200th Podcast: Celebrating And Loving Life

 

Today’s show marks the 200th episode of The Conscious PIVOT podcast.We are so grateful to our listeners and guests who have made this podcast a blessing. You help us spread love, resilience, positivity and change for good. This episode celebrates this milestone and shares our commitment for 2021. The year 2020 has been full of frustrations and uncertainties for us all. There is no question that 2020 brought about many, many life pivots. We hope you’ll enjoy our insights about resilience and self-care that can help you bounce FORWARD from the disruption of the past year into the opportunities of the future. Make this THE year that you love YOUR life….

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200th Podcast

I have no idea how on Earth we have gotten to 200 episodes quickly but this point I’m uncertain about how time flies in the way that it does and how we get to be where we are quickly. I don’t know if you have thought that way or felt that way. I’ve been sentimental about time since about the age of ten. This may be a weird a reminiscence here but I remember when I was nine years old going into my tenth birthday, that that was such a big thing to go from 9 to 10, it was like life was altering in some mysterious and even ominous way. I’ve always felt that way, a little melancholy about birthdays and not so much of late but over the last however many years, looking at the passage of time is something that is a mystery. In fact, that shared with friends and family and others that time and space collapse that when we look back, it’s a second, it seems like a flash in time. I could think back to when I was ten years old like it was a minute ago, like a second ago even and I’m sure you felt the same way when you look back at events of your past, whatever those things were, maybe they were wonderful times and you look back and reminisce about them with a smile.

Sometimes there are things in our lives at those earlier stages and phases that we look back and we clench our teeth or feel a sense of remorse or even regret about. It truly is the case that this is the only moment in time, this moment now because everything else collapses on itself. There’s no experiencing time in the past. There is only this moment and what leads here is burned up in the process. It’s nice to look back and see those pictures or think about good times and times that we’ve learned things, of but everything flows from a standpoint of power, of what is possible in our lives. It all exists in this moment and the past is truly something that has no energy, it’s dead. I’m speaking to a friend about the idea of letting go and how important it is to be able to let go and what the value in letting go of things is to us in the moment.

 

What it does when we let go of something, we take an old hurt or something that we might have some resentment or regret about and we choose to let it go. We are recapturing energy in this moment. We are energizing. Filling up the tank or recharging the battery when we are not allocating our precious resources, the resources of our thinking and our physical abilities to something that has no energy like throwing away good time at bad time is the difference between living here now and instead allowing your time, your energy and other resources to be allocated about something that has no life force at all. Letting go is essential. We have been speaking about how it is that we love our lives. It’s in fact, 2021 is the year of loving your life. We declared that at the start of this year, we have a book, a beautiful workbook called The I Love My Life Challenge, a 28-day workbook. We decided that this was going to be the year of loving your life. If you can love your life in the midst of a pandemic, political and social unrest and upheaval, in financial terms for many people. If you can love your life, love your life and not envy someone else’s life or wish that you were anywhere other than where you currently are.

If you could do that, what can’t you do? What else can you do if you’re capable of pulling off that one? I don’t think it’s a feat that anybody isn’t capable of pulling off. In fact, it’s the thing that if you decided even in this moment, I’ll take that challenge from out of me. Do it, you could. You don’t have to be a Flying Wallenda. You don’t have to balance yourself on a tight rope between two tall buildings. You don’t have to do anything that’s death-defying. This is life defining, it’s life affirming. It is truly a practice to love our lives in the midst of anything, no matter what. It’s the only life course that we’ve been given. It’s this great grace, it’s this gift, this profound blessing that we’ve been bestowed with, the opportunity to utilize our life in some manner, in some means that is how we wish to live not how we’re directed to live or how we’ve been programmed to live.

