Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Today we're diving into the one no that changes our entire life. That shifts from negative to positive. There's this magic moment that can change whether or not you go into a very negative spiral, get into a bad mood, do some crazy thing, or go in a positive direction. So that's what we're getting into today. Because each one of us throughout our day has thousands and thousands, if not millions of micro moments where we can either go one way or another way. And depending on which way we go, our day, day either gets better or it gets worse. If we allow certain thoughts to happen, they connect to other thoughts, and then things start getting out of hand.
And I'm sure you've noticed in yourself, especially with addictions, that once. Once it starts its little process, it's very hard to stop it once it's reached a certain point.
So this is what we're diving into today. And this is an extremely important topic.
So get ready.
Ding, ding, ding.
This is. This is one of those big topics now.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Tell us about it, Michael. Tell us.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: So one of the things I learned when I started doing meditation years and years ago from my meditation teacher at the time is he said, when we are going about our day, we have all these thoughts, we have all these things that we're. That we're doing. And there are certain, like, negative patterns that we all have. Whether you call them the vices or just bad habits or whatever it is, right? And so, like, you've seen the angel on one shoulder, devil on the other shoulder kind of thing, right? So that we come across these situations and the devil says, just do it. It's gonna be great. You'll be fine. Right? You should do this thing. You need this thing, right? And the angel says, no, no, no, no, no. That's not a good idea. Right? This is. This is going on all day long, actually, in different situations.
And in that moment, we have this really tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny window where we are capable of listening to the angel and saying no.
And if we do it at that moment, then we. Then we basically won the game, right? It doesn't go down that road, and we can regroup ourselves and go in a different, healthier direction.
If we don't say no and it carries on in that old habit, it just moves in that direction until it plays itself out. That's the cycle of addictions. There's a trigger, and then the thoughts start coming, the emotions start coming, and there's this thing. I need to take action. I need to, like, fulfill my need, whatever it is. Then we act out whatever it is, like eating or whatever it is, and then we say to ourselves, oh, I shouldn't have done that. I'm such a bad person. Why did I do that?
And then it comes up again and just goes round and round and round and round and round.
So the only way to break this is there has to be a no in there somewhere.
And ultimately a lot of spiritual work is, is that kind of micro magic moment where instead of saying yes, I'm going to act out, I'm going to say no.
And there's. And it's not necessarily just the word no itself, there's different ways of saying it. So here's some things that I personally have found helpful is instead of saying, let's say, for example, like one thing, one of my sort of more savory, unhealthy, but not good things I do is eat toast, right? Which I'm sure some people will say, what is wrong with toast, Michael, Seriously? Right?
[00:04:08] Speaker B: I know, right? I can like. Come on.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: I know, I know. I guess stop giving it. But I'm just giving an example, right? So, so, so I'm like, eating toast.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Is your worst problem.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: It's my worst. My worst problem. Then I'm doing all right. I'll give another, like sugar, right? So right here I have a bowl of cherries. I don't know if you can see the bowl of cherries, right? So I went to the.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: What is wrong with eating cherries? Okay, I can even understand what. So maybe then something is wrong with eating toast, but what's wrong with eating cherries?
[00:04:36] Speaker A: No, there's no, let's just. This is just an example, okay? So I went to the gym yesterday. This is exactly.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: I can understand if you don't eat 10 bars of chocolate, but I cannot. So I cannot support you on eating cherries. And something's wrong.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: This, this, this is the example though. We're gonna. Because this happened yesterday, right? So I went to the gym and. And I'm getting back into, to more exercise. And my trainer said, look, just, you know, if you want to build muscle and all this stuff, you want to cut the carbs and up the protein, which is classic advice for that sort of work, right? So I went to the store and I said, okay, I'm going to buy protein, you know, vegan protein and low carb vegetables. So I walk. And I had literally had that in my mind. I walked in this. I'm going to get these. And immediately the first thing I saw was these cherries, right? And they haven't been in season.
And first thing I did is just grab the cherries and put them straight in my car. The very first thing that went in my car, Spaghetti. I mean, end of the day, like, the reason. This is not that big a deal because. And it's not, it's not going to kill me having cherries. Right. But that, that's an example of where I had a thought and I immediately did the opposite.
[00:05:50] Speaker B: This is an example of just being too extreme.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: I mean, it could be, it could be that. But the, the, the point is that this happens.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Oh, my brother.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: It's, it's just an ex. I just noticed it happening yesterday and I thought that was quite funny. I saw. I'm not. I'm only going to buy protein and vegetables. And I immediately grabbed the cherries. But so when.
