In episode, find out why upgrading the quality of your focus is the best thing you can do to upgrade life across the board and the approach to plugging energy leaks like hesitation, second guessing + looping.
You can also binge articles and join conversations about other cool topics in The Immortal Odyssey Network at www.ImmortalOdyssey.com
In episode, find out why upgrading the quality of your focus is the best thing you can do to upgrade life across the board and the approach to plugging energy leaks like hesitation, second guessing + looping.
You can also binge articles and join conversations about other cool topics in The Immortal Odyssey Network at www.ImmortalOdyssey.com
Welcome to the immortal Odyssey podcast where we break esoteric spirituality, false light and predictive programming, and make the process of consciousness expansion tangible. I'm your host, Ryan Mintz,
Annie Earhart:together with Annie Earhart, and we are here to help you be more human. In this episode, we talk about why upgrading the quality of your focus is the best thing you can do to upgrade your life across the board. And we share an approach to plugging energy leaks like hesitation, second guessing and looping. Let's begin,
Ryan Mintz:I talk a lot about beliefs, and how those are a major component in where people meet with resistance in achieving the things that they want to achieve in life. But another really important component is their ability to focus. And a lot of people believe that they are bad at focusing. And the thing I tend to remind them is they're not bad at focusing, they are really good at focusing, they're just focusing on the wrong things. And part of what I want to help them in today's episode is understanding the areas where they're leaking energy, and where their focus is diffused in a way, and how that diffused focus is energizing both the thing that they want and the things that they don't want and how to then retrain your mind. So that it is much more skillful in arranging itself in alignment with what you want to believe about yourself and the achievements that you want to make as a result of, of your beliefs and of your focus.
Annie Earhart:So there's a there's an analogy that I've heard you give before about this, and it's about the laser beam and the lamp,
Ryan Mintz:I might have even given that did I get that last week, I'm not sure. But it is a good one, it's a good one to reshare. So a lot of people we all have focus to even be in our physical bodies takes tremendous focus. And we all have a really extraordinary ability to focus. But we've been trained through school through upbringing to focus in kind of a particularly diffused way. And the analogy that I give is the focus that most people hold is that of a lamp, and it's illuminating in every direction. So you might be bright, you might be illuminating a lot of things. And that is releasing a lot of energy. And that simultaneously, is going to be energizing, many different things that are in the room. So let's let's build this analogy a little bit. Let's say you have a lamp in your kitchen in the center of your kitchen table. And that is illuminating the room. And in that room, you're illuminating the knives in the knife rack, you're illuminating dishes in the sink, you're illuminating the edges of your cupboard, you're illuminating the kitchen table itself. And you're eliminating the people who are sitting at the kitchen table. And now you have all of these things that are illuminated by your your diffused focus. And that diffused focus now is pouring energy into the dishes into the knives into the cupboard into the people sitting there into the surface of the table. And you are you have a limited supply of energy to some extent do you have a limited supply of attention to some extent. And when you spend that attention in a diffused manner, meaning you are taking her attention and you're about either bouncing between the cupboard and the knives in the sink and the table or you're trying to illuminate all of those simultaneously, or you're even just flickering between a bunch of them, your focus is very diffused. And so you can only light you end up pouring this this amount of energy into all of these just a little bit. Whereas if you were to take that diffused focus and you were to focus it further like a laser, you could pinpoint your focus into a specific area. And you've probably heard of the concept that energy flows where attention goes and it's kind of like Oh, I love that idea. energy flows where attention goes. But it's much more true than you might realize. Wherever your mind goes, energy starts to accumulate. So if your mind is on a pain point, energy starts community accumulate in that pain point. If you are bouncing between emotion and thoughts and you're looping and indecision and you're illuminating the whole kitchen that is your container of energy being spent on a lot of different things simultaneous Sleep that is much less powerful than if you take your same amount of attention, the quantity of attention you have, and you learn to focus it much more skillfully. And that doesn't mean improve your focus. So you're not distracted. What it means is having better discernment on what you actively say, I don't need to focus on that right now. I don't even need to question that right now. That's not something I can control anyway, can I let that go and leave it up to the universe,
Annie Earhart:otherwise, what happens is you're kind of pouring your attention into all these things, because you are giving each thing an equal level of importance. And that's a surefire way to hemorrhage energy, and not get anywhere.
