A Mason's Work

[00:00] So yesterday I said that your feelings are better sort of navigation instruments than
[00:05] your numbers, that your dashboard, the signals your body is sending you all the time and
[00:10] in real time are what's actually working and more reliable than the kind of roadmap of
[00:16] objectives you wanted to achieve that you drew back in January during your resolution.
[00:21] I want to make it more practical today because I know that trust your feelings sounds like
[00:27] Star Wars and it belongs on a motivational poacher with a cat or something.
[00:33] This is actually serious though.
[00:36] The feelings that you have are really the driving force underneath the MacGuffin that you set up,
[00:46] the goal that you put aside to gain weight, lose weight, gain muscle, lose muscle, make
[00:54] money, change jobs, whatever.
[00:57] All of those wantings that you had, all those feelings got translated into a goal and the
[01:04] feeling isn't itself even the destination.
[01:07] We've talked a little bit about this.
[01:09] The emotional content that we're shooting for, the kind of place you wanted to go isn't a
[01:15] destination.
[01:16] It's a filter.
[01:17] It's a way of being in the world.
[01:20] Here's what that means in practice.
[01:21] So let's say you do the work of getting underneath your MacGuffin and you find something you like.
[01:27] Let's say you want more fun in your life, like real fun, whatever it is, the funny stuff,
[01:32] right?
[01:33] The feeling that maybe everything shouldn't be taken so seriously.
[01:36] That's a legit desire and it's specific enough to work with it, right?
[01:41] The old way of solving that problem would be to try and convert it into a trophy or an
[01:46] object, sign up for something, go take a class, whatever.
[01:51] But here's the thing about fun, right?
[01:54] It isn't like just a destination.
[01:58] It's an experience.
[02:00] So instead of saying, how do I get more fun into my life?
[02:06] You say, will this be funny?
[02:09] Will this present moment that I'm in right now, is there humor in it?
[02:14] Does this decision that I'm making, does this planning that I'm doing, is there fun in it
[02:21] in the moment?
[02:24] And that moves this from a desire that someday off in the future that you'll have and into
[02:32] the right now.
[02:34] And when you move stuff into the present moment and allow the feelings to modify what you're
[02:41] experiencing, it changes everything it touches.
[02:44] So let's go through that in maybe some other ways, right?
[02:48] Because this translation isn't always the easiest thing to do.
[02:53] Let's say you have this genuine desire to be more authentic, whatever that means.
[03:02] One version of yourself might have been the person, you know, before you heard the series
[03:07] of podcasts, you might've been like, well, I need to go find myself.
[03:10] I need to figure out who I am or what that is.
[03:12] When in fact, the better question is what's more me right now.
[03:19] When you move these things into the present moment, you gain agency and autonomy right now.
[03:29] It's not conditional.
[03:31] It's not this identity.
[03:32] It's not a virtue signal.
[03:33] Later on, where I've collected the checkboxes and all of a sudden I'm now permitted to feel
[03:39] a more authentic.
[03:39] Right.
[03:40] You get the results, the benefits, all of it in an instant feedback loop that sitting with
[03:49] your emotions provides.
[03:51] Now, just like in the Star Wars reference that I'm trying to not tell you about, there's
[03:59] an important truth to this, right?
[04:01] You, you're allowed to take these feelings to inform your decisions and allow them to
[04:06] do so.
[04:07] But if you allow them to govern your actions completely, you lose autonomy.
[04:11] It's in a different way, right?
[04:14] If you're always the victim to what you're feeling in the present moment, you're not in
[04:17] charge.
[04:17] You're just doing whatever feels good.
[04:19] That's poor impulse control.
[04:20] That's a bunch of other stuff that leads to its own set of problems.
[04:24] So when you sit with your sort of emotional content, then you can put on that treasure's
[04:33] apron, the one that evaluates whether or not the thing you're doing right now is going
[04:38] to help you achieve the objectives that you have long-term and use that treasure's apron
[04:44] to analyze your emotional content right now.
[04:47] Will, you know, there are times, for example, when you're in the middle of exercising or you're
[04:51] like, I feel like giving up.
[04:53] Well, does indulging that feeling put on the treasure's apron does indulging that feeling
[04:57] get you the objectives that you're looking for?
[04:59] If the answer to that question is no, then you don't get to let that one be the boss for now,
[05:03] right?
[05:04] Same thing's true throughout the entire range of your emotional experience.
[05:08] And when you start taking on these officer aprons to evaluate the emotional content you
[05:13] have, you begin to develop this capacity to not only feel the emotions that you're having,
[05:19] but you create this analytic distance that lets you drive the entire organism, your entire,
[05:25] you know, being towards a meaningful change long-term.
[05:30] You move from analyzing and creating these what kind of goals, these objectives, and move
[05:36] into the how of being.
[05:38] You become more yourself.
[05:40] You get more sort of of a flowering into the present moment by using your emotions as an
[05:48] instant feedback loop.
[05:49] And tomorrow we'll get even more into kind of what that means and how to work it more effectively.
[05:55] .