That's a fairly minor thing, obviously. Right. It's not a big deal. Otherwise I would be more disturbed about this. I like cherries.
The, the thing that comes up is more like negative thoughts about other people. The five vices. Anger, lust, greed, attachment, you know, getting irritated.
These are the more serious things that take a little bit longer to deal with.
And so what I've found is that initially I would beat myself up about it or I would be in denial that it was even happening when I started my spiritual practice.
So the first thing is I, I would just suppress it. I'm like, this isn't happening to me. And then I would act out some unhealthy behavior without even acknowledging that I did it, because I think that's kind of what. A lot, a lot. It's like that didn't even happen. I'm sort of go unconscious. And then you think, you know, I'm all good because there's, you can' Deal with the fact that there's a double standard happening.
And that's not a good way to deal with it, obviously, because it's not resolving anything.
And then I would perhaps beat myself up. Oh, why did I do that thing? I shouldn't do that. I shouldn't want that. I shouldn't need that, whatever it is. Right. So that's like a denial of what is. Again, so these are all suppression methods.
And then what started helping, helping me was talking and listening to people who've been on the path for longer. And one of the things that someone said, I can't remember who was.
He said his response was, oh, there you are again.
Right. Like talking to an old. So instead of it being like, I'm denying this and. Or I'm beating myself up, about changed to oh, there you are again. Hello again. It's like ah, when the pattern comes up, there's a certain detachment from it that isn't taking it too personally.
And I found that very helpful actually. Just oh, oh, hello. That's interesting curiosity, like watching it neutrally, right?
[00:08:32] Speaker B: Yeah, that's helped a lot for me too, watching my vices play out very neutrally. Not saying oh, bad, bad, bad, bad. Just very neutrally say oh, okay, you're there. Good, there it is.
Let me just let you be there.
But I like this idea you were saying about that a lot of our spiritual path is about these very micro moments where we can say no.
Recently I was witnessing two people, two of my friends talking and now of course they're on a spiritual path. And but before they were saying that before they would do something that they know that they would feel guilty about and they know that they're going to feel guilty about it, but still they would just do it.
Like something would compel them to do something even though they know they're going to be guilty about it. Like you know, like drink too much, know that the next morning they're not going to like themselves for drinking too much, but they still just do it.
And so interesting that if you are, why, if you know, right? If you know you're doing something and then you're still doing it somehow there is a self punishment, self sabotage mechanism going on, right? That, and you have to watch why this self sabotage is going on.
Why am I self sabotaging?
[00:10:17] Speaker A: It's a coping mechanism, isn't it? There's, there's a comfort. I mean we're kind of delving into the area of addiction basically at this point. I mean this wasn't.
You can't really talk about this no thing without dealing with addiction because that's, that's the devil on the shoulder saying, give me my stuff.
And so when, whenever we act out any addiction, whether it's, you know, there's, there's such a long range, there's obviously cell phone, Internet and then there's all the different drugs, sex, gambling, you know, people, it's like a long, long, long list of addictions, right? All the 12 step groups, every single one of them is a coping mechanism to come into a different state.
But that's why it's there, isn't it? So let's say, let's say I'm feeling emotionally unsettled, right? And eating food makes me feel more relaxed. Then I can just go in the Kitchen buy, get a bunch of ice cream out of the freezer and just eat away at it. And then I'm full and then I feel okay, everything's fine. But then later on, why did I eat that? My stomach hurts.
So. But we have to have compassion that the reason that happened in the first place is because we were feeling something that we didn't like to feel and we didn't have a better method to feel better.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: And so that was a proven method. You know, we did it before and it worked last time. So I'm just going to do it again.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: Right, right. Like it could be also be like, you know, let's, let's take alcohol, right. Since we're talking about addiction.
Someone.
At certain point in my life, I used to have a lot of people, I used to know a lot of people who were going through this 12 step program and they like lots of friends. And then they, they used to tell me that, you know, alcohol is not like you like it. Like you don't drink alcohol because you like it.
You're drinking it because you're numbing your pain about something.
And that's, that's the method, you know, that's the poison you've chosen to numb your pain.
And, and so they would tell me that to, in recovery. This is what they were told all the time in recovery.
So let's say you, there are certain times during the day you're drinking, right.
And you need to find out what those times are. And let's say you don't know what to do with yourself. Let's say you just put the clothes in the washer and then you have a few moments and you're like, you know, don't know what to do with yourself.
So this was an exact, actually example this person was giving me that in that moment is you need to tell yourself that no.
Right.
That no needs to happen in that moment. Because previously it was, oh, let me go get a drink.
