Guilt & The Game Of Life | A Lesson For Letting Go

I'm not so much letting go of some thing.

I'm letting go of my determination to keep it captive to my idea or my projection.

Maybe in the illustration of letting go of another person,

You're holding on to an idea that's related to your worth and value.

You're using them,

Like you would use a game,

To determine your worth and value.

So letting go of the card game isn't to stop playing the game.

It's to realize that this game has nothing to do with your worth and value.

And if you look at anything in life,

Maybe even if you feel a lot of guilt over,

You are looking at that thing in a way that determines your worth and value.

And that is keeping you prisoner to a perspective about yourself that is so incredibly dispowering.

My name is Tiger Singleton,

And this is a show where I just hang out and share some reflections,

Dive into my heart a little bit,

See what's there,

And maybe I say something insightful for you that will ultimately expose a deeper connection that you have with life and yourself,

Which can allow you to live a more grounded,

Focused,

And playful life.

The title for today is Guilt and the Game of Life,

A Lesson for Letting Go.

And this was also the subject of my email yesterday.

This podcast is an opportunity for me to usually reflect on that Monday email and dive in a little bit more deeply and see what's there.

But you know what?

Can we just take a moment and acknowledge what we might call the opportunity of life and being human?

I know that it's so easy to get lost in our lives,

In the chaos of noise with so many agendas,

So many things that we want,

So many things we think that we're missing.

And that noise can become such a major distraction to the fundamental,

Let's say,

Purpose and opportunity of being human.

And of course,

I'm going to attempt to put words to these things.

I invite you to bear with me through that playful struggle,

That impossible task.

But this opportunity that I think is so important to just take a moment and acknowledge is that when I look at the totality of my human journey thus far and I ask myself,

What has made the most impact?

What has been the point of it all?

You know,

In some regard,

When I was in my teens or early 20s,

I would have assumed that the point of life was getting what I wanted in the world.

Whether that was finding someone to love me,

Whether that was becoming super successful,

Whether that was getting the approval of society or people I thought I needed the approval of.

The assumption was that there was some sort of agenda to get to the future,

That the future had what I wanted.

So life became itself an obstacle.

Like,

How can I get around this moment to get to the moment that matters?

Only to find out that that's not the point at all.

It's always just now.

And what I've recognized that has made the most profound impact is what I'm just going to call a clarity of self.

It's this deep investigation to see the difference between what I really am and who I imagine myself to be.

The internal struggle,

The battle has always been my attempt to perpetuate some idea of myself.

And naturally we could just call this the ego's fight for survival.

And so there was this imaginary character in my mind that was constantly trying to be real,

Trying to be validated,

Trying to be seen.

And it was always met with some flavor of disappointment,

Ultimately,

Because it's impossible,

Even though sometimes it looks like it's working.

But in this investigation,

Which is really just through a deep willingness to be incredibly honest with myself about my experience,

What I recognized is that the difficulty was not caused by life.

The difficulty was not caused by other people or circumstance.

The real difficulty was,

And again using silly words,

Was my opposition towards what is.

My fight against life in reality with the assumption that somehow I knew what life should be doing,

That I knew what the world should be doing,

That I knew what other people should be doing,

Or even to say that I knew what I should be doing.

And of course,

All of that was fueled by this effort to get away from the present moment.

And as I began to see through the illusion of this character that I thought that I was,

I started to see how,

Let's just say irrelevant,

This character was with regard to everything it thought it wanted,

Which also implies everything it thought was missing.

Essentially,

What's seen is that there's something about what I am that is so deeply integrated and connected with the whole of life.

This natural extension of life where what I am intrinsically belongs and what I am is intrinsically whole,

Meaning that there's nothing really missing about what I am.

And therefore,

My struggle and the emotional disturbances could always be traced back to a confusion about who I thought I was,

Which was also a confusion about life.

And therefore,

The greatest impact on this journey has been essentially seeing things more clearly,

Seeing things beyond my filters,

Seeing things beyond my projection,

Seeing things beyond my conditioning,

Really seeing things as they really are,

Rather than how I imagined them to be.

Because there's so much evidence that we have for this that as we journey through life,

It's so obvious that we're not seeing things as they are,

But we're seeing them as we are.