Ryan Mintz:And think about just in general, when you're looping, when you're in indecision, when you're questioning yourself in what you should do, and what's the best choice and what's the best route to take to achieve what I want to achieve. That requires a lot of mental real estate. And anything that takes up a lot of mental real estate is taking up a lot of energy to and you don't realize how much energy these things take up until they're no longer taking up that space. So let's say that you are somebody who over analyzes who overthinks who second guesses what they want to do, or they they have a conversation with somebody they leave that conversation, then later they're over analyzing, wondering, Oh, did I say it right? Did I say enough? Should I said this a little bit differently? Could I have reached them a little bit better, you're sitting there spending a lot of energy, thinking thoughts. And that energy forms those thoughts, it brings it, it brings in thoughts that are similar to it. And of course, you're just looping in similar types of thoughts, trying to solve a problem about something that already happened in your past, re energizing those energies. And there's no benefit to that, because it's not, it's not making you more intelligent, it's not making you more effective. It's not improving something you do next time, the only thing that can make you more effective there is to trust that you did it right, and see how how things respond. If you're second guessing yourself with no response, you're you're questioning feedback that doesn't even exist, you're creating your own feedback that is completely made
Annie Earhart:up. All this kind of stuff comes from not believing in yourself or believing that there's one right way to do things and that you are not always making the correct choice.
Ryan Mintz:If you don't inherently trust that there actually is no right choice. And this is something that I I've spoken to a couple of times, is there's no such thing as a right choice, there's no such thing as a wrong choice. And learning to make choices is probably one of the most important skills that somebody can cultivate. Because people have sets choices, or let's say they've set decisions on on a pedestal. And so the stakes have become so so high about how to make decisions and weighing all the different possibilities. And
Annie Earhart:because decisions are forever, right, and
Ryan Mintz:they whether they realize they're thinking this way or not, they they have this idea of permanence that, oh, if I decide to leave this relationship, and this is forever, if I decide to stay in this relationship, then this is forever. If I decide to commit to this, I can never change my mind, I have to promise to be the same tomorrow that I am today. And that is a self imposed inflexibility of the mind. And so part of what I want to teach people is how do you become more flexible in certain areas of your life that you hold in rigidity? And how do you become? How do you predetermine certain elements of behavior so that when you're confronted with certain types of questions, you've already you've already adjusted your mindset so that when you're confronted with that question, you already know how to respond to it. And and that comes back to looping and making choices. A lot of times you're weighing pros and cons are like, Oh, well, which one's going to be the best? The thing is, you never know what's going to be the best. Because like I said, there's no such thing as the best. So if you come back and say, Okay, let's say there's no such thing as the best choice, there's no such thing as the best route because either they're all the best, or they're all wrong. Because nothing there is no destination. So how could anything be right? It can't lead you It can't, but it can help you grow. It can help you be more powerful, it can move you forward in some way to simply make a choice. And then what happens is you instead of you trying to overanalyze and use your rational mind to assess the choice before you make it, you take your function of your rational mind and use it in the place where it's meant to be used, which is after the choice. And so so many people use the rational mind in the wrong place, which is why they're they think their focus sucks. They're there. They're over assessing something that hasn't happened. They're they're assessing. They're creating feedback, probable
Annie Earhart:timelines that are not what they want, right. So like they're, they're looping in that timeline, pouring energy in it, the worst. You know how they always say like, The worst thing ever comes to your mind in the situation that you find yourself in, oftentimes your mind goes to like these weird places about things you don't want to happen. So when you're looping in that you're
Ryan Mintz:energizing those things. For one, you're you're energizing those things that you're, you're paying attention to, you're telling those stories on. And it's, it's ironic, because there's so much so many new age teachings that speak about manifestation. And people are so afraid of thinking negative thoughts are so afraid of thinking. Something that opposes what they want to create in negative thoughts inherently are not the thing that creates the wrong outcome, the energy that generates the negative thoughts, you are paying attention to that story. Now the story creates specific thoughts connected to that particular story. And you may just be thinking thoughts not even realizing what story you're telling, and what you believe about that scenario. And so when you're, you're, you're energizing, the disempowering story or disadvantageous story, by pouring your attention into it just by it's not that we want to be afraid of certain ideas of an idea is coming up to you. If it's a negative idea, if it's a conflicting idea with what you want to have, and the first thing you do is Oh, no, no, I shouldn't think that. Well, you're not acknowledging that you are thinking which is really important. So