Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:03 Welcome to the doctors week show where I show you how bad States of mind, difficult life issues. Aren't pathological, but rather signs of personal growth trying to happen. All right, let's get into it. Hey people dr. Z here, good morning or afternoon, or in my case, middle of the night, how are you doing? I hope you feel well and are on track in your life. But if not, no worries. There are lots of ways to process and transform. What's bothering you in the last few episodes I shared with you how your problems are not pathologies to just try to get rid of, but meaningful processes that aim at personal change and growth. In this episode, I'm going to introduce you to the whole topic of processing your problems. And at the end, I'll give you a really simple exercise to try over time. You'll discover that these methods are helpful for dealing with all kinds of issues, depressed, moods, anxious, feelings, trauma, relationship, conflicts, career troubles, inner critics, the whole range of problems we experience.
Speaker 0 00:01:28 Now, when I say processing your problems, I don't mean trying to zap them away nor do. I mean, just trying to understand them. I don't even mean trying to change how you think or feel about a certain issue. I mean, experiencing its underlying meaning and purpose in your life and using this awareness to transform it, to make real change, you have to go through an experiential process. Thinking is great, but it can only take you so far and it can easily get off track without you knowing since it's often hard to verify whether your ideas about yourself are right or wrong. So instead of thinking through your problems, I'm going to show you how to tap into an experience of the deeper process. That's driving them. Answers solutions and directions will happen organically rather than us trying to super impose ideas and interpretations onto your experience.
Speaker 0 00:02:30 After experientially connecting with your process analysis can be really helpful, but only afterwards, the rule is this experience. First analysis, second, otherwise you follow a bunch of ideas without ever really knowing if they're right for you or not. Now, how do you experience your process by using your senses? Seeing hearing, feeling, and moving to engage with your perceptions. This involves far more than just observing what's going on in yourself. Like for example, one does in mindfulness meditation, although that is an initial element of the work, it requires interacting with your thoughts, feelings, and personality, parts by dialoguing, play, acting, visualizing, and embodying and expressing your experiences physically. You won't just learn about yourself. You'll learn how to embody and habit own become your authentic process. Your problem is only the starting point. It's the seed for your process. We usually perceive it as an end point, a painful disturbance to your life with no purpose other than to make you miserable.
Speaker 0 00:03:50 But this viewpoint misses the fact that even though your problems feel like crap, they happen in order to challenge your self awareness, mindset, beliefs, and identity. In order to wake you up and connect you with something new, it's your growth trying to happen. It's not just a bad effect or an unfortunate, meaningless obstacle in your life. In fact, once you dive into your process, your problem begins to morph and change. It starts out as a mysteriously, messed up part of your life. But as soon as you engage with it, it loses its original form and becomes merely a springboard for your development. What seemed like a fixed static condition. You want it to zap away becomes a fluid process and unfolding story that transforms your consciousness. This is a paradigm shift in how you perceive and relate to yourself and the world. And it changes how you deal with your problems.
Speaker 0 00:04:57 There's a brilliant Albert Einstein quote that says you can't solve a problem by using the same kind of thinking that created the problem applied to personal growth. This doesn't only mean you'd need to change how you think it means that thinking itself is a limited tool for solving your life issues. The reason is that the core elements of a problem often happen on a level of our psyches. That's inaccessible to mere thought, try telling someone with a phobia to be more rational and stop their weird behavior. Ain't happening. Tell yourself to think positive thoughts when you're in the grips of a deep depression, not so easy. Having someone tell you that your worries are irrational or even that they're caused by trauma may give you some insight, but it won't necessarily change your problem. You can't think your way through your trauma. You have to process it viscerally.
Speaker 0 00:05:57 Then you'll arrive at true understanding as well. Talk therapy is great, but it limits you to processes that your thoughts can influence. Unfortunately, many of our deeper processes are immune to thinking strategies. I mean, you can definitely change some things by altering how you think it just won't go very deep deriving answers directly from your inner experience rather than from what other people tell you you should or shouldn't do connects you with your true process. Not just an idea of what it is. In fact, following what others tell you to do can sometimes be damaging people mean well, but they usually tell you what they would do. And it may or may not be your process to do so. The methods I'm going to teach you bypass all the brilliant, but often flawed ideas we have about ourselves and others have for us, one of the most prevalent fallacies in psychology therapy and self-help is that problems are generalizable.