We have this perception of ourselves,

Which is usually seen as separate,

Which is usually seen as disconnected,

Which is usually seen as less than,

And then that becomes a filter through and then that becomes a filter through which you look at everything.

You look at other people,

You look at your circumstances,

You look at life,

And you're looking through this filter that effectively destroys everything.

It tears it apart and turns it into something that it's not.

And in a very sort of dramatic fashion,

We paint a life that's just so not real.

And this completely distorts reality and the opportunity that we have.

And as these things become more clear,

You start to realize that all the monsters that you imagine,

Everything that you think is going so wrong,

None of that's actually happening.

We are literally having a dream of something we think is happening,

Something that's scary,

But that dream is only contained within the imagination.

And as we look at that imagination and we think it's reality,

It becomes intensified.

In the same way that if you're watching a movie and you know that it's just a movie,

It's not that big of a deal.

Sure,

You can get taken by it sometimes,

You can fall into it,

And that's part of it and part of the play.

But fundamentally,

There's something in you that knows it's just a movie.

So as you sit there and watch that movie,

As you sit there and watch it,

You also know that you're fine.

Now in contrast,

If you're watching this movie and you really think that you're in the movie,

You think that the movie is really happening,

You sit there with this agitation,

You sit there with this fear about what's going to happen,

You are overly concerned about the characters in the movie,

You're overly concerned about the outcome,

You have become identified with the movie playing out and therefore the movie rules your life.

And so the opportunity,

Which is also the spiritual pointer as far as I'm concerned throughout all of time,

Has been this invitation to be still and see yourself,

Others in life more clearly.

And the natural consequence of that is to invite an experience that includes what we just might refer to as love,

Compassion,

And freedom.

Which is actually quite brilliant because these qualities that we crave,

That we long for,

Summarized as love,

Compassion,

And freedom,

These are just natural consequences of seeing what's true.

It's kind of like if you just removed all of the judgment,

Which is a dream,

Then the only thing that's left is this beautiful acceptance that somehow understands that everything belongs.

And we're really going to get into this today on this episode.

And so it becomes a monumental priority and focus for me to remember the point of this opportunity,

That even though I have my human play,

My projects,

My goals,

My visions,

All of this pales in comparison to the underlying opportunity,

Which is to see things more clearly.

And so as I engage my human experience,

I'm engaging it with an attitude of openness that's willing to see where I don't see clearly.

And that attitude of openness allows me to receive tremendous more insight and wisdom from my experiences as opposed to if I came at them from a closed perspective.

And this is obvious to see that if you think something is against you,

Whether it's what's happening or life as a whole,

Then you're effectively turning away from it.

You're running from it.

You're saying,

I don't want to see this.

And naturally,

If you don't want to see it,

Then you can't clarify what it is and you can't discover the lessons in the insights that it's trying to show you,

Which is essentially inviting you to see this more clearly.

And this is really just the fundamental undertone of everything I talk about.

I know I explore lots of different subjects,

But ultimately in the spirit of insight and wisdom,

The invitation is to open up,

Fear less,

And love more,

Which is opening ourselves up to the miracle of life,

Maybe the possibility that there is this harmony,

There is this miracle of life that is not against you,

And we can turn towards it.

And as we turn towards it,

As we look at things that seem to bother us and look at them sincerely,

We start to realize that the things we are afraid of,

We don't need to be afraid of.

And so from this openness,

You start to experience less fear.

And naturally where there is less fear,

It's like a permission slip for love to flow.

Because the reason we don't let love flow is because we're scared.

And the more we look at those scary things,

We realize we don't need to be scared.

And this completely transforms your experience.

It completely transforms it in the way that you realize you don't need to be tense.

You don't need to be defensive.

You don't need to be judgmental.

You don't need to sabotage yourself.

You don't need to be hard on yourself in the ways that you're probably hard on yourself.

All of that is stemming from seeing yourself in a distorted way that disregards,

Let's just say,

The beautiful truth of what you are.

And so this is what we're going to dive into.

This is what we dive into every time.

And as it relates to the title,

Guilt in the Game of Life,

The inspiration from this comically came from a card game that I was playing with my partner.

And this card game,

The original name is called Palace,

But it's popularly known as,

It's more commonly known as Shithead.

And we've been playing this game quite a bit at night.

And she was just on a winning streak,

Like just over and over and over again.

I just kept losing.

And I noticed this frustration,

This irritation with continuing to lose.