there's two layers here that I want to speak to. The first layer is if something is coming up, you have to tell yourself the truth about it, you have to acknowledge that that exists. If you are think if you're trying to sell a program, and you want to get 20 sales, and every time you go to sell it, you're judging yourself for whether people are going to like your program, whether people are going to buy it, you're worried if you're you have enough value in the programming, that they're going to see that value. Well, you have beliefs there that exists. And these beliefs are conflicting with the belief that your program is valuable that your people will sign up for your program. And those conflicting beliefs are really important to examine. So if those beliefs come up, and the first thing you do is Oh, I'm just going to ignore them without processing them without acknowledging the fact that without acknowledging the fact that I have these beliefs inherent in me, then those beliefs still exist, subconsciously, they're going to keep energizing elements of the energy that are flowing through you. At the same time, as your desirable beliefs are energizing things that are flowing through you as well. And both of those outcomes effectively are getting energy poured into them. And they start to coalesce. And whichever one has more energy effectively, is what ends up getting closer to you so to speak. But they both end up showing up to some extent, you have both thought showing up because you're energizing both. And this is what I mean by energy leaks. So when I say energy leaks, your attention is pouring into both what you want, and something that conflicts with what you want. And if you're pouring energy into both, you're going to have mixed results, you're gonna have mixed signals from your body, you're gonna have mixed signals from your intuition, you're gonna have mixed signals from your feelings, that leads you down confusing paths, because your energy is leaking into two places, you're getting feedback from the universe from two places. So there's uncertainty that's involved. And the only way to repair this uncertainty isn't to just live in blissful ignorance and trying to ignore the beliefs that are coming to the surface, but to say, oh, okay, so I do believe that people might not show up, let me process this. How do I process that? How do I assess that? Right. So if I believe that people aren't going to show up, but I want to believe that people will show up after say, Okay, I believe that people won't show up. Is that because that's happened to me before? Do I believe that people won't show up this time, because maybe something else I've offered in the past people didn't show up. And so now I hold that belief that people might not show up, because they haven't showed up before. Can I change that? Can I change that now. And so you start to realize that the reason that people didn't show up before it was because they believe that people wouldn't show up before and now they have this distorted level of focus that they are playing with. And so now you reassess that you're like, Okay, I see that that happened before. But my program now is completely different. I am able to focus differently, I see these two elements, I see that I have this conflicting belief, I see that I have the affirmative belief that I want, I want to focus on the affirmative. I'm acknowledging that the conflicting belief is here, and I'm rewriting it consciously. So now I'm conscious of it. It's not operating subconsciously. And that is a really big step in plugging some of those energy leaks. It's not just to go immediately to denial. It's to acknowledge and then deny otherwise, it's
Annie Earhart:this deeper layer of almost like a toxic positivity idea.
Ryan Mintz:Yeah. And we don't want to be afraid of our negative thoughts. There's nothing inherently wrong with negative thoughts. Negative thoughts don't create negative outcomes, our beliefs about reality create negative outcomes, and our beliefs about reality create negative thoughts. So we're looking at to surface level, if we have negative thoughts, that means there's something below that creating those negative thoughts that we need to acknowledge, we don't need to ignore them, we don't need to be upset about them, we need to acknowledge them so that we can plug the energy leak that's creating something, we don't want that something that's undesirable. And this is where our attention comes in. Because attention is not just, oh, pay better attention. It's, it's recognizing where our attention is, based on what's showing up in our life. If you have all these thoughts that are coming into your life, if you have all of this looping, that's showing up if you have both confirmation of a good product and people not in people questioning it in a certain way. It's showing you that you have attention that's divided. So first, we need to recognize you have divided attention, you have attention pouring like a lamp into a bunch of different places. How can we take that lamp and focus it a little bit better? How can we control our attention a little bit better? And first, we have to acknowledge Okay, I have attention over here. I have attention over here. I have attention on this. I have attention on this. And throughout the day, how many things am I paying attention to that are wasted energy that I look at and say wow, I am paying attention to this specific thing on social media a lot. Paying attention to that is energizing first acknowledge Okay, me looking at that on repeat me wondering about the vaccine on repeat me wondering about COVID on repeat me wondering about whether I'm
Annie Earhart:secure in whatever, financially, like what's going to happen?
Ryan Mintz:Exactly. And all these wonders that you keep pouring attention into are energizing those things. And what happens you start to get feedback from people on social media or in your life, that that resembles or mirrors the point of attention on those particular elements.