Speaker 0 00:07:05 If you've got this problem, you should do X. If you've got that problem, you should do. Y people eat that stuff up because it's simple, it's intuitive. And it sounds right, but it's not. I remember in my psychology training, my teachers kept spouting cliches. Like no one size fits all and everyone is unique, but they could never give me an answer. When I pointed out that everything they taught was a generalization. The individualized aspect was totally superficial. There are patterns say in people with depression or anxiety, but the patterns are so general. They're meaningless. When I lived in Zurich, I worked with hundreds of severely depressed people, and I rarely saw the same process twice. Each of us is a one of a kind character. No one can predict what the process underlying your problem wants you to do, or how it wants you to be.
Speaker 0 00:08:05 You have to discover this in the moment in integrating what you discover will transform the problem. It's totally individual. And it even changes within you. There are no set answers. So my aim here isn't to get you to be a certain way, but rather to discover your way in this moment, you might need to be calm and peaceful today and fierce as a mofo tomorrow. There's no one correct way to be. This is different from most other personal growth methods in that they usually have a goal of getting you into a particular idealized state of mind, which is seen as the solution to your life problems. For example, some methods are designed to pump you up and get you ready to take on the world. Other methods, aim to induce inner centeredness and tranquility some aim at teaching you to be clear and rational towards your irrational emotions.
Speaker 0 00:09:06 Some want you to be more vulnerable and open while others preach mental and physical toughness. As the ideal state of being, I call these preferred States. And in a future episode, I'll get more into this, but for now what's important to know is that the methods I'm going to teach you are for tapping into your unique process, not for trying to get you into a specific state of mind. This means following the organic changes that are continually trying to happen in you, the various idealized States of mind, I just mentioned are great. If that's what your process wants in a given moment, but in the big picture, your life, isn't just one state of mind. It's an ongoing experience of your own meaningful changing States of mind. Okay? So far I've emphasized that rather than relying on thinking as your main tool, you're going to use experience as your guide.
Speaker 0 00:10:03 I've also stressed the fact that you're going to engage with your experience in a way that uncovers your unique process, not in a way that intentionally tries to get you to attain a specific predetermined state of mind. Now there's another element in these methods that may be the most unusual or surprising to you. Usually when you work on a problem, you focus on it the whole time you work on it, right? Duh, you, you try to figure it out by yourself or you talk about it to your partner or a friend, or you go to a therapist. Well, that's not what we're going to do. You'll start by focusing on it, but then you're going to follow your perceptions as they organically lead you away from the problem. This is the core of what a processes you see. Your problem is only the starting point.
Speaker 0 00:10:56 Once you dive into your experience of it, it's original form will begin to change. And as the process unfolds in real time, it will slowly lead you to discover the intrinsic directions and solutions trying to come forth to transform you. Most methods, keep you focused on the original form of your problem. The whole time they're static. After working on it for an hour, you're still focusing on it as it was an hour earlier, it hasn't changed the terrain hasn't shifted so that you're now on a new road. You're trying to change you, meaning how you react to your problem. But the problem itself remains intact. That don't get me wrong. Changing how you react to something can help you a lot. It can give you some distance from your dramas and help you disentangle somewhat, but it won't transform the problem itself to do this.
Speaker 0 00:11:52 You have to discover and integrate its meaning and purpose. And what is that meaning and purpose? I have no idea because your process is totally unique to you. It will lead you to a new awareness, a new way of being a new orientation to yourself in life. Your problem is your catalyst for change, but we don't know what that change is until you engage with your process. And let me be clear. The issues you struggle with, especially the acute and chronic ones. Don't just want you to make a little change in your life. Like think more positively or rationally, or even have insight into the origin of your problem. Although those things are important and great. Your problems want revolution in your life. They have a rock and roll message for you. They want you to transform your consciousness. Whoa, I just got excited about this. Uh, I think I got to go play my guitar for a minute back in a flash.