And it was funny to observe because I got this sort of pain response,

This emotional disturbance.

And naturally I was curious,

Like,

Okay,

What's,

What's going on there.

And it was just so obvious that I was using the game as a way of validating or destroying my worth and value.

So if I was winning,

Then I'd see myself as enough.

If I was losing,

Then I'd see myself as less than.

And again,

It's just all part of the game and it's fine,

But it's amazing to the extremes that we can take this,

Where you're playing a game where the points are utterly imaginary.

Like if you win or lose the game,

It doesn't do anything at all.

Like the moment is still the moment.

The only thing that's happening is you're having a dream of winning and losing.

You are associating a meeting with winning or losing where it doesn't really mean that at all.

These parameters in the game of winning and losing are simply set up for the game to be the game.

But what it actually means is nothing at all.

More accurately,

Rather than the purpose of the game being to win and not lose,

There's a deeper purpose of the game,

Which is to share space with another human being,

Right?

We can say the deeper purpose of the game is to just play.

And the parameters of the game,

What you might call the rules of the game,

Are not against me.

They're not set up for me to fail,

Even though I can see them that way.

They are just the landscape,

The container that allows the game to be the game.

And the opportunity in the game is to share space with another human being,

To experience that connection,

To enjoy ourselves and to learn and grow.

Naturally,

As you're playing this game,

There's some strategy involved and you have to think and you have to use your brain.

And that can be fun.

And it's not even so much that you're trying to learn.

There's just a natural learning because you're engaged in this process of doing something that you enjoy.

And so,

As I was playing this game and feeling this frustration,

There was this funny thought emerged,

Which was something to the effect of,

I think I made a joke.

I made a joke that says,

I wonder if God is mad at me and that's why I'm losing so much,

Which insinuates that I'm somehow being punished.

So,

Get this process.

All right,

We're going to unravel this a little bit.

I'm experiencing what we'll call losing the game.

And I am interpreting that as some form of punishment from life,

Right?

Something outside of me is against me.

Something outside of me doesn't want me to win.

And I am assuming that it means I'm being punished.

And this is a common thought process for people.

In our conditioning,

We've been convinced that there's something real and necessary called punishment.

And so,

We take that conditioning and we try and use that to make sense of our lives.

So,

When things aren't going out,

We think God's punishing me.

We think this is my karma.

We think that I deserve this.

And here's what happens when you do that.

When you ask the question,

Am I being punished?

You go looking in what you think is your past and you start looking for all the reasons why you would be punished.

So,

You're effectively telling a story of why you're a terrible person.

You go looking through all your past experiences,

Which are just your interpretation of experiences and not the actual experience.

And you are distorting them in such a way as evidence to justify why you're losing.

But yet,

More accurately and more truthfully,

What you are isn't losing.

Meaning that to not get enough points in the game,

The card game,

Doesn't mean anything about you.

And so,

It's almost completely null and void to have this experience of losing the game and then look for reasons of why you're unworthy.

It's completely unrelated.

But yet,

In our misunderstanding or our inability to see this clearly,

We run with that and it completely creates this distorted world,

This distorted life,

This distorted version of you where you think something is happening,

But there's literally nothing happening.

And I don't think I can playfully stress that point enough.

Where you ask the question,

Am I being punished?

And then you literally punish yourself by looking for reasons why you might be punished.

And so,

What you think is happening to you,

You're literally doing to yourself.

This is extraordinarily fascinating.

Where the only thing that's happening,

Again,

Using words,

Is I'm holding space in now,

The only thing that's real,

Playing a game with someone that I love,

Which means absolutely nothing about me.

We just have the opportunity to share space together and enjoy.

And then because of the conditioned confusion,

The awareness within me takes off and goes on some silly quest of trying to protect my worth and value based on a game I'm playing,

Which has nothing to do with my worth and value.

And so,

In seeing through this,

And this just applies so much to the point of this inquiry,

In seeing through this,

There's this comedy that emerges that shows you you don't have to play that game.

You don't have to play the game of worth and value as if your worth and value is tied to anything that's happening in this world.

It's just not.

What you are might be super deep,

But what you are cannot be touched by anything in this world.

The only thing that's touched is your idea of yourself and your idea of yourself isn't real.

It's imaginary.

