Mind Noise – Dealing with Frustration

One of the most challenging sources of mind noise is frustration. Man it’s a total bummer. We learn and then we learn and then we learn and then we learn and ….. and each time we learn we wish we’d learnt sooner what we learnt. We also only seem to learn when calamity disaster or humbling circumstances invade our mindpower with trumpets and bagpipes. Frustration is the early warning sign that you are stuck living with past competencies that are no longer cutting edge for the current realities. Frustration is therefore the single most important red flag to action because it reveals incompetence and the result of a period of that is disaster.

TRANSCRIPT

00:01 Well, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are. We’re up to we are talking about mind noise, and we’re up to gee, we’ve done 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 sources of mind noise. 00:19 And what we keep saying over and over again is that without mind noise, we are intuitive. We all are without mind noise. 00:29 We can be what’s called vacuous or available to listen, to observe, to witness, to experience, to be, to, to turn up in that state. 00:44 We are, we are not trying to get to the third phase of this month, which is the broadcasting system. So we’re not into the stage at yet of being able to introduce thoughts that will transmit to other people. 01:01 What we are doing at the moment is getting clear on a emptying the mind, which is a really important first step because how do you know if the quality of your thoughts are on track, if you dunno how to be empty? 01:14 The second part of it is to make sure that the fullness of your mind is not full of rubbish and garbage in, garbage out. 01:23 We know that the sensors, the ears, the nose, the mouth, your fingertips, every aspect of your human condition, the sensors bring information in and on the, in the process of bringing it in, they, they split it, they becomes binary. 01:42 In other words, the eyes can’t tell a hundred meters. They just know 110 meters or 90, and they say, that’s about a hundred meters. 01:50 So they, the, the, the eyes can see distance, but comparative, the ears can hear loud or soft comparative. So when we split everything into a binary nature, we also split it into what’s called emotion, energy, and motion. 02:09 The more binary we become, the more like, that’s too loud, or that’s too soft, or that’s too bitter, and that’s too sweet, or that’s too bright, or that’s too dark. 02:21 The more binary we become, the more primal we become. Now, primal behavior is really fantastic. It’s quite attractive. It certainly for some people drives work. 02:35 It certainly for some people, drives performance. The only trouble with it is it’s fir firstly, it’s not healthy because binary thoughts are electrical impulses across cells. 02:47 So every thought is a electrical current, and if you go binary, there’s a lot of voltage across a cell, and that cell starts to break down. 02:56 So if you look at the whole body Mind science, which is, which governs 99% of all western and eastern science, we know that thought processes really do impact wellbeing and, and and health. 03:13 And the main way to look at this is the more guttural or the more primal our thought process, the more binary, the more fundamental, the more we tax our body, that that tax is not necessarily a healthy tax. 03:28 It’s, it’s an electrical short circuit. And so a lot of the illnesses and diseases we end up with come from binary thinking, extreme binary. 03:38 So recognizing that we can’t get away from binary thinking, what we try to do and what we, what we aim to do with reducing mind noise is reduce the degree of binary. 03:53 So if this is how far our binary thinking is apart, it’s way apart at the bottom of, let’s say, a pyramid at the top of the pyramid, as it gets close to the top, there are still two sides to the pyramid. 04:05 They’re just closer together. And when you get the two sides of a pyramid closer together, people are afraid that we are seating seeking mediocrity. 04:14 But mediocrity is actually at the bottom of the pyramid in the middle. So if you go down the bottom of the pyramid, you go way over. 04:21 There is, it’s too bright way over there, it’s too dark way over there. It’s the past way over there is the future. 04:29 And, and what people are, what, what mediocrity is, is being in the middle between too dark and too light, and not being able to experience or witness the, the, the, the incredible color, the spectrum of being a human being. 04:48 We are still, as we get to towards a higher consciousness, and we’re still, as we get to the top of the pyramid witnessing the full spectrum, we are just not reacting to it. 04:58 And that’s where color becomes alive. That’s where we become alive naturally. We are not seeking in any form mediocrity. In Buddhism, they call this up the middle of the pyramid, the middle path. 05:14 And what they’re basically saying when they talk about the middle path is, is not to be boring, but define e e equanimity in, in your search from which to watch everything that’s going on in western language or we say, I i, if you’d be grateful for the bottom of the pyramid, that takes you up the middle of it. 05:38 And so gratitude for the good news and the bad, too dark, too light, too up to down. If you can be grateful for both sides, it leads you up the pyramid. 05:47 And that’s how we evolve consciousness. So today we’re going to talk about a really important subject in inner wealth, probably the most important, and that Word is frustration. 