Annie Earhart:So what about like some people identify as a DD or attention deficit, and they kind of just hold this belief that that is just how their brain works. And that is their lot in life. And they have to kind of mold everything around that. What do you think about that,
Ryan Mintz:if you believe that you have attention deficit, you will recruit unconscious mechanisms to fulfill your lack of attention. That will then resemble looping and starting on one thing and getting distracted and then going into another and forgetting that you're responding to a message to somebody and then going back to paint. And then once you start painting, you get an idea for a post and you start writing it and as you're
Annie Earhart:posting, are you describing my day.
Ryan Mintz:When you believe you can't focus when you believe that you have a deficit in your ability to pay attention, you will recruit unconscious mechanisms to fulfill that belief, you will be programming yourself to be distracted more easily and have poor focus. So the first game there is to stop saying that you know whether it's true or not, it needs to be irrelevant. So if you're experiencing add right now, if you are have you believe you have a deficit in your attention, or there's certain things that that you can't change labels on historically, it serves you no benefit to continue to label yourself as that because you're just energizing that further. And the way to change it is not to continue to energize it. But to energize something else. I guarantee anybody who thinks they have a DD has areas of their life where they are actually very skilled at focusing on something. The problem is they don't look at that thing as evidence for good focus. And it's really important to find that evidence of good focus. So it doesn't need to be a lot. And the more you find those little tiny pieces of good focus, let's say you think you have ADHD, but you're a movement coach. And you're really good at like when you're in a session with somebody or you're in the gym, just by yourself, you're really good at feeling your muscles, you're really good at getting into your body, that is focus. And it takes tremendous focus to do a lot of those types of movements. And if you ignore that example of focus and focus upon the data that says you're bad at focusing, you're gonna keep energizing the the evidence and the reality that you're bad at focusing. So so many people who have a DD just need a shift in the stories that they tell they need to shift in the areas that they're focusing. And what happens when they start realizing this, the small areas where they can focus well, that increases the energy in the good focus pot, the good focus category, and that builds that coalesces more energy. And that then begins to bleed into all these other areas where they thought they couldn't focus. And so now they're seeing more evidence of places where they're focusing a little bit better and that grows as a skill. It's interesting to see the way that people have learned to label themselves because there's so many distractions through social media. through life in general, there's so many things to think about. And when we're thinking about so many things, we're pouring our energy into a lot of different things. And once we've done that for a really long time, it's hard to even imagine that there's another way to even be able to focus or am I going to lose something? If I don't think about this? Is this going to be a problem later? One of the reasons people overanalyze is the read about if they don't think about the right things, or enough of the variables, that they're going to make a mistake that they're going to fail, that they're gonna lose out on something. Yeah, they're afraid of pain, ultimately, whether it's emotional pain, or its projected of suffering. But they're afraid of that to some extent, and being able to say, Well, what is it that I can actually control about my day? And what is it that I can leave up to the universe? What What can I allow the universe to take care of for me, and this was something that I think I taught in the master key that I just, I'm going to share it again, because it's just, if people get this one little reframe, it can make such a huge difference in how they engage with their reality with their with their life. And this one was to say, you know, okay, you get up in the morning, what things during your day? What things in your mental processes and your connection to yourself? What can you take for granted? Every single morning? And the thing that I said is, I asked these in terms of questions, and you can answer these to yourself. Does your soul know what you desire? And if your soul knows what you desire, does, let me say this in even an even better way? Does your soul know what you desire better than you do? If your soul does know better,
Annie Earhart:like you, the creature, human versus having this three dimensional experience versus your higher self, your greater self, your soul, that kind of thing,
Ryan Mintz:right? So either either your soul, your greater self, your higher self, your your, your spirit that shows this incarnation, this experience that is coordinating all of these other things that are happening. does it know what you want? Where did it come here? Not with any desire whatsoever? And no intention whatsoever? No, no drive towards fulfillment? Of course, you know what I'll say about that. But the the, if you believe that your soul whether it has a purpose, or a mission, or a, a point of focus for its incarnation here, does it know more than you do? Does it have more information than you do? And if it does, do you believe that your soul is leading you down the most effective path to get to what you desire? So So let's say something does your does your soul want you to have what you desire? You would think it would, why would your soul incarnate? Like why would you play a video game as a character? Well, preventing your character from having the