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Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.
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This podcast is brought to you by Ritual, and in particular, their women’s prenatal, which I wish I had found when I was pregnant, which I recommend all the time to my pregnant friends. Did you know that there are now updated recommendations for omega-3 DHA intake during pregnancy and that this is super critical because less than 5% of U.S. pregnant women consume the recommended amount. And there are a lot of data linking the proper amounts of this essential nutrient in pregnancy to really good outcomes for the baby, including brain health and so much more. And approximately 95% of Americans, including pregnant and lactating women, are not getting enough choline in their diet either. And Ritual sets out to solve this problem. Their prenatal is different from my perspective. It’s science backed formula, it’s third-party tested to be free of heavy metals, microbes, traceable ingredients, and it is meticulously researched to have the right levels of nutrients to specifically support a pregnant woman and her developing baby. They include, for instance, methylated folate and nature-identical choline to support the baby’s neural tube development, the right amount of omega-3 for brain and early vision development, and vitamin D support for fetal bone health.
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Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com. And this episode is a fun conversation with a friend of mine about three popular truths that can keep you stuck and what to try instead. And if you missed it, I did a first episode with my friend Michael about microdosing and some novel treatments that have been given breakthrough status for their ability to resolve things like depression. In this episode, he tackles some of the common things that we are presented, especially in the modern world, as solutions that he believes can actually keep us stuck. Things like focusing on our thoughts or our feelings or just the need to be better and what he’s found profoundly helpful instead. And I love Michael’s style. He’s a little bit off the wall and brings fun examples into this. And if you missed it, his story is both heartbreaking and incredible. And we shared that in the first episode we did together, which I will link in the show notes, but let’s join Michael for this episode. Michael, welcome back. Thanks for being here again.
Michael: Hey, thank you. Glad to be here.
Katie: If you guys missed it, I will link to our first conversation in the show notes. We got to touch on some vulnerable and deep topics, as well as some really profound solutions, especially for people who are struggling with depression, but also overwhelm and anxiety and so many other common things that so many of us experience in the modern world.
And in this episode, Michael, I would love to shift gears a little bit because you and I got to have some incredible in-person conversations about mindset and you quickly became what felt like a lifelong friend. And some of the things you said really stuck with me. And then in the prep for this podcast, some really stood out as well. And so I’m titling this episode, Three Popular Truths That Keep Us Stuck. And I think you have a very unique viewpoint on a lot of the things we’re going to talk about today. So I know that was a very broad jumping in point for this topic, but I would love for you to just kind of broach that topic of people who maybe feel like they’re stuck in the loop of trying to get better or trying to heal or wanting to heal. I have my own thoughts about that word wanting and how that keeps us in that space of wanting versus the space of healing. But you have such a unique perspective on this. So with that very broad entry, can you kind of jump us into this concept?
Michael: Yes, yes, gladly. I want to tell, I want to warn everyone who’s listening, this might be offensive, and I don’t mean it that way. It’s just that some of the things that I see happening are so detrimental to people and wrapped in such, such wolves wrapped in sheep’s clothing that I feel compelled to, to bring it up because I’ve tried many of these things myself and found, you know, it’s, it’s the most frustrating thing in the world, isn’t it, when you read something and it says, hey man, if you do this, your life is going to be awesome. And then you go and do it and it doesn’t work. And you think, what my problem? What’s wrong with me? Well, let me tell you, there ain’t nothing wrong with you. That person’s a liar.
So this is what happens. Okay. And one of the things that you asked in the preparation, you said, hey, what was the book that has had a profound influence on you? I just want to tell you right now, there’s this guy named Bob Gardner. Oh. Free, Born to Be Free or something like that. Freedom something, whatever it is. Bob Gardner is his name. The freedom Specialist. Let me tell you, this guy, you’ve ever had this experience where you’ve had an idea of the way things work, but nobody else seems to think that? And then all of a sudden you meet somebody, and they’re like, they say the same things you do, and you’re like, oh, my God, I thought I was the only one. This is that guy. Those thoughts that you had when you’ve, you know, I’ve read probably 500 books on how to get better. And every one of them I tried and it didn’t work. And I kept thinking I must be a mess up. What I found is that in order to find something that works, you need to hear it from somebody who’s honest.
