Here’s a personal conversation I’ve had with a friend back in September. I’ve been feeling tense and tired for a very long time, and I wanted to allow myself to just feel this feeling of tiredness more, rather than do what I usually do: trying to overcome my tiredness, and just push it away.
And when I did this, I realized that I’ve never really paid attention to my tiredness. I was never that aware of what tiredness actually feels like in my body.
On this day, I got to know my own tiredness better, because I just stayed with it and experienced it fully.
There’s no major breakthrough or magic revelation in this. I’m just sharing how I experienced my own tiredness in a new way for the first time.
Looking back at it today, I can say that getting more in touch with myself, my feelings, my body has drastically improved the quality of my everyday life. I’ll share much more of this in future episodes.
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Um, I think what I’m trying to do is I am attempting to fully feel my tiredness. Yes. Without analyzing it or categorizing it. Um, this is based on this book that I’m reading, uh, what is it called?
Uh,
her name is . Uh, the hard lady. Yes, the hard lady. Okay. And so, so one of our books, the process that she proposes is really connecting to your emotions by using your body. And the simple idea [00:01:00] is if there is a physical sensation in your body, then if usually it’s tied to an emotional sensation and through fully feeling your body and that sensation without resisting it without explaining it without.
Finding solutions to it just by, not just by, but by being present to it and allowing it fully, um, you can make the first step towards. Transforming these things, right? So basically the idea is if you have an emotion that you’re not accepting and your suppressing eventually that emotion, if you [00:02:00] thought about it as a being that has needs, the, the need of your, the needs of your emotions are to be felt fully.
And if you are running away from it, what the emotion will do, it will try to. Get to your attention if you like it or not. So it will start growing or manifesting eventually in some physical bodily discomfort, the sickness, right? I’ll force your hand. If you don’t want to feel me, I’m going to make this a strong than struggle, struggle until you cannot, but face me that sort of a thing.
And so this morning, Or this morning, I started, I’ve been feeling this for a couple of days now, more fully and more, no
more presence is that I have this like super tensor tenseness in my body. [00:03:00] Hmm. And in German you would describe this as for business design to be like, think this is like, for this means to be. Word for word translation in this would be like to be over biting, but over biding, the real meaning of the word in English in German or in English would be to be, I don’t know, overly determined, stubborn, maybe stubborn.
I Googled it. Oh, what did he say? Dark. Dark. Grim obstinate, but it’s not meant there’s not really a one for one translation for it. It seems at least I don’t see any, yeah. My description for, for Bisson would be to be stubborn, overly determined.
[00:04:00] I’m reasonably. Pushing for something. I don’t know, something along those lines, like you lock into something and don’t let go. I’m being going a certain way. Exactly the way you wanted and not letting go of that insistence. Yeah. And you’re overdoing it. Yeah. Despite the fact that it’s obviously not. Going.
Yeah. Yeah. So to me, that sensation of this, like my I’ve had this now for a couple of months, but it, it, I felt it more consciously with ALEKS last couple of weeks, this overly tenseness in my jaw. And it’s been noticeable how, now that I pay attention to it, how it happens. Quite a lot throughout the entire day, even in situations where I’m kind of surprised by it myself.
I’m like, why do I have this much [00:05:00] tension in my jaw right now? I’m just sitting here, just sitting in a coffee shop, looking at the ocean, like what is going on with me? Um, and, and the same thing happened this morning and I tried to just like, were you present for it? But then I kept on reading a little bit further in the book from Sophie Nidia and she describes how it seems like, kind of doubling down on the same idea, but there’s two different ideas of like first recognizing the emotion then being present for it to fully feel it, and then being fully surrendering and accepting to it.
She’s like, it sounds like doing the same thing twice. Like if you fully feel it. Why do you also have to accept it and fully surrender to it, but the idea, the thought, the word of fully accepting and surrendering helps a lot of people to let go of the last little bit of [00:06:00] resistance to you might be feeling it, but still resisting in that feeling.
I mean, resistance to it or judgment. Right. And I definitely had this, I had this feeling it. Noticing it, and then not being able to help myself, but thinking about how I will hire how I will surpass this or let this go right. Or connecting it to ideas and situations. Oh, I feel this because of this way of thinking or because of this situation, like I was trying to find the.