things you want your character to have? Your soul wants you to have the things you want. That's why you have those desires in the first place, you're already connected to those things. It's you who gets in that way, by by trying to control things that are outside of your control. So if you look at your soul, and you assume that it knows what you want, and you assume that because it knows what you want better than you do, it is going to be doing whatever it can to help align you with what you desire. The problem isn't your soul not knowing what you want. The problem is you getting in the way of aligning with it. So you assume you're like, Oh, well, I want to manifest all this money on a manifest or relationship. I want to manifest a house or a car. And you're like, Okay, let me keep reminding my soul what I want. Maybe if I don't say my intention enough, or frequently enough, or maybe if I don't do the right ritual, or if I don't like think about it all the time. My soul won't know what I want. My soul doesn't know what I want. If I don't give her the universe won't know. Yeah, universe won't know what I want my the universe won't be able to tell me those things. And, and if I don't remind it all the time, then it's gonna forget and I won't get it. Or your soul does know what you want. And you don't need to remind it you reminding it all the time is you also saying I don't have it. I don't I and you can't be given something you don't already have in terms of feeling. And so I hope that is really, really powerful to to give people a different way of approaching their day. Because if they're constantly doing affirmations, if they're constantly doing these things to manifest if they're constantly trying to control and micromanage their reality in their life, to to create circumstances that they want. They're not realizing that their soul already knows what they want isn't is guiding them there. The best way to follow that thread of guidance is not to micromanage. It's not to get in the way of it. It's to feel the energy line and trace it and to learn to follow your intuition and to act on your intuition and do something wrong. Right. So many people think your intuitions Oh is right, the most people's beliefs are so conflicted that their intuition gives them mixed signals. So when you go to follow your intuition, and you learn to follow your, your gut and you learn to follow those signals, you're going to be led in an undesirable direction until you refine your beliefs. And that's okay, because the game is refinement, the game doesn't have a destination, it's not a road, you're nurturing this, this garden.
Annie Earhart:So when you're making requests to the universe will say like in manifestation type scenarios, oftentimes, a lot of that is, you know, like setting your intention, you set your intention. I used to do this all the time, I would religiously do a new moon intention and hang that on, hang that list on my bathroom window. and wonder why these things aren't happening like that I wrote down because everyone, like all these coaches say that manifestation works and all this stuff, they teach manifestation. But I was really starting to get disheartened about like these things that I put in a request for that, or my intention for this month, or whatever, when I wasn't seeing them, and with intention, sitting rituals, there are merits, and then there are ways that it's totally useless. And because there are two parts to this whole thing, it is your intention, that's kind of where you point your focus, but then you also have to focus and pour your conscious energy into that laser beam spot. And I had not cultivated any sort of skill in my scatterbrained squirrel brain to be able to coalesce enough energy in any of those things, because I was just bouncing all over the place with my attention.
Ryan Mintz:There's, there's so many pieces to this puzzles, you can't just say, okay, it's intention and attention. And people sit there and stare at the page, right? And it's intention. It's what they believe about themselves. It's what they believe about their intention. It's about what they believe in terms of their worthiness of receiving whatever they intend. And it's their ability to focus on the positive side of their beliefs, while acknowledging and dismantling the conflicting beliefs that exist. So if it was easy, everybody would have just succeeded at this stuff already, just by default, the point is that it requires skill, it requires refinement, it's an it well, it is a magic trick to some extent, it requires a certain type of mental activity. And part of this, this game that I want to encourage people to start walking down, is to understand the difference between where their intentions are showing up in their life, and where their attention is showing up in their life. And whether those are congruent and aligned. And also, what's the difference between attention and intention? And why is it so important to really know the difference? There's so many schools of thought in New Age teachings that be more intentional, you know, don't be habitual, don't be unconscious, be more intentional, do things on purpose. And of course, that makes sense, right? With all the self help that's out there. Everybody wants to be told to do things on purpose, be more aware of all the choices that you're making. And that's 100% true, right? You do want to be more aware of what you're doing. The thing is, with intention, you are trying to insert and manipulate reality in a certain way. And you're trying to control an element of reality. And while this isn't inherently wrong, to a large extent, it is disadvantageous, because what you are saying when you become intentional, is my soul doesn't know what I want, and it's not leading me where I want to go. Let me control this scenario and remind the universe of what I want. And so when you look at the low level, you're like, Okay, I'm being intentional. That's a really good thing that's really conscious