Don't Believe Anything! ... And How To Use This Podcast

Wake the Fuck Up,

The podcast that mingles mindfulness,

Buddhism,

Brain science,

Evolutionary biology,

And real authentic human experience.

Welcome to Wake the Fuck Up.

Hello and welcome,

Amazing human beings,

To the second episode of Wake the Fuck Up.

My name is Tiffany Andres Myers,

Your host and fellow traveler on this human journey.

And I'm so grateful and excited to share the topic of today's podcast,

Which is basically what even is this?

Why are we here recording this podcast,

Putting it out in the world,

And hopefully sharing it with all of you?

And I'll maybe start by just saying that the intention,

My heartfelt purpose for this podcast,

My sincere wish,

Is that it gets the curiosities,

The playfulness,

The way of being,

Of mindfulness,

Into the hands of people who might otherwise not ever find it,

Or at least not find it for a very long time.

These are practices,

Tools,

Explorations that have radically changed my life.

And maybe I'll say the most dramatically is actually creating a sense of happiness and contentment every single day of my life,

Which if I'm going to be very open and honest,

Was not something that I think existed when I was younger,

Not through my adolescence,

Which was really hard and tumultuous,

Of course,

With moments of good.

But even into my college years,

The uncertainties of who I was and the desires to be successful as a means of feeling like a good person.

And these practices and these tools have not only changed the way I experience every day of my life,

But I think that comes from the fact that for the first time in my life,

I feel like a good person.

I'm proud of myself for being out there and having the intention of bringing good into the world and feeling a lot more love than I've ever felt before.

So obviously,

I think all of this that I hope the podcast offers is not just worthwhile,

But it has the capacity to be life changing.

So of course,

I'm seeking avenues to get it out there.

But the biggest reason for actually starting this podcast right now is the recognition that there are huge demographic disparities amongst the mindfulness community.

Most people that we find in mindfulness are white,

Middle aged and middle class.

And I think a lot of this has to do with how we actually hear about or find out about mindfulness in the first place.

But also,

There tends to be a cost with really integrating into a mindfulness community,

A cost for doing meditation and mindfulness programs that teach us how to be mindful and how to practice meditation and cost for meditation and mindfulness retreats,

Which I am absolutely an advocate for because I think they're fucking amazing.

Just hitting that reset button through a couple of days of silence,

I cannot advocate for that enough.

But with that said,

Most mindfulness resources tend to be in a style that really serves the population that's currently present to it.

And so you tend to hear podcasts that are mindfulness podcasts and the guidance in them is very calm,

Peaceful,

Gentle.

There's a sense of slowness,

Of softness to the way that we communicate and maybe you can hear that subtle shift in my voice as well.

And I want to be clear as I talk about this that I actually think this is a really beautiful thing that tends to happen naturally as we engage with a meditation and a mindfulness practice,

That we live in a world that is so fast paced that to actually invite ourselves to sit down for five or 10 or 30 or 45 minutes a day and be still.

One of the things that I think really naturally comes out of this practice is we start to invite ourselves to be more slow in our day to day life.

And for me,

What that's meant is actually experiencing more of my life,

Seeing and feeling the world around me as sensationally alive.

And by that,

I mean alive through my senses.

I actually feel things and smell them and taste them,

Seeing each and every leaf on a tree instead of the concept of a tree.

But I say this because I think the resources that are out there really target a population that kind of misses the younger generation or people that don't have access to spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on trainings to populations that are often underserved and under-resourced.

And so I hope through this podcast to get these tools and these practices into the hands of basically everyone and anyone.

I want to say as well that the intention of this podcast is to invite us to free ourselves from the masks that we hide behind,

To the curiosity of what it looks like to be enough in every single moment,

And to slow down and become so deeply curious about ourselves and our world that we start to see the beauty that's here in every single moment.

What I hope this podcast turns out to be for anyone and everyone who's listening are the tools to break the chains of our conditioning.