06:00 Why is frustration the most important word in the inner wealth language? Well, great question, Chris. I’m glad you asked it, <laugh>. 06:10 The answer is really, really powerful. And that is that we evolve in cycles. Nature never grows in straight lines. We evolve in cycles. 06:21 And if you look the look at the rings of a tree, or you look at the development of rock, or you look at anything, there is layers. 06:31 When we reach the top of a layer, we feel absolutely fantastic. We feel absolutely in sync. We feel absolutely in love, and we would really love it if we didn’t have to grow more into the next layer. 06:54 We would love it so much if we reached a really good place in our careers, in our relationships, in our health, in our mind, in our knowledge. 07:04 If we went, we would love it. If we went to uni for four years from the age of 19 to 23 and never studied again, we would love it so much because we would have knowledge that would be carried through into the future. 07:20 Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. We grow in circles, we grow in cycles, we grow in loops. And so the knowledge that we earned at university about two years after we leave university starts to become dysfunctional because it’s complete. 07:39 So all knowledge is incomplete, all experience is incomplete, all capacities are incomplete. And so that means that everything that we grow to know becomes an impediment to growing. 07:58 So if we can’t let go of what we know, if we can’t say, you know, I, I, I, last year was my best year because oh wow, I nailed it to the fence. 08:08 But if this year you’re looking at it going, oh gosh it doesn’t look as good as last year. It’s because you’re using last year’s knowledge and trying to apply it to this year. 08:19 But this year’s a different year, and you have to grow like you did last year. You have to grow from being a baby to an adult in one year. 08:27 And now guess what? You’re going to grow from being a baby to an adult this year. And that means you’ve gotta come to things with accepting and, and grateful for who you’ve been accepting and grateful for what you’ve learned. 08:44 But in some form or another, and I dunno how to word this really well, discounting what you’ve learned in favor of learning, whatever it is you’re gonna have to know this year to get through this year, and the cusp of that moment where we are saying, I have to let go of what I know in order to become a baby. 09:06 Again, that’s called a frustrator, where you go, I’m really frustrated in a way that I’ve invested all this energy and all this time learning stuff, knowing stuff, building stuff, creating stuff, and I’ve become really good at what I do. 09:23 And now I’m frustrated that I may become not very good at what I do if I don’t let all what I know go. 09:30 And that’s the same in domestic relationship. You could say the first year of marriage, you know, you understand you, everybody’s really good at it. 09:40 The question is, how do you make the second year as good as the first year, if not better? And the answer is, you don’t do the same things you did in the first year. 09:48 In the second year, you’ve gotta do things different. And the question is, how do you keep that joy of learning that a child has, th ey go through kindergarten, first year, second year, third year, fourth year, all the way, and they’re excited about the idea of going to the next class because their friends are going there. 10:09 There’s a whole lot of opportunities, but they learn more. And it’s an excitement about being dumb. It’s an excitement about letting go what you knew, because they can always see the high school kids being cleverer than themselves, and they want that. 10:25 But when we get to business, we start earning money, the cost of being dumb starts to become expensive. We think about failure, we think about loss of a marriage or a relationship. 10:34 We think about our health and we, we start to think, I wonder if I could lock down my process so that my process no longer has to be different. 10:47 And we start to develop. For example, I know many people who in their, in their journey, their spiritual journey have studied things like for passionate meditation. 11:03 And I think that’s worth a worthy tool in our arsenal at some point in our life to go and do some form of silent retreat. 11:14 And it adds value at the time. But to do another one next year and another one the next year and another one the next year, that’s Groundhog Day. 11:25 And that’s kind of like saying, I want the same, I wanna use the same tool the same way every year. 11:31 When I face bigger and larger and more complex problems, I’m gonna use the same tool as I used last year. 11:40 Now the world is we win. I don’t have to tell you that the world is getting faster. Technology is taking over. 11:49 Artificial intelligence is here to stay. Electric cars are here to stay. The world is different. And so if we apply the same thought processes to handling stress that we did last year, we are going to be the equivalent of a t model four or button up boots, and it’ll start to fail. 12:13 Frustration is when our processes, our education, our learnings and our experiences become in incompetent, loving the word incompetent requires a, a, an an obsession with learning. 12:35 B, it becomes a recognition that if we don’t, we are going to attract calamities, disasters and humbling circumstances. And that’s a good label to put on. 12:46 The consequence of not responding positively to frustration. C frustration becomes a window into incompetence. And we have to have a sense of humor. 