962. Experience Is A Form Of Meditation

Have you ever noticed how experience works like meditation? The more you live through, the less you freak out. You start slowing things down, thinking clearer, responding better. That’s what this episode’s about — how experience creates space, and how that space makes you unshakable.

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Transcript

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Have you ever noticed how experience itself is a form of meditation? Sounds kind of crazy, man, but I just, you know, I started thinking this morning, I'm like, bro, you know, you experience is a form of meditation because think about meditation. When you think about meditation, you think about someone who's just like sitting there quietly. Their legs are crossed, their eyes are closed, they're breathing deeply. But at its core, meditation is simply the practice of creating space, and it's that gap between the stimulus of whatever the current situation is and how you respond to it. That space is everything. That space is. What allows you to stay calm, to think, to move with intention instead of reacting out of some sort of raw emotion. Experience does the same thing. This is why. I say experience really is a form of meditation because think about it like this. When you're new to something, the freakouts are immediate, right? Whether you're a new manager, a new parent, a new driver, like you just got the keys to the car, you're a new homeowner. When something happens, you freak out. You overreact because everything seems urgent. Everything seems like a fire. Why? Because you don't have any experience yet, so the uncertainty and the new adversity, like you, you, you don't know how to process this. You don't know how to handle this because. You have no experience. It's all brand new to you, so you gotta get experience. And sadly, hate to tell you, the only way to get experience is through experience. You can't borrow it from anybody. you can read about it, but you can only read about it, like to get an understanding like what other people have gone through. And sometimes I think that's what's good is 'cause you realize, oh, I'm not the only one, or my situation's not that bad. So you can read about other people's experiences and how they dealt with it, but the only way you're truly going to gain experience for yourself and be equipped for the future. Is you gotta live it. That means you gotta sit in the tension instead of escaping from it. You gotta resist the urge to blame others. Or hand it off or say, that's not my monkey, not my zoo. It's not my wheelhouse. I, it is above my pay grade, man. Man, I ain't got nothing to do with me. Truthfully, you're scared and so you just immediately blame someone else for it or throw more confusion at the situation. So you just like pour gas on it, or you just say, man, that ain't got nothing to do with me. Go see so and so. That's what he makes the big bucks for. And bro, you're never going to get any better at life. You're never going to get any stronger at situations because you blame it or you delegate it all away. You want to create freedom. You want to create independence. You want to create value to yourself and the marketplace and the world for that matter. You gotta have experience, but it's not just experience for experience sake. It's learned, productive experience. It's not that you're gonna hit a 10 every single time. It's that I have the willingness to sit in the tension and to try to come up with a solution. I try to figure it out on my own, that experience. Is going to transform you when you sit there and you resist the urge, the fight, flight, or freeze. When you resist that urge to run away or delegate or blame you get that experience and when you subject yourself enough times to this, things begin to happen for you. You begin to widen that space. It's the same space that meditation builds. This is why I say experience is a form of meditation. At first, you freak out, but then as you sit in that tension, you slow things down. You literally breathe through it. You don't just spew off at the mouth or react. You are like, what are my options? Okay, what is I have to do? It's kind of like what quarterbacks do in in mayday situations. They have a mental checklist, a mental Rolodex they go through and they just work through these different situations and they're actually able to slow the field of play down and work through their options. It's the same thing you gotta do. Experience is a form of meditation. I think Steve Magnus in his book Do Hard Things, put it perfectly, he says, experience develops the capacity to flexibly modulate. Love that. Flexible and modulation meaning you're you. You can bend, you can adjust. Modulate means that you're controlled, that you have influence over. So you're able to flexibly modulate automatic reactions to an aversive. Event aversive means you don't like it. You have a lot of opposition to it. All right? I gotta use my experience to find a solution. When you modulate, you're flexible in thought. You're flexible in action, and you modulate. You learn to bend instead of break. You are not rigid, you're not reactive, you're not defensive. You start adapting and you adapt from a position of strength instead of panic, you just work through. I mean, have you ever like seen somebody think of someone who just seems unflappable? Whether it be in the public face and the press is all on them and the pressure's there, or an athlete or even maybe, you know, somebody you work for or work with, and they just, bro, like in the situations, they just seem like. Made of steel. You're like, God bless, man. I wish