And you'll probably hear me use that word a lot,

Conditioning.

And so I want to clarify what I mean by that.

What I mean by conditioning can also be termed in Buddhist philosophy as causes and conditions.

And when it comes to ourselves and how we see and perceive the world,

How we engage with every single moment,

Most of the ways that we unconsciously interact with the world inside of us and around us were hardwired for us by the age of seven.

We didn't have a choice about the thoughts and belief systems,

The ideologies that our parents and our external environment imprinted on us when we were young.

And the crazy thing is that in these formative years,

The brain is developing so much that much of the ways we interact with the world come from these younger years,

They're unconscious.

And this is great,

Right?

Because if we had to think about every single thing we did every single day,

We would be tired by about five minutes into waking up.

But we don't have to think about the way we eat,

The way we brush our teeth,

The way that we walk.

But we also don't have to think about the way we conceptualize thoughts and emotions,

The way we conceptualize the world around us.

It's why if you've ever experienced therapy,

You've probably heard your therapist say,

What I hear you saying is,

Right?

And the reason for that is that what we actually hear and the words that are actually spoken are two radically different things.

If there are 50 people listening to this podcast right now,

Every single one of you will walk away from what you hear,

Which is the exact same thing,

With a completely different experience and a completely different understanding.

And that's because of our conditioning,

The filters through which we see the world.

I don't want to dive into this too much because I'm sure I'll do another podcast related to talking more about conditioning.

But I wanted to offer what I mean by that so that that's not conceptual or confusing.

One of the things that I think is so valuable about mindfulness is it invites us to really pause and take in our life moment by moment.

And so here I'm going to shift gears for just a second into what is mindfulness.

But before we shift gears,

I'm going to invite us to take a pause and a breath together.

So wherever you are,

Maybe taking a deep inhale and a sighing breath exhale.

Maybe bringing your hands together and gently rubbing them back and forth and actually feel the sense of touch at the palms of your hands.

Maybe notice the aliveness at the surface of your skin.

Can you feel the pressure of your butt in the seat,

Your feet on the floor,

The touch of your clothing?

I think so often we are distracted from what really makes us feel alive as human beings and that's being awake to our senses.

So one of the things that I will highly advocate for is taking as many breaks as you possibly can throughout your day to reawaken to your senses.

Come alive.

Let life be sensual again.

So from this beautiful pausing breath,

Let's dive into the exploration of what mindfulness really is.

And I'll start by using Jon Kabat-Zinn's definition.

And Jon says that mindfulness is being present to the moment on purpose and without judgment.

And that last piece I think is the one that's often the hardest without judgment because this comes so naturally,

Especially for those of us that have a really loud voice of a self-critic.

Welcome to being an American here in the United States.

But this piece of without judgment,

Maybe we can tease this apart by looking at the feeling of knowing what's happening in a moment and absolutely hating it versus what mindfulness offers to us is this wider space from which we can see what's happening where we're engaged and aware,

But we're in that place of being heart soft,

Tender,

Vulnerable,

And open,

Curious about what's really here,

Relaxed out of judgment,

If you will.

I also want to offer here as we explore what it really means to be mindful that one of my favorite quotes that I think relates directly to what mindfulness is is by a man named Viktor Frankl.

And he says,

Between a stimulus and a response,

There is a space.

And in that space lies our ability to choose,

And in our choice lies our growth and our freedom.

And what I see mindfulness is doing is widening that gap between stimulus and response.

And if you think about the way we normally engage with our life,

It's like things are happening all the time,

And without even thinking about it,

We're reacting to them.

You know,

An emotion comes up in our body,

We get uncomfortable or angry,

And before we even realize it,

We're using a harsh tone or even yelling at somebody else,

Right?

And we need this stimulus response system to be engaged in the world,

But what happens if we actually start creating just a small enough gap that we have a choice in the way that we engage?

And this is one thing that's huge that mindfulness begins to offer us is that in that space,

We start to see our conditioning.

