 Hello my friends, welcome to the depression to expression podcast Scott St. Marie here Recording in the early morning Because I woke up with a very fun little thought you ever wake up and you're thinking like 10 years in the past Memories just pop up and the cool thing about thinking is you get to kind of chase that as much as you want You can dive deep into thoughts and you can see what's linked to what and how deep you can really go or You can kind of be like cool That's a thought and then you can get on with your day And that's the really interesting thing because I've been meditating for a lot of years and people are like Scott You must be so great at just stopping your thinking and I'm like No, that's not the way it works everybody. Please. That's not the way it works Meditation is not about stopping thoughts. You can't stop a thought the monk who has been in the cave for 30 years right now eating lizard intestines still has thoughts and Meditation isn't about stopping it meditation is about being the witness to thoughts Acknowledging this idea of non attachment that you are not your thoughts that you can watch them come and you can watch them go Right, you don't need to identify With the things that you think about just like you don't need to identify With a certain emotion that you're feeling because you know that it will come And it will go and a thought will come and something else will come in its place And the really cool thing is that you cannot predict what you're going to think of next I couldn't predict that I was gonna have this thought. I'm gonna talk about this morning I was gonna wake like I'm waking up and who knows what's gonna enter my mind That's kind of the cool and funky part about life. We're always dealing with the unpredictable We're always dealing with the unexpected Just like you're not gonna know what I'm what word I'm going to say Turkey You didn't know I was gonna say turkey there. You probably thought I was gonna say the word next See just just as unpredictable is the next word that comes out of my legs Right, that's as unpredictable as a new thought coming into your mind No point in trying to guess no point in trying to predict but through mindfulness and meditation Right, we actually have this objective view and we can blow up a weather balloon and we can hold on tight and we float We become weightless a little bit and then we can look down at our thoughts and What happens on a psychological level in our minds and and okay? That's a cool thought interesting thought. Oh, that's just another worry. Oh, that's just another anxious thing Okay, that happened ten years ago cool. Okay, that's a thought about the future right That's all meditation is it's not about stopping thoughts. So that's just something I wanted to get through alright Well, the other maybe I'll touch on this later. The other thing is that people think that You know to have this weather balloon Objective reality and to look at thoughts from above and be the witness They're like, okay, I'll practice meditation and that's what goes on through the anxiety course and people practice for a week And they're like Scott, you know, it's not really working for me or sometimes people will practice for a month I'm like right on every day and they're like, ah, I haven't really seen a difference. Oh my gosh Give yourself some time Why don't we allow ourselves time We always want quick fixes. We always want to be healed in 30 seconds Meditation this kind of stuff takes time and that relates to this thought I had so I woke up this morning and I'm already thinking of When I used to work at a golf course New people would arrive at the golf course every summer we get some new recruits and I'd be on the maintenance team I worked at a few golf courses and Man, they'd have to learn the new equipment and I remember learning how to drive one of these Lawn mowers that that cuts the greens. You got to cut them really short So it's all real mowers, right and really precise cutting like you're cutting grass Like two millimeters high kind of thing real precise Right and you're using you have the steering wheel But then to put the blade down and the blade up you're using pedals But you also have your gas and your brake at the same time But that is on the right side your throttle is on the right side. You have to empty your buckets, right? And it's a three-wheeled mower So you have two wheels in the front one wheel in the back But you don't want to do these quick dime turns because then if you turn on a dime You're gonna you're gonna completely mess up the green and you're gonna create these these dark Circles and then your boss comes along and he's like no Scott was turning too sharp on the green because we saw He tore up the edges a little bit by the fringe Then you get in trouble and you got to do it again So every time every summer we get new people coming in and learning the new equipment just like me and it's So I kind of smiled this morning just thinking about People trying to figure out the tractor People trying to figure out you have the hitch you have the trailer on the back And then you have this Kubota tractor Kubota Kubota Damn, it's been a while anyway, orange tractor with a trailer on the back you got the hitch and People trying to back in With this tractor back in the trailer to the parking spot is One of the funniest things I've ever seen Because it's their first time backing up a trailer and any any of you listening if you've tried to back up a trailer You know that if you spin the wheel to the left your trailer is going right if you spin your wheel to the right Your trailer is going left. I'm just thinking about I'm even thinking about myself trying it too So you back up six inches and oh it's going the wrong way So you got to crank it forward go forward Reset straighten out try to do it again. Oh, no the wagon's going left You got to redo it go forward and each and every time you know even if you're not watching You know the guy who's new because all you hear is And then he's and then you don't hear it anymore because he's moving forward and then he puts in an reverse and you hear Sorry that hurt that back up noise. It's so crazy and the crazy thing is That in a week's time that same guy That same person trying to reverse taken 30 times to get into the spot in a week's time That person's doing it blindfolded That person can back up without even looking back That you're so in tune with the machine and how it works and how the trailer moves when you move the tractor Same goes with all the equipment at the golf course. It's the same for starting the line trimmers people Okay, how much gas do I put in and how many times do I press the choke and you get a feel for the throttle and you get A feel for this and that same with the lawnmowers. It's like, okay at what point do I raise the blade so I don't hit the fringe But I get close enough Right how often do I have to empty the buckets of grass before it gets too heavy before it doesn't get heavy enough So I don't waste time all of this stuff brand new for people brand new for me when I was starting at the golf course And you give it like a week just a week Cutting grass every day and you're good It's like you can do it without even thinking anymore And then I start to think oh my god All things are hard before they're easy I'll repeat it. Everything is hard before it's easy But we get so consumed by looking at social media that we think that