Speaker 1 00:13:06 <inaudible>
Speaker 0 00:14:10 Phew. Okay. How to express myself like that for a second. That's my process. So what exactly are you going to learn from these methods? Here are 10 practical things. Number one, how to control and direct your focus. Number two, how to change your States of mind. Number three, how to discover the message in your problem. Number four, how to transform specific problems like depressed moods, anxious, feelings, worry, conflict, self-criticism self doubt, et cetera, into personal power and enlightenment. Number five. How to discover the meaning and purpose of your physical symptoms. Number six, how to change a relationship dynamic, number seven, how to gain access to and work with the subconscious parts of your mind that create your reality. Number eight, how to think metaphorically instead of literally, and use your imagination to transform your reality. Number nine, how to develop a positive attitude, no matter what's happening in your life.
Speaker 0 00:15:29 And number 10, how to have fun while working on yourself and develop compassion and love for who you are. And here are seven important things I recommend for doing the exercises. Number one, set up a daily ritual for working on yourself, to create positive change in your life. You need to develop a habit of focusing on your process. You already have a whole lot of rituals. You perform every day, whether you realize it or not, some are good for you. And some aren't rituals. Our behavioral habits, we adopt for various reasons. Exercising every morning is one of mine. Some people go straight to their computer to check their email in the morning. That's a ritual to reading the newspapers. Also one, we fill our days with these sorts of things. Having a ritual of working on your process is one of the best things you can do for yourself.
Speaker 0 00:16:26 It heightens your awareness, increases your effectiveness in life and sends a message to your subconscious. That you're serious about making real change. So have the care and compassion for yourself to set aside a time and place each day. Even if it's just for a few minutes, the world won't fall apart. And if it does, you can process it. Personal transformation doesn't happen all by itself once in a while. It does, but it usually requires an intervention by you. If you're like most people, you spend a lot of time and energy avoiding and managing around your problems. You watch too much TV, spend hours, mindlessly surfing the internet, eat too much, work too much or too little drink, too much rely on too many medications or bury yourself in your relationships to the point of self numbing. So let's use some of that time and energy to get you moving in the direction you need to go in your life.
Speaker 0 00:17:30 If you're super busy or live in a hectic environment, don't use these as excuses. There are a million excuses you can use to avoid yourself. You're important and special enough to do this. Take charge of the situation and make it happen. Schedule it. This action in itself is already an important step in your personal growth. It's like starting an exercise program. It's not easy, but the payoff is going to be big. When you sit down to do this work each day, always have a pen and paper or your phone with you to jot down your thoughts, feelings, memories, insights, and questions. Keep your notes together in a journal. So you can refer back to previous sessions. This will provide you with meaningful continuity in your personal evolution. In addition, you can use writing itself to help you facilitate the inner dialogue sessions. We're going to do number two, create a friend group to do this work.
Speaker 0 00:18:29 No one can process everything on their own, other people's perceptions ideas. And sometimes just their presence will be of great benefit to you. This doesn't mean you shouldn't work on yourself when you're alone. It means create a social structure to share your experiences and to get and give feedback. If you don't have any friends to do this with, or you're too shy to create such a group online, no worries. Start by yourself and see if you can find some people in the future. Number three, get physically fit. Why? Because there's a direct and powerful connection between physical fitness and awareness. Awareness is your main tool for transforming your life. So do everything you can to cultivate and Polish it getting in shape will really help you in changing what plagues you. Number four, here's what kind of attitude I recommend you bring to this work?
Speaker 0 00:19:29 Exploration, curiosity, even fun. Don't make it into some kind of surgery experience. Don't get over serious, relax, be playful. Don't feel like you have to solve something right away or immediately figure it all out. Create as much space as you can around your problem and give yourself time. Patience is so important. Something's changed overnight. And some things take years. Our processes have their own timing. So be kind and compassionate to yourself, pace yourself. And don't forget to love yourself. Sometimes we need to use tough love to give ourselves the discipline and courage to deal with something, but don't be overly strict on yourself. And of course don't be lazy and avoidant either number five until you've had some real life experience with this approach, you're going to have to go a bit on faith. You'll need to trust that. Not only can you discover the hidden message in your problems, but that doing so will transform them.
