Announcer (00:04):
Welcome to Life, the ultimate Choose your own adventure game with hosts Cliff Ravenscraft and Daphne Scott. Join this dynamic duo as they explore the profound concept of life as a thrilling adventure blend. Ancient wisdom and modern psychology. Embrace the joy of living with presence, creativity, and playfulness. It's time to navigate the game of life together. Are you ready to play? Let the adventure begin.
Daphne (00:33):
Let the adventure begin.
Cliff (00:35):
Let the adventure
(00:36):
Begin. It has begun already,
Daphne (00:38):
Ladies and gentlemen. That's called having a backup plan.
Cliff (00:42):
That's exactly right.
Daphne (00:44):
Well, and today I think it's fitting because today we were talking about mindfulness. What is it? Okay. I'm bold to even ask that question. I think. I don't know that we're going to define that today, however, that is what we're talking about. And I think having a backup is part of the whole plan. It can be part of the plan. So we're going to be talking about mindfulness today. What is it? What does it mean? And Cliff, I want to dive right into this. I'm going to, because we always have a little ramp up. We're kind of chatting before the show, before we hit record and we said, okay, here's the topic today. And I want you to talk a little bit about your process because I put the outlines together. I kind of choose the topic and I give us some, what I call it a foothold.
(01:27):
It's just a jumping off point. I don't know where the show's going to go. I don't know. I don't know really what I'm going to say. I don't know what you're going to say, but you said something and I thought, this is great when we talk about mindfulness, because I think mindfulness, there's the idea that there's some intentionality, which would imply some future planning maybe, but there's also another part maybe. Maybe right. There's another part of this. So talk a little bit about your process of how much work you go through Cliff to get ready for the show.
Cliff (01:56):
Yeah, so we were talking briefly, and you had asked me How do you feel like last week went and I'm like, I felt like it went great. It's the way that I typically show up. And as long as you are happy, because I think of this primarily as your show. It lives on your brand and stuff like that. And I'm delighted to co-host this with you. And I'm like, as long as you are happy with how last week went, that's how I like to show up. And so what I had said was I looked over the outlines just to see what topic you had chosen. I saw a little bit of a brief overview from above about where you're thinking our conversation might go. And I make it my intention to prepare nothing at all as to what I might contribute to said topic in advance.
(02:47):
And the reason why is first, I want to make sure that I know what the topic is and that I have some level of understanding of at least what the topic is. As long as that's the case, then what I want to do is I just want to go with the flow in the moment rather than thinking, oh my gosh, Daphne had in the outline, she was going to ask me this. I was really looking forward to really showing my stuff by giving this response. And she never asked that question. It was in the outline,
Daphne (03:20):
And I spent hours researching it.
Cliff (03:22):
Oh my gosh. It's like that's the one thing that I thought I could contribute to the show. But instead, what I want to do is I'm like, okay, I got to feel where Daphne's going with this. And I in the moment, my intuition will guide me, not my memorization. Yeah.
Daphne (03:41):
Oh, that's so good. That's so good. So I have a similar experience, and I think this is why I've understood that frameworks can be helpful. And at the same time, there is this beauty of being in the moment and that all of my training in improvisational theater and what fits into this and what you were describing Cliff, how you were talking about, look, this is how I'm coming to this and how I'm showing up to this, and I have no idea, no doubt about your ability to be present with this show. And when you were talking about that, that's also what came to me is all my training in improvisational theater, there were frameworks, there were things that you're taught to help you interact with one another when you're on stage, but there's no script. And what you just described, the minute that you get in your head, oh, I'm going to say this because that'll be really funny. We actually, we call in one of the books that I read, they call it being in hell because you're not present, you're not responding or reacting to what's going on in front of you to the person that's in front of you. And boy, it was a real tempting thing to do just to get your own agenda and you just missed the whole plot. Then I call it,
Cliff (04:52):
You just said something, Daphne, and I know this may be nitpicking down to the detail, do it. But the funny thing is, is who I was 45 minutes before we went live reviewing what the topic is and what I might contribute to who I am right now, I'm a completely different person,
Daphne (05:17):
Really.
Cliff (05:18):
I genuinely mean that because so much has transpired between 45 minutes ago or 45 minutes before we hit record today, I was upstairs in the kitchen. My wife was upstairs getting ready. We have our daughter's dog here with our dog, and so they're running around the kitchen and I'm reading the outline and I'm thinking about, okay, this is what the topic of the show is, and I'm in a completely different state of mind. I'm in a state of being. I'm in a completely different environment. And so what I would've been thinking about sharing intentionally, prescriptive, whatever, I would've been coming from a different place than where I am now. Since then, my wife came down, relieved me of the duties of caring for the dogs. I came down here and I'm setting things up, and now you and I have gotten into the back end of Streamy Yard, and we're talking about how the technical aspects are going, different options for bringing in jingles and all this other stuff. And you and I are in mean interacting with you brings forth from me a different state of being than me having the dogs. So in essence, I'm a different person. I'm coming from a different place. I'm in a different state than I was when I was upstairs. And so what I might say regarding any topic be completely different. This is the now version of Cliff.
Daphne (06:53):
Yeah. So I'm just going to go with that. So you mean you're not just a static entity?
Cliff (07:01):
No, I'm ever evolving.