But in that moment, not only should it be a no, but there has to be a redirect. I feel, what else am I doing?
Because if I don't have a redirect, if I don't have a established redirect to this kind of behavior, the no is not going to be enough.
I will do it. And then I'll be like, oh, I did, you know, did it. But if there is a no and then there is a gentle redirect, I, I think that would really be both.
Right?
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Yeah. It can't just be no.
It's no. And so I was given an example of someone I was working with recently. And she had negative thinking patterns where she just get into a bad state because complaining. And this isn't working, and this isn't working, and it just goes down this thing. And then she's in a state of despair, basically.
And so I. What method I gave her, which she's been using, it works really well. Is.
Is to say, even. Even though this thing has come up, which could be like, even though the addiction's there, even though I'm hungry, even though I'm feeling this thing, here's something else. And I gave her different thoughts to things specifically for her based on her situation. Even though. Even though this, this is good, this is good, this is good. And do these other things. So the reason I'm giving this example is that it starts here. And normally it goes in a dark way down there like this, but we're taking where it starts and we're putting it in a new direction so that that initial trigger can connect to something positive over here.
So even though I'm feeling this thing and I want to eat loads of pizzas or whatever, I love myself and I'm going to do this other thing instead.
Because if we don't do that, what other choice have we got then to repeat it? And this is happening in the brain as well. This isn't just like in our head. Our actual body becomes physically addicted to all kinds of things. So the body's going, give me my stuff. You know, like anyone who's tried to overcome any addiction, they know that there's like an actual feeling around it.
So, so we. So there's two things going on here is how do you say no to yourself in the nicest way possible, and then how do you come out of it so that it doesn't keep going in that direction?
A couple of things that I find helpful is to have other ways of saying no. So, for example, one that works really well for me is I say to myself, boring, boring.
Right, Boring.
[00:16:20] Speaker B: Like, let's, let's. Let's take this cherries example. As soon as you see the cherries.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: You'Ll be like, boring, boring, boring, boring. Yeah, because it's like the. The part of my brain is like. I mean, to be honest, cherries are hardly a big problem. I could do without the cherries. Right.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: You were the one who brought up the topic.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: It was just an example of.
[00:16:43] Speaker B: It's just an example of going extreme, but go ahead.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: No, no, this. I just. I thought it was. I just Thought it was funny that I went in the store, I'm just getting protein and I immediately grab cherries. But, but that's because it doesn't matter that much to me actually. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have done it. But, but let's say I'm. I'm wanting to distract myself on the Internet, which is more, more of a problem. Right.
So it, the, the unconscious thing is let me just avoid whatever I'm dealing with and just look at some random stuff to.
But if I think in my head, boring, boring, boring, but then it actually changes my feeling because, because to be honest, most stuff, most of these addictive behaviors actually are quite boring really. Because it's the same old thing again and again. Doesn't have any real value. It's just, you know, once you've done something enough times, it's like it actually is boring on a deeper level.
And I find that just saying boring, boring, it just makes it feel boring. I'm like, why don't got time for this nonsense? And I just chuck it aside.
So it's reframing something that, that part of our psyche is like, I want that thing to. This is super boring, you know, because we don't normally do things that we're bored about.
And then there's this new fun thing that I would do instead of another one that, that helps is to say to ourselves, I don't want that.
To actually say it directly. I don't want that thing. I don't want it. I don't want it. I don't want it. I don't choose that to actually like reinforce. I don't want that.
Because we've got this little magic moment right. Where we can make a decision, am I going to go in this direction or this direction?
So we have to have something that like gets. Cuts through the, the pattern.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: And gets right to it. So boring. Works for me. That's interesting. Works for me.
And I don't want that. I'm not interested.
We can use, you can use your own terms, but those general things, I'm not beating myself up. I'm not denying it. I'm not pretending it isn't happening.
I'm saying I don't want it, I don't like it and it's boring.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: That is enough to expand that window of pattern based addictive behaviors.
And then, and then we have to do something different.
[00:19:22] Speaker B: You know what really helps me in these situations where I'm doing something I used to do, a lot of it is mirror meditations would go in front of the mirror and meditate.
So for example, let's say I'm scrolling a lot, right?
Any moment I get, you know, not spending time with my family, this and that, I'm just keep scrolling that. Let's say that is my behavior, right?
And so mirror. And the mirror meditation can be any time and it can even be one minute, right? So you go in front of the mirror and you see yourself.
Opposite of that, you see yourself someone who's very engaged with life. You see yourself someone who is really doing high quality things, not just wasting your time doom scrolling.