The theoretical explanations for why I have this. And so just a few moments ago in a ways to kind of holding on to it, not letting it go, not letting it be, not letting it be like maybe over analyzing it versus [00:07:00] fully feeling it. And just a moment, just a couple of moments ago. I felt intense tiredness, really, really tired.
And this is some, this has been a big theme of my life. Over the last two years. I had like this battling with how tired I am all the time. And it’s gotten a lot better since I’ve started this exploration of my feelings and trying to understand and feel more. And.
But it’s still happens. It’s still there. It’s more physical than it is mental. It used to be, I would wake up and I would be mentally exhausted and physically exhausted. Now I wake up and I’m mentally fresh and ready to go. But physically, usually I’m [00:08:00] still a bit, a bit rusty. But the amount of tiredness I had this morning, it was stronger than usual.
And so I, I, I was, I thought, all right, I need to fully feel tired before I can jump to the podcast recording with Rameen because typically my, my game would just be to push it aside, get determined, push it aside, record. Right. That’d be my usual game plan here. And so I thought, no, before I started recording me, sit still and fully feel tired first.
And
how was that? You know, the most noticeable thing that I can say about it [00:09:00] is that. I don’t think I’ve ever fully felt what it means to me to be tired. They’ve never given my tiredness or exhaustion this much space and attention. And so I could feel. The tiredness means tension to me, there are parts of my body that are very tense.
I could sense that it meant my head was heavy. This, this sensation that I felt a million times, but I don’t have a fully was present for it to recognize. Ah, it’s interesting. My body doesn’t feel heavy, but my head feels super [00:10:00] heavy. Where, where does your head feel heavy? Is it like given to your head or is it like more on the front and on the back a pie or down in the center?
So it’s the entire top half of my head.
I recognized that my eyes felt tired as well.
And that my breathing was pretty shallow. Now, none of these things, to me at least seem that out of the ordinary, but I, if you asked me. If I wanted to feel tired the way you feel tired, this is a famous NLP question, right? It’s like if I wanted to be in the state, the way you are explained to me, what do I see?
What do I feel? What do I hear? How do I move to be able to copy paste your current state? Right. She had asked me, what do I [00:11:00] have to do to feel tired? Like Steli, after he feels tired, I don’t think I could have told you because I don’t think I’ve ever. Been present for it. Usually when I’m tired, I would ask myself what I need to do to get out of that state.
Hmm. Mmm. Or I would try to get myself to a determined state. I’d be like, I’m tired. Right? Shut the fuck up. Wash your head, go for a walk, change your posture. Start working on this, do that. Like, it’d be like a. Do do something to get out of this right now. Um, so this was remarkably remarkable for how remarkable it was like it was, huh?
This was, this feels very special. Although what I am experiencing seems very [00:12:00] normal, but I’ve just never had the will or the awareness. To one are fully experiencing. Uh, it’s actually like for me, some of my favorite discovery sometimes when it’s something that, you know, for, for a lot of people, it might seem like super obvious of course, but it’s just been a blind spot, uh, like a personal blind spot.
And then you, you realize it and saying, Oh, that’s oftentimes for me much more meaningful than, uh, you know, some, some realization I get out of. Uh, some very refined inside if you want to put it this way. Yeah. Also we’ve been blind to, we have in life, I saw make us so dumped in some areas that they have a lot of potential.
Also. I think that there’s such a big, I mean, there’s such a profound difference between having heard something or [00:13:00] thought something before. Having understood it, having felt it fully. Yep. Those are all not the same thing. And until you fully feel it, every step of the way seems like you’ve already completely experienced this idea.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Do you hear something? You all right? I got it. I heard it before. And then you are something happens that makes you truly understand it and you go, Oh, now I fully get it. All right. Okay. Like checking this thing off. I now got it. And then you fully experience and feel it. And then you go, Oh my God.
Okay. This is how it feels to truly experience this. All these shit, you know, that sort of a thing. [00:14:00] It’s like, Oh, being a parent is an amazing experience. It’s like, okay. Yeah, I get it. I have parents. I can see what they do my eyes. See it. My mind can think it, I can kind of relate. I had a little pad. One, one time I loved, or I had something I loved or something.