Daphne (07:04):
We all are. Well, this fits in great with the idea of mindfulness. I think because there is this experience that we have of thinking that the me that is me is me. I have a name that I didn't choose by the way. I've kept it. I could change it, but I've chosen I guess to keep it. With that comes the identity. There is a person, there's this entity called Daphne, and Daphne has an identity, and that identity likes certain things and it doesn't like other things. And when we start, I'm going to call it subscribing to that idea, then I lose the essence of the change that actually I'm going to say change, the change that's actually happening, but I lose the essence of the reality, the more less conventional reality that this isn't a fixed entity over here. It is ever evolving. It is ever changing.
(08:06):
It is ever, if I let go of this idea that there's a fixed thing over here, that there's this Daphne over here, I can see where it does have this flow that goes through its natural process. It becomes more of a process. That's what I would say. There's more of a process over here than a fixed entity. So I love that you brought that up because I think when to plan, there's some beauty to planning, love planning, and we're at the beginning of the year, so I have people have goals and resolutions, however they want to, projects things they want to do. I do too, as far as the eye is concerned. And there's also this beauty, there's this other level of a deeper truth. I think that at least in my experience that says it's not as fixed as we think. It's, I'm not as fixed as I think I am, and there's a real beauty to that. So really you saying that you're like the cliff that was here 45 minutes ago, the cliff that was here one minute ago isn't really here.
Cliff (09:04):
It reminds me of Taylor Swift. Are you familiar with her reputation? And she's like, I'm sorry Taylor can't come to the phone right now because she's dead, or something of like that. I don't know if that's the line, but
Daphne (09:16):
Yes, she did say something.
Cliff (09:18):
But yeah, that version of me no longer exists. This is the present moment, Taylor, and I really love that line. I love that imagery. It reminds me of Eastern philosophy, and I'll never forget hearing this. I think it was from Sad Guru the very first time I ever heard this, where he talked about what is personality? And he says, many of us think we have a personality, and personality comes from the room root word persona. And it's another word for mask. Like Greek plays. They would have a persona and it was a mass that you speak through, and they would have just a handful of actors, let's just say three or four actors on a stage. But each actor on the stage would actually play multiple roles throughout the entire production. And so an actor would come out and they would hold one mask or persona, and they would play that role. They would play out that story, that narrative, that identity. And then they would go behind and they would come out and have another persona. And he says, here's what happens. Sometimes somebody will have glue on the persona, stick it to the face, it gets stuck. Now you have a personality, right? So a personality is nothing more than a mask that got stuck on your face.
Daphne (10:43):
And sometimes it fits real well and other times not so well. That's us wanting to make things certain.
Cliff (10:52):
And it goes with the title of our show Life, the Ultimate Choose Your Own Adventure game. But as soon as we subscribe that if I'm going to carry the identity cliff, so that's a name, a label. Again, I could change that just like you, but if I continue to carry this, if I subscribe using your language to the idea that Cliff is this, he's an Enneagram such and such, he's a NTF, whatever, J, whatever, he's this, he's that. Then all of a sudden, if I subscribe to all of those things that all of a sudden now I am limited in the choices I make within this adventure called life.
Daphne (11:42):
Exactly.
Cliff (11:43):
And I love the fact that, you know what? I am cliff ravenscraft, and I'm an ever evolving second by second millisecond by millisecond divine spiritual being, having an experience called life. And it can be anything I want to create
Daphne (11:58):
Anything, anything.
Cliff (12:01):
And I could have that full-blown experience and still choose to say, you know what? It would be easier to interface with my world as I'm currently interacting. If I just choose to stick with the name Cliff Ravenscraft. It kind of makes things easier. Yeah,
Daphne (12:18):
It's helpful. When I call you, I'm like, Hey, cliff. You're like, oh, you're talking to me. Hello. Hey.
Cliff (12:28):
It is funny though, how many people, when they come through a spiritual awakening, there's so many spiritual paths where changing your name, choosing a different name is such a part of that process. And I value and appreciate that practice.
Daphne (12:43):
And I've known several people who have done that. They don't identify anymore in that way. And so they feel that's a little bit, I mean, to me, it's sort of rearranging the furniture in your house, your environment. My environment right now in this room that I'm sitting in is representative of what is happening right now in my life, and I have changed this space. As a matter of fact, getting ready to do this show, I changed the space up again. I have drums sitting over here, my electric drums. I moved those all into my drum studio. I mean, I just really rearranged. I moved my desk into a different part of the room. There was some change in the space itself that wanted to happen because that's this current iteration of how, of what is showing up. So yeah, our spaces, our names, however, whatever the things are that we do that are representative of the changes that we're experiencing and going through.
