelity, sometimes it's simply professional and you've been burned by somebody that said they would take care of something in the past and they didn't, and then one of your quote-unquote have-tos bit you on the ass and it was unpleasant for you or painful for you, or it can be any number of different trust violations. The most obvious ones are when somebody says they're going to do something and then they don't, and that's tied in a very anthropological way to hunter-gatherer days, if you think about when you well, most of us living today have not really experienced this.
Speaker 1:
I, fortunately or unfortunately did actually experience a life in the military when I was deployed overseas and in combat zones where if one of my teammates said that they were going to take care of something, whether that was searching their sector to make sure there were no explosive hazards because that was what my job was was disarming explosive devices or whether it was one of my security personnel holding security on a certain section of the city that we were in so that if we started getting shot at that, I would have somebody to cover my retreat. These types of activities when somebody said that they were going to do something, it was actually quite relevant to my immediate survival and that's part of human history. There was a time when human tribes roamed the earth. Try not to get too much into my National Geographic narrator voice here, but there was this time when we roamed the earth in tribes and it really did actually matter to our survival that every person in the tribe pulled their weight, did what they said they were going to do, and so trust is deeply woven into our fiber and I think it's gotten a lot easier for us to live kind of fast and loose with the truth these days generally, because our lives are not hanging in the balance of somebody doing what they said they were going to do, unless you're in one of those rare circumstances maybe you're a first responder, or again you're in the military, or there's some other way in which there are dire life-threatening consequences to someone in the team or in the relationship not doing what they said they were going to do.
Speaker 1:
But this sensation of mistrust can deeply derail our ability to do it differently if we had known that there was going to be a bad outcome. And oftentimes, when our trust has been betrayed, we often feel that the other person kind of deserves it if things go badly. And the interesting piece to this part of the conversation is that this entire episode is not actually about the other person having a good ending. It's about you avoiding regret. And what's interesting to me, when I've done this myself in my own life because you, betcha, I do this stuff too right I am not some paragon of virtue. I try really hard to be a better, more enlightened, more aware person, but there are many, many times where I fail, where I end up in a place of regret, where I say to myself if I had known I would have done it differently, and where I am caught sometimes in a sensation of mistrust.
Speaker 1:
And what's interesting is when I am in that sensation, and when clients of mine have been in that sensation as well, we often act in a very spiteful way and in the moment it can feel ooh, so gratifying. Can't wait till he or she or they get theirs or his or hers. Can't wait, I cannot wait. You know, you got your fingers kind of steepled like the stereotypical villain. You just it's going to be amazing Can't wait for them to fall on their face, can't wait for them to feel the sting of being let down, being betrayed themselves.
Speaker 1:
And after that initial gratification wears off, people land in this place of regret and oftentimes embarrassment, and oftentimes embarrassment. And then oh, you know, for good measure oftentimes a sense of guilt and a sense of shame come with it, because we knew that we could have been a better person. We knew somewhere deep down even though we weren't feeling it at the moment, but we knew it somewhere that maybe we should have elevated this experience instead of dragging it down one notch further. But this also again blinds us from our ability to choose differently in the moment instead of, you know, reaching that conclusion and recognize, oh. Instead of reaching that conclusion and recognize, oh yeah, I did not handle myself well through that relationship that ended. Another reason that people eventually reach sometimes it depends on the circumstances that they're facing, but they are very frequently overwhelmed or otherwise have a sense of being under-resourced. And this one, in certain ways, I think, is more tactical, more actionable, more tactical, more actionable.
Speaker 1:
One example that comes right to the top of my mind right here is where clients have told me that they started acting in a way that they didn't like. A common one for the types of folks that I work with is they start yelling at their people, whether that's at home or at work or both. They start yelling, physically, yelling at another adult and when it happens at work, ostensibly a very professional, experienced, well-trained adult, highly educated, because the people that I work with typically have multiple degrees and the people that work with work with typically have multiple degrees and the people that work with them also typically have multiple degrees and they're going to start yelling like they're all children. Probably sounds a little different, but hey, got to make you laugh somehow and it's often that sense of overwhelm, this emotional pressure, that leads to that explosion. And when I ask them huh, wow, that sounds pretty intense. How do you think you got there?