I was that unflappable. They have the same emotions that you do, you just don't see it. What they've done is, is they've trained themselves to increase the capacity, to get triggered, to feel the stimulus, but because they've accumulated experience. And they're very conscious about that. They work through that mental Rolodex and they're seeking to find a solution. And so even though the situation may not be the same, it's similar or they can just draw from the experience they've had before and apply it, adapt it for this current situation. And this is what I find is really unique about experience. You can't drain experience with experience. Yeah, meaning that you can draw when you draw on experience. Like think about drawing outta your checking account. When you draw out of that checking account. You draw a hundred outta there, a hundred ain't in there. Your a hundred dollars less , but with experience is different. You can draw on that experience and use it and apply to your situation for a solution. And with that, you have new experience. So the experience that you originally drew from is not only put back in, but it's actually compounded, it's reinvested. That's the trippy thing about experience. You can't exhaust it when you use it in the right way , and you lean into additional uncomfortable situations, you lean into the adversity. I don't know what the answer is. I don't know. I've never been in this situation, but let me draw from my experience and figure out what are my options here? What can I do? You take control of your situation. You're not a victim and you work through these situations. You discover things, you get more experience, you apply it to your experience account, and that meditation, that space, it increases. And sometimes when I say space, it's more so it's not like, oh, it's gonna take me two hours to figure this solution out. It's that mental space. That you're able to quickly work through these situations in your mind and say, I'm going with this one. And so sometimes you have solutions. Sometimes you just have outcomes, and the outcomes may not have been the solution you hope for, but with that experience, you learn how to recover. You learn from it, you reapply it. It's beautiful. Experience is beautiful. You gotta have experience. The only way you're gonna get better at anything is you gotta subject yourself to it. You do. And the more you subject yourself to it and the tougher they become, and you purposefully, you have an awareness of leaning into these things, the marketplace, the world will react by not only gravitating to you, but. Damnit, they will pay you handsomely for it because you can do things that most people can't. Why? Because you've learned that experience is a form of meditation. So how can you use this? This is what I wanna bring your awareness to. Like what's a situation that you just kind of like passed off to someone else or that you confused by just blaming you? Like you just poured gas on the fire. You just started laying blame or you played victim. So what of those situations that come to mind that you can revisit? This time, sit in the tension and work through it. Keep your mouth shut. Stop blaming. Just work through it. Figure it out. Even if it's not your role, even if it's not your responsibility, it is your responsibility. It's your ability and your opportunity to bring value. To the marketplace, to the world, really? You become that glue guy. You become that go-to person. You wanna be more of one of those people. And bro, there's a, there's a confidence inside of you that when I had the choice to bail, when I had the choice to delegate it to someone else, fuck no. I'm gonna figure this thing out. I'm not gonna ask the question. I'm gonna get to a point. That I absolutely cannot figure this out. But until then, you will find that with that space, that meditation, and you just remind yourself. Experience is a form of meditation. Okay, what are my options here? Hmm? What do I have? What can I use? What can I use now physically? Or what can I use mentally that I've been through before? What have I read about and now can experience? What are those things, right? So can you revisit some of those things? And if you cannot, you, you're still gonna have an opportunity more's coming to you. So the next time, this is why I bring you this episode, the next time you have an awareness to that situation and you're ready for it, you just, I gotta increase that bandwidth. I gotta increase that space. And the more you do this, the better you're gonna get at it because you're gonna have experience and because experience is now a form of meditation for you. I told you in episode 9 61 of Tenacity. If you have not heard it, go back and listen to it. And I said the next episode was gonna be on resistance. It's still coming. I just came up with this this morning. I haven't recorded the resistance one, and so, but I, I, I, I, I came up with this one and I have to share it. One thing about me is like, as soon as I come up with something. Like I have this insatiable burn to get it out there and to, and to share it with you. And that's exactly what this is. Alright, I am coming with the resistance. It will be the next one. I'm not gonna write anything else until I come out with the resistance one. Alright, with that, please share this episode. Also leave a rating and review if you can. This helps get the word out. Uh, just like a restaurant, people are shopping for podcasts. They need something to listen to. Why do you keep coming back to what's your problem with the podcast? Alright. 9 62 is in the bag with that. Stay amazing keep it simple. Keep it moving. Never settle. Stay tough p