(13:35):
And then I want to go back to, and Cliff, I think this is, and we'll get more into this mindfulness thing, and you brought up Eastern, the Eastern mysticism, so we're going to get to that too. However, I think what you said about when we get attached to the sort of glue of this mask that we wear, how we can miss out on the parts of life. And I think your story that you went through, you were, and I still secretly call you the podcast answer, man, just so you know, but you were noticed the podcast answer, man, that was a major part of your evolution. And I think one of the things that had attracted me so much to you, not beyond your integrity, was your ability to simply go through that process, that evolution in your life and let go of things. And I think it would be really interesting just to have you say a few bits here about you letting go of that identity and the change that you went through and the fear that you went through. I mean, I remember being, and you've said a lot of this on your own podcast too, but just being in that part of your journey, which frankly I found incredibly inspiring, but I think it'd be helpful to share a little bit about this too, because it fits in with this idea of intentionality and mindfulness and recognizing what's happening in our life, and then being really willing to let go of an identity. So I think that'd be helpful. Yeah,
Cliff (14:54):
So just a little short overview is I used to work in insurance full-time. Nobody outside of northern Kentucky ever knew who Cliff Ravens crash was. Always had a desire to be of support, encouragement, inspiration, motivation to others to live the life that they were created to live. Started podcasting as a hobby in December, 2005. And my wife and I, together, we did that and grew an audience over the course of several different shows into the hundreds of thousands of people. So much so that I saw an opportunity through content creation, through podcasting to do what I always felt most called to do in this world to the largest number of people. I'm like, ah, I wonder what life would be like if I could leave my career as an insurance agent and go do this. So that's the first transition. A couple of things to know about that. The insurance agency that I worked in was owned by my mom and dad, started by my grandfather in 1937, and I was next in line to take it over. Wow. So you talk about guaranteed job security, and I left all, and by the way, I was incredibly successful
Daphne (16:06):
And expectation, by the way, I would imagine your family had some expectations of you.
Cliff (16:10):
Yes. Well, with the exception of the fact that when my mom and dad first invited me to work in the family business, it was so that I could help them out with digitizing and computerizing their client base data systems. It was all paper filing before me coming in there. And I said, listen, I will come work for you on two qualifications. Number one, you won't ever expect me to get my insurance license. I have no desire to sell insurance. And if I'm ever offered an opportunity to pastor a church full-time, no matter how much less money I might make, I have to have your full blessing. And they agreed to that when I had started working with them back in, I think it was 1996.
Daphne (16:53):
Okay.
Cliff (16:56):
But over time, I will tell you that I began to see insurance work is far greater ministry to at least the world at the time for me was my local geographical area here. And so yeah, I had kind of divorced myself from the idea that I'll pastor a church one day, and I'm like, wow, insurance is lucrative and I am so much support and help to this community of tens of thousands of people here. But I did decide to leave that so that I could pursue the serving of this much greater audience and a much greater expression of who I am and not sit there and fax proof of insurance cards every day to people who forgot to take them to the courthouse. Anyway, so I began, I'm like, how am I going to make a living creating podcast? And we had ideas, we had advertising sponsorships, and it just kind of happened naturally that people said, cliff, can you teach me how to podcast? And I'm like, well, gosh, yeah, I can. And they're like, you need to let me pay you to do that. And I'm like, well, how much would you pay for somebody to teach? And I'm like, you're seriously? I'd pay you to let me talk about podcasting for
Daphne (18:11):
An hour.
Cliff (18:13):
There was a whole journey about pricing and stuff, but here's what I left behind, and this is what Daphne is getting to. I did grow my podcast Answer Man brand to where eventually I was doing a four week podcasting, a to Z course where students paid $2,000 per student. I would host this every other month, and there was 20 to somewhere between 20 to 40 students per session. So put the math together. That was pretty lucrative. I generated millions of dollars in sales of that course, millions of dollars actually over a million dollars in sales of podcast equipment, which I was selling as a reseller. And I had trained more than 40,000 people through all of the stuff that I was doing online to successfully launch a podcast. So there are 40,000 podcasters out there that I personally introduced to the world of podcasting. And after a decade, I became absolutely mind-numbingly bored with teaching. This isn't why teaching somebody how to get rid of the buzzing noise in the audio quality of their podcast was the same to me as faxing a proof of insurance card to the courthouse for you. But Cliff,
Daphne (19:27):
You're so good at it.
Cliff (19:29):
I was good at it, and I could spend all day every day, eight to 10 hours a day doing it, and I could make tons of money doing it, which I could have done in insurance as well. I've proven that model to be financially successful, but not internally rewarding.
(19:49):
So over time, I realized what I'm really doing is not helping people launch a podcast. Yes, that's a byproduct, but what I recognize is the greatest value that I had was helping people discover, who am I? Why am I here on this planet? What is it that I desire, and how can I overcome anything that holds me back from creating that? And as soon as I learned that it was about an 18 month transition, but I had to overcome all of my limiting beliefs about leaving yet another financially guaranteed proven economic model for my business to go in a completely different direction.
Daphne (20:33):
And I, I think that's what I find so inspiring, and I too went, I've done that twice in terms of changing my career, changing what I'm doing, letting go of the money. Someone said to me one time the story of golden handcuffs, and I'm like, yeah, I get golden handcuffs. You're in the handcuffs. Somebody else, it makes it look like they have all the gold. Everyone thinks the handcuffs are gold. I'm like, oh, no, no, the handcuffs aren't the gold. So letting that go, I think Cliff is part of, and you going through as part of the process and letting go of that identity. I mean, there's, we'll call it, there's a very transactional part of the world, which is the money and paying the bills, and you've got a family and the whole thing and mortgage, the whole thing. And there's also underneath that is I think the deeper part of it, which is there's an identity over there that you are also letting go of and a comfort with that identity.