thing to do, while at the same time being intentional in that way, works against the mechanisms of the universe. And how often have you heard that the phrase, the road to hell is paved with good intentions? How often do you have really good intentions that you think are brilliant that you think are going to be perfect, that don't do anything, right or blow up in your face no activity. And when you don't have that energy, when you don't have that activity? There is a mismatch that ends up happening. So let's talk about the difference between intention and attention when you pay attention, so attention itself is the most nurturing thing that you can give. When you pay attention to something you are putting your mind on it. And wherever you put your mind energy starts to coalesce. So with a child, giving it your attention is the most loving and nurturing thing you can do. So what does it mean to be nurturing it means to foster growth. And so when you pay attention to a child, which is the most loving thing you can do is provide your attention because that's where all of your energy comes from. When you pay attention, you're encouraging energy to go into that place, which is why what you pay attention to is so important. When you are intentional, you are trying to manipulate and control. And so there are two ways to approach those types of interactions. It's not that you want to be unintentional, but you want to be intentional with where you're paying attention. You don't need to be intentional with what you're asking for. That's already known, the universe in the ether is all that stuff knows that you don't control how that unfolds, what you control is where the energy starts to coalesce, and how you respond to the feedback you get as that energy coalesces. So being able to recognize that subtle difference, because it's really scary to live that way, it takes a lot of trouble. Most people want to control the reality, they want more control of the reality, not more surrender, they don't, they don't want everything to be known. Yeah, they want to have endedness, they want to have stability, they want to have predictability, they want to have salt, solidity, these are all egoic desires. And that's okay, it's absolutely normal to want those things. Of course, you want those things. Our whole identity wants that because we're, we're not solid anywhere else besides here. So there's a reason we want that kind of coalescing of energy. But the only way that can actually happen in a tangible, trustworthy place is if we cultivate trust beforehand. So for saying, Okay, this needs to become solid, so I can trust it, you're going to keep waiting for trust forever. Whereas if you choose to trust ahead of time, you are focusing in a certain way that allows that to become solid for you to step on to. And it is a very difficult way to live. Because if you're so used to saying I want this to happen, I need it to happen this way, so that I can feel good. And if it happens, any of these other ways that I'm worried about, it's going to create pain and hardship and things that I don't want to happen. And you don't realize your capability to navigate whatever comes up. So you disempower yourself from the beginning, by paying attention to the narrative that of of potential struggle, when things don't go the way that you want them to go. Versus the inherent belief that you can navigate whatever comes up the chosen belief by default, that whatever is coming up is guiding you towards fulfillment that your soul knows what you desire that your soul is leading you to what your desire, because why would it do anything else, you the human cannot be visionary, from what you already know, if you are operating from what you already know, you can only create from ideas you've already had. And if you're wanting to be visionary, and you're wanting to be operate in a level of creativity that is beyond something you've already seen, you will never get there by being intentional. It they just don't match, you have to you have to get into a place of a type of allowing, and a type of self awareness that allows you to control your focus so that those things can unfold in a better way. You don't like take a hammer and start building them on purpose by saying Okay, I need to think this, then I need to think this and I need to think this, we need to cultivate a mind that can just pay attention to the right things. So this is a good exercise, I'll just give you guys this exercise as part of this podcast that I think will be really good for you. Because if you can't cultivating attention on if you kind of cultivate attention on your something really simple and specific, you're gonna have a really hard time controlling your attention, when there's a lot of data that's around. So the first thing that I recommend doing is a sitting practice. And this is something that I taught in the master key and wrote some articles on it, because I'm not going to go super in depth with the nitty gritty of this practice. But what I want you to do when you do this sitting practice, is you're literally just going to sit, you can sit in a chair, you can sit on the floor, in whatever posture that you want to sit in. But you want to sit upright, and a meditation posture. And once you sit, you're going to set your timer for 15 minutes, you're not going to do any longer than 15 minutes. There's no need initially to do longer than 15 minutes. And when you sit, you are going to be in your body and that's it. You're not going to think about anything, you're not going to imagine anything, you're not going to control your breath. You're not going to pay attention to your breath. You're not going to move at all. So what's going to happen You're going to put your hands in your lap, and your mind loves stimulation, your mind is always going to be looking for stimulation. And as you're sitting there, you're going to start thinking things and distracting yourself and you're gonna have to bring yourself back to the present moment, you're gonna have to bring yourself back into your body, just