So,

There's nothing real about you that's touched by anything that happens in this life.

And looking at the card game,

You can see that very clearly,

That the truth of you is not touched by the winning or losing of the card game.

The only thing that's touched by the winning and losing is your idea of self,

Which is the imaginary version of you being touched by imaginary points that don't have anything to do with reality.

And of course,

We could say,

Okay,

Well,

That's true in the game,

But what about in life?

And here's the point of what I'm talking about.

There's no difference between the card game and the game in life as it relates to a human being being a human being.

Maybe we can say the only difference is a level of intensity based on our belief in the dream that we're having.

Because the person who's playing the game,

The card game,

That is genuinely disturbed by losing,

There is an intensity of belief in that dream where they really believe that the points or the winning or losing says something about them.

Right?

On one level,

You can see,

Well,

That's silly.

I mean,

Why would anyone get bothered by that?

But you can see that the person that does get bothered by it is the person who has been captured by that dream of their worth and value being tied up in the concept of winning and losing.

Now,

You can take this another step further as it relates to money,

Which we can say is just another game where somebody who loses a bunch of money or somebody who doesn't have a bunch of money,

They look at that and equate it to their worth and value.

They say,

Because my bank account looks like this,

It means I'm less than.

And we ask,

Is God punishing me?

Why can't I make money?

Whatever.

But it's the same mechanism where you're looking at something in the world and you're essentially trying to find yourself in the world.

You're looking at these experiences like winning or losing or your bank account,

And you're saying,

What does this mean about me?

And it doesn't mean anything about you,

Right?

Because what you say it means is just something you're making up.

There's no intrinsic meaning to any of that.

You're the one that puts the meaning there.

And again,

It's not even your fault.

There's just this innocent,

Let's say,

Lack of awareness that doesn't know.

We've been taught this.

We've been taught to wrap our worth and value up in things in the world.

We've been taught that the prize is somewhere in the future,

Right?

I mean,

You're born into a world that's upside down.

You're born into societal absurdities that don't see reality clearly and everyone's bumping into each other,

Trying to hold on to their particular dream.

And it's a complete mad town.

And that's fine because that's just another part of the game.

Whether it's a card game or whether it's money or whether it's relationships or whether it's whatever,

We are ascribing points to these things and then using those points to define our worth and value.

And because it's not working,

Because it's not real,

We assume that we're being punished.

We assume that it's our karma.

We assume that it's because we're not enough.

But here's the thing.

We assume that that is coming from the outside,

Not realizing that what you think is being done to you is what you're literally doing in the moment you think it's being done to you because it's not actually happening at all.

And this is so incredibly wild because to get still,

To take a moment and to take a breath and ask yourself,

Wait,

What's really going on here?

And I was just telling somebody about this.

One of the things I'm so thankful of is this transformation in relationship to how I relate to my emotional experience.

Whereas I used to think when I was emotionally disturbed,

It was because something was happening to me.

And therefore the disturbance was somehow this trigger to control something outside of me,

Which never really worked well.

But what I've seen is that the emotional disturbance is there because I'm not seeing clearly.

There's something that I'm missing.

There's something that I'm making up.

I am essentially creating something to fear and that I'm believing in that creation.

I'm imagining a monster and I think the monster is real.

And so the emotional disturbance is like an alarm system that says I've disconnected myself from reality.

And so as I go through this life and I experience being emotionally disturbed,

My relationship is one of gratitude where it's like,

Oh,

Wait,

This is for me,

Right?

This is here to help me.

And so that disturbance is an invitation to be still and question,

What do I think is really happening?

And just this little transformation completely changes how you relate to life,

How you relate to yourself and how you relate to everything that's happening.

Because again,

The fundamental point is that I'm on a journey of clarifying perception,

Which is essentially to see more of what's real and true,

Which is also the spiritual journey.

And so as I go on this journey,

There's the openness to see where I might not be seeing clearly.

And so I'm so much more open to my own internal experience,

Rather than trying to hide from it,

Rather than trying to get away from it.

And I only know this because I have some degree of mastery in trying to escape that internal experience,

Which never works.

It just results in some form of disaster.

And so we ultimately in our growth journey,

Come to this place where we have to meet this,

We have to meet this confusion inside of ourselves,

Which in a gentle way is somehow recognizing.