And you see yourself as a soul and you really see yourself doing those things. Other things. Right. Just other things, right? Like going out into nature, spending time with your family, putting your phone away.
You see yourself and you keep reinforcing this seeing. Right. You see yourself as a soul and then you see yourself doing these things. It really helps.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: It really does. It's good to have various different things to do instead of. And one thing I've personally found helpful is to write a list. You know, if I'm wanting to do this unhealthy behavior, what are my other options specifically to actually write them down. I actually have something on my. Over there in the kitchen.
Just to remind, because if sometimes I'm. My biggest problem, I would say is wasting my time on the Internet because I get tired and I'm like, I'm just going to check this thing. So I haven't.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: Then this thing turns into an hour.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: And then I'm like, yeah. And then it turns into now, then it turns into two hours. And then I'm like, what happened to the day? Then I beat myself. So. So I'm like, okay, so in that moment I need to say boring. I'm not interested.
Get away from the thing. This is another thing that's important. If you're in. If you're in it. Like, if someone's addicted to alcohol, they shouldn't be surrounded by a full bar.
[00:21:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes, absolutely. They shouldn't be walking into bars and they shouldn't be surrounded by a bar.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Yeah, they open the fridge and there's loads of beers and wines and all sorts of stuff. And there's liquor bottles. That's not gonna help very well, is it? Because it's just right there. So you want to actually get rid of the.
The opportunity to do these things. That solves half the problem.
And then, and then we say, this is boring. I love myself, I don't need this. And instead I'm gonna do this new thing and and ideally, make that new thing something that's easy to do and is quite rewarding as quickly as possible. Because the. The thing with addictions is they give instant rewards, otherwise we wouldn't do them. You know, normally any kind of addictive behavior has some chemical effect very quickly, especially drugs and alcohol, things like that. It's like, boom.
So if you're doing something like meditation, it takes a bit more to get into it relative to like cocaine, let's say if you compare the two. Meditation on one side, heroin on the.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: Song, that you can do. Natural comparison. Let's do it.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Natural comparison. Exactly. It's like you could do a line of coke or you can do an hour meditation. What's it going to be? You know, so what can you do that's. That's something that is going to hit the spot fairly quickly instead of the other thing because.
And there's lots of, you know, you have to think about this for yourself. Everyone's different. Whether it's, you know, going out or listening to music or reading a book or calling someone up or whatever. Whatever, right? You. You know yourself better.
So we can't just go cold turkey and then have this void because it will end up being filled with the usual stuff fairly quickly.
So this is. And it's good to come up with a plan.
Just see, because we all know ourselves after a while, right? We all know what. When things happen, when they go wrong, what the usual thing is. So we can plan this out. Normally, what's going to happen is this, this and this.
But instead of that, I'm now coming up with this new schedule. It's boring. The other thing's boring. I don't like it.
And I'm going to do this.
And. And to be perfectly honest, if it's a serious addiction you're talking about, you probably want to get help from somebody who can.
You can check in with.
Because it's hard to get out of serious things all on your own.
[00:24:35] Speaker B: Yeah, 12 step programs really work.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Yeah, 12 set. And some people don't like them for various reasons. And there's other versions of the 12 step that for whatever reason, people don't like those. They're same sort of thing, but different.
But we definitely need help with big changes in our life.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: You know, this.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: So if you have that one thing.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: This thing, what you're saying is this moment where you have a impulse and then you act on that impulse, you have to make that choice point at that time, right? You have to keep observing. You have to keep, you know, Narrowing it down and shining a light on that point, that choice point, right? This is the impulse I have and what is the choice I'm making in this impulse?
And you can actually, you know, see yourself doing it, right. See yourself. And sometimes I feel like neuro linguistic programming techniques sometimes really work, right?
Like you see yourself reacting, you see yourself at that choice point and you see yourself going this way, and you can really pull yourself back and say, no, that's the point. Let me stretch that point.
And actually now let me go this way. Even though two days ago I went this way, which was not good for me, let me stretch that point and see myself going this way. You keep seeing yourself going in another direction, in a more positive direction.
And that no, when it finally comes to that point again, you will say no.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: That's right. You know, one NLP method is related to this is that you would imagine doing the thing that normally is like the addictive behavior. And you play it over and over and over again, black and white and grainy. There's a bit of a process to this, but you want to reframe it so that it seems nasty and boring and unpleasant to you. And you can even imagine, like the negative feelings that come with it or some annoying music that goes with this. You're imagining that scene happening from a distance in a very unpleasant way. So when you think about doing it, what comes up emotionally is, oh dear, that's just boring and nasty. And I don't like it. I genuinely don't like it.
