Ep.34 - Everyday tools to stay aware, with Mathias Fritzen

Episode Transcript

Bringing it down to real practical tools

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Wisdom Practice Podcast. Today's episode is a little bit different, so I wanted to give a small introduction before we jump in.

I'm having an amazing conversation with a good friend of mine, Matthias Fritzen, today. He's also a coach in the space, and today's conversation is really about what self-awareness means. We both go into it in detail, but more importantly, we go into exactly how you can implement it every single day, so you can become more grounded, less triggerable.

Sometimes talking about self-awareness can feel very philosophical and almost unreachable, so today's episode is going to bring it down to real practical tools that you can start using today to see a difference, to start connecting with yourself, to become less stressed, to become more grounded — just to start living more like the way you want to live.

I really hope you enjoy this episode. Let me know in the comments if you'd like more episodes like this, with a conversation rather than me just lecturing. Either way, I hope you enjoy.

Knowing where I'm coming from

I've been thinking about this — it's a good topic, because I think a lot of people know kind of what self-awareness is and how to do it, maybe shadow work or whatever else, but maybe not how to integrate it into everyday life. It's easy when you're on a mountain somewhere, but how do you not get pulled into drama and family and job, and how do you maintain your groundedness throughout all of that? I think that's what people would like to know.

That's the most challenging bit, right? Self-awareness on the meditation cushion or on a beautiful retreat is not super difficult, but in everyday life, when things get tough and the resources are low, that's a whole other story. For me, the way I see it, the whole self-awareness thing is like a muscle that you train — it's basically like going to the gym.

So what does it even mean, self-awareness? To be aware of what exactly? How would you define that — for you personally, not a general definition?

It's knowing how I'm operating in the world and knowing where I'm coming from. And I guess being able to see my life outside of the lens of my own beliefs. It's not even objectivity, it's just not getting pulled into the mind, into all the stories and everything it tells you based on the past. It's having space — that's basically what it is to me — space between how the mind operates and you.

You being who, you being what?

Me being the watcher of the mind.

Okay, so that's a cool definition. What you understand is — I'm just going to replay it back — the watcher of the mind, the inner witness or the observer, that's the part that is aware of the mind. And looking from that position helps you not get sucked into the stories of the mind, the limiting beliefs, and basically the whole biased view that the mind naturally has.

Yeah, I see it the same way. I have a bit more of a generalistic perspective on this. For me, the self is awareness — what we are essentially is awareness. And if that's true, then everything else is what we see. So everything else we can perceive is an object of our perception, and we are the subject. Objects of our perception can be literal objects, like this, but also thoughts, emotions, sensations, even energies — all objects of our perception. Being awareness, staying as awareness — that's what I'd call the pure watching, the pure witnessing.

And yet at the same time, we are also human, and we are moving in the world and interacting, and getting triggered all the time, getting sucked into stories and beliefs and old habits. It's easy to be exclusively one or the other — you can either watch what you're doing and meditate, or you can be in the world. The tricky thing is how do you merge the two? There's this famous quote, I think a Christian thing, about being in this world but not of it.

That is so personal for everyone, but it does come back down to knowing that you are not your mind — because a lot of people have this voice in their head and really believe that's them. Whatever it says, you can't even question it, because you'd be questioning your own self. How do you do that?

The first step, maybe — I don't know how it comes about — but that first step is that little crack in the shell of realizing: ooh, what's going on here? What's this mind telling me? And after that, it's just widening that gap. Like you said, practicing — it's exactly like a gym. I think the biggest thing people get wrong is they think it should be, you know, untriggerable — that they should be able to go into events with their families or people from their past and stay aware. But when they can't, they get ashamed, they judge themselves. That's the equivalent of going into the gym for the first time and trying to do a two-hundred-kilogram deadlift. It doesn't work.

Correct. There's a lot of pressure in the so-called spiritual community, and a lot of misconception about what this awareness is, what even awakening or enlightenment is. There is a part in you that will get triggered, and there is a part in you that will never get triggered, and never has been triggered, ever. There is no "I" that becomes untriggerable. That's not how it works — at least not in my experience.

What am I feeling right now emotionally?

