The past couple of weeks being back in Germany, I’ve started doing what Germans do a lot: think, and think, and think some more. It got to the point where it feels out of balance: too much introspection, too much heavy self-analysis, too much thinking and reflecting, and not enough living for the moment. At least, that’s how I interpret what these two weird dreams I’ve had recently are meant to tell me.
Transcript:
Now had two dreams , one was maybe three days ago and then the other one was yesterday I’ll tell you the two dreams or the short summary of those. And then I want you to interpret them for me.
[00:00:13] Okay. Let’s try this and then I’ll tell you what I am. It’s going to be ridiculous because I don’t interpret dreams. All right. Well, that’s why I want you to do it. I would not go to somebody that does this professionally. Okay. I’m not interested in a professional opinion, a dream interpretations. Thank you very much.
[00:00:32] No. So I think three days ago I had a dream where I was at the airport. And my kids were there. Like I was there traveling with my two boys and they were like playing somewhere and we had maybe an hour overlaid before the next flight. And all of the sudden I discover another bag and for whatever reason, it’s a back too much.
[00:00:53]I know I cannot take this bag with me and it’s. Way over filled and it’s not filled with clothes it’s filled with just paper notes and shit, just all kinds of random, more like office stuff. And I’m trying to work through all these papers and decide what from this, can I throw away? What do I have to keep?
[00:01:15]Where do I put it? And for whatever reason, very quickly, the amount of stuff that I’m dealing with is seemingly at the beginning of teams, just like a slight annoyance, but increasingly it becomes overwhelming to me and just, I worked through it. And then all of a sudden it’s in a few minutes or, the flight is already boarding and I’m still.
[00:01:36]Ways ahead for being done. And I’m like just stressed out of my mind, trying to figure out how to figure out the luggage situation. Right? So that’s dream one dream two, which was yesterday was I’m at a restaurant with Sofian and some other people in Greece and we’re walking out of the restaurant. And on the way out, there’s a little, whatever area, just a weird area where there’s nobody.
[00:02:02]And I see a bunch of garbage bags that I left there. Last time I came to the restaurant. Don’t ask me why and I see them and I go, Oh fuck. I left this year. And it wasn’t cool. I should probably deal with this and clean this out. And it tells something and the rest of the people that were there with me to just go ahead.
[00:02:22] I have to do a little bit of cleaning up here. Now I’ll catch up with you. They leave. And I’ll again at the beginning, the, it seems like a minor annoyance. Just a little bit of garbage that I, for whatever reason out of convenience or something just left there instead of taking care of it. And I’m like, fuck, I should really here.
[00:02:41] This is my mess. I need to take care of this. And as I start trying to put it together and figure out where can I throw this away? It is growing all of a sudden I look and it’s a bunch of stuff and I’m like, wow, I can’t carry this. I need to come. I need to go back and forth to some garbage.
[00:02:57]Can multiple times and then I have to go. And then there’s some girl that works at the restaurant that shows up and she’s like flirting with me. And I just, I don’t get that at all, but I’m asking her if she could get me. Garbage bag. So I can clean up after this and she’s like, no problem.
[00:03:14] And she brings a garbage bag and it’s, I’m trying to put things in there. It rips apart. And I look and all of a sudden, now we’re talking about the, if you have a garage full of shit, A whole garage full of it, just like old printers, fucking broken chairs, just stuff that I can’t just I cannot put in a garbage bag and go throw out of the way out.
[00:03:37] It’s just massive, just insane mess. And I, and now getting stressed and I’m like, what the fuck? I can’t even take care of this myself. This is way too much. This is going to take forever to do. I don’t even know where to start. And I’m like super overwhelmed by all of this shit. So I want your unprofessional opinion.
[00:03:59] What doc Dr. Samy, what would offer it? Freud say, this means, what do these two, because these do dreams have something in common in my mind, right? Although they’re very different dreams. What is it? What is my subconscious trying to tell me here? Well, my very unprofessional diagnosis here after looking at the lab results.
[00:04:21]And said, you need to strip a lot of the extra baggage that you have in your days out and just be more present for the present moment. You’re so nice. You went to the, you went with your outer image, like if you were a therapist, people would call you. You know, whatever Buddha me or something. Right.
[00:04:43] Because you seem self Zen. This is a very Zen analysis. okay. Maybe, you know what? My instinct was both times I felt like, Oh, I’m like the F after the first dream, my instinct or my first intuition was. I need to let go of some shit that I’m still trying to organize. Like I’m still trying to make sense and decide and determine and, figure out things that I just need to let go, because my feeling was that at that airplane, the only thing that stressed me out so much is that I was trying to organize all these papers and figure out which ones I need and which ones I didn’t.