And I know people misunderstand when I say this,

But it's somehow recognizing that you're the creator of everything that you're experiencing.

And,

You know,

At first glance,

That can seem like a nightmare,

That can seem like a disaster that you're creating it all.

But of course,

The hidden gem there is if you're the creator of your experience,

Then there's nothing outside that's doing the experience to you,

Right?

You're not a prisoner anymore.

You're not captive.

You're not a victim.

You are someone who can now,

And I hesitate using the word,

But someone who can now take control over their experience and not have to live in such a responsive way that sort of reacts to what you think is happening on the outside,

Because you're only reacting to what's happening on the inside.

You're only reacting to your interpretation.

You're reacting to how you see things.

And in recognizing that is a beautiful opportunity to just be still and to question what it is that you think you're seeing.

And if you look at any flavor of growth that you've had,

Any transformation you've gone through,

It's been exactly this mechanism.

It's not so much that you change something on the outside,

You change something in how you saw yourself,

Which then changed something in how you saw the world,

Which then dramatically transformed your relationship with it.

And it was the transformation of your relationship with it that made all the difference,

Right?

The assumption initially is that we need to change the thing out there,

Or we need to change part of ourselves.

But that manipulation of the surface or the transformation of the surface is actually the very last step of real transformation.

And it's also an effortless step when the inside has been transformed.

It's kind of like realizing that as you see things differently,

Then those things that you see naturally take on a different shape because you're seeing things differently.

You don't force them to take a different shape.

You see them differently,

And then they become different.

And in one way,

We can illustrate this by simply saying you are seeing things with more love.

You are seeing things with less judgment.

You are seeing things as they are rather than how you imagine them to be.

And to touch on the second part of this title today,

Which was a lesson in letting go,

What I find for myself is that I'm not so much letting go of some thing.

I'm letting go of my determination to keep it captive to my idea or my projection.

Maybe in the illustration of letting go of another person,

It's not like,

You know,

You're literally holding on to them and you have to let them go.

You're holding on to an idea that's related to your worth and value.

You're using them like you would use a game to determine your worth and value.

So letting go of the card game isn't to stop playing the game.

It's to realize that this game has nothing to do with your worth and value.

That's to let go of it.

And if you look at anything in life,

Maybe even if you feel a lot of guilt over,

You are looking at that thing in a way that determines your worth and value.

You're looking at the experience and saying,

It means this about me,

And it means this about me,

And it means this about me.

And that is keeping you prisoner to a perspective about yourself that is so incredibly dispowering.

And not only that,

It's fundamentally not true.

And so letting go of it is maybe at least being open to see the mechanism,

Being open to see that the pain in holding on isn't caused by the thing out there.

The pain of holding on is caused by the interpretation about what you think it means about you.

And my goodness,

We as human beings can go through our whole lives and have this sort of attachment to these painful stories.

And on the surface,

It looks like we have these attachments to past experiences or circumstances.

But again,

You're not really attached to them.

You're attached to your story.

You're attached to your meaning.

And a lot of this is sprung by our determination and our belief that we can find ourselves in the world.

We assume that there's something in the world that we need in order to be whole and complete,

Just as it relates to the fundamental nature of what you are.

And this is really an impossibility.

And my God,

There's so many things we can get into,

But this is just a short video.

What isn't recognized is the truth of your nature.

And I can say that it's like,

Oh,

These are just silly words.

But,

You know,

Some of you have had experiences and you know what I mean,

That there is this character that you think you are,

That you think is living this life,

But it's not living this life.

It's just an idea.

It's just a thought.

It's a story.

And there's a part of you,

Innocently so,

That's attached to that story that thinks it's real.

And the evolution of your consciousness is,

In some way,

A letting go of that story and coming back to what's real,

Which is also to say,

To live a more present life,

To realize that the point and opportunity of your life is happening right now.

And just like playing a game,

When you see that the point of the game is to just play the game,

Then you're present,

Right?

And you're not just right.

You're there to show up.

Even if it's challenging,

You're present in the challenge,

You're learning.

But if you think the point of the game is to win or lose,

Then you're lost in the future,

Which means you're not even present to do a good job,

Right?

You can't actually give it your attention because you have this fear that you might lose.

You might not get the prize in the future.

And so this present moment just becomes an agitation.