13:05 We, you know, there’s, if there’s one thing that I, I can say that has stood out in my journey of life, and that is that I’ve been obsessed for 50 years with learning how to be Chris. 13:19 And every time I learn how to be Chris, the world around me changes. The, the number of people in the street changes, the neighbors change the, the, the clients I work with, the people I want to help change the environment, social community, the internet changes, and every time I get it right, I become happy that I’m getting it right and I’m growing. 13:40 And then no sooner does that happen, then it all changes again. And I become in some sense, incompetent. For example, today I’m, I’m looking at my membership of Flicker, which is a, a photo upload app. 13:55 And I’m looking at my membership of Vimeo and YouTube, and I’m looking at the membership that I pay for SoundCloud and Spotify and for the internet and for my thing. 14:06 And I realize I’ve been hanging on to a lot of these things that they’ve become for me in, in my work, not functional anymore. 14:16 They’re old tools and they aren’t serving the purpose that I originally bought them for. So I’m re-looking at my investment and what I invest in. 14:25 I want to go to something that has artificial intelligence built into it, rather than the good old school of having a photo album. 14:33 So it, it’s just ne it’s, it’s a never ending journey of competence to in incompetence. So if you walked away from this today saying, I evolve into incompetence and therefore obsession with learning about how to do my job, how to do my stress management, how to do my health, how to do my wellbeing, how to do me, how to do relationship, how to do all these things, how to do them better, is not about going over books that I’ve already read. 15:12 They’re not about going to people who tell me what I already know. It’s about going somewhere where I get shocked. 15:21 Another example yesterday I was sitting with a client and they were talking about their friends who live in a, what’s it called? 15:33 A tr a triple. They’re in a triple, which is a couple with three in it. And the child in that relationship has two fathers, and one of the fathers carried the baby. 15:51 And we were talking about the humor of how you have sex education with a kid. I remember when I was in Boy Scouts and I, I dunno my age, probably eight or nine, and we had a sex lecture, and the, all the scouts came into the hall and instead of doing tying knots, they tied knots in this. 16:10 And they got a slideshow and they put it up on the wall, and there’s a massive big uterus, looked like bagpipes. 16:18 And and they, then they showed a picture of a, a thing, I think it was a penis going in a a, a groove and leaving a, a tadpole. 16:29 And they described this whole process of intimacy and sex education and pregnancy. When I, we were laughing heads off because you think about that lecture now. 16:44 So you get a test tube and you fly it from London. It was bought, it came from some guy who went to a shop and donated with and got income for selling his sperm. 16:55 It’s implanted into the guy who was a girl who is now the father, mother of the child, and whose partner is a male female or something who carries the baby. 17:14 And, you know, talk about incompetence. If I have to give a sex lecture right now, I could give the one that I, that I know from my history and I could give the one that I probably give myself, you know, that male sperm, female egg. 17:33 But I’m also constantly in touch with transgender people and gay people and, and and a and a full spectrum of pregnancy. 17:46 And so I, I suddenly have grown into my own own incompetence, and it’s time for me to immerse myself in being gender aware in order to stay relevant in my work. 17:59 And you could say that’s frustrating that I already knew something, and now I have to, in a way recognize that what I’ve, I’ve outgrown what I know, but it’s the same with leadership. 18:11 And it’s the same with business strategy, and it’s the same with relationship. And it’s the same with everything you do. 18:18 You’ll notice my desk here today is in a different position than it was in yesterday. If you’re watching this. I moved my desk around <laugh> probably more than most people. 18:30 And I find when I start to feel, because I have very little mind noise, I start, when I start to feel foggy, I know that I’ve, I need to reinvent myself, reinvent my environment, and I just move the desk around 360 or 280 degrees, or I change some layout on my thing, or even put the microphone down instead of up change the microphone for a while, use a different one. 18:57 I, I just tweak things to try and make them more efficient, more better, more and operate in a much more scientific way so that I stay up, stay on top, stay evolving. 19:14 And I don’t want to wallow in incompetence. I have an old saying and it makes people laugh. And that is, I’ve never been in a race. 19:25 I couldn’t win. And so when I was racing ocean kayaks, and that was my passion sport, I would choose the events very carefully to make sure that in my age group I could win. 19:38 It doesn’t mean I always did win, but I could. And I never went into an event where the world champion and 15 of their best friends were coming in, and I had no hope of winning. 19:49 I just wouldn’t go in it. And it’s a little bit like saying I wanna stay competent, and, but I recognize and I honor the fact that I grow into incompetence. 20:01 So frustration is such a noisy thing in our head, but there’s a way of dealing with it. And that is evolve, grow, and, and accept that frustration and incompetence are one in the same topic. 20:14 This is Chris. You have a beautiful day. Bye for now.