(21:32):
Again, we're back to what we talked about in our first show's, sort of this idea of certainty. I know who I am in this world, I know where I fit. This is predictable, it's comfortable, it's comfortable also, and we enjoy parts of that. But to be able to let go of that, and you've said to me a couple of times, there's just a must that has to happen. The discomfort has gotten great enough. And I think that's really part of, let's get into this mindfulness thing, because I think that's part of I've, and I've said this, you can come to your choices. If I made it binary, you could come to your choices a couple of ways. One is you can allow the discomfort to get great enough, the pain to get great enough where it forces your hand to make a change or another option. And another option is that you can come to these changes through a greater vision for yourself. And there's probably a combination of things happening there. I would imagine in your experience, you had some discomfort, and at the same time though, you were experiencing something that was like, oh, I need to keep going over there. So I dunno if that's true, but
Cliff (22:45):
Yeah, no. So for me, there was certainly a growing discontent on both the insurance side before I leaped into the podcast world. And then there was a growing discontent with the technical aspects of teaching podcasting and what I felt most called to do in the world. There was a growing discontent and there was a pain associated with it. And if it weren't for that, which I'm thankful for in both cases, I don't know that I would've asked myself the question, I wonder what life would be like if fill in the blank, which is one of the best questions I've ever asked myself ever.
Daphne (23:24):
It's the only question I wonder. I mean wonder questions, and I learned that from Katie Hendricks wonder questions. I wonder what it would be like instead of, if only I had this, I'd be happy. I wonder what I mean. The quality of the questions we ask is everything right? I think so. Yeah. I wonder what it would be like. I wonder what it would feel like. I wonder, and those questions are very
Cliff (23:52):
Powerful, and that's what led me to the compelling vision of the future. And there's some ancient wisdom from the Bible that says, without vision, the people shall perish. And so without some sort of compelling idea of what you want to create or what you desire, the desires of your heart, without that compelling vision drawing you, then I don't know that I would enjoy the adventure of life as much as I do.
Daphne (24:21):
And it is an
Cliff (24:21):
Adventure. And there is something to be said about the initial pain. I liked the fact that it woke me up to the idea maybe something else could be possible here. But I do want to stress that I've since been made the transition from podcast answer to mindset answerman. And today I coach people around business mindset and strategy and a lot of people making a transition from corporate world into self-employment or whatever, just I help a lot of people as brand new entrepreneurs or people who are transitioning from owning their own business for 30 years and they just sold it. And they're like, who am I now? For the last 30 years, this was my identity, helping them discover that. And through this process, I've always discovered that those who are running away from pain only end up finding the same vibration of pain and suffering wherever it is they go to next.
(25:21):
Because there is this thing called law of attraction. I'm a believer in it. I don't necessarily think that everybody believes in it, but that's fine. But the thing is though, is that if this is your experience of life is that you're running from this, I think there's an opportunity for you to go through and experience the pain of what you're going through and evolve through it and become the person that you desire to be without making the change. And then if you can make that change from a compelling vision standpoint, chances are the problems won't lag behind you and walk out the door with you.
Daphne (26:00):
Well, what you're talking about, I think Cliff is again, this pattern, this fits right into mindfulness. So I'm simply making decisions to avoid something. I'm simply making decisions to avoid something versus, and therefore, I'm in a reactive state, right? I'm reacting. I'm not in a responsive state, which is, yes, I'm noticing I don't enjoy doing this thing anymore, or I'm not this person that enjoys this thing anymore. This is run its course. And I wonder what it would be like. I'm noticing that I'm drawn to this thing over here. I wonder what it would be like to create more of this in my life. So when we're in the space of simply wanting to avoid something, then our entire world is constructed around avoiding that thing, and we can't, and I'm going to give you a real world life experience I had yesterday on an airplane, and you know how much I love, I know definitely love for airplane travel, know I love our air, commercial, air travel, so many suggestions by the way that I have for them to improve this.
(27:06):
Anyway, besides that, if I'm wanting to avoid simply missing a connecting flight, or if I'm wanting to avoid that, then my life becomes one of missing all of the beautiful nuances that are happening in the moment, because I'm only focused on avoiding this thing over there. I'm missing out on, well, what can happen here? What are all the opportunities in the adventure? What are all the possibilities that I have? I don't have all the possibilities available to me because I'm only focused on avoiding this one thing. And it does become very restrictive and it becomes constrictive to our life. Again, we're in a reactive state. So let's talk a little bit about this mindfulness thing. I think this is a nice segue how I relate to this idea of mindfulness. I think there's, and you've talked about it just a bit here. You said, cliff, you work with entrepreneurs and I work with people in the business world to, I call it thriving in the nine to five. And the idea being that are they present to really what's happening? They're not in a threatened state. So that's the first thing. I think when we talk about being mindful, we're able to recognize when we're reacting from threat.
(28:23):
And the other opportunity then is to get ourselves grounded enough to simply look that maybe we're not as threatened as we think we are. Most of the time it's being threatened around our identity. We're not physically being threatened. That happens too. But we're in a non threatened, non-reactive state, and therefore our choices do look different. We have more choices available to us in this adventure and to be able to play this game. And we're not as attached. And I think this is the other part of this, we're not as attached to the outcome as we might be when we're attempting to avoid something. If I'm attempting to avoid something only and I'm in a reactive, threatened state, then I'm going to become very attached to that outcome and that loses. Now life starts, to me, I describe just life feels really dry, right? There's not a juice to it.