But let's keep it practical — what does all of this mean in everyday life for somebody who wants to own their self-awareness, who wants to practically apply that?

One simple exercise I give almost all of my clients — it's so simple, it's almost like, how is this an exercise, how did I never think about this — it's just a check-in that you do, let's say, three times a day. And the check-in is: what am I feeling right now emotionally, and how does my body feel physically? Initially I also had the inquiry, what am I thinking — but I cut that out, because most people are stuck in their minds anyway. It's much better to connect with emotions and physical sensations.

So just take two minutes, sit down somewhere in a quiet space — you can do it right now, on the bus, on the train, whatever — and really check in. What am I feeling right now in my emotions? What am I feeling in my body? And now comes the twist: what do I need based on this information I just got? And then, what can I do — what is one little thing I can do right now to fulfill that need?

Let's say my check-in is: I'm coming home from work, on the bus. I ask myself, how am I feeling right now? Body feels tired, exhausted. Emotions are somehow sad, somehow low. Then I ask, what do I need right now — what would be good for me, good for my system? And that brings ideas to the surface. Maybe I could use a walk. Maybe some time in nature. Maybe a relaxed conversation with a friend. Whatever it might be in that moment. And then take action, apply it, make it happen. That's a simple little check-in. It takes two minutes. Do it three times a day for two weeks, and you'll have a completely different relationship with yourself.

But you say it's easy — we as people are so disconnected from our bodies, it can be really difficult, even to sit down. Your mind will go crazy straight away: why aren't you working, why aren't you doing this, this is a waste of time. That's the hiccup. I think the first step in any self-awareness is connecting back to your body, and we're so unused to that it will take a bit of grit to realize this is important. It may sound trivial — connect to your body, blah blah — but it is the basis for everything else.

Correct. The body is the compass, and it gives you valuable information. Where is tightness? Where is pain, where are aches? What are they telling you, what are the messages they carry?

One little message of encouragement for everyone: forget about whether it works. You just have to show up and do it. It doesn't have to work. If you sit down for the first time and check in with yourself, it can be very difficult to even establish a connection to your body. That's okay. Sit down for two minutes and try. Later that day, try it again. Just showing up and trying improves your capacity. At some point, like with everything you practice, you get good at it. It's inevitable.

How do I know I'm getting better?

I've been talking a lot — what did you have to add?

I'm trying to think back to when I was starting out. I didn't have any formal knowledge of, okay, I have to do this step and this step. Part of the reason I'm a coach is I want to give people some level of understanding, because this whole inner self-awareness stuff is really intangible, really messy. You don't know where you are, you don't know what your next step is, it looks like you're going backwards most of the time. I'm trying to find a way of grounding it in something where people get tangible feedback in the moment — something they can attach to, that they know is having some effect.

This was the issue I had for so long: how do I know I'm getting better? Because you'll have days where you feel like you've overcome everything — same with being triggered, days where nothing gets to you, and God knows why. And the next day could be the complete opposite. It's like, I spent the last ten years climbing a mountain just to start again. What the hell's going on?

I think it requires some realization on all our parts that if we don't connect to our bodies, we're going to get sick, we're going to live an unhappy lifetime, because your body is your body, and then your body starts feeding your mind. What people maybe don't always realize is the lower energy you are, the more power the mind has over you. When you're in those lower emotions — pride, anger, lust, whatever — the mind has more kick, it feels more true. But when you're in a place of compassion or acceptance, suddenly you have more opportunity to create space between you and your mind, more opportunity to realize that maybe there's more here than just a voice in my head.

There is no thought

It's a really interesting thing. One thing probably everyone has experienced to some extent is a state of flow. It can occur when you go running, or maybe whatever you do — playing an instrument, or giving a talk, it doesn't matter what it is — but you love doing this. And then there's this one special day where you really nail it and everything goes perfectly well, and you lose yourself in the doing. That's a very high-frequency state to be in. The side effect of this state is that there is no thought. You're surfing the wave and you're not thinking about how to surf it, because it just works naturally by itself.

That proves the point you were making before — when your system is operating in this more free, higher-frequency state, there is no thought, or no necessity for thinking. You can still think, but why would you need to? And vice versa — heavy thoughts, difficult thoughts, worries about the past or future, lower your energy, and that manifests in the body as fatigue, for example.