Speaker 1:
They usually start to say things like oh, I haven't been sleeping that well. They usually start to say things like oh, I haven't been sleeping that well, no, okay, well, why not? Oh, you know, I'm stressed, okay, about what Work, family, the new house we're building, whatever, whatever your thing is, or things. Okay, what have you been doing to minimize that stress or depressurize in some way? How's the meditation been going? Oh, well, yeah, I haven't been meditating. Oh, okay, why not? Well, it was going so well I didn't think I needed it.
Speaker 1:
Now, mind you, I have said the exact same thing, so this is a very common experience. So I'm going to make a little pitch here, a little side story pitch, that meditation should be in your life every day. And you're going to tell me I don't have time for that. Well then, you should double up every day. And you're going to tell me I don't have time for that. Well then, you should double up every day. If you can't cut aside at least two minutes, 120 seconds in your day to ground yourself, to check in with your breathing and your blood pressure meaning lowering your blood pressure, unless you have medically low blood pressure to begin with. But if you don't have two minutes in your day, then you are doing something horribly wrong. You are mismanaging your day terribly. I'm just going to come right out and say that you do not have a single client, not one who has created for themselves a daily meditation ritual and who has not greatly benefited from it, and who has then been harmed by dropping it. And when I talk with my coach friends and coach colleagues, same story Do you need to sit on a cushion and say OM for an hour?
Speaker 1:
No, absolutely not. To meditate properly, do you ever have to say the word OM? No, you meditate all kinds of different ways and there are a myriad number of apps out there that can guide you through the beginner steps of meditation until you figure out yeah, what types of meditation do I like? What about meta-meditation, which has more to do with, I guess, connecting with a sense of compassion for self and others, connecting with a sense of compassion for self and others? What about Vipassana meditation, which tends to be more of the kind of mind-focusing style of meditation? What about moving meditation? Yeah, you can meditate while you're moving and guess what Some people call meditation prayer Great 100%, no problem. Prayer Great 100%, no problem.
Speaker 1:
But ultimately you are attempting to create some sort of space inside yourself that separates you from your perceived daily whirlwind metaphorical whirlwind so that you don't get so caught up in a sense of overwhelm that then, in turn, limits your ability to show up as a higher self, to be able to actually do it differently from the start, instead of waiting for a shitty ending and then being mired in regret and also, potentially, guilt and shame. From what I've observed, those three often travel together, and I notice so frequently for my clients and for myself as well. My friends, my family it's all over the place, and it's not a fun wholesome feeling, and so the reason that I'm talking about this is because I want you whether you are a client of mine, because many of my clients do listen to my show, thank you or whether you're just some random person that I will never meet, I don't want you to feel connected to that terrible sensation. I don't want you to feel connected to that terrible sensation. I want you to be able to make a better choice so that you can live a life that feels better to you and that allows you to stay focused on the wonderful things that you can create in this lifetime, because this lifetime is tremendously short. Even if you live to be 100 years old, it will still most likely feel at the end like it was too short. And part of my passion for this topic and part of my passion for coaching in general is the fact that when I was on my combat deployments, I was almost killed numerous times and I watched colleagues, comrades, teammates leave this earth all too soon, some in their teens, some in their 20s, some in their 30s, but, by most likely any person's definition, all too soon, and this also includes the opposition.
Speaker 1:
Now, is it possible that some of the people that we faced in combat were regular people quote-unquote, meaning not criminals, not professional terrorists that had it in their heart to spread evil and to spread malevolence around the world? Yes, most definitely. From my understanding granted, I've never been inside of Al-Qaeda or ISIS or anything like that, but from my understanding, there's often sort of a core nucleus of individuals that have been, I don't know, maybe warped from childhood trauma or who knows how they got the way that they are. But who are these true diehards, these true fanatics that are willing to spread, with a genuine sense of malevolence inside their spirit, hurtful and harmful activities. But then the majority of the rest of the organization is made up of people that are potentially lost, are connected to some element of the organization, and not necessarily the darker, more malicious components.