(29:12):
So I don't know what your reactions are to that, but I think just sort of getting a framework around, and there are a lot of different definitions of mindfulness. I'll read one at the end of the show, but I think that non-reactive, non threatened state, which by the way, I got that from the Conscious Leadership Group who I worked with for forever and have dear friends there, Diana Chapman, one of my best friends. And I thought it was a really good way of describing this sort of experience, non threatened, non-reactive state. And I think the first step is just recognizing when we are in a threatened reactive state, that's the first thing, right? So I don't know how you relate to the idea of mindfulness, but I'd be curious.
Cliff (29:46):
Well, there's so many different ways that I relate to mindfulness, but I want to share how I'm relating to what you talked about with threat. The idea of threat. So the first thing that comes to my mind is brainwave states. I wish in our educational system that we were taught about brainwave states. And what's crazy is I tried to read a lot of books on hypnosis to understand different brainwave states, and I could never figure out anything because I know in college I was a part of TA Kapa Epsilon. And so I know the Greek alphabet at least a little bit. So there's alpha beta, and then delta gamma, and so it goes in this order, but that's not how they categorize brainwave states. Are you aware that they're out of order? So it starts with beta Beta, alright. And there are three ranges of beta. There's high range beta, mid range beta and low range beta and high range beta brainwave states are a higher frequency, and it's kind of going crazy up there. And that is your fight or flight mode.
Daphne (30:57):
That's right.
Cliff (30:58):
And in fight or flight mode, what I've learned through my study and also my experience is when I'm in flight or fight mode, I have no access seemingly to my intuition, to internal thoughts, to being present in the moment and making a conscious decision. The only thing I can do in fight or flight is rely on what I've agreed to, what beliefs exist within me, what I've been conditioned to, how to react in each and every situation. And that is programmed by television shows, movies, religious figures on stages, my parents, my school government program messages, all of this stuff. And so I become a puppet to my beliefs in my narratives that I've subscribed to using your earlier language in that state. That's all I am. I a reactive puppet in this world of reality. And then at least in mid-range beta, now I can be in a crowd, but I'm still kind of like there's a perceived potential threat.
(32:12):
And then in low range beta, that's where you and I can be in a conversation like this. We are not perceiving any threats. We're not actually on the lookout for somebody to burst into our offices here and threaten us. And so we're able to tap into some intuition. But then Daphne, and by the way, so what I've just done is I've just educated hopefully some people on the three different ranges of our beta conscious, awake, brainwave states. Then we can drop down to, I think it's alpha is next. And when we get into alpha, and I can get anyone listening to us in an alpha wave brain state, and all you have to do is take just a second and I want you to breathe in and I want you to feel, I want you to feel the coolness of the air as it goes through your nasal passage, and then breathe out and feel the warmth as it comes out.
(33:11):
Now, if you did that, what you just did is you placed your energy and attention and awareness internally instead of externally, that instantly put you into an altered state of consciousness called alpha brainwave state, and that's how quickly we can drop down. And you can't do that in a high range threat, blah, blah, blah state. So wow. And then all of a sudden, if I could, so Daphne, let me ask you this just real quickly. Tell me about a birthday party that you really loved, one location where you remember being, and just paint the picture of what that's like and our audience is going to imagine that with you.
Daphne (33:55):
I'm going to talk about Saturday. I celebrated with my mom, her 80th birthday, and we were at my brother's house. Him and his wife hosted all of our family there, and we had music playing and everyone was talking, and my mom was sharing stories from her life, and I got her this poster that said, here are all the things that happened in the year of your birth. It was 1944, which was an education for me by the way also. And she was reading that and sharing it with our family and talking about just memories of her life and so appreciative. And my brother wrote a poem for her and read that. It was incredible. It was an incredible evening. And just to be able to be there, knowing so many of my friends who have lost their parents and being able to be there with her was just a very special moment. And we had a wonderful lobster dinner because that is her favorite special celebration dinner.
Cliff (34:47):
I love that. And so as matter of fact, as you were talking about this, I imagine your mom as 80 years old. So I'm thinking of somebody of an advanced age, and I'm imagining her, I imagined her sitting on the couch in a living room in a pleasant area. I'm imagining other family members seated around. I'm imagining the opening up of this vision board of all the memories and hearing, and I am imagining in the background the music that might be playing. And so all of a sudden, because I'm using imagination, that is all internally focused, and that put me into what's called theta brainwave state, and the fact that we are actually still consciously awake and interacting when we were actually entering in and bouncing through alpha theta brainwave state. So now, and then of course there's delta brainwave state, which you could get even deeper, or you can go into full theta, and then gamma is this amazing thing, which can happen in any brave wave state. But here's, when I think about mindfulness, what I think about is like, wow, if I find myself threatened or perceive a threat, or if I perceive chaos or I am definitely reacting, it's very common language today. If I'm triggered,
(36:12):
If I find myself triggered and I do get triggered, sometimes they're like, wow, where did that come from? That person just said that thing and that did not feel good. And it's like, oh, okay. And so what I instantly try to do is I try to go internally and say, you know what? I am aware that I am reacting right now. I am aware that emotionally that there are chemicals that are flowing through my body that has increased the blood flow through my body, my increased heart rate, my breath is starting to get shortened, and I am, my body feels as though I am being threatened, but I've learned not to take things personally. This person, what they said, that doesn't have anything to do with me. It has to do with what they are perceiving me. It's their picture of who I am that doesn't define who I am and what's going on is I recognize there are still some internal beliefs that what they said is important and that it's true and that it means something negative for me and therefore could cause me harm.