Annie Earhart:feeling your body, like a diffuse awareness in your body, not like any specific area, just you're
Ryan Mintz:just feeling your brain there, feel your body and be quiet and everywhere else. And so thoughts are coming up, you quiet, those thoughts come back to your body. If you what's going to happen is your mind is like, okay, you're not entertained. Yet, sir, Chase will start to get little glitches. Because that's your mind saying I need I need stimulation, pay attention to me. And it's going to start itching. And your job is to ignore the edge, your job is to focus and sit in your body. Regardless of what the sensations are, well, that isn't going to work and your body, your mind is going to say, Okay, well the edge isn't working, let me come up with something else, it's gonna create little aches and pains. And then you're gonna want to fidget, you're gonna want to move your back, he's gonna want to wiggle, you're gonna want to make your body feel better you are not to do that you are sitting for 15 minutes, and no amount of sitting for 15 minutes is going to cause you injury, you're going to sit still. And you're going to ignore that pain, because you recognize that that little pain in the middle of your back is because your mind wants attention, your mind wants stimulation. And it knows that if it points stimulation into that area, you're going to start wiggling and paying attention. Your job is to ignore it. Your job is to starve your mind so that it can become it can stop requiring all of the the food attention that you the attention traits, yes, that you always give it in your daily life. So you're going to sit there, and you're going to have all of these different things come up that are going to make you want to move that are achy, that are itchy on your face, you're
Annie Earhart:going to get cold and you're going to want to get up and get a blanket and come back to it. But you're not going to do that you're
Ryan Mintz:going to sit there in your misery for a total of 15 minutes,
Annie Earhart:let's talk about the sneakiest way that your mind tries to distract you is the subtle pain of boredom, you're gonna
Ryan Mintz:get bored sitting there, it's only 15 minutes, maybe you have a great meditation practice. And you can sit in a meditation for hours because you can get lost in your imagination, you can process things you can think about things you can visualize, you can meditate on a topic and get ideas. That's easy. Sitting and keeping your mind disciplined, meaning you're not going to go off into your imagination, you're not going to try to do anything, you're not going to anchor your breath, you're not going to build energy in your body, you're not going to do breath work, you're not going to visualize, you're going to sit still, you're not going to move your hands, you're not going to move your hips, you're not going to move your shoulders, you're not going to adjust your body, you're going to sit and discipline yourself for 15 minutes, it's really, really, really hard to do. It's so hard, really hard to do. It's so hard, you don't need to do it for super long. But you do need to do it, especially if you have trouble focusing, especially if you tend to have a mind that wanders all over the place. And it doesn't take a lot of time doing this practice for one week, for 15 minutes at a time will change so much in how your mind works, just by making it not starving for stimulation all the time,
Annie Earhart:and you like feeding it, throwing it those little table scraps.
Ryan Mintz:And what that does is it allows you to control your attention much better. It allows you to first starve your mind of needing all of these different sources of stimulation, to not needing them. And then once you don't need them anymore, you can much more easily control where your attention is being poured.
Annie Earhart:And that's ultimately so important. Because as we see what's going on in the world, it's like this whole war on consciousness. And really, it's a war of war on attention. It's a war on attention spans. Because if people are all over the place, their minds are jumbled and bouncing back and forth, it's a lot easier to steer, we'll say steer them in a certain direction
Ryan Mintz:humans create what they pay attention to. The best way to get humans to create a future that is desired by somebody is to get them to pay attention to what you want them to pay attention to. That's what marketing is. To some extent, it's also what has been done globally. They tell stories because that's all it takes nothing has to be true. They just have to tell a story that people pay attention to. When you pay attention to it. The energy of the collective is poured into that narrative and coalesces energy and becomes more solid in people's experience. So what has happened they have created systems of feeding off of human attention, social media, of all kinds, entertainment of all kinds. These are all mechanisms of getting human attention of acquiring Human attention, that energy of attention as it coalesces, can be taken as heat and then converted to other substances and form energy that can be used by the people who are siphoning this energy on the planet. So this is why it's so important that we are aware of where we pour our energy and where we pour our attention. Because where you pour your attention, you're nurturing whatever stories you're telling you're nurturing, whatever, and growing, whatever things you're paying attention to. So if you're worried about COVID, if you're worried about the vaccine, if you're worried about your children in a specific way, if you're worried about whether something will be successful, if you're worried about tomorrow, you are pouring energy into those things. What way? Are you pouring energy into them? What stories? Are you telling about those? And can you self assess and realize I get to choose what stories I tell?