Speaker 0 00:20:35 When I work on myself, the implicit idea I operate under is that my problem has a meaningful message. I can discover. I may already know all sorts of things about my problem, but I don't yet know the key that can unlock its mystery. So I have to approach it with a beginner's mind. I have to allow myself to be curious and explore so that I'm open to learning something new. And my process can show me the direction I need to move in. In other words, trust in the power of transformation, number six, consider problems that seem to originate outside yourself. For example, in your relationships at your job or in the world as reflections and extensions of your inner process, as well as being external situations and number seven, consider your physical health problems as expressions of your psychological and spiritual process, as well as being medical issues.
Speaker 0 00:21:39 All right, are you ready to do a simple exercise, grab a glass of water, a pen and paper and whatever else you need and let's do it. You can't change. What's going on within you. If you aren't aware, awareness is something we all have, but we don't all use it in the same way. It usually uses us. Instead of us using it, we tend to be on automatic because we let our awareness go wherever it wants in this exercise, we're not going to work on a problem, but rather on your capacity to observe what's going on inside of you and to control your focus. It's basic like learning a C major scale. If you do mindfulness meditation, you'll already be familiar with this. If you haven't ever meditated, then welcome to the world of doing nothing, nothing but being aware. Okay? Sit in a comfortable chair, straighten your back. If you can close your eyes and focus your attention on your breath, You don't need to breathe in any specific way.
Speaker 1 00:23:14 Just watch your breath, breathe, breathe, breathe. Just observe yourself breathing. Notice if your breaths are short and tight or long and flowing somewhere in between. Notice any sensations in your chest, mouth or nose. Okay? Now relax your focus. And in the same way, begin to observe your inner thoughts, but don't get involved in them. Don't engage or try to change anything. Observe them without participating. Watch yourself from the outside. Let your thoughts come in and go out. Just like your breaths. Observe them coming and going like clouds, drifting across the sky. Just let it all happen.
Speaker 1 00:26:36 And if you suddenly realize you've lost touch with your inner observer and are lost in the flow of your thoughts gently, bring your focus back to your breath and begin again, watch your breath and then observe your thoughts. Okay. Now notice what you feel. Happy, sad, frustrated, bored blank, but don't get into the feelings. Just acknowledge them, watch them, witness them, name them and let them be. And again, if you feel you're lost in the flow of them, begin again with your breaths and then focus on what you're feeling from an outside standpoint. Now feel your physical sensations like relaxation, aches, pains, pressures, and so on. But again, don't do anything to alter them. Let them be exactly how they are zero in on their specific location and the details of how they feel.
Speaker 1 00:29:39 Does a certain sensation feel soft and warm, tingly, hot and dry tents and nodded up cold and numb name the sensation and let it be just observe it when you're ready, gently and slowly open your eyes and just take a moment to notice your state of mind. Great work. Here's some questions for you to ponder. What did you notice about your capacity to observe yourself without getting involved in the contents of your experience? Was it difficult? Did certain experiences draw you in and make it harder for you to state attached? Did you get entangled in your thoughts, feelings, or physical sensations, or were you able to just observe them from the outside? If you want to turn off the podcast to make notes about your answers, or if you need more time, go ahead and do that. And I will continue. What's your mind racing from thought to thought or was it calm and centered or somewhere in between? What kinds of feelings did you notice? Were they ones you often have or brand new ones? Did you notice any areas
Speaker 0 00:32:40 Of physical discomfort? If so, were these aches and pains brand new or something you already knew about? Were you distracted by sounds in your environment? If so, was it easy or difficult to bring your focus back to your inner world? And finally, what experience, if any surprised you during the exercise, you've just learned how to take control of your awareness. You did this by sitting quietly, closing your eyes, following your breath, and then observing your thoughts, feelings and physical sensations from a neutral detached perspective, do this every day for five or 10 minutes or more. And you'll be surprised how it makes you feel more centered by creating distance between you and your inner experiences. This is mindfulness meditation. People use it as a method unto itself. However, it's only the very first step for processing your problems. Your awareness is like a muscle. The more you exercise, your intentional focus, like you just did the stronger it'll get, but this alone won't transform your problems. It'll help you with your relationship to them, but to experience true transformation, you have to go into your problem with your awareness, not just observe it from the outside, but one step at a time. I'll see you in the next episode, stay aware you can follow me on social media@doctorsawakeandyoucansignuponthemailinglistatdoctorswake.com, where you'll receive discounts on private coaching events and merchandise starting 20, 21 weekly personal growth tips and lots more be well.
