Ep.6: The moment when we decide

Episode Transcript

The Moment You Decide to Say Yes

Welcome back to the Wisdom Practice Podcast. Let me ask you something. Have you ever, in the moment, had the opportunity to make a decision that could have made your life better, could have helped you grow, could have done something amazing for you, but in the moment it was so overwhelming, or there was so much fear there, so much uncertainty, that maybe you didn't take that leap?

In this episode we're going to understand that one moment and how crucial it is, and if you decide to say yes, what that means, and if you decide to say no, why that is. So I really hope you guys enjoy this episode.

Bouldering Is a Lot Like Life

I went rock climbing last week, it's something I love to do every week if I can, specifically bouldering, without the ropes, just free climbing around. If you've been bouldering before there's something about it you may resonate with, I've done both, with the rope and bouldering, but I went there last week and realized bouldering is a little bit like life, and I think that's one of the reasons I love it so much.

When you're watching someone bouldering it seems fine, it seems okay, you're just climbing, how hard can it be. But for some reason, when you're there and you're climbing, even if it's only three meters above the ground, you could fall and be completely fine, there's a big mat, but for some reason you're not sure about the next grip, whether you can make it, whether you'll fall. To be fair, I'm not an expert climber, I'm an intermediate climber, so I still have that fear of falling, whereas some people are happy to go right to the top and just jump off, they don't care, props to them, but not so much for me.

The Grip That's Just Out of Reach

The reason it's a little bit like life: imagine you're on the wall, looking up, and there's a grip you have to reach, and it's a little bit out of your reach. Part of you knows you can reach it if you really gave it your all, but it's a little out of reach, and the only way to do it is by destabilizing yourself, going up on tiptoes or jumping a little, and when you're tightly against the wall and barely holding on, you don't want to even think about that.

Then two things can happen, and I've experienced both. Either something in you just takes that leap and reaches for it, in spite of all the fear that you'll fall, and when you're looking down from that height it looks a lot higher than it is, and as soon as you decide to go for it you give it your all, because now you're in a place of vulnerability, you have to make it, your body's already taking that step, and if you don't give it your all now you will definitely fall. Or you're reaching up but not fully reaching, kind of pretending you're trying, and then you put your arm down and think, actually I can't do this, and you come down.

I've done both, at times where I reached for something that seemed so impossible, my mind was telling me I'm definitely going to fall, this is crazy, but I still did it, for some reason I reached. Then when you get there you hold on for dear life, because your mind feels like it's life or death, and you get your balance and grip onto the wall, and you've made it.

When I got to the floor there was so much adrenaline coursing through me, because I'd just pushed my boundaries, expanded what I thought of as myself, what I thought I could do, in such a literal way, I'd quite literally reached beyond what I thought was possible. What I liked about it is how similar it is to life, it's a brilliant microcosm of it, because you'll have situations where you have the option to reach for something, and part of you may think it's actually possible, that if you gave it a little more you could reach it, but something is holding you back. And other times you don't want to do it at all, it looks too far out of reach, or you're just not in a state where you want to take that risk. Either way is fine, that's what I'm trying to say, but you'll have those situations in life where you have the opportunity to take a risk, and it may seem impossible simply because you're not used to it. The truth is, if you really give it your all, as soon as you commit, there's a good chance you'll find a way. It's committing to it that's the issue, deciding that in spite of the fear, in spite of the anxiety, I'm still going to try. That's the hardest thing with any decision. Once you fully give something your all, you've already committed, it's too late to step back in a way, so your body stops using energy on trying to talk you out of it and starts using all its resources on figuring it out, because now you have to.

The Cliff Dive

Another example: I haven't done cliff diving before, I really want to, I think it'll be amazing, but I imagine the hardest part is when you're on that ledge deciding, okay, do I actually want to do this? I said I wanted to, I signed up, I've walked all this way, I've come with friends, they're all watching me, I'm right on the edge, looking down, I can see the waves crashing beneath me, and then you start to question, actually, now that I'm here, maybe I don't want to do this.

It's the same with rock climbing, you have that choice in the moment, and it may take you one minute, two minutes, five minutes for your mind to talk itself into it, or out of it, or just go around in circles. But as soon as you take that step and walk off the edge, there may be a second of, oh damn, I'm really doing this, and after that your mind goes quiet, because there's no benefit anymore for the mind to say I really shouldn't be doing this, it might end up hurting me, it's literally too late, you've already jumped, and the mind knows this. So what's it going to do now? All it can do, now that you've taken that leap, is put all its energy into making sure you survive this, come out of it unhurt. As soon as you jump off, all that fear energy goes, and suddenly it's, okay, I need to make sure I land right, I need to make sure I'm in a pencil dive, I don't land on my stomach.

Same thing with the rock climbing, as soon as I made that leap, and the exact scenario was it was out of reach, I had to pretty much jump, my feet were on three-millimeter grips, one wrong move and I'm slipping, that's why I was so cautious, I wanted to make sure my feet were steady. For me to reach it I had to push off and really jump in a way, and there was no guarantee I'd make it, some part of me knew I could, but there was no guarantee. As soon as I made that decision, my mind went quiet, and suddenly all I was thinking about was, okay, I need to make this work now, it's too late, as soon as I push off my feet it's too late to go back, I've lost my balance, I can't go back to where I was, I have to reach it, hold onto the wall.