Our world is in dire need of great leadership now more than ever. Share on X

Our ability to do that is within our own. There’s no one that does not have the frame to decide how they feel about themselves. There’s nobody anywhere in the world, in any regime that can steal from anyone else their autonomy and their freedom to decide how they wish to feel about themselves, to feel about their life. In the midst of what is difficult circumstances for many people around the world and great suffering, as I know, folks that are reading this are in all kinds of situations, difficult and not so difficult and yet this is our shared freedom. It’s the freedom of humanity that no government, no other human beings can take from us. The opportunity to realize that, to be conscious of it, to double down on what we can do with that freedom and how that freedom can inform our decisions is profound.

How we feel about ourselves is everything. It’s the core of everything we do in life. It builds our esteem, our confidence or takes it away or strips it away. That’s entirely of our own making and our own choosing. Loving our lives and making 2021 the year that we love ours, that’s what I am committed to this year. I look at this opportunity and the 200th anniversary of the start of this show. It’s been quite a journey. I’ve had phenomenal conversations with people. If you’ve not checked out prior episodes, please feel free to go back and read some of the episodes that have been interesting and heartfelt. The one common denominator in every one of these shows is that we have come from the heart both in terms of the guests that we’ve had and the ability to dive into some direct questioning on the challenges that we’ve all faced, the pivots in our lives.

That’s why the show has been dedicated to giving an audience and a voice for people to share their pivot stories, the good, the bad, the ugly and to discuss how it is that we can learn to love our lives so that we can be more resilient in the world. Resilience is the essential skill that everyone must develop, must cultivate, create and share with their families, share with their coworkers, share with anyone that you have influence to share it. By sharing it, I mean modeling it, living it, living as a resilient human in this world now is exactly what the rest of us require. If we see more of that, we experience more of what it looks like to take care of ourselves so that we can take care of others, to love ourselves so that we can love others. We can live out so many of the things that we say we want to be many of the things, even in spiritual terms, we’re taught we ought to be and yet we live at something of a distance from those things, is a disconnect in many ways because we’re not putting ourselves first. We’re doing the opposite of what they tell you to do if you’re in a situation of extreme turbulence on an airplane and the masks drop, they tell you, “Put it on yourself before you attempt to help anyone else.” It’s wisdom, the combination of intelligence and love combined to create something we call wisdom.

It’s wise to make sure that we ourselves are in the position to be able to show up for other people that when we’re depleted, when we’re worn out, when we’re burned out, when we’re anxious, exhausted, depressed, any of those places that we find ourselves when we are in the weeds, when we’ve made mistakes and we beat ourselves up mercilessly about it. All of those things detract from our ability to serve a greater purpose and a greater audience of people who will learn from our example how to show up in the world. We need more of those examples. That thing that we’re talking about here where you put the mask on for yourself and then you’re able to then help others to do the same, that’s called leadership. Our world is in dire need now more than ever. It’s always been in dire need of great leadership but now is as no time in my short, beautiful lifespan have I seen the need is greater than it is now for all of us, each of us, to open our hearts, to be in a position to look and see what’s missing and where we can be of service to others.

Celebrating this episode, celebrating number 200 is a joy. I don’t know how amazing it is or why it is that it has gone by quickly but we’ve gotten here. We’ve gotten here in large part because of the messages of resilience and messages of how we care for ourselves love ourselves and how it is that we are able to not just bounce back from setback, from disruption and from failure and mistakes but that we bounce forward. That’s the principle of pivoting in a nutshell. Our ability to leverage adversity and even uncertainty to be able to move forward, to be able to progress and to be able to share that message with many people for so long now, years at this point, has been a joy to our team.

When we find and feel peace, we get to truly be ego-less. Share on X

I want to say to our community, thank you for reading, for sharing as you have with other people, this show and the thoughts and what we’ve expressed is valuable. We get a lot of comments and I love it when you do that. If you’ve got a comment to share, please do that. Share it with us, share the link to it, your favorite episode with someone else. Share The I Love My Life Challenge workbook or the idea of taking 28 days to learn this new skill with people that you care about whether they’re people on your own team or they’re people in your personal life. We all know people that that would benefit from a great deal, more attention and focus and energy around their own development. I don’t know anybody that wouldn’t benefit from those things.