So I want to share a couple of things that I’ve noticed that make people, these truths that everybody clings to that end up being like golden handcuffs that keep people stuck. And the first one is, man, you got to control your thoughts. Hey, your life is made from your thoughts. Thoughts are things. You got to control them. I don’t know if this can relate to, I don’t know if any of you can relate to this, but man, I’ll tell you what, I was running around in my mind like a frigging little boy afraid of the dark, running from my thoughts every chance I could. And then I try to turn around and fight him and put up my little cardboard shield and my little cardboard knife to try to fight him back. And, man, I just got wasted every time.
Look, you ain’t got to, this has nothing to do with your thoughts. The way that you’re feeling has nothing to do with your thoughts. Your thoughts are a result. I know, I know, I know all the self-help gurus are going to tell you, no, no, no, everything starts as a thought and all that. And they don’t know what they’re talking about. I’m telling you. I’m telling you that it’s easy to tell you that it’s all about your thoughts because then they can hook you and make it feel like it’s your fault. I’m going to tell you what it is about after I tell you the other two things, because it ain’t about your thoughts.
And here’s the other thing that’s super popular. It’s even less about your feelings. Good Lord, have mercy. Bless the hippies. They all want to tell you that just you need to feel good and just feel good. And what they think that means is make your emotions always happy. Look, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried that, but that’s a real hard thing to do because life has a tendency to be up and down and up and down. And if you want to always be happy all the time, man you’re going to be real disappointed. Because that is not the way life works.
So the first truth that keeps you stuck is, hey, it’s all about your thoughts. You’ve got to control your thoughts. No, it ain’t. It ain’t about your feelings either, and you ain’t got to be happy. These are nooses around the neck. And the third thing, the third truth that slides in here and just sounds so good, but only ends up wrecking people is, hey man, you got to be better. Hey, look, you know, that’s a very popular thing for people to be for, you know, all on Facebook, how to be a better man, how to be a better wife, how to be a better CEO. Man, all of this stuff, this is all, all of these things are traps. Focusing on your thoughts. Oh, you got to control your thoughts. Look, listen, have you ever tried to? Katie, have you ever tried to?
Katie: To control my thoughts? Uh-huh.
Michael: You’re a pretty successful person in life. You’re a great mom. You’ve got a great business. You’ve got great friends. People love you. We would, everybody who’s listening to this podcast would say, man, if anybody could do it, I mean, you pole vaulted at 40 years old for the love of God. Come on, let’s go. If anybody could do it, we would say, Katie, how do we do it? How do we control our thought? Please tell me. Were you able to do it?
Katie: Absolutely not.
Michael: Well, golly daggone it, that tells us something, doesn’t it? And it gives a relief to every woman and every man out there who has tried and failed and thought, man, there’s something wrong with me, though there ain’t. There ain’t, I’m going to tell you, look, people want to control you for their own reasons. So they tell you all this gobbledygook because it doesn’t make any sense if you scratch below surface of it. But they’re counting on the fact that you won’t count scratch below the surface of it because you’ve got too many things going on. So look, it ain’t nothing to do with your thoughts. You ain’t got to control them. You ain’t got to do nothing with them. And furthermore, you can’t do it unless you’re going to become the Buddha and sit on the side of a mountain for 30 years, which neither one of us have any much time to do that.
Second thing is, look, you ain’t got to be happy all the time, man. It ain’t about your feelings. Oh, I just want to feel good. I just want to feel good. No, you don’t. Listen, listen, just consider the things that people tell you, how stupid they sound. Listen, if your son or your daughter comes inside and they’ve been bit by a dog and they’re crying and they’re terrified because they’ve been bit by a dog. Do you want to be happy right then? No, of course not. You want to be the appropriate emotion, which is concerned and protective and affirming and taking care of your child.
Look, people don’t want to be happy all the time. What they want is to be able to feel their emotions without being afraid of them. We want to be able to feel the heights of joy and pleasure and the depths of sadness and despair without being consumed by it.
Like, you know, I spent a couple years living in Costa Rica. I’m still living out there more or less. And the place that I lived was a big surf spot. I’m not a surfer. But all the surfers, they teach us a great lesson about how to live because they’re always willing to ride the wave for as long as it will hold them. And, man, isn’t that the way we want to do it? Don’t we want, isn’t it feel so good when there’s some huge emotion, whether it’s a beautiful one or a sad one, but when we can ride it out for all it’s worth, there’s something beautiful about sadness when it’s appropriate. There’s something beautiful about anger when it’s appropriate.