That's what I love about it, it's just like life. It may take you ten years to make a decision to change your life, ten years of talking yourself into it, out of it, going in circles, wondering if it's a good idea, wondering if it's possible, but it only takes you one second to decide. As soon as you decide, your mind is no longer concerned with talking you out of it, it's now going to put all its resources into making it work. It helps you realize an interesting thing, that you are not your mind, because you're the one making the decision in spite of your mind, and then your mind suddenly gets in line.

Your Mind Is the Advisor, Not the Driver

When you decide to make that decision, your mind is the advisor. If you have a king or queen, they have their advisors, Game of Thrones is what I'm thinking of, and that advisor is going to give you advice based on your past experience, because your mind is like a tape recorder, it records everything that's happened and can only use that data to make decisions or beliefs. You're limited by your own experience, which is fair, but then you have the choice to do something outside of your experience. Your mind is there to keep you safe, so you have this box of experience it can draw from and make conclusions about, but it can't make conclusions about something it hasn't experienced, it hasn't got the data. That's what I mean by it being an advisor, it can't give you advice outside its scope, it can't tell you whether you should take the leap, whether you should go for that grip. So its default reaction is, don't do it, because you haven't experienced this before and therefore it might not be safe.

You then have the choice to decide whether you want to listen to it. If it's a true decision, you can be on that wall, or on that cliff, and keep saying to yourself, yeah, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it in three, and you can keep going in circles, because there's a visceral difference between talking yourself into a decision and making a decision. When you make that true resolution to do something, something changes in your body, and then you just know, that's when the mind and body get in line, not when you're trying to talk yourself into it. It's something I like to call the all-in theory: as soon as you're all in, the mind shuts off, because it knows there's no point talking you out of it anymore, you made the decision, the best way for it to protect you now is to help you figure out what to do.

That's normally the hardest thing for people, getting to the point where they're all in, where they've decided, resolved, this is going to happen, and then the mind will look for ways to make it happen instead of trying to talk you out of it, because it knows that won't help. It's a powerful thing to understand conceptually, but you have to experience it. I'm sure you've had experiences where something inside you just clicked and you just did it, whether it's a literal leap of faith, approaching someone you like, or making a decision in your work.

When you're on that wall, what happened for me at least is your mind goes crazy, goes in circles, part of you says let's do it, part of you says hell no, go down, and the more you listen to your mind, even if it's saying yes or no, it just kind of paralyzes you. There's something about making the decision in spite of your mind, at least in my experience it wasn't a conceptual decision, it wasn't my mind listing pros and cons and thinking, okay, that's a good idea, let's do it, it was just chatter, and I had to make the choice in spite of that chatter.

Imagine you're driving a bus with twenty people behind you, and everyone on the bus wants to get to where they want to go, they all have different destinations. They're all shouting at you to turn left, turn right, go forward, stop, because they all want to go where they want to go, but at the end of the day you're the one driving, you're the one with the steering wheel, you have the choice to listen to that guy, or that girl, or ignore all of them and go where you want to go. This is the powerful thing about learning to treat your mind as an advisor, not as that babbling crowd on the bus. They may have very good points, they may know the exact route to get where they want to go, and if you want to, you can listen to them, but it's your choice. I find that when doing something new, uncomfortable, or scary, that crowd of people isn't really going to help you, because their opinions are based only on your past experience.

Give Your Mind More Data

So going back to cliff diving or rock climbing, the only way to give your mind more data, because your mind is very powerful, very good at what it does, your job is to give it more data. You could have the most incredible software or AI on the planet, but if it's been trained on ten pieces of information, it doesn't matter how well it's coded, it's not going to do anything compared to an AI trained on ten thousand pieces of information, or ten million, there's no comparison, even if that better-trained AI isn't as well made. This is why being smart does not make you successful by itself, you can find many people who aren't as smart as you but are way more successful, because you need to train yourself on more information, and the only way to do that is to have new experiences in spite of the fear, because that fear is justified, you can't argue with it. The fear is, I haven't done this before, how do I know it's not going to end in me getting hurt, that's what the mind is saying. It's your job to decide for yourself if it's something you still want to do, and the next time, your mind is not as loud, because it's like, okay, well, I've done this before, maybe it's okay, it's still skeptical, but the more times you do something, the more times you speak in front of a crowd, the more times you jump off that cliff, your mind gets a lot more used to the idea that you can actually do this, and the chatter shuts down, until the point where you're so comfortable with it that you can do it unconsciously, thinking of other things instead.

So what I'm trying to get across in this episode is: to change your perspective on life, you have to live life, and life will find a way of changing your perspective by hitting you with things and making you think differently. The journey of self-discovery and self-development is the realization of, wait, I can do all this stuff now, I don't have to wait for life to hit me on the head.