success just appears people get good out of nowhere People get fit out of nowhere You saw my before and after picture. Hey, I don't deal with anxiety anymore. I got off all my medication You think it just happened overnight Meanwhile, I've been working my ass off for years to get to this point But we don't give ourselves credit for that because we don't see it in the public eye We don't see the constant forward and reverse and forward and reverse trying to back up our trailers man So when you say that you know when you when you try something new and say that life is hard and I just can't get it right It's probably because you're pretty new at something or you just haven't given yourself enough time Maybe you've given yourself a week of meditation Maybe you've tried therapy and you've gone to like two appointments and you're like meh didn't work We love to do that. We love to dismiss things after one time after two times after ten times The benefit usually comes with us just sticking to something No matter how we feel about it how it's gonna work out in the future. Just give it your best and give it some time Like steak like you cook a steak you buy it you put it on the grill Versus you buy a steak and you marinate that baby for 24 hours Like give it some time give yourself time to marinate in some things that you're doing in your life I've had to give myself so much time and so much self-love too because it's easy to beat ourselves up for not Experiencing some newfound, you know pleasure or or or adopting some new skill and learning something really really quickly We get discouraged really fast Don't get discouraged fast Give yourself time know that everything is hard Before it's easy and don't dismiss that it's hard because you know what have the mindset that yo This is hard right now But in like a month's time a year's time for this trailer idea a week's time I'm gonna be doing this with my eyes closed anyways, so may as well have a little bit of fun learning something Being being terrible at something because when you're terrible at something you're really really mindful of it You're really concentrating when I'm trying to back up that trailer You're really like okay, how many degrees do I turn that so then the trailer moves that way? And then I got a reverse and you're you know where all the shifters are you have your rpms You have your gauges when you get good at something all that you don't even notice anymore Right you have this filtration system in the mind where you can ignore these things now and I know you know this because a lot of you drive and Remember your first time trying to learn how to drive you couldn't pull in to an empty parking space with no one around you Who isn't that crazy? I remember learning how to drive full parking lot I couldn't get in between the lines. I'd have to do the pull through for sure But you don't know the turning radius You don't know how the gas feels you don't know how strong you got to push on the brakes You don't know the actual size of the car, right? That's spatial sense of where the hood ends. How close can you get to the curb? So a lot of us were always taken like Really why turns because a lot of the time we think that we're really close to the curb Right or if we're on a two-way street if you're driving for the first time This is I guess this the theme of this podcast is Driving everything's hard before it's easy, but driving. I just I know a lot of you can relate When we're we're driving on a two-way street, you're never close to that median You're never close to the middle when you're learning how to drive You want to be as far away from that oncoming traffic as possible and when you get more comfortable You don't even think about that anymore You're not hugging the curb anymore. You're closer to the middle You're right in the middle of the lane right where you're supposed to be So all things are hard before they're easy. Don't beat yourself up if you're hugging the curb a little bit If you need a lot of support right now during COVID if you're reaching out to people more than you usually would If things that maybe used to be easy are hard again We're learning new skills. We're learning. We're developing this new routine and learning how to live very very differently Man, I miss my friends. I miss meeting people. I miss going to a coffee shop. I miss going to concerts I miss so much. I miss seeing family Like it it's killing me This is hard And you know what that's okay, we're adapting humans adapt relatively quickly too Give yourself some space give yourself a breath Know that all things are hard before they're easy. So if you're backing in that trailer with the tractor Laugh at yourself a little bit Don't take yourself so seriously add some levity to the situation some self-deprecating humor That's what I'm learning how to do. I gotta stop taking myself so seriously Which is one of the reasons why I'm getting off social media for about three months. So that'll be a different episode I wanted to do a series on why social media is ruining so many lives I know I talked about that in a few previous episodes, but I'm I'm taking a big reset here and and really doing some I Don't want to use the word self-care, but I'll just use it self-care And it's gonna feel amazing. I already feels amazing not to be on my phone as much not to be on Instagram on Facebook. Oh my gosh It's like a weights been lifted and with that weight lifted I can take that weather balloon up even higher to look objectively at the world and my thoughts my thinking thought process Emotions It's an awesome thing. So I'll keep you updated on that, but the message here my friends is you know, we like to Say that life is hard and as human beings. We're pretty lazy with language Sorry, uh-huh burp We're pretty lazy with language so We say life is hard. We have these generalized statements, right? We we inflate things all the time. We become dramatic in our language life is hard When you say life is hard everything That's good is in life too. This is life every single damn thing is life So when you say life is hard Like give yourself a little bit of space there a little bit of breathing room saying hold on There's a lot of good in life the best things that happen Happen in life and the shittiest things that happen happen in life the hardest things and the easiest things So rather than saying life is hard Narrow that down with your language and say, okay, what is hard in my life right now? What am I struggling with what am I having difficulty with and then acknowledge that okay depending on what it is Maybe it's something that used to be easy now. It's hard, but most likely it's something new you're experiencing It's something new and you're saying well, this is really hard Then I want you to repeat okay, it's new it should be hard It is hard because it's new and Because it's new that means I have to learn all these different skills Give myself a hug give myself some space Know that all things are hard before they're easy That's it my friend keep up the great work Thanks so much for listening check out all the other episodes on the podcast Make sure you click the link in the description if you ever want to chat check out the website depression to expression Dot-com for coaching for the course for all good things public speaking and I'll talk to you It's soon. Okay. Bye. Bye guys. Bye. Most of you don't make it this far. So I thought I'd just be weird See you guys