(37:25):
And then I begin to question the reality of that. Is there evidence to support that? Is there evidence to the contrary? For me, when I get into a mindfulness moment, I actually think about what was my brainwave state when I actually heard it? Is the threat real? Can I bring myself, can I breathe? Can I actually get my focus internally? Can I get into what I call the seed of awareness? And when I get into the seed of awareness, then I can observe from the seed of the observer what's happening in my physical being and how is that interacting with my psychological belief system, and that's creating this physiological result in my body. I'm like, oh, wow. Then it's like, okay, what do I want to create in this moment based upon all of this data? Yes.
Daphne (38:19):
At the end of all of that process, you're able to ask a really powerful question.
Cliff (38:25):
What do I want to create? What
Daphne (38:26):
Do I want to create? This is the isness. You've sort of ridden this wave between the reaction and acceptance, and that's why I call like can riding waves of lives. I know that's coming. It's coming. I am going to fall into reaction. I am going to feel threatened by things, right? That's just part of living. I want to rewind all the way to the beginning of what you said, cliff, because you really, I think this is the whole point. When we are in that reactive state, our brainwaves do change. And we know, I think most people are probably familiar with the idea of fight and flight. It is absolute true, and this is where science is so helpful that our prefrontal cortex, our higher reasoning center goes offline. We literally are reacting from the amygdala, the lizard part of our brain. And that is, we touched on this last week.
(39:13):
We didn't get into the whole free will conversation in its entirety, but we did touch on this last week in the show too. How at choice are we? Well, I think we're getting to some of that. When you're in this reactive state, not very much. You are simply reacting from the things we've subscribed to our old beliefs, ways. We've been taught to handle stress ways. We've been taught to react in the world. We've picked up these things from our caregivers, from society at large, wherever we've gotten them from things that we've subscribed to. And there is this also this ability, this is what you just described in that whole process, this ability to ride these different waves, to get with sort of what's happening. And then we land in a more powerful question, which means our brain, the bigger parts of our brain are coming back online.
(40:00):
We're able to ask these more powerful questions and to be in this. And so in my experience, sometimes it happens very quickly. Other times it just depends on what the thing is that has occurred for me where I've gotten reactive, and sometimes I work through that very easily and sometimes not so easily. It might take me a minute. I think that's the other real beauty, right? Yes. So you've just described more so not defining what mindfulness is, but I think really talking about a process, and it is a process, and I think that some of, when we talk about these things, putting a verb to it like I'm mindfully versus I'm mindful. There's just these waves that come, and I think that fits in with the brainwave idea, I think. Yeah. And so what choices are available to us, which is really, and I think how we come to these things, there's no one right way. And I find, again, this is probably the thing that is the most, I think it's the most constrictive part of this process for people is that there's this searching for this one right way to do it. And if you're not doing it that right way. So you mentioned all the Eastern mysticism. I made a whole list of them. We have all the different ways that we can come to this thing we call mindfulness. I'm a fan of all of it, by the way.
Cliff (41:36):
I am as well. Yeah.
Daphne (41:37):
We've got meditation, prayer, cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy. I list all mindful eating yoga stoicism, which has made a real revival, by the way, Confucianism, Taoism, you've been studying, I think lately reflection, the contemplative approaches, gratitude practices. I mean, I could go on and on and on, and I think all of them are beneficial. I think all of them
Announcer (42:02):
In place, absolutely every single one of them have their value. And if any of them don't resonate with you today, rather than just saying, I don't like that, or I'm against that, just go find something that does resonate. Find any modality or any method that allows you to either address the situations of life or cope with the situations of life or evaluate the whatever it is, if it's therapy or if it's spirituality, no matter what. Whatever helps you have a higher quality of life and allows you to get less reactive and more creative in your life. That's what allows you to experience life where you can choose your own adventure.
Daphne (42:51):
Exactly. So let's talk about in that spirit, I think this is where with all of these things, let's talk about our emotional states, and I think this is really what you also were pointing to in your example Cliff, which was just so well articulated, really our ability to, I'm going to say regulate our emotions. I'm not a big fan of that language by the way I say it because I haven't really thought through a better way of expressing it. It always feels like I'm going to regulate my emotions, meaning I'm going to have none, or I'm going to become a robot in some way. I do have a reaction to describing it in that way. I like the idea of I'm going to be very intentional about creating my emotional state. Like look, I'm finding the language as I speak.
Cliff (43:38):
Yeah, I like that. And about, and for me, as you were speaking, that what came up for me in the moment, and I've never used this before, but I like to navigate through my emotional state and navigate means that occasionally when I navigate from my home in the northern Kentucky, Cincinnati area and I want to take a road trip to Nashville, I'm going to choose a path that I think is going to be the quickest to get what I want to experience to my destination. But occasionally something unplanned comes along the way and there's a deviation, and so I need to navigate around and do that in the most efficient way possible. Now, don't get me wrong, I could choose to just get angry, upset and turn around and say, you know what? It's just better if I just stay at home. So what came up for me as you were, is this idea, I want to navigate through the spectrum of my emotional opportunities.
