A Mason's Work

TRANSCRIPT: 2026-03-01 21-20-15.wav
DATE: 2026-03-02
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[00:00] So over the past couple of weeks, we've talked a lot about how you want to focus on process
[00:05] over outcomes.
[00:07] And one of the ways you're going to get there is by moving your mindset.
[00:12] Mindset is super important in the entirety of this conversation around how do you change
[00:18] from outcomes driven to process focused.
[00:23] So before we dig deep into the mindset conversation, let's talk about work in general, either work
[00:31] with groups or work by yourself.
[00:33] It's important to understand that work emerges when you create a space for it.
[00:39] Work is not just something you do.
[00:42] It happens in relation to the space you're in.
[00:47] And when you create space for work, like mental space or things like that, you really are
[00:55] setting up an environment for the work to emerge.
[00:58] So what does it mean to set up a space?
[01:01] Creating a space is not.
[01:02] So it's easy to start with.
[01:03] It's not.
[01:04] It's not blocking your calendar.
[01:05] It's not laying out materials.
[01:07] It's not sitting in front of your to do list and just kind of waiting for things to happen.
[01:10] Those things are fine.
[01:12] But that's not really what we're talking about.
[01:13] Creating a space for meaningful work is a combination of mindset, environment and kind
[01:19] of emotional readiness.
[01:21] And the best place to start, like I said, is mindset.
[01:24] So the shift we're after is this.
[01:26] When you're focused on the outcome, you're busy kind of getting attached to what it should
[01:31] be.
[01:32] And in places where that doesn't work, where you don't really have a concrete understanding
[01:37] of what the final answer is going to be or the final product of your work is going
[01:41] to be, you get stuck and it tends to create ambiguity and the problem, the process just
[01:47] kind of stalls.
[01:49] So what we're looking for is moving in that process orientation from embracing those outcomes
[01:57] to embracing the work itself as a form of play.
[02:01] I know it doesn't sound serious.
[02:04] It doesn't sound like it's going to solve the problem.
[02:05] And we're conditioned in a lot of ways to think about work in this very sort of certain
[02:11] intense outcome focused way.
[02:14] But there's a version that's kind of much more useful and it helps a lot of us get from
[02:21] this kind of blocked state to the best work of our lives.
[02:27] And that's what play is.
[02:30] Play is a discovery process where you get to not measure yourself against yesterday.
[02:35] You're not comparing your output to your neighbors.
[02:37] You're in the joy of the experience itself.
[02:40] This discovery process where you're putting kind of new perspectives on the same experience
[02:46] or you're noticing you're moving deeply into the work that you're used to doing, noticing
[02:53] that there's still more to surface, more that it can teach you.
[02:56] Bringing a kind of curiosity to something that you may have done a lot of times before.
[03:02] That's where play really starts to kind of make sense.
[03:06] Now, this moves beyond being kind of just doing the easy stuff and being bored because
[03:11] you've done it a billion times and you just can't put your mind in it anymore.
[03:14] It's more like moving past a standardization of the outcomes to noticing the differences.
[03:21] It's loosening the grip on what it needs to be and allowing the work itself to change and
[03:30] evolve to create new and different outcomes that are maybe slightly divergent.
[03:35] Maybe they're better and maybe they're worse, but it's that exploration that really creates
[03:39] a lot of value.
[03:40] In the lodge experience, we understand this intuitively.
[03:43] A man who enters from a ritual for like the hundreds of time with the same sort of rote
[03:48] memorization that he brought the first time has never actually learned the work.
[03:52] It doesn't create the space for transformation.
[03:54] It's only when the sort of memorization activity stops and the engagement of the transmission
[04:01] portion of the conversation and the ritual really starts to deliver on the outcome.
[04:06] And that's what we're building towards over the course of this week and the series overall.
[04:12] You may have felt it before, at least briefly, when the work is going, when you can drop
[04:19] your ego for a little bit, the work just kind of moves.
[04:22] Time disappears.
[04:23] That experience you had maybe when you were a kid where the days seem to last forever and
[04:28] you only come up for air once a no-no amount of time has passed, once the needs of your physiology
[04:37] have just kind of been neglected for so long that they can't be ignored anymore because you're
[04:42] so enriched and entrenched in the work.
[04:44] This kind of experience is available to you and it is through this creating space, this
[04:50] conscious understanding of the mindset you have to bring to the table to make this work.
[04:54] It can be maintained.
[04:56] It can be created.
[04:57] And it can be intentional.
[04:58] So as we work through this, as you work to understand what this means and try and do it for yourself
[05:04] on a regular basis, the challenge here is to think about the last time maybe in your life
[05:10] that the work felt effortless.
[05:12] It felt special and intentional without being intentional and special.
[05:21] It may have taken on a character of flow.
[05:24] And when we talk about flow, we're really talking about this, this kind of place where you're not
[05:30] trying to do stuff.
[05:33] Uh, it's just happening and you're kind of along for the ride.
[05:38] Think back at the last time that that happened, try and figure out what was going on.
[05:43] What are you doing at the time?
[05:45] What made it work?
[05:47] And what knocks you off of that kind of, uh, headspace or out of that heart space?
[05:52] Uh, we'll build on this over the course of the week.
[05:54] Uh, see you next time.
[05:55] Thank you.