Andy Johns: evaluation

Transcript context

…I love this question. So most of the conversations I have are with folks who are going through significant change. Now, what's involved in that? It can happen on a spectrum where everyone's process is unique. We all change and unfold in identical ways. Some can go through subtle shifts. I've heard this referred to as a micro transition, where, for example, they may be working at a tech industry or at a tech company, but this specific company they're working at, they have no real values connection to it. So part of their suffering is the fact that they feel that the work that they're doing doesn't really matter or they don't feel a connection to it. So switching to work at a different company that's aligned with something that's consistent with their values, that may be enough for somebody to go through a small transition and then find themselves in a happier place. The transitions that I talk about are the big fundamental ones like the transition that I've been going through myself. Now, what's involved in that? I think that there are four parts, just to give it a simple general framework. Step one is it begins with suffering. These large transitions in life rarely take place in the absence of suffering. So step number one is suffer. Usually, the deeper somebody suffers, the more significant the transition that may follow. There's a reason why in the 12 steps community like Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, you name it, there's a reason that rock bottom is in the vernacular because rock bottom tends to proceed somebody getting sober. So step one is suffering. Step two is seeking the truth behind why we suffer. Once the suffering gets so bad in somebody through some spiritual intervention, a legal intervention, the intervention of friends and family, whatever it may be, they decide to change, and in order to change, you have to understand the truth as to who you are and why you are the way you are and why you're suffering. The answer lies in understanding the truth, and that is usually a long process. Digging through the subconscious mind, digging through your history and your past, digging through your relationships, that takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of time to remove the mental blocks that we might've spent decades developing such that we don't even see these patterns that we play out regularly. So first, you begin with suffering, and then second, you seek the truth for your suffering. What I have found, and that leads to step three in the process, is that once you discover the truth of your suffering, the real root cause of it and where it came from, that's when you move to step three, which is you begin to experience and to practice self-compassion and self-love because inevitably, what you discover through this process of seeking the truth is that your suffering isn't necessarily your fault. Maybe you're suffering because of things that you experienced or had to go through of which you had no control over. s process of seeking the truth is that your suffering isn't necessarily your fault. Maybe you're suffering because of things that you experienced or had to go through of which you had no control over. Nonetheless, it's common for the mind, especially the mind of a child, to interpret those less than nurturing experiences as, "This happened because of me." So what sits at the core of their suffering is not only a low sense of self, but a shame, a shame regarding who they are and who they believe themselves to be. When you dig deep enough into your own self-understanding, eventually you'll discover that that's not true, that it isn't your fault, that these things swept you up like a wave, and you were just along for a ride of which you had no choice. When you understand that and you start to feel a sense of forgiveness and to begin to love yourself for the first time, you make this switch where then you're willing to live in a way that is more consistent with self-love and self-compassion. So me, for example, stepping away from my career, at the end of the day, I wasn't running from something, I was running back towards myself. That was an act of kindness towards myself. Going into a 45-day hospitalization, that was an act of love. So what ends up happening is the truth fuels that process of self-love, and when you begin to live in a way that is consistent with valuing yourself and understanding that it's not your fault, then that's when you move to step four, which is compassion towards others because by understanding yourself and realizing the true nature of why you are the way you are and forgiving yourself because you understand it's not your fault, guess what? You see the same thing in everybody else. This is what is meant when folks sometimes say we're all adults or we're all children walking around in adult bodies, right? We're just acting out the things that were done to us in the past because when I think of the human mind, there are many ways that you can describe what the brain is, but one way that I describe it certainly is that it's autobiographical. It tries to predict what's going to happen next based on what happened in the past. It's a prediction engine. That's what it does, and that's why I say it's autobiographical because the way that you present yourself to the world as an adult is a reflection of what happened to you in the past, the messages you were told, the ways you were conditioned by society, maybe the traumas you experienced. So that's the process as I see it of deep, deep, deep transformation. It's that four-step process of the suffering, the seeking of truth, the living in a way that is compassionate towards oneself, and then living in a way that is compassionate towards others. When you do that, you change. Think of that as the horizontal foundation to which the rest of your external life is built. wards oneself, and then living in a way that is compassionate towards others. When you do that, you change. Think of that as the horizontal foundation to which the rest of your external life is built. The place you choose to live, the partner you choose to have, the friends you have, the career you have, all of these things are erections on top of a foundation of identity, and that identity is what is completely rewired when somebody goes through that four-step process, and as a result, everything that's built on top of that identity, it doesn't necessarily have to change, but it might.…

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