That's a great point. I think it's a really powerful exercise, when you're going about your day, to look out for those moments where you're not thinking, and become more aware of them, because you realize it's possible — you don't rely on thought. Your thought isn't you, it's just an operation you're doing, and that can create some serious momentum.

Michael Singer describes it so beautifully — I think in the first few chapters of The Untethered Soul, he describes his thoughts as a bad roommate, a really negative roommate trying to drag him down. At some point he's like, why does he even live there? Why am I even listening to this guy? Would I listen to an actual roommate dragging me down on a daily basis? No, I would not. I would not live with a person like this. And yet most of us are living with this sort of inner critic constantly telling us what we do wrong and what we should be doing differently.

So the question is, practically, if you're stuck with this annoying roommate and you can't get rid of them, what do you do?

Thank you so much for trying to support me

Well, I don't want to give a general statement — I'll tell you what I do. I try to muster up as much compassionate love as I can. I say, thank you so much for trying to support me and keep me safe and do your job — I understand. So I'm not fighting it, I'm not resisting it. And yet, after that expression of gratitude, I choose a different path. I say, I take it from here. It's okay.

That's perfect, and it's basically exactly what I do. Because when you have more body awareness, one thing that's really great to do is notice your body when you have those thoughts and naturally start fighting with them. At least for me, if I'm having a negative thought and trying to stop it, I'll tense up gently somewhere — could be the shoulders, one of the most popular locations. And we don't realize that the more we fight with something, the more energy we give it.

Correct — you know that video of two people leaning on each other, and the more one pushes, the more the other pushes back, subconsciously, until you let go. So that whole idea of loving it and being compassionate with it is so powerful, because it is letting go. And it's still addressing it, you're not ignoring it — you're very consciously separating yourself from it. It's an energy that is so opening that it releases all the tension in your body, and suddenly you're in a better state. Maybe the thought goes away, maybe it doesn't. But either way, if you just repeat — I love you, I love you, or anything like that — at least for me, it gets to a point where the thought just disappears, because there's nothing fighting it anymore.

Two things happen in that moment. One, you give up resistance — and if something is bothering you and you're resisting it, you add a second layer of suffering to it. So you remove that. And when you express gratitude and compassionate love towards that part of yourself that's speaking up, you become love. When you express love and it's genuine, you become love, you're speaking from a place of love, being love expressing itself in that moment. That feels fantastic. And that part can relax back, because it can integrate. Why would it act out? Because now you're noticing it, paying attention to it, even embracing it.

What does the child actually want?

This is fantastic. I'd like to add another thing, especially with inner child parts — they're very powerful. When they want something, they're usually needy, and I think there's real power in not only listening to them and sending them love, but also respecting their wish and their need and trying to accommodate that in your life. For example, if there's some part of me that feels it was lacking nourishment in childhood, and that shows up over and over again, I can ask myself, as an adult, as the conscious me: how can I incorporate more nourishment into my life? What would that be for me? And it's not always incense sticks and prayers and rituals — for the longest time I was doing those things and it didn't work, because it's not my thing. I had to find my own way.

Once I had a very powerful session with someone who made me aware that what I was doing to support my inner child was not what a child would actually want. It was stuff that was nourishing for me as an adult — but what kind of five-year-old would go to the gym, or to wellness? No kid would do that. So what does the child actually want? For example, I enjoy playing with Lego. I sometimes do that — I ask for a nice Lego set for my birthday and build it. I, as an adult, enjoy it, and I, as a child, enjoy it. I don't know what to do with the thing afterwards, but I enjoy building it.

I think that's so powerful, to lean into that and play, in a very real sense of the word. It's not really done anymore, I don't think. No, we've eradicated play from our lives. Even as kids — I can't remember the last time I've seen a kid just out in a garden. And that's such a powerful way of how you learn, how you learn to interact with your environment. It's a powerful thing to get back to.