[00:05:26] But in hindsight, it was clear that I didn’t need any of these. There were like, there were old notes from NLP workshops in there and hypnosis workshops and just stuff that I don’t need. And so the feeling was, I just need to let go of some shit. Like I could’ve just taken that bag and go, that stays here.
[00:05:42] We don’t need this versus, Oh shit. I didn’t know. I have this bag now. I need to deal with it and fix it and figure it out. And then this morning, When I woke up after this dream, there was this intuition that maybe it’s just a part of me that is giving me this message, because it doesn’t want me to keep digging.
[00:06:04] But I had this feeling of maybe the more I dig into some parts of my psyche or my past, or my family. Maybe all that is doing right now is creating more and more quote-unquote work. But I just need to let go and move on versus figure out and analyze it. Yeah, I agree. That’s actually kind of what I had in mind.
[00:06:30] Also, when I say be more present for the present moment, And I actually find that for me, when I have these like nights where I wake up, I’m like this dreams of thoughts that don’t, me in peace and let me get back to sleep. Usually the way I get over that is by just stripping my base of as much as I can.
[00:06:48]Like I just focus on, on doing the few essential things that I, that I got to do. And I basically don’t allow myself to do anything else or think about anything else.
[00:06:58]You mean the day after you’ve had a dream like that? Yeah. Yeah. I actually, I reduce everything. I eat less. The only thing I do is like, I drink more water. Right. And I moved from war and I moved from on, I just tried to do everything that I do kind of more consciously, more mindfully. Nice. I like that. You know, this is the, this is not the kind of, those are not the kind of dreams that they’re not disturbing.
[00:07:24] And I have to fight I only remember this for the first few seconds after waking up and then I like write them down because they are very. Very easy to to lose in my short term memory. But I do have in the sense that the last few weeks, maybe I’m taking too much of a deep dive on something old topics or the one hand it’s sort of.
[00:07:50]It’s interesting. I do like to discover new things about myself and or to discover my family in a new light, right. And our family history, like I’ve basically rewritten my entire upbringing in the last three weeks. Not completely, but it had some drastic changes in notes and some very different interpretations of what really happened.
[00:08:11]And there was also a lot of. Family dynamics. My mom getting really sick. My oldest brother and me, getting into a little situation just like there were all these little, tiny little bits of family tensions and that plus. All the self analysis and family analysis that I’ve done on the one end.
[00:08:34] It’s very interesting. And I’m like, eh, I, on one hand, enjoy learning. All these things are new and seeing them new and discovering, Oh, here is like discovering a bag with stuff in it. And I’m like, Oh, here’s a bag. I didn’t know about. Let me clean it out. Let me figure it out. But then it is not.
[00:08:56] Yeah, but then I do have the intuition that maybe I’m going too deep into that rabbit hole too fast. And that is not going to lead me where I want to be, which is I want to feel lighter, not heavier. I want to feel happier,
[00:09:12]I don’t want to be dragged down. I want be uplifting myself and living my days a bit later, a bit more with a bit more fun and exploration and adventure versus with deep, intense, dark analysis. But if I had to choose, I both things are not fully painting the true picture of my life right now, but if I had to.
[00:09:35]Pick one of those two, it’s less fun, lighthearted adventure, and it’s more deep dark analysis, and so, and so maybe it’s just a reminder that I don’t have to figure this all out all at once. And I also, maybe now that I discovered it, it’s good to know, but I don’t have to make this. Now my main projects, my main project that I have to.
[00:09:59]Clean out and figure out and resolve completely maybe. And also this is the type of stuff that is not resolvable completely. Right? So it’s the type of thing where learn something and then move on, let it go as well. Don’t keep going through all these pieces of paper and trying to like, organize all this because.
[00:10:19]All it does is stresses you out or it drags you down. And the more I do that there, the metaphor is striking. The more of this analysis I do, the bigger the mess is getting, it’s not, yes. It’s like, what’s that mythological creature where you chop off the head and then there’s two new ones. Medusa. I think he is when you cut off the head.
[00:10:41] Yeah. Um, it’s exactly that it looks like at the beginning, it’s like, Oh, Here’s the bag of some old garbage, I should take care of this. And couple of days later I look around and there’s like mountains of stuff. And I’m like, what the file never get out of here. I will never get out of this room.