I see a lot of movies where the other or parenting, I get it. Like it’s, although I’ve not been a parent. I have seen a million of them. I’ve read about it. I’ve experienced similar things that I can relate to it. This is not a, a mystery to me. I’m a very empathetic person. And I’ve talked to parents. Yeah.
This is not a mystery. I, I know how it will feel to be a parent and maybe not fully, but I kind of get the idea. Yeah. Until you’re a parent. And then you understand, you knew nothing. Right? You knew, you knew the theory. It’s like, you know, the theory. You read a book about being in love is not the same as being in love.
No, you saw some [00:15:00] pictures of people having sex, not the same thing as having sex. It is Hastings. You’ve never tasted before, but maybe you’ve read the taste described, but then when you eat it, it’s like it’s different than what I had in my mind. Yeah. It is the map, not the territory. Right. You kind of get the concept.
Mentally, but it doesn’t mean that you’ve experienced the place and experiencing the place changes. You, understanding the territory, seeing the picture, seeing the map, it doesn’t change. You
come part of you. It’s just now, like it is a mental map, you know, now know this thing exists, but knowing it exists. And you becoming part of it and it becoming part of you. They’re not the same thing. Oh, I would say it’s, it’s kind of always a map, but it’s a higher resolution map. I mean, now you’re getting all philosophical or me.
I mean, [00:16:00] now, you know, I have to say, fuck off. You’re overly intellectual book, warm of a person ever. Of course, if we chunk high enough, then nothing is nothingness and everything is everything and nothing. This is everything and everything is nothing. And that is true, but it doesn’t mean really anything, but you’re right.
I mean, I agree, but okay, go ahead. All right. You know what? You, I know what you mean. I mean, not even. A place is really fully a place, places, our interpret our eyes, a brain interpreting, you know, electrical stimulations and yada, yada, yada, whatever. But to keep it going, the reason why I say that we are not in the, in the territory, but in the map here is because like, it’s just layers of the onion.
Like it’s not just three levels and then you’re there, but there’s probably at some point like another layer where like, Oh, this is it right. At least that’s how it is with me. That’s very true. That is very true. Also, you know, [00:17:00] who knows how many layers they are? Yeah. The, the openness to, I think what, what I’m getting at is that because we live in the age of the mind more so than we’ve ever, maybe we’ve always as humans.
And to start thinking we’re in trouble. Right. And in salvation, like everything beautiful came out of that ability to think ahead and behind, you know, to project into the future, to reflect on oneself and all that, that good stuff. That is our biggest art biggest gift consciousness on this level of, of it.
But it’s also the biggest trap. And today is probably every decade. Every century, we live even more in a world of the mind than [00:18:00] a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago. And living in the age of the mind means that everything that is unfolding in our own head is. Being worshiped, like the truth and it’s being thought of as life and it is part of it, but it is not the full of it.
I feel like today, once we see a picture of a place, once we read a story about somebody experiencing something, We’re confused. We’ve now experienced understood this, and this is something we’ve mastered. You checked on that. I get this, I get what it needs to go through this. I mean, I have not done it [00:19:00] myself, but I’ve seen it, uh, read about it.
I can imagine it. I’m good. I get it. Yeah. And. Probably the more simple, the thing is that we’ve thought about, but haven’t fully felt the more profound and let’s take breathing. What a thing everybody does. Who’s alive like everybody. So we should all be black belts in breathing because we’ve done it a lot.
And we do it all the time, day and night. We never stopped. The breathing for anybody that has tried meditation or yoga or breath work of any kind, you know, we’ve all kind of, you can experience how little consciousness goes into breathing and how awkward breathing can feel when you’re fully [00:20:00] present for it.
And when you do it consciously. Yeah, the simplest fucking thing on earth breathing can be very difficult to master fully experience, fully understand and live and embody. And so probably the simpler, the quote unquote thing, the more profound it can be if we’re really there for.
And so it was just.
Awesome to feel tired, to fully feel tired, to be there for it. Probably the first time in my life, or the only time I remember that I felt tired and I stayed present in that feeling with that feeling for 15 minutes with no agenda, other than to experience it once in a while, I have to admit. My mind would take over [00:21:00] for a minute and start to like analyze, ah, if you’re tired because this and this, and this is how, like I’m trying to grok everything, right.