Speaker 1:
And I'm certainly not going to be the individual that says, hey, the United States is always doing it the right way and we're just the good guy all the time. No, that's also not true. In part, because when you engage in combat and forgive me for this sort of seemingly unrelated aside but when you engage in combat and you engage for this sort of seemingly unrelated aside, but when you engage in combat and you engage in the taking of life, unless you are actually and this is my belief right, this is just take it for whatever it's worth. I'm just representing myself, but my belief is that unless you are physically defending your life and the life of your family, it becomes very, very tricky for us to justify the taking of human life. Was I willing to tread in those waters? Clearly, because I joined the military in those waters. Clearly, because I joined the military.
Speaker 1:
But I can recognize that we often act in a way trying to achieve a certain objective because we see elements that are worth pursuing, even if we also see elements that are distasteful, and I think this might be another. I didn't put this in my notes, so I'm sort of operating off the board here, operating off the board here, but I think we often end up in a place. If I think back to some of the stories that people have told me about how they ended up at a negative result the ending of a relationship, the ending of some sort of chapter of their life and they recognize that they didn't act the way that they wanted to, the way that they wanted to. And in reverse engineering that and trying to figure out where the root cause was, I think they often come to this recognition that there were elements that they were trying to pursue and mixed in with those other reasons I gave earlier, distracted by imminent threats, caught in mistrust, feeling overwhelmed that they lost their way. And one of my clients right now he likes to joke about how he and his wife will end up in these arguments at times. It's become noticeably less throughout the coaching, thank you, but they'll end up in these arguments sometimes and days will go by and they will no longer even recognize anymore what they're mad about or what they were fighting about in the first place, but they continue to be angry, they continue to be entrenched and this, I think, is also this losing of our way.
Speaker 1:
And one of the things that I wonder sometimes is when we're in these prideful, ego-driven entrenchments where you're not going to be the one to say I'm sorry, you're not going to be the one to make the first or extend the first olive branch, as it were, if the person that was on the other side of that argument from you suddenly dropped dead, how would you feel, how would you feel that it ended that way? And admittedly, most of the time it doesn't end that way, most of the time it ends with somehow, some way, both parties kind of start talking again. But it does make me wonder what benefit would come from, or what benefit would come through, in a deliberate exercise, in trying to visualize, okay, this person that I'm so angry with, this person that I am so mistrusting of, yet still care about, still want them in my life, whether it's personal or professional, for whatever reason or reasons professional for whatever reason or reasons what if that relationship ended without my power to repair? And if we, just for the sake of exercise, kept that in mind. You know whether we had to write it on post-it notes and put it all over our computer screen or whatever like.
Speaker 1:
However it is that you need to put reminders in your day. What would that do for us? How would that affect the trajectory of our choices? You know, if you look at Greek and Roman stoicism and there was an episode that I did, I don't know, maybe like two years ago, I can't remember, and it talked about you are going to die and the Greek and Roman Stoics from way back when had a phrase memento mori, remember that thou art mortal. Had a phrase memento mori, remember that thou art mortal. And that expression was an attempt to remind them. It was part of a, for some of them, a daily ritual to remind them to be present, to remind them to appreciate what was immediately in front of them, to remind them to show up as the person that they wanted to be, that their angelic self wanted them to be, instead of allowing themselves to be mired in mistrust, to be mired in stress, to be mired in overwhelm, so that our lower baser self shows up because we feel so strapped. Anyway, I think that's all I've got to say about that.
Speaker 1:
Hopefully this is useful for you and I would implore you to try it. Whatever language you need to use, how will you remind yourself that you are mortal, that the person across from you, the one that you are in an argument, is mortal, and potentially it requires reflecting on times in the past where you didn't have the opportunity to fix it, you didn't have the opportunity to make it all better and the other person was simply gone. How did that work for you? How would you do it better? So, if you've been enjoying the show, today was, I guess, ended a bit heavy. Sorry about that, but if you've been enjoying the show, or you, you find that it's maybe not enjoyable, but it's worthwhile. I would love it if you would like subscribe, share, follow, etc. Etc. Or don't, it's totally up to you. Until next time, try to take care of each other.