[00:11:02]And then even like, do I, do I need to do this right now? It’s in both stories, it was a personal choice. I didn’t get an external force that said. There was nobody in the restaurant that stopped me and said, this is your stuff. And if you don’t clean up, you can’t get out. Right. And in the airport, there was nobody that said, you have to take this back with you or else.
[00:11:21] I just discovered the luggage, the piece of luggage, as well as the little bit of garbage. And I went, Oh, I should figure this out. And as I’m figuring it out, it becomes bigger and I’m more and more stressed and it’s becoming more and more working. And I’m like, And in that sense, it’s it is similar.
[00:11:37] I don’t have a consciously, I’ve not been living the last couple of days with the goal to figure out my family history or something. It’s not been my like core intention, but you know, if I look at what I’ve been doing, What was the main work inner work I’ve been doing? It’s that it’s been a lot of that.
[00:11:58] And it’s because I tip it towed into an area. I didn’t even. Think about that much. Like I sort of stumbled over something and thought and felt, wow, there’s a lot going on with my family. Still. I should take a look at this. And as I took a look, I’m like, wow, there’s a lot going on. And then, the, every day I’ve been thinking about it, I’ve been having conversations.
[00:12:20] I’ve been reading, I’ve been dreaming. And now I’m like, Whoa, I’m so drained. I really feel drained by all of this. This is overwhelming. I don’t know. Like, I’m always, I’m suspicious on four dimensional in my suspicions. It’s like thinking about it from all kinds of angles. I’m like, huh? Maybe I’m just about to hit gold or find something really important.
[00:12:42] And there’s a part of me. That’s dude, just leave, just leave this garbage. Don’t worry about it because yeah. From another perspective I could say, well, if this is my garbage and it’s at a restaurant and I just left it there, it doesn’t matter if it’s overwhelming or not. If it’s getting more, I should deal with it.
[00:13:00] What am I supposed to do? Just leave. It’s not going to get less with the airport dream. It would be easier because if it’s just a bag of papers, I could literally just throw it away. But. With the restaurant dream, maybe I should take care of it. And maybe this is a part of me. That’s like, ah, this is too much work.
[00:13:19] Just run away from it, which also don’t want to do. But I think, I do think that the right approach is all almost always a more balanced approach. And I do think that. That’s not the worst idea to let some of these things rest a little bit and refocus. It’s not even not thinking about them or not, or making them a taboo now, but it’s more taking a bit of my energy and attention and directing it towards what brings me joy.
[00:13:50] What do I want to experience today? What fun do I want to have today? What exciting things do I want to be participating, investing some of my energy into the now and into the two day and less of my energy and attention into the past. And then it’s not a running away from it or pretending it’s over or not wanting to look at it, but it’s also maybe not a diving into it so deep that I’m getting lost.
[00:14:20] Yeah. Yeah. and, you know, also the back of coverage or the leverage of documents, right. That’s something where you have to choose, what do I keep and what do I discard forever. But this is this, this is with you anyway. So, you’re not really throwing away your family.
[00:14:36] You’re just like saying, all right, this is. Like when you, like, when you diving, right. You dive for a certain amount of time, but then you go back above the water and you take a brief, let it suffocate you. Yeah. I feel like I definitely have been
[00:14:51] having some intense days, internally. Yeah. I think also part of this might just be sort of all, a lot of this started with me wondering about my grief, like why I don’t have it. We didn’t have it. Maybe there’s something interesting there. And then,
[00:15:11]you know, maybe if you like some of these things. Uh, better when you deal with them in a, you experience it or you engage with it, but not in a, you under all day around it. You know what I mean? So instead of like the, the thing that I haven’t done, one thought that I had once was maybe I should bring together my two brothers and my mother.
[00:15:38] And we should grieve together. Maybe, maybe won’t cry, but sit down and talk about the death of my father and the pain. It caused us all. Maybe we make it a more official thing where there’s we have some time and space, maybe the, you know, we put on some candles and we talk about this and make it a thing, and then it’s done.
[00:15:59] And maybe it was a big thing. Maybe it was a small thing, but it had a beginning, middle and end and it was lift. In the, now like a ritual or a ceremony, something along those lines. Yeah. Versus this I’m thinking of about it, then I’m meditating on it, then I’m going on a walk and I bring it up. And my brother one brother, I talk about a little bit then you know, I asked my mom a question about it, then I read in a book about, and it’s just like, I’m dragging this on.
[00:16:27] And I’m in these multiple dimensions. I’m in the, now I’m in the future. I’m in the past, but I’m not. Tackling it, I’m not attacking it. I’m not experiencing something and going let’s grieve and let’s talk and let’s make it an event, a ritual, a thing. Then, then it’s done and we’ve gone through it together versus this for days and weeks and weeks.