We start to see the ways we are habitually,

From habit,

Reacting to what's happening.

And in the moment that that space exists,

We can actually say,

Well,

How do I want to respond,

Right?

Responding versus reacting.

Who do I want to be in this moment,

And how am I going to choose to engage?

Instead of being driven by our conditioning,

And again,

I want to remind us,

Conditioning,

Which we had no choice over.

Another piece of why I think mindfulness can be so profound is the idea that we really can't change what we don't see.

And perhaps many of you can connect to the experience of having done something that you really weren't proud of,

And it's not until the experience is over that you actually have the wherewithal to go,

Wow,

That didn't go so well,

Right?

And the hope with mindfulness is that we start to cultivate the ability to pay attention in the moment as it's happening.

That stimulus comes in,

And before we react,

We see what's happening,

Right?

So we're pausing that reactionary system we're seeing in the moment so that we have the capacity to change.

So we can't change what we don't see.

And mindfulness is the opportunity to work with our capacity to pay attention so that we actually have the ability to see for the first time ourselves,

Our lives,

As it's happening in the moment.

One of the things I want to offer on this podcast as well,

And I'm putting it here at the very beginning of our journey together because I hope it's something that carries ubiquitously through every single thought,

Belief,

Feeling,

Idea,

Craziness that I offer on this podcast is that I don't want you to believe or trust anything I say.

I want you to get out there and explore it in your own life.

And what I mean by this is I hope that some of the things that come through in this podcast stab you in the gut or radiate through your heart,

Right?

There's meaning imbued in them for you in the first experience of hearing them,

But that's not enough.

I want you to turn this podcast off,

Go out into your daily life and explore whether or not these things feel real for you because that's where change authentically begins to happen,

Not in our minds,

But in our bodies and our experience.

I was once sharing with a group that I was teaching a technique that's called straw breathing,

Breath practice that we can do for as little as one minute to change our stress response system from an experience of being stressed to an experience of being at ease.

And somebody in the group,

And I absolutely love that this happened because this is exactly this don't believe me,

Try it out.

He said,

Well,

Does this really work?

Can you actually change your physiology in as little as one minute?

And I said,

Well,

Let's do it,

Right?

So let's do it together.

For one minute,

We're going to straw breathe.

So as long as you are somewhere where it's safe to sit and breathe quietly and maybe to close your eyes,

I'll ask you to play with this with me.

And we're actually only going to do it for 30 seconds.

So the instructions are that you're going to breathe in through your nose and breathe out through your mouth,

Imagining there's a straw in your mouth.

So you're pursing your lips and you're trying to make your exhale as long as you possibly can.

So let's try this together.

30 seconds.

If it feels comfortable,

Close your eyes.

And before we begin,

Just notice how stressed you feel.

Maybe on a scale of one to 10,

Where would you put yourself here?

And I'll invite you before we begin,

Give it really a real shot,

A real try so that you can actually see if this works for you.

So labeling out how you feel on that one to 10 scale,

Close your eyes and begin to breathe consciously.

A deep inhale through the nose and exhaling through pursed lips like holding a straw.

Let your exhale be as long as you possibly can.

Inhaling through your nose,

Exhaling a long,

Slow,

Deep exhale.

And last breath.

And before you open your eyes,

Just checking in again,

Where are you on that stress scale?

And as you feel ready and comfortable,

Letting your eyes open again.

So maybe this worked for you.

Did your stress number drop?

Did it not?

If it did,

Maybe this is something you integrate into your day-to-day experience.

If it's not,

Maybe try it for a little bit longer.

And the only thing I'll offer here is as you explore these practices,

These thoughts,

These ways of being in your everyday life,

I want to highly encourage letting it be a real authentic exploration.

If you show up with doubt and we show up with reservations and hesitation,

Then often what happens is we don't actually let ourselves fully experience the try,

If you will.