Just like,

And I use this example a lot,

And forgive me for the ones who have heard me say this time and time again,

But it's like if you're playing a game of Monopoly,

The moment you think the money is real,

You're not fun to play with anymore.

Because now you see all the other players as enemies.

Everyone else is an obstacle.

And you're terrified of losing this money,

Which is only imaginary.

The real point of the game is for us all to hang out,

To learn and grow,

And to share in this present moment experience.

The pieces in the game,

The cards in the game,

The parameters in the game,

Just like in life,

There's all these things that we think are rules.

There are these elements that we think are paying bills,

Money,

Relationships,

Yada yada.

And we give those things so much meaning as it relates to our worth and value,

When really they are part of life's parameters that allows this game to even be this game.

And these parameters are found everywhere.

It's like when you look at the four seasons,

You have wintertime,

Which it is now,

Doing this video,

You have spring,

You have summer,

And you have autumn.

These are different parameters that have to be what they are in order for this life thing to be this life thing.

Right now you can make up all sorts of arguments about how these parameters are in your way,

How they shouldn't be there,

But yet it doesn't matter what you think about these parameters.

They have to be that way in order for life to be life.

In fact,

The more you are arguing with these parameters,

You don't see the beauty of them.

Right?

Just like wintertime,

You can be adamantly against the wintertime.

You can think life made a mistake.

You can think that life got it wrong.

But yet if you step back and you see the whole thing of life,

There's something that's immensely beautiful about the wintertime.

Sure,

It might be uncomfortable sometimes.

Sure,

It may not be what you prefer,

But it's required in order for the game to be the game.

And the more present you are,

The more you see things as they really are,

Then there's this deep allowing for that parameter to be the parameter.

And you can let go of it and do something that you can enjoy given the parameter.

You know,

Whether that's cozying up next to a fire,

Whether that's watching a movie,

Whether that's focusing inside on a project because you can't go outside,

There's all of these infinite possibilities of other things you could be doing to enjoy the game.

But because you're so caught up in your resistance,

Your mental capacity and energy is just in a state of fighting.

You're fighting life.

You're fighting reality.

So you can't actually enjoy reality.

You can't see reality clearly.

And this is no different.

And my God,

There's been so many examples of this in my life.

I think one of the big examples is the concept of money,

Where I used to think that the parameter of money was some sort of cosmic mistake,

Right?

Like humans got it wrong.

Humans shouldn't be trading with each other.

Everything should just be free.

But of course,

That doesn't work in the parameter,

Right?

For things to work as they do,

There has to be this parameter of trade.

And we as human beings are going to find different modalities of trading,

But it's all just trading.

And what you use to trade is just an energy.

And it doesn't mean anything about me.

But I remember that time thinking that it was such a big deal as it related to my worth and value.

Because of course,

I would see people with more money and think that it meant that they were more worthy,

Which just creates this fascinating distortion that sees myself as less than and completely destroys my ability to have a beautiful relationship with money.

Isn't that wild,

Right?

And I see this a lot in my work where people have all sorts of hangups and belief issues around the concept of money.

And it's so obvious as to why they have the experience that they have,

Right?

Because as they're having beliefs about this parameter,

They are setting up their experience with the parameter.

Just like wintertime.

If you think wintertime is dumb,

Then your experience will be dumb.

You're just getting a reflection of how you see it.

So,

You know,

All in all,

There's such a profound opportunity here to not even just necessarily think about these things,

But just to get still.

And there's such a beautiful doorway of humility here where we come back to the present moment and we open our hearts and we just admit,

I don't know what the hell is going on.

I might be super,

Super confused.

And we can just start there and release the intensity of belief,

Release the intensity behind thinking that,

You know,

When,

If you look more honestly,

You realize that you don't know,

And you're just pretending to know.

And this is something that is so profoundly obvious in my experience that if ever I'm disturbed emotionally,

I'm proclaiming that I know something.

But if I look more sincerely,

I don't actually know that.

And just getting honest with myself about that really helps to bring about some more presence,

Which ultimately allows me to see things more clearly.

So I went off.

I rambled a lot.

I said a lot of things,

But I think that's all I got for you on the subject of guilt in the game of life.

A lesson for letting go.

Thanks for playing.

Autumn says how to achieve clarity for a decision,

How to achieve clarity for a decision.

That's a great question.

Thank you.

You know,

For myself,

What makes decisions overly complicated is how serious I make those decisions out to be.