See, when we get into this thing of like, you need to feel good all the time, you get real confused and start thinking, well, I can’t be mad because that’s not being charitable and compassionate. And we put all of these ideas into this one virtue. We need to be this one thing. We need to be full of love. Oh, my God, the hippies are running around talking about love and light all the time. No. What you need to be, what we want to be is a human who is adept and able to handle many emotional situations skillfully without being consumed by it.
And the third idea that I would submit to you that is terribly unhelpful is that you need to be better. Yo, you can’t be. This was real confusing to me for a long time because all of the propaganda was like, oh, you’re perfect just the way you are. And I thought, well, man, I’m definitely not perfect. That’s some, that’s a case. I missed that part. But now I understand. I understand that everything that is happening in your life is a perfect representation of who you are right now.
Look, this is real subtle, and I don’t know if I have the communication skills to be able to tell you, but I’m going to give it my best shot. Here’s what I think the problem is. The problem is that we start to believe that life is a two-step process. That means I think something, now I got to go make it happen and then the thing results. That’s the way it works, right? I consciously think of it, then I got to go take the step, and then the thing will happen. Man, I have never seen in my life that’s the way it works. Instead, everything happens in an instant.
Let me tell you about an experience I just had yesterday that just beautifully summarizes this. I used to think that I followed all these self-help clowns, and I did all they did and then wrote down my vision a hundred times. You know, sat there on the side of the bed with my fingers balled in the fist and trying to see it. And, you know, none of that happened. But I did walk down the beach randomly and just happened to run into a girl who was selling magic mushrooms who just so happened to be the very thing that I ended up doing to fulfill the vow that I had made to myself.
And here’s, so here’s what happened yesterday. I was in Salt Lake City after a retreat. I was doing some stretching and in a flash, I had a vision of my perfect life. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever done this where you sit down with the journal and you try with a lot of consternation to think, well, what would my perfect life be like? Man, it was real frustrating for me. And I thought, maybe I’m not, maybe I don’t have a perfect life. Maybe I don’t even know. Maybe I don’t even know who I am. What the hell’s going on? I realized that I was doing it all wrong. That I was trying to use some faculty of my conscious mind to do what automatically happens, don’t you see? Haven’t you ever had that experience where you see something in your life just as vivid as day? Of course you do because it’s just like the way your life is. Right now what you see is exactly what happens. The way that you, the emotions that you feel, the sensation, and more importantly, the sensations that you feel in your body act as a honing signal for this vision. Not the one that you’re writing down in your journal but the one that you see. You don’t have to visualize anything because that conjures up the idea of effort and consternation and really trying. It’s seeing it and here’s, look, but here’s the trick, here’s the trick you got to do this look after you see the vision and it’s perfect, can’t mess with them.
So, tell me if this has ever happened to you. You have this vision, this flash comes to your mind of this perfect life. Whatever that is for you. Whether it has something to do with your relationships, whether it has something to do with your health, whether it has something to do with your business or your finances or your children, whatever it is, some part of your life that you see in, you see it just as vividly as you see a memory, just as vividly as you remember a memory. You see it. And then what happens?
Well, for me, what happened a lot was, well, I’m going to have to work real hard to get there. I got a lot of work to do in order to do that. Well, I better start doing some meditating, better start writing, better start doing it. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Look, everything that happens, happens instantly in that moment. In that moment, it’s what the hippies talk about when they talk about manifesting. I’m convinced of this. That what the hippies talk about when they refer to manifesting is that something we do but something that is done through us. Look, man, you, life, life is a part of you. It is guiding you in some way that you have no idea. But we can listen and if we pay attention and listen to the things that seem so incredible that we’re embarrassed to admit them.
Look, if I tried to tell you what I envisioned, what I saw yesterday morning, I’d be embarrassed. I’d be embarrassed to tell you because I’m like, oh, man, Katie, she knows me a little bit and she knows this ain’t never going to happen to me. You know, all of those self-conscious types of things that are totally normal. You don’t have. Look, you don’t have to do anything about it. Don’t you know what it’s like to be like, oh man, well, if I’m going to do that, I can’t be self-conscious. I better get rid of all my limiting beliefs and I better make sure that I don’t have any doubt. I better make sure I’ve got a lot of faith. You don’t have to do any of that. Look around at the people who are living great lives. Do you think that they’re free of their limiting beliefs? Do you think that they are like some sort of superhuman. Or, is it more likely that they’ve touched, they tapped into the way life works. Instead of super heroically becoming something stronger than life so that it can impose, we can impose our will on it and show this is the way it’s done. Or is it more likely that they just learned how to work with it, in harmony with the waves of life that are always coming towards us. That’s what I’ve come to see as the way of living that is not only most successful, but also most sustainable. Sorry, did I get all too riled up?