Daphne (44:42):
Yes, yes, exactly. And so how we're choosing our emotional state. Then if we come back to fight and flight, and I think this is some of what people, as I've worked with people and coached them, some of what they're also desiring or a great deal of what they're desiring, which makes total sense, is to feel good. I want to feel good. I want to feel at peace, feelings, emotions. I want to have the sensation of peace in my body. By the way, no matter what is occurring, I have had not had someone say to me, I need my life to go perfectly. And if it doesn't, I'm just going to be upset all the time.
Cliff (45:23):
I know anybody who's ever consciously said that, but I do know a handful of people who seem to operate through that life that way. Yeah. Yes. By the way, I used to be one of them.
Daphne (45:36):
Me too. What I've experienced more is where people want to know how do they navigate life and feel good when it isn't going the way that we've imagined that it would.
Cliff (45:50):
Well, first trade your expectation for appreciation. So if we are perceiving that life isn't going good, well, if we're perceiving something negative, and it could be a terminal illness, we talked about my friend Dan Miller, but I can tell you right now, go and check out Dan's still here. He's facing his final days on this earth, but he's not facing it in a low emotional realm of vibration, such as fear, anger, all of that stuff. He's literally approaching it from a different emotional level. But I forgot what I was saying. The initial insight or response that you had said, my response to what you were saying just left me.
Daphne (46:43):
Well, it'll come back
Cliff (46:44):
When I was thinking about
Daphne (46:45):
Thinking
Cliff (46:46):
About it. But anyway, yeah. So the whole idea about emotional state, one of the things that I thought as you were speaking is the idea that every emotional state is valuable. So that's the first thing to appreciate fear, guilt, shame. I used to unquote say, you know what? I never want to experience these. There's nothing good that ever comes out of it except for the fact that they're incredibly valuable tools to help me become aware of beliefs that I've adopted. That equates something is a threat to me. And
Daphne (47:27):
I want to tag that just for a second because, and when we're wanting to avoid those things, again, when we are coming back to your appreciation, we're right back where we started, right? That's it. Right? We're right back in the aversion world and wanting to avoid it. So just to tag onto that, that's the appreciation of like, wow, I'm noticing I feel a lot of shame or a lot of guilt around this right
Cliff (47:46):
Now. Yeah. What's that about? So here's my favorite metaphor of all of this. It's these lower emotional states that if you were to look up, it's called the Map of Consciousness. And there's a book by Dr. David R. Hawkins called The Map of Consciousness Explained, and he gives this vibrational chart of emotional states and these lower vibrational emotional states that calibrate below 200 and below. He states that, gosh, what is going on? I get into halfway into a situation here, and I'm losing that train. Excited you. I am so excited. But anyway, the metaphor, the metaphor is where I was going with, but these lower emotional states, I see them as check engine lights in my car. And so I am thrilled, okay? I am beginning a process of trying to respond with a thrill and delight in my heart when my car's check engine light comes on.
Daphne (48:51):
You're working with it. You're working with it.
Cliff (48:54):
I have not yet mastered this skill.
Daphne (48:59):
So good, though.
Cliff (49:00):
It is skill, by the way, in the seat of awareness. I am aware that sometimes it's like, oh my gosh, what's going on this time? How much is this thing going to cost me on top? You not know. It's like blah. It's like, but no, if that check engine light wasn't there and it continued, if it didn't notify me of something that's not going internally within this engine and how it was designed to operate efficiently, then this could be far more costly down the road. If I weren't notified about it. Now, I'd rather spend a couple of hundred dollars, even a thousand or $2,000, than to completely lose out on the tens of thousands of dollars of the investment in this car. So the check engine light. And so how much more valuable is my life when my emotional check engine lights come on? So if I get triggered into anger, if I get triggered into feeling shame, if I feel a great level of guilt or of loss in all of this other stuff, it just alerts me that, hey, something's going on internally, and the way that I am perceiving the world is not necessarily in alignment with the way that I was designed to experience life.
(50:20):
So something internally is not operating according to manufacturer specs.
Daphne (50:29):
You know what? Now you're diagnosing the buzz in a different way.
Cliff (50:33):
Yes, thanks.
(50:37):
I'm still diagnosing technical buzzing.
Daphne (50:40):
You're still, no matter what, you're still getting
Cliff (50:42):
The technical buzzing. I love it.
Daphne (50:47):
Well, it is a vibration, right? I think of it as a vibe. The check engine light is on. My guitar is out of tune. And this is where the idea of vibrations out. If anybody, if you're listening and you play a guitar, you played an instrument, you can hear when the strings aren't in tune, and literally you can hear a vibration, they don't vibrate. There's a sloppiness to the resonance. And boy, when you tighten it just right or you loosen it just a little bit, that goes away. And there is just a steady hum of the string. So there's not this sort of weird tone. And I think that is when we're sort of resonating, to use that word, it's a great word that we're resonating. It means that there's this real steady vibration. Everything is in sync, it's tuned up, and when the check engine comes on, it's not.
