Landing On Your Feet with Sam Morris
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
When one’s sense of identity gets challenged, the whole foundation becomes loose. Even people who are ambitious and are making things happen in the world cannot predict when something is going to come along that is going to completely derail that direction. You have otherwise confident people who have been very successful in their lives suddenly questioning everything and going, “How did I end up here?” Zen Warrior Sam Morris talks about landing on your feet and knowing how to come back to building that foundation in a fresh way. Sam met an accident and became paraplegic due to a drunk driver. From that point on, he has been consistently working on reestablishing the foundation that he lost when his accident occurred. Sam says sometimes that building can come crashing down and you’re left having to find out how to build a new foundation. He now helps people to create that foundation and finding that inner strength that they didn’t even know they had before.
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Listen to the podcast here
Landing On Your Feet with Sam Morris
I have a guest that I’ve been fortunate enough to have on before, Sam Morris, the Zen Warrior. Sam was on my show before and I’ve had the privilege of working with him one-on-one. When he told me, he had some new insights to share with us, I couldn’t wait to have him back on the show. For those of you who haven’t heard Sam’s other episode, his story is in 1999, he was leading a bike trip for nine teenagers across the US when he was in a car accident caused by a drunk driver, which has left him paralyzed from the waist down. He’s had to deal with surgeries and literally lying down for over three years. Two of those years were in the hospital, but Sam has an ability to not let anything stop him, including being paralyzed from the waist down. As he said to me when I first met him, “My legs might be paralyzed, but my brain and my mind is not.” Sam, welcome back to the show.
Thanks, John. It’s great to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Your topic that’s very close to your heart and it needed more than ever is how can high performers and entrepreneurs recreate themselves after they’ve experienced some disruption, whether it’s personal like you went through or professional like I went through after being laid off. What is it that made you think, “I have something to say about this topic?”
I have encountered this particular thing over and over again with people who are ambitious, who were making things happen in the world, but you cannot predict when something is going to come along that is going to completely derail that direction. You have otherwise confident people who have been very successful in their lives suddenly questioning everything and going, “How did I end up here? I was on this track here and now I’m in this situation here,” whether that is a being laid off or whether that is getting a divorce or going through something that challenges one’s sense of identity. When one’s sense of identity gets challenged, it’s like the whole foundation becomes loose and people need to know how to come back to building that foundation in a fresh way.
[bctt tweet=”Disruption is a natural process, don’t take it personally.” username=”John_Livesay”]
When my injury happened, my accident happened shortly after finishing my bike trip when a drunk driver caused my paraplegia. From that point in 1999 to this point in 2018, I have been consistently working on reestablishing the foundation that I lost when my accident occurred. I’ve put in so many countless hours, days, months and years into working on sensing the core essence of who I am and the value that I offer that is independent of any circumstance. I happened to have a lot of practice in this area where most people, unfortunately, don’t have as much practice. It’s quite good that they don’t have that practice. I’m trying to make it easier for high performers and entrepreneurs to make that pivot. When something happens in their lives to make that pivot because that foundational identity that we build up over the course of years or decades can get compromised very easily.
It tends to happen periodically throughout people’s lives in some major way. It’s so easy to get trapped in the mindset of linear success where if I am X degrees successful now, then I should be X plus one tomorrow and then I should be X plus two next week. There’s this expectation that people put on themselves to keep on building on what they have already done. Sometimes that building can come crashing down and you’re left having to find out how to build a new foundation. That new foundation is what I help people to create. What I discover is that when people create that new foundation, they actually find an inner strength that they didn’t even know they had before.
What I’m hearing you say is that our foundation and our identity get tied up together and when we lose the foundation, either through a job loss, a divorce or a health situation, we also somehow feel we’ve lost our identity. That’s part of the challenge when the foundation goes away. Even if you just lose your house in a fire, that’s equally traumatic and that’s literally your foundation. In your case, your legs are your foundation. “It’s who am I without that foundation,” is what I’m hearing is the big challenge for most of us.
It’s exactly that. The “Who am I?” makes it very challenging to build a new foundation when you’re constantly questioning who you are and what your role is in the world because the way that you learn to function before simply no longer works. These things are very common. In general, I would say people experience this at least once in their lives past the age of maturity where something occurs that totally makes them question everything.
You said about this expectation that everything is going to consistently be a linear, straight line up. The minute it becomes a roller coaster, it makes us mad and angry in addition to scared because having been in the corporate world at Conde Nast for over fifteen years where every year was a quota and that quota was consistently set higher than the year before and you were expected to meet it. The following year, it was just endless, “We need growth, growth, growth.” Startups have the same thing. Anybody who’s in any accelerator, it’s the whole thing is, “How fast are you growing? Are you growing faster than the other startup that’s in here? Whoever grows the fastest gets the funding.”
Landing On Your Feet: Honor both what you can do and what you can’t do.