Katie: Not at all. I think of the happiness paradox comes to mind, that idea that the desire for a more positive experience is ironically in and of itself a negative feeling or experience, whereas the acceptance of a negative experience is ironically a positive experience. And it’s like learning to feel into that paradox. Or I read a quote, I think I mentioned to you before we even started recording that bliss is any feeling allowed to be fully felt, whereas we tend to categorize things we feel as like good or bad, positive or negative.
Or you touched on these ideas that we have to do all of these things for certain things to happen. I know for me that used to be things like stories in my head of I will be happy when or if only this, then I will be happy. And I think learning to let go of that, I’m a big fan of the book Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender, but I think the experience of learning to let go felt very helpful to me in that journey. I know people listening may be wondering then, they might be thinking, this makes sense. How do we actually do that? How do we begin to go on this journey of doing that?
Michael: So good. Look, okay. If, if I can, if I can express this well, and if this makes it this will be such a beautiful experience for both of us. Okay, look I told you it ain’t about your thoughts, it ain’t about your feelings, and you ain’t got to be better. Well what then? Look I am convinced that everything that you need to know in order to live a beautiful life is right here. It ain’t got nothing to do with your thoughts. It has everything to do with this tool that you’ve been given. And being able to process the sensations that you feel. To feel your body, not to indulge your feelings. There’s a difference. The sensations.
You know, have you ever, I don’t know, maybe I’m too weird, but like I’ve always had this notion that there’s a way that a human being, like a sixth sense, where they can like really know what’s going on without really having to see it. I feel like this is like an inherent part of a person, but we don’t really ever get taught how to use it. Now, we don’t have the time right here for this to go off into a conspiracy theory conversation, but, there is something really valuable when we can use the body as a sensory, as an instrument. I think of the body as some sort of antenna that radiates and receives a signal that is unique to us.
And one of the reasons that microdosing and even macrodosing magic mushrooms is so effective is because man, if you’ve ever, my whole life, people are like, dude, you spend so, you’re really in your head. You spend so much time in your head. I never understood what they meant. I was like, well, where else would I be? Where else would I be is in the thing that I’m walking around in. But I didn’t know how to do that. The way that I lived was by proxy, right? Something would happen, I would think about it, then I’d do this thing to go here, instead of actually being in it. And the way to be in it is to become re-accustomed with how your body feels. And this can be done with simple breathing exercises.
But the thing is, more importantly than any of the exercises, is the starting point in recognizing what are the inputs that I’m going to pay attention to. Let me just tell you this. If I’m getting off track, please let me know. But look, you can drive yourself crazy trying to run around chasing your thoughts. Come on, man. And they, and when they ain’t driving you crazy with all of them being all different, they’re driving you crazy about being the same. And you can’t, it’s like trying to wrestle a wet fish. You just can’t get a hold of it.
But you can begin to feel, hey, what’s going on? What am I feeling? What is this tension? What is this openness? In a way that sounds almost like I should be writing a movie scene for Disney, you’ll feel this knowledge. You feel, you know it. You’ve known it before. You’ve been in the conversation with somebody where you had that gut feeling that said, ah, I don’t know about this. Or that gut feeling that said, gosh, I really, and you can’t explain it. Somebody said, hey, why do you feel that way? You wouldn’t be able to explain it. But you know it in a way that is more convincing than the best pros and cons list that you could come up with.
So how do you do it is to recognize what inputs to pay attention to. You know, if, okay, I know you’ve got six children, right? So I’m going to make up this situation where you come home and the whole house is burnt down and everything’s shambled. And luckily everybody’s okay. But you’re like, hey, what happened? If your youngest came up and started saying all this, going all crazy about saying all this stuff and it didn’t make any sense, you’d say, okay, thank you. But then if your oldest came up and said, well, actually, here’s what happened. There’s a, you know, somebody sent off fireworks. You would listen to your oldest for the greatest amount of information. You would trust them, not because you’re youngest, you don’t trust your youngest, but because they don’t have the ability to articulate as well as your oldest does.