Cliff (51:37):
And so going to your original question, how do we handle the scenario? It is about the idea of, okay, I recognize I'm not feeling good. So how does trade your expectation for appreciation? So one of the things that I've discovered, I haven't found any evidence to disprove this, but I heard it once. I've heard it several times. I have evaluated, and so far, I've not found any evidence to the contrary, but as far as I know, I can only feel one emotional state at any given moment in time. I can't both be depressed and filled with gratitude at the same time. I can't feel shame and feel unconditional love at the same time. I've just not been able to do that. So if I'm feeling what I might determine to be a negative or undesired emotional state, that means that I must be focused on something that I perceive not to be going well.
(52:35):
And that focus on that thing will draw from me more related to that thing. So when I say that trade, my expectation of how I thought this scenario was going to go, or what the results that I would get, or how I thought this day was going to happen, this did not go according to plan. I'm recognizing that my check engine light has just come on. But you know what? Gosh, and I could always do this. So far, every single morning I wake up and I'm like, I have the opportunity to say, wow, I slept through the entire night. Number one, what a gift that is the restoration. What a gift it is to have this amazing body that has this immune system that works most of the time in my favor and is fighting off anything that came up out of the day before the toxins from stress and cortisol. But I love the fact that every single day so far, for nearly 51 years, every morning when I wake up, the earth is still rotating around the sun, precisely at the exact distance necessary to keep me from freezing to death or burning to death overnight.
Daphne (53:44):
It's so funny. What a gift. I always, I come back to gravity.
Cliff (53:49):
Yeah.
Daphne (53:50):
I somehow put my feet down and I'm not stuck to the ceiling. Incredible.
Cliff (53:58):
And the fact that, I mean, you and I are incredibly blessed in our world today that how much food is available to us. I mean, the oxygen that's available to us, the fact that there's just so much one can be filled with gratitude about, now granted, this could be a temporary solution, at least to get you out of the fight or flight or to get you out of that high range beta. Exactly. That's the key.
Daphne (54:27):
That's the key
Announcer (54:28):
Key is to get out of the high range beta. And when you can start getting internally, you start having access to that prefrontal context or cortex. And that's when you can begin to reevaluate the previously undesired unexpected circumstance, and you can begin to reframe what it means. And then there's a powerful question, what does this make possible? Yeah.
Daphne (54:56):
Yes. I mean that I think in terms of choosing your own adventure, coming back to the game, it's like that's what we have available to us. And all the skillful means there are a thousand skillful means, and I encourage you to find yours a thousand who's joining us today, a thousand skillful means to being able to choose that emotional pathway, how we want to feel in that moment. And you described a process cliff again, and just for momentarily, seeing the appreciation that we can have, even when we're experiencing something that might not feel so good in the moment, how can we come to some level of appreciation? How can we come to some level of a deeper understanding and reframe that just to get us out of that? I call it kind of like being locked in the garage. Kind of just get us out of that for a minute.
(55:49):
I'm locked in this cage of emotion. How can I get myself out of that just for a second so I can get access to the bigger way that I can show up, have a different level of resonance, and then go from there. I mentioned this in our last year too. I'm always intentional about being too high-minded with some of these things, because I have seen how many of these concepts, and I want to asterisk this right now on the show, I've seen how many of these concepts can be utilized in a less than healthy way for people. There are challenges. There are all of the very less than savory things that go on in our world, and this is for each individual to find their path with. I think that's the take home part of this too. It's for each individual to find their path.
(56:36):
And I think that's one of the things I appreciate so much about you, cliff too, is your path. And it looks so different than my path. And yet when we talk about it, there are these same threads that we keep pulling, right? We're finding 'em more and more. And I think in this day and age, we're able to find those threads more and more as well. But really looking at what's this whole mindfulness thing about? What are we really talking about and why should we care? And I think that's the other part too, who caress, if I can see myself as not as fixed as I thought I was, who cares if I can Go ahead.
Cliff (57:10):
Yeah, who cares? So why should we care about mindfulness? And what came up for me as soon as you asked that, why should I care about mindfulness? Yeah, who cares? Mindfulness is my ability to choose my next move intentionally, not based upon what my third grade teacher said, or what some priest or preacher said, or what the expectations of my audience has. But instead, if I could be mindful in the moment and see that, quite frankly, my options in almost every situation are nearly unlimited.
Daphne (57:50):
They're unlimited. And that's the great adventure. I think it's a perfect time to wrap up the show.
Cliff (57:59):
I think
Daphne (57:59):
So. I think so. I think we got it. Well, I'm just going to do our outro right now because I'm going to play a little bit of music, but I don't have our outro. But I do want to let everybody know that they can find us at our respective websites, cliff ravens craft.com and daphne scott.com, and they can find the show at Choose your own adventure podcast.com, so you can find the show there and connect with us on the show there. And we hope that you really enjoyed the show. I'm going to play this little outro music. What do you think?
Cliff (58:29):
Sounds great. Hey, everyone, go be mindful and choose your own adventure. Sure.
Life: The Ultimate Choose Your Own Adventure Podcast Ep_03 Mindfulness: What Is It And Why Should We Care
Life003-Mindfulness-b (Completed 01/15/24)
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