So I once had a teacher that framed this in the way of put on the hat,

Wear it for a while,

And after some period of time,

Take the hat off,

Turn around and reflect on the quality of your life.

And if it's grown in the directions that you desire,

Then at least for this moment,

Whatever you're testing,

Whatever hypothesis or practice you're trying is for right now a truth for you and keep wearing the hat.

So last but not least for today's podcast,

I want to be sure to invite us here in episode two to the reality that meditation is a beautiful part of a mindfulness practice.

And a lot of people are scared of the idea of meditation because they think that it means that we have to sit quietly with absolutely no thoughts in our head.

And I want to start by dispelling that completely.

If you're listening to this,

Hopefully you're human.

And if you're human,

That means that you have a human brain,

A human brain that after millions upon millions of years of evolution of living on planet earth is designed to be constantly scanning the environment and constantly talking to you about threats,

What to expect,

Planning into the future,

Thinking about the past.

This is just the brain we have.

And it's a beautiful brain.

I mean,

Look at the innovations that we've come up with,

But nothing that runs our life without any sort of direction or consciousness surrounding it can turn into something that's bad,

Right?

Anything that runs amok without any control at all tends to be a good thing.

So this is kind of the playfulness of meditation.

It invites us to actually form a relationship with our own mind.

I mean,

Your mind determines how you feel about every single moment of your life.

It's worthwhile to start knowing what it's doing in any given moment.

And this is really the playfulness of meditation.

Meditation,

I absolutely love is called a practice.

And what I mean by this is that we are practicing the qualities,

The characteristics,

The ways of being that we desire to emulate when we stand up off of our meditation seats and move into the world.

I once had a teacher,

A beautiful woman named Stephanie Swan here in Atlanta that said,

There's nothing dignified about sitting in meditation.

And I'll be completely honest,

When I first heard this,

I was a little upset because I felt dignified.

It felt good to sit,

Right?

But what I've come to take away from Stephanie's wise and beautiful words is that what this means is nobody cares if we're a good meditator.

What matters is that the qualities of human beings that we are when we're in our lives engaging with other people and out in the world,

That's what matters.

And so meditation is our practice in a quiet,

Soft,

Untriggered and gentle space to be able to work with who we are and how we want to be in the world.

So how do you practice meditation?

Sit down,

Start with one minute or two minutes or five minutes and follow your breath.

Let your attention rest on one thing in particular.

And this is also the beauty of learning about meditation.

We can meditate with anything being our point of attention because fundamentally meditation is a practice of paying attention.

Remember our definition,

Paying attention to the present moment on purpose and without judgment.

So all we have to do is pay attention.

Give yourself one thing to rest your attention on.

And when you notice you get distracted,

Celebrate because that's the moment of waking back up.

You just did a bicep curl for your capacity to be mindful and pay attention.

Celebrate that moment and come back to whatever you're paying attention to.

And that's it.

And you can practice for five minutes a day,

10 minutes a day.

You can practice in one sit or multiple times throughout the day,

But let it be a practice.

And the last thing that I want to offer here today is the remembrance that this is a journey,

My dears.

We all want ourselves to be perfect right now,

But that is not reality.

So at the end of our last session last time,

I talked about radical self-care and self-love.

And today I want to reiterate that idea.

Today I want to offer that as you begin to explore this Wake the Fuck Up podcast,

As you begin to explore mindfulness and the journey of coming home to yourself,

That you offer yourself self-compassion in the moments that life feels hard.

And what does that look like?

Place your hand on your heart.

Say words of kindness,

Of compassion,

Of love to yourself.

My dear,

I see you.

I'm so sorry this moment is difficult,

But you're not alone.

I'm here with you.

I've got your back and I love you.

And for those of you who are listening,

I mean that to you as I place my hand on my heart as well.

Thank you all so much for being here today.

Thank you for your curiosities,

Your vulnerabilities,

Your wisdom,

Your enoughness.

Thank you for joining me and for signing off,

I'll see you next time.