[00:16:51] It’s this veal that hangs above everything that is happening. And it’s not resolved. But it’s just constantly running in the background. Yeah, yeah. That idea. I was also just thinking about like me doing this with someone, and then I felt so uncomfortable because it feels so weird to like to imagine, okay, Hey, we’re going to, let’s do this thing and then be then doing it.
[00:17:17] But it’s the kind of weirdness that. It’s like a good kind of weirdness where you’re like, okay, this is weird that I should do not. Yeah. Kind of witness that. What stops you is not that there’s not an intuition that this would feel good and be healing or right. But that you are self-conscious what will somebody judge me?
[00:17:37] Will I feel weird doing this thing because it’s unusual. Yes. Yes. But like, fuck all them. That’s the thing where. I am getting better with this type of stuff. And that’s the thing, when we were talking about, in the episode about me punching Pelos, that was a sort of thing I would have never done.
[00:17:56] Ever, and I didn’t make it a big thing or a small thing. I didn’t make a B, now it is stop therapy practitioner. And let me tell everybody about pillows and I didn’t try to make it it’s sophisticated and make it a big thing. And I didn’t. I didn’t look at it and go, well, it is an idea that I just had, but because it’s not sophisticated or cool or impressive, I will not engage, which is the, what I would have usually done.
[00:18:25] But I just thought let’s just try something. Let’s just try it. What’s the big deal is punch a couple of times. It didn’t help it didn’t help. Fuck it. Then I’ll do something else. The, this, I think the attitude of just let’s do something. To deal with a situation to experience something differently versus this just purely let’s analyze that think.
[00:18:49] And then if we come up with a plan that in our minds sounds and feels both safe and highly likely to succeed, then we will, Yeah. Enter the world of real doing and exit the world of analyzing. Uh, it’s like it’s like having a business idea and then coming up with a 10 year business plan, we call it.
[00:19:14] Yeah, it’s the, it’s the, I want to have the perfect marketing plan before we launched this product versus doing a million little experiments. And failing, failing, failing until you find the right thing and no failure making it a bigger deal that it is, but just focusing on speed and experimentation, experiencing thing, generating insights, generating learnings, and ultimately finding the right path.
[00:19:37] That that model is a better one. All in almost everything. That’s the same thing with our personal issues, our inner work where. If we overthink and over analyze, because we want to find a solution in our head and then turn the key in our mind. And boom, now a new door is open and everything changes. We, you know, that can sometimes that can work, but oftentimes that can take forever and never gets you there versus a more practical attitude that is not let’s run away from it.
[00:20:15] Right, but is let’s do let’s talk, let’s write, let’s engage with this subject and then move on and not let’s sit here and look at this problem, for days and days and weeks and weeks and months and months, sometimes when you look at a problem or a failure, Just staring at it from a very close distance for a very long time is not a recipe to finding the solution.
[00:20:42] Right. Because all it does, is it stiffens you up? It makes you less flexible. It makes you usually feel worse. It creates tension. Versus the stepping away from the problem, starting from scratch, using diff now writing it out on paper, writing on your laptop on a whiteboard, going on a walk in nature, calling a friend to talk about it, trying, trying something with a bunch of people in a coffee shop, whatever, like, uh, engaging, trying to find the solution from different angles and in real life versus sitting in front of something and just staring at it and getting more and more stuck.
[00:21:19] In the process, you do some introspection, but then you also put it out on the real world and let it do something and see what happens. Yeah. Yeah. You can’t live in your head. Yeah. You cannot live life in your head and therefore you cannot fix most problems by just being in your head. Right. You can’t run a weight.
[00:21:43]From your thoughts and changing the way you think about something can change the outer world completely. But it is the play between both and real living always happens outside. Like you have to engage with the world in some way. And too many of us too often, We’re trying to figure it out. Quote unquote, we try to organize our thoughts, make a plan, set the goals, make the decisions, figure out the right solutions.
[00:22:13] And then once we figured out everything in our mind, then we feel quote unquote, ready? To step into the real world and I’ll execute this plan that gives us security, false hope that this will work because I’ve thought it through. And I’m so certain, but sometimes when people start on that path of thinking, they never think it through to the end and therefore they almost never even get started.
[00:22:33]It was very difficult to figure it out and to have a perfect plan that gives you a hundred percent certainty and confidence in anything in life. And then when we, even, if you do have that certainty in your mind, you go out of the real world and no plan ever survives contact with the real world and then things changed.
[00:22:48] And what, what did you do? Like spend all these months planning you just wasted life.