I’m trying to like, ah, my mind will master this now. Right. And then that will be master of the tiredness and then I can make it disappear. And so my mind would go there and I would just like catch it, just like with meditation, everything else. Just catch it. LIGO. Be like, no. There’s nothing. You have to think, just feel it.
And then let a couple of moments later. My mind would get involved again, you know, try to run the show and it’d be like, Oh, I wouldn’t notice it. Let it go. But so it was not like 50 minutes of pure presence. Like I’m not, I am not there. Um, but I’ve experienced it in a way you’ve never experienced it before, for sure.
For sure. Yeah. Very interesting. Very, very refreshing in a [00:22:00] way. Yeah, do it. Yeah. I was just thinking of when you said that of the, like when I was at a meditation retreat for like, It was a seven day retreat ones. And then I like my mind got like Wilder and Wilder with every passing day. Um, Oh shit. This is not, this is not what I expected.
I expected like maybe the first three days, a lot of struggle and it kind of calming down regularly. Right. So, and then at the end of the retreat, you ask that monk was guiding that thing. Right. And he’s like, yeah, I don’t think your mind has really gotten like wild. I think you just got more awareness about.
How wild it actually is all the time anyway. Oh, uh, yeah. Yeah. That’s some profiled shit right there.
Yeah. It’s uh, it’s. Uh, is this, is this the, have you [00:23:00] tried this with like other, other emotions, other feelings, other experiences? Yes. So, um, so I have played around with this concept. Yep. Good amount, but I’m still kind of still very much in the beginning phase of it. So I have like, for instance, yesterday, And this is something I want to do a whole podcast episode about separately, but yesterday, um, Diana sent me a voice message, was kind of like reporting how the weekend went and it was kind of a very calm, collected, matter of fact, voice, very soft and gentle.
And like this happened today and this is how we feel, and this is [00:24:00] what’s going on. But in the entire world, voice recording, I could hear her pain. I could hear that she was hurt and there was a reason for it we’ll record about a day. They, she decided to give up the new puppy that they had just gotten.
Okay. So it was the weekend. They. Brought the puppy to the new family. And I knew that that was a very difficult decision for the Ana and I knew that they were so sorry, reached out to her to ask how are things going? And she gave me this update that was very calm and nice, and you know, things are okay.
But during the entire time I could intensely hear her pain and that made me feel pain, feel hurt, feel regret, feel pain in my own heart, my own body. And I think that I don’t think I know for a fact that in the past I would have never gotten this far of feeling to begin with. Like it would have just [00:25:00] been in my head.
I was just been like, yeah, this and this is happening. She’s probably heard she’s trying to suppress it. This is I would have analyze it, but I would have not, my heart wouldn’t have been open enough for me to feel hurt and pain. And then if I would have heard it, uh, felt it, I would have instantly tried to suppress it.
It’d be like Phil, the hurt and pain and be like, okay, what can I like, let’s do something now. Like, I’ve been like, just try to escape it instantly. Let me take action. Let me, let me do something empowering. Let me do something fun. Let me get some work done. Let me, you know, I would have tried to escape it through action.
Hmm. And so this time I just sat with it and I was just like, this is hurt and pain. It’s not hers. It’s mine was in my body. And in my heart way before she sent me a voice message and through [00:26:00] hearing her pain, I can now recognize my own, just sit here and feel it. And I was feeling it. But I think I wasn’t surrendering completely the toys.
So I was like recognizing where in my body it is. I was attempting not to want to instantly to suppress it or run away from it. But I think I was feeling it, feeling it, feeling it. And then eventually my mind went to where’s it coming from? What is it related to just thinking about it versus surrendering to it.
And I’ve had this many times now, the last couple of weeks around rage, anger, pain, hurt, regret,
[00:27:00] fear. These are emotions. I hadn’t felt in decades, only had thought about them last couple of weeks. I felt all of these many, many times. And I got to tell you, this is what I said to my friends that were sitting at the table while I was listening to the voice message. And then I was sitting with my pain.