That is the priority that the body sensations have. Yes, of course, we can pay attention to our thoughts at times. But the primacy is how does your body feel? And I want to draw the line between this doesn’t mean how do your emotions feel because your emotions are a result of bodily sensations. So the thing to do if, to get rid, to get free of this trap is to begin a new way of understanding, a new way of understanding that doesn’t require this pros, cons list, right, wrong, any of that. Instead, it’s a what do I feel? How does this feel? And what happens is it’s this, like, life begins to do this thing with you where all the mystics and all the healers in the world said to trust in life, trust in God, if that language is not offensive. Trust in the providence, trust in the universe. It’s not a mental thing. And I can, I can, I remember so many years trying to, I trust that you’re, sitting there repeating it like over and over like a weirdo. That’s not it. That’s not it. It’s, it’s feeling what this instrument is telling you. Does that make sense?
Katie: It does. And it’s, I feel like a common thing in other cultures or especially historically, like there are examples of this, but something that’s not as understood seemingly in the modern world. Even in small ways, I’ve been slowly learning to tune into this in ways as simple as rather than following a prescriptive way of eating or based on what the data says, or what I think is quote unquote, the right thing based on studies, I started learning to ask my body, what would you love? What would you love right now? And listening. And it’s funny because I’ll sometimes get answers I would not have expected, but I feel great. Like I feel like I’m actually getting answers on what my body would find most nourishing in that moment. And very often they fit within the paradigm of what would be healthy.
But I just find like even little tiny ways of learning to ask those questions. Or as a mom, I’ve tried to start building this into how I speak to my kids. So even if they’re having an emotional experience, rather than just asking them cognitive questions about their emotions, asking them so they can hopefully develop this sense earlier of like, well, where do you feel it in your body? And what does it feel like? And explain it to me. And I even had sort of a heartbreaking moment with one of my children who said that she feels like there’s a hole in her body. And I asked, well, where do you feel like that is? And she’s like, everywhere. And we had a long conversation about it. And it seems like a lot of it went back to when her dad and I got divorced. And it led to this beautiful conversation and hopefully more emotional understanding for her, or at least that I was able to be present for her. But I feel like kids maybe even have a little bit more innate ability to do this. And we lose this as we get older. Like babies seem extremely in touch with how their body feels and extremely good at communicating it, even if they can’t use words yet. But it seems like as adults, we often develop the skill of suppressing what our body’s feeling rather than listening.
Michael: Yeah, 100 percent. And when, wow, what a great story about teaching your kids how to feel. And doesn’t it, like, as you’re learning, doesn’t it feel like some sort of superpower? Because it’s almost as if you’re connected with the essence of the universe. That’s what Jesus said. The kingdom of heaven is within you.
And so, I want to give you a resource that I found really helpful. This guy, the Freedom Specialist, he wrote this book. I’ve read it a few times, something born to be free or something. Anyway, it’s at freedomspecialist.com. And I mention it because he’s the guy who really helped me to understand and got me to break free from the trying to win the battle of my thoughts. You know, I knew that it wasn’t right, but I couldn’t, I didn’t know what else to do. And the way that he explained things was really so helpful to me. So I want to pass it on to you guys as well, because it hopefully will be just as helpful to you.
Katie: I will link to that in the show notes as well. And I know we’ve touched on a lot of topics and we have our first episode that went deep on some things that can be really profoundly helpful for depression. For people who want to continue learning about either of these topics, where can they find you or your work online and keep learning?
Michael: Yeah, we have a special offer for the listeners here. Thank you for being here. We have a special offer for you at microdosingacademy.com forward slash mama, M-A-M-A. And there you’ll get our e-book on Microdosing 101, Everything You Need to Know About Microdosing Magic Mushrooms Safely and Effectively. We’ll also give you a book called What to Expect When You’re Microdosing and How to Wean Off Antidepressants in 7 Days. It’s a book that we put together helping people who want to get off antidepressants in favor of microdosing but have some concerns. You can get all those at microdosingacademy.com forward slash mama. And after you opt in so that we can send you know where to send your books to you, we have a special offer where you can save $50 on a three-month supply of magic mushrooms for microdosing in case you want to give it a shot and see what effect and benefits it might have in your life. And of course, if you do, please reach out. The stories that we get from people are amazing and always cheer us to hear them.
Katie: Well, I will make sure all of those links are there. If you guys are listening on the go, that’s always at wellnessmama.com. But Michael, always so fun to get to have a conversation with you and even more fun this time to get to record it. I hope we get to have more in the future. But for today, thank you so much for the time.
Michael: It’s so good to see you. I’m so happy to see your smiling face. And I love hearing the stories that you share about what you’re doing in your life and how you are parenting these six little humans. It always gives me such profound respect for you. So I look forward to talking to you again soon.
Katie: Thank you. And thanks as always to you for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.
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