I’ve gotten finished reading a number of books to start 2021. In fact, one that’s sitting on my desk now is called Ego Is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday’s book about ego. I enjoyed it. It was a tough read at times probably because it cuts a little close to the bone when I think about or was reading about ego, I can’t help but think about my own ego and where it is that I’ve gotten in my way and where my own unwillingness at times to confront the old programming inside of me. The programming that says that I care a great deal about what other people think, that I am putting my need to be right ahead of other things at times. It was confronting in a wonderful way. Humility is the unsung hero in relationships of every kind whether they’re business or personal. I’ve been thinking about that principle since I was in college. I was feeling my oaths and doing well to get good grades.

 

I remember at a certain point being congratulated by some family members and thinking to myself, “This is all BS.” My thinking was right on that particular day or the person grading that paper on that particular day was in their right mind or resonated with what I had written. Many factors could go into whether or not it was an A or a C. I’d gotten Cs or Bs on things and thought, “That was the best paper I’d ever written.” The arbitrariness of it started to hit me hard when I was in my twenties. I thought to myself, “Humility, that’s going to be the center for me.” I got into the practice of law and I was a litigation attorney for many years. Humility, it was a hard thing in that arena. It was like going to battle and being a gladiator. Being humble in that gladiator environment was difficult for me. My ego was on full display back in those days, even more than it might even be now.

That concept grows for me and for many folks is in finding a humble place, not a place of passivity or passive aggressiveness or not speaking up or speaking your mind. I don’t use the word “humility” in that sense. I feel that humility is a place where we’re grounded and where we don’t have to show off, show other people on Instagram or wherever else how great we are or how many great things we’ve done or how many great things we’ve attained. That is the stuff of ego. The stuff of humility is born out of a peace within us. That peace comes from loving our lives. It comes from loving ourselves at a level that permits mistake. It permits us to be imperfect. We’re perfectly imperfect in that sense. The peace that is born out of unconditional love for us, being unconditional. Not loving ourselves when we are good or when we’re successful and despising ourselves and being despondent about ourselves when we fail.

That equilibrium produces a certain serenity and a certain feeling that I would call peace. In that place of peace, ego doesn’t exist, at least not in my experience. When we find and feel peace, we get to truly be ego-less. We get to be humble and not have it be an act. 2021 is already here. We’re in full swing. We got off to a quick start. There’s a lot going on in the world. There’s a lot going on in your world and in mine. If there’s one prayer that I will express in this moment, it is the prayer for peace. It’s the prayer for our world to be peaceful and peace-filled but it’s the prayer for us individually to create that peace, to find it, cultivate it, grow it, share it and model it. Be that kind of a leader.

I’ve loved every second of every show that I’ve been privileged to share with all of you. I appreciate your support in this community. As always, if you’ve got questions for us, you can go to AdamMarkel.com/podcast and leave a question. You can subscribe if you haven’t already and share it with a friend because we know how important it is that we share things with others especially if we think they’re things that would benefit them. We don’t hesitate to share a good restaurant or a good book and a podcast or anything, any discussion, any conversation that would help people to think more expansively open their hearts and their minds in a way that is good for the world is something worth sharing as well.

I will end in the same way to remind us that now is a gift. We got to wake up. To the readers, you got to wake up now, no question about that. Maybe you’re still in the process of waking up and that’s all great as well. When we’re blessed again to wake up, I invite you to feel grateful in that moment of waking, in that moment of being aware of this gift of a brand-new day, happy new day, you can feel that gratitude and declare if you like out loud a statement that makes sense to you.

That is a wonderful way as my grandmother would say to start the day on the right foot. She would always speak to me about these important little things in life that she called little gems and she even made cakes that she called little gems, these tiny little cakes that has this massive flavor to them. One of the wonderful little gems that I’ve discovered is the way to start the day with four simple but profound words, “I love my life.” I hope you all will. Love your life or learn to love your life as I have. We’ll see you soon. Ciao for now.

 

Important Links

• Ego Is the Enemy