For example, take the number one recreational drug, alcohol — if we assume we do everything for a good reason, what would be the good reason to drink? It's simple: it switches off the mind, because the mind is bothering us. It does that at least for a while, and then it comes back — not sustainable, but for a moment it does. And it helps, at least in some cases, us be more outgoing, exuberant, joyful — it helps us play, connect, make silly jokes, dance on the table. So it does two things: switches off the mind, and helps us express and play. Now, the means to get there using alcohol is probably not the best thing, but the wish for the play, and the wish for the mind to be quiet, is very real, and it's actually quite a good impulse.

I've never thought of it that way — I guess you're completely right, in most cases, if you drink, you get to be a kid again. In some ways, yes. It's funny that if the main purpose of alcohol is to tune down the brain, the instant response is normally happiness, normally laughter. If you really think about it — oh, if my mind isn't there, I'm naturally happy. I believe that's one of the biggest parts of it. It also does a lot with your hormonal system, let's not exclude that, but usually people feel extremely happy and peaceful in those moments when they are not thinking. And yet when you tell them it would be good to start meditating, they avoid it like the plague.

It's that delayed feedback, right — you start meditating the first time and suddenly every thought comes up, and you think, I'm doing this wrong. No, you're doing it right, you're just noticing how much is there. It takes a bit more discipline. I was never really a formal meditator — it had a purpose and helped in some cases, but I really prefer to do my meditations in life. A lot of people say, oh, I haven't got time to sit down for ten minutes a day — it's probably BS, but fine, if that's what you want to say. There's something you can do in your normal day that you do anyway, but you can turn it into a meditation — when you're making tea or coffee, or when you're running. Running is a great form of that, because you probably aren't thinking when you're running. Let's do that more consciously and turn it into your meditation — meditation is such a loaded word, just call it a break from your mind.

And simply take a moment to purely watch and observe what's going on outside of you and inside of you. That's meditation already — not distracting yourself with your smartphone, but instead watching and observing what's going on. People wonder why bird watching is so popular — the exact same reason. I've got a friend who goes fishing sometimes — he never catches anything, but he just sits there because he enjoys it.

Treat it as a gym

What are other simple ways to incorporate self-awareness into everyday life? I think going back to what you said about the gym — treat it as a gym. What for you is a two-kilogram lift? Take all the things in your life that trigger you — I just mean make you emotional, upset, whatever — write them down, write down the people who make you feel that way. Very systematically go into those situations knowing it's going to make you upset, but do it anyway. Choose something that's very low stimulus, a very light weight, and build up. It's difficult, but it's not difficult. We judge ourselves so much because we expect, like I said, to go into a massive situation and be completely calm — but you haven't even started with the two-kilogram weights.

I had the same thing — the mind has a really funny way of ignoring all the good things you do and just focusing on the one thing you made a mistake on. I think that could be a really powerful exercise for everyone: write down what bothers me, and maybe a situation you can control, like meeting a friend. Before you go into that situation, take a minute — maybe do your body awareness beforehand, take a few deep breaths. Know that it's probably going to upset you, and know that it's okay, because it's practice. Build from there.

Correct — collect positive experiences, and with every positive experience, you grow. One beautiful inquiry I learned from a fantastic coach named Steve Hardison is to ask yourself, in a moment like that: who am I being right now? Am I being a kind person? Am I being a loving person? Am I being a peaceful person? Or am I being an asshole? If I'm being an asshole, I do asshole actions, I think asshole thoughts, and I attract asshole people. Investigate the place you're coming from, rather than focusing too much on the thing on the surface. That's what I said at the start — self-awareness is knowing where I'm coming from.

I think that's a massive thing. And also, don't judge yourself for it, because we contain multitudes — I don't know the exact quote, but we contain multitudes. You can be amazing and you can also be a dick. They're not mutually exclusive. But again, with self-awareness, with awareness comes choice. If you're aware of that in a true way, you then have the choice of deciding, do I want to be this way right now, or do I not want to be this way right now? Without awareness, you have no idea, and you just do it by default.

Thank you for bringing that up, because that's really important. What you do not know, you cannot change. What lies in your unconscious, what you're unaware of — I think it was Carl Jung who said, it runs you. Because you can't change it, you're oblivious to it, you act from it, it acts you. And as soon as you become conscious of it, become aware of it, it's like, huh, this thing is showing up again — and now I have a choice.