So that when. When we're in real life and we're going through our day and it comes up in that moment, that inner work of reframing it over and over and over again comes to our awareness and we go, no, I don't. I really don't want to do that anymore. Like, that's not cool with me. I'm not interested.
So then there's that real shift where we honestly don't care anymore, we don't want to do it, and then we can sincerely say no because it's. It's in us that we don't like that anymore.
These. These are very deep things we're getting into today. Actually, I wasn't quite planning on going into this heavy jury addiction discussion, but that's basically where it ended up, isn't it?
[00:28:09] Speaker B: So all because you thought cherries were a bad idea?
[00:28:12] Speaker A: Oh, cherries. I mean, oh my God. God who? I don't know if anyone else has any cherries. This first. Cherries. I bought this even. But I mean, sometimes in the summer when it's proper cherry season, I do buy like 10 bags of maybe six. Six bags of cherries and have massive bowls of them because it's cherry season, you know, and then they runs out and I can't have them for a year, so.
But there are worse problems than eating cherries, I think.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: Really, Michael, that's so horrible.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: How could you, how could you Think about the cherries. Think about those poor cherries.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: Think about those poor cherries.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: Those poor cherries that you ate. Oh my God. What do they think about this?
Yeah. So, yeah, if cherry addiction is the biggest thing we got going on, that's not too bad.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: Are you sure?
[00:29:06] Speaker A: I don't know. Yeah, think about the cherries.
Poor cherries.
It's. It's a fun and games. We have to laugh ourselves see it from a distance and have patience. Have patience. Because some of these things, they're the ground in.
Getting someone away from their cherries is harder than it sounds.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: Getting ourselves. No, we have to first understand, I mean, let's take the ridiculous example of cherries out of the picture.
The.
Let's take, let's take alcohol.
Oh, let's take even saying no to people.
Like, let's say no to something that is really pulling you down, right? Like you hanging out with someone is really pulling you down and you have to say no. Right.
And that just by force of habit, you say yes and this and that. Right.
But even at that point, you need to understand you have to like have a different value for yourself. Right. There has to be a different amount of self respect. Whether it is saying no to alcohol or saying no to people misusing you and abusing you or any of these things. Right? There has to be a certain amount of self respect.
And so you have to start building your self respect up.
You know, I am a good person, I am a beautiful soul, I'm worthy of love, God loves me. All of these things. You start building yourself up.
And when you build yourself up, then you have the strength to say no.
You know, whether it's bad company or bad habits or bad company is even worse, I feel. Because company does everything for you, right? Because of company. A lot of things happen or don't happen in your life because of company.
And so if you keep, keep on keeping bad company, then it will affect you. And if you don't know how to say no to bad company, that's going to affect you.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: That's. That's a game changer. Yeah. One of the easiest ways to get out of an addiction or bad habit is to hang around with people who don't have it or have overcome it because they, their presence has a positive effect.
And related to this self respect is it's very important to have standards.
We to know what our standards actually are for ourselves.
Because the reason I gave the cherry example is because I, I invented a standard for myself like on my way from the gym to the health food store, which is a period of like maybe less than a mile. So I come up with this new standard for myself all of a sudden and then I arrived in the health food store and I immediately broke my standard because it, because it wasn't like a real standard that I actually really had.
So like, I immediately just was like, whatever.
But if we don't know what our standards are, then how can we decide whether we should do something or not do something?
You know? So like, if your standard is I only eat these sorts of foods, then then at least know what they are and what you have and what you don't have. If you say I, I drink or I don't drink, what is, what does that actually look like? Because in the moment we can only really make a serious decision on whether it's a yes or a no based on standards that we've come up with before that, right? We don't, we don't just on the fly come up with our conscience and come up with our standards for life. These are things that we, based on our belief system, based on our different ideas around what a lifestyle we want to have is or what's good for us.
So what are those standards?
You know what, what is your ideal standard for yourself?
[00:33:11] Speaker B: Yay. That thought we do a blessing.
[00:33:15] Speaker A: Yeah, there it is.
[00:33:17] Speaker B: There it is.
So let's pick a random page. So this blessing, divine viewers, listeners, this blessing is directly coming from God to you and picking a random page.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: Go for it.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: Okay, random page constancy.
Your presence is a source of healing and guidance.
Every single day you commit yourself to spiritual, spiritually replenishing your strength.
Your commitment has become a beacon in your life, guiding you through even the most challenging times.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: That's beautiful.
One of the most remarkable things is to do what we say we're going to do, isn't it? Be consistent.
Thank you, Shireen.
Om Shanti.
Yay.