At some point, I turned around to my friends and I was like, feeling feelings is tiring. Hmm. And they all laughed. I was like, no wonder I was not in the business of feeling feelings. This shit costs energy. It’s like, it for me is very tiring to feel so much as much as I do now. It’s like, it’s kind of like a lot.
This is a lot. It’s like a lot of highs, a lot of lows. It’s just a lot. And then I had to think about how to. Think and admit to myself that I [00:28:00] remember Diana, when we were married, telling me how exhausting it is to feel as much as she felt and to be so overwhelmed by your emotions all the time. I remember having zero empathy for it.
Zero. I remember looking at her thinking, just fucking grow up.
I was very harsh. I wouldn’t say that to her. I would just think it, but you would feel it obviously, because she felt so much, she could feel everything I was thinking and feeling, and that was thinking and feeling just shut the fuck up and get it done. Like, just be an adult because that’s what I would tell myself.
I would feel something I’d be like, shut the fuck up and go do. All right. So that’s what I would tell her. This is another episode that we’ll record is my shut the fuck up and do it anyways. Mantra is it, do I change my mind now about it? It’s just [00:29:00] so valid. I want to explore and unpack that in the, within the context of my recent explorations into the emotional world of Steli Ft, but I’d be very harsh to her.
And when I said. Feeling that many feelings it’s very tiring and they laughed and I laughed. I thought, Oh my God, I have to apologize. No, I have to tell Diana that I get it now more at least than I used to. Um, so I’ve, I’ve, I’ve done this with lots of emotions, not quite with this last step that I did today with the once I fully feel it.
Then surrendered, fully accepted
that last step. I think I didn’t do. And instead of doing that step, I went into fully feel it, feel it, be present for it, feel it. Ah, now I understand why this feeling is. And then I went into analyzing mode [00:30:00] from my body to my mind because my mind is so dominating of my experience in my world. Literally like 98% of my reality is just my mind, my thoughts.
And so being in my body, being in my emotions, it’s such a far journey. There’s such a strong pull that if I not present for a second, I’m instantly bouncing back into my head and thoughts about things.
today was nice because I didn’t, I went to my mind multiple times, but I’ve stayed in the feeling and in the state for longer than I think I’ve ever. And it was just felt good in a weird way. Although it was like just feeling tired and [00:31:00] exhausted and fulfilling it very intensely. There was something, it didn’t feel good.
There was something satisfying about being present for it. And in her, in her book, you know, she in South-East book, she describes at times emotions like these little entities that have an agenda and their feelings, one things. Right. And in her description of it, it’s like when you. Neglect the feeling and you don’t feel it.
You cause more pain to it and you, you don’t need to actually psychoanalyze it. All you need to do is be full. It’s like almost like a child, you know, when your child is really upset about something, if you can be there as. Loving [00:32:00] loving parental presence. You just are there. You’re holding space and you’re present.
You’re empathetic and you’re loving, but you’re still strong. You’re not crying. You’re not upset. You just they’re full of love and understanding and strength. Like I’m there for you. Then the child we as parents, you can experience this quite impressively. Then a child can be transformed from having this insane, intense meltdown.
I mean, compared to an adult, that’s not a dog, you would only act and feel this way of like somebody would die you that you love just like in pain, losing yourself in pain and emotions and being a wreck that children can go there much faster for much smaller things. And if you can be there for the child fully present, not trying to stop that emotion, not trying to distract your child.
[00:33:00] No, no, no. Look here. A toy look, chocolate ice cream looks something else. If you could just allow it to feel it, but you’re there with loving presence. It can be transformed quite easily. And then the comes out of that state almost refreshed. And it’s sort of like, felt like this, maybe not as profoundly, but it’s kind of directionally, it felt, it felt satisfying.
Like almost like, almost like my tiredness was satisfied that I finally looked at it. Finally, I’m getting some attention that sort of a feeling, ah, that felt good to him to get some attention from Steli.
indeed kind of a, it’s kind of a funky, but cool.
[00:34:00] All right. Well it’s probably is going to go down as another episode in the explorations of. The world of feelings of Sally Effie, something of that sort. I think this isn’t for today’s episode, but is there’s always so fucking mastering in the work. And so the work never stops.