And this plays on a little bit with what I was talking about as it relates to tying your worth and value up in the world.

When you are presented with a choice,

You look at these different forks in the road and you imagine certain outcomes.

And let's just say your two paths,

One is success and one is failure.

And if you interpret failure with a meaning that says you're less than,

You will fear failing.

And fundamentally,

There's the element of the unknown.

And so you can't actually know if it's going to succeed or fail.

But because you might be so scared of failing or losing what you're holding on to,

Which is interpreted as a loss of your value,

Then those decisions become then those decisions become very,

Very serious.

But if you can recognize that this isn't about your worth and value at all,

This is more about getting in touch with what's actually sincere for you.

What would you enjoy?

What feels like the right thing?

What feels like the true thing?

And then you put your trust in that and then you let the cards fall wherever they fall.

And here's what you know.

You know that if it's a failure,

There's going to be a tremendous learning opportunity.

And if your goal is,

For the sake of using words,

Success,

Success,

You can.

And so you don't look at success or failure as if they're two different things.

They're actually the same thing.

And your intention ultimately is to learn.

And so whether you fail or succeed isn't really the important part.

What's important is that you are learning and that you're moving in a direction that matches your own sincerity.

And you know,

This is something that I've noticed in my life where decisions have been processed more rapidly.

Where I spend less time trying to figure out what to do and I just do it and then see what happens.

And because there's not so much of a delay,

There's more learning.

You could even say a more rapid learning because I'm diving in.

And there's a lot less fear of failing because I know that it's just learning.

And so it's like I have this intention to learn rather than this intention to make things be how I want them to be.

And so for your specific situation,

Which I'm not familiar with,

I'm just guessing here,

I invite you to see if you can connect with the playfulness,

See that it's not as serious as your mind takes it to be,

And explore what it is you want to learn and let that be the focus.

And so go into the decision and what follows the decision with a curiosity rather than a determination to make it how you want it to be.

Use it as an opportunity to learn.

Francesco says,

I believe money is a cage for our being.

I would really understand how could I free myself from that cage considering that I'm a father of two kids and I feel in charge for their growth.

Money is a tool that compress our decision.

I'm going to attempt to make sense out of that.

Money is a cage that is definitely one way to see it,

Which will paint an experience that makes money really look like a cage.

And you know what?

Let me just speak directly as if I was just talking to myself and you can see if it resonates for you.

And again,

I'm going to say it again.

I'm talking to myself,

So don't take this personally.

I would say something to the effect of,

Look,

Buddy,

You can spend the rest of your life blaming money for your unwillingness to take risks and do what you need to do to provide.

You can keep blaming life and external situations for your own fear of failure,

For your own fear of being seen,

For your own fear of showing up in new ways that challenge your comfort zone.

You are free to blame things.

You are free to make excuses.

But I just want you to get radically honest with yourself that is that the life you want to live.

And if it is,

Then look at your past experience and ask yourself,

How is that going?

Because if you look honestly,

You'll see that not only does it not serve you in any capacity to give your power away,

But it's not a reflection of what you more sincerely want.

The real issue here is not money.

It's not society.

It's not your past.

The real issue here is that you are encountering yourself.

And that's scary.

You are encountering the depth and magnitude of life and the unknown and maybe seeing that there's nothing real to hold on to.

And that can be challenging.

But the more you dive into that,

You're going to you're going to discover a vast and open playground where this life exists for you to explore,

For you to play,

For you to discover what excites your heart.

And dive into that and maybe dive into that in a way that adds value to other people's lives.

And as you add value to other people's lives,

Maybe you'll be open to an exchange where other people offer you value for you offering them value.

However,

That can't happen if you continue to blame things like money,

Which is to push away certain forms of value.

Yeah,

That's what the conversation would be like,

But not talking to you.

Just talking to myself.

You're welcome,

Buddy.

All right,

You guys.

It's 12 noon.

My time.

My time is up.

Thank you for the donations.

For those who sent in donations during this time together.

I appreciate it.

And it seems like I'm scheduled to be back here next week.

Whether that happens or not,

I don't know.

We will find out.

Yeah,

I so appreciate you,

Though,

Hanging out with me today.

That was a really good session.

I enjoyed it.

Till next time.

Aloha and cheers to the beauty that you already are.