This fear of things never being fast enough. You better hurry up and get your funding before the economy tanks again or the bottom falls out of the XYZ stock market, home market, fill in the blank. What are some of your suggestions for everyone and the clients that work with you on, “I definitely either experienced losing my foundation and my identity along with it and I don’t know what to do because the things I’ve been doing aren’t going to work anymore?” How do we let go of expecting things to continue to be linear?
The first place to start is getting that the process is natural, that this is a human process. That it is not a personal thing so much as it is a human condition. A lot of people compare themselves to an idea of how other people are doing and think, “Their lives are so much easier. They are so much more successful, or they have so much more money or whatever than I do this and that,” but rarely do they get a chance to look under the hood and see what’s occurring in that person’s life. Even with the most successful people out there, there are massive disruptive circumstances that occur in their lives, which create the exact same challenge for one’s sense of identity and self-esteem and everything.
It doesn’t matter how successful you are. Those moments can happen. and they can throw you off for months or years, depending on how you process that situation. How you process your circumstances and how you move forward from there, a lot of people will stay in a state of paralysis for a long time. My physical paralysis has given me a lot of insights into the nature of paralysis because my physical paralysis for a number of years, created this emotional-psychological paralysis inside of myself that was actually a lot harder to deal with than the actual physical paralysis. I understand this very deeply from the inside out. Getting that this is just a natural process, that there’s nothing personal, it’s not saying anything about who you are, what you can do or not do or whatever it is, a time for reassessment.
It’s a time to get grounded and look at, “What can I do and what can’t I do?” Get clear about that and honor both what you can do and what you can’t do. A lot of people get caught in the trap of thinking they should be able to do more than they’re actually able to do. That’s a very unhealthy mindset if you get and it’s humbling. It’s very humbling to get clear on what you can do and what you can’t do. The vast majority of what there is to do, none of us can do. The vast majority of what there is that I could potentially do, I cannot do. I have to get clear on the very limited range of things that I can do and then commit my focus to those things without getting caught up in what I can’t do and think that I should be able to do.
The big takeaway for me on that is this process of being disrupted is natural and not something that you should sit around feeling sorry for yourself. “Why did this happen to me? Why am I in a wheelchair or why did I get laid off? Why did I get divorced? That must mean I’m a failure as a spouse. That must mean I’m a failure as an employee,” and this whole internal paralysis. You’re really big on paralysis or movement and using breathing, which is something everyone can do to not stay in the state of paralysis. Can you talk a little bit about that?
The breath is our most important tool that we have. I am constantly amazed by the power of the breath. The breath is a way of being able to access your whole system and get out of your head. When disruption occurs, the hardest thing is for people to get out of their heads. It’s the identity, identifying with what went wrong essentially. “What the hell went wrong? What does that say about me?” All that negativity comes in and it’s a very natural thing for people to have all of this self-judgment occur as a result of disruption. You can’t get away from that judgment at the level of just trying to think new thoughts. You have to actually have a tool to work through that self-judgment that actually puts you in touch with something deeper than those thoughts.
[bctt tweet=”Get out of your head by getting into your body.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Those thoughts are just projections. They’re not real, the what ifs. People get way too caught up in their thoughts. The breath is the way that you can process thoughts and feelings in the moment and stay in contact with yourself, essentially maintaining a relationship with yourself that is more holistic than your thoughts that you have about yourself or any temporary feeling that you may be having. By connecting to your breath and connecting to your body, it helps to still the mind. It also helps to process feelings and process thoughts so that the feelings that one is having don’t turn into this back and forth between thoughts and feelings.
It’s a common thing for people to get caught, essentially tripping out on themselves where they’re having some feeling and then they’re having some thought about the feeling which is inaccurate. The feeling just gets worse because the feeling doesn’t feel like it’s been listened to, which then creates another inaccurate thought. It goes back and forth like a feedback loop between thoughts and feelings. In the meantime, we’re not present the whole time that’s happening. We’re getting caught in our feelings and then thinking about the past or worrying about the future and we lose track of our presence. The breath is here to bring us back into presence. There’s a reason why every Zen master and every Yogi all emphasize the importance of the breath. There is a very specific reason why. That is because it actually helps you to contact yourself in such a way that it transcends any thought-based identification with one’s feelings.
If we lose our identity, when we get disrupted, and then we start identifying with our thoughts as being real, then it sounds to me like that’s a total recipe for paralysis.
It’s an absolute recipe for paralysis. I cannot tell you how many people that I have met and worked with who have or are experiencing that exact recipe for paralysis.
If the thoughts aren’t real, you’re catastrophizing the future or for separating and reliving the past. “I can’t believe he said or she said this to me and did that or this,” and you just get angrier about it the more that you think about it. Meanwhile, you’re not in the moment at all. You don’t have any tools to release that. Then you’re missing what’s happening in the moment, which may be great, but you’re still stuck on what somebody said or did to you. Whether it’s a divorce or getting fired or being mad at the person who hit you who was drunk back in 1999. You were clearly not in the present, if that’s what you’re thinking about all the time.
Not only is it key for anyone who’s gone through some personal or professional disruption, this is also key as well for productivity. People frequently talk about how they wish they were more productive or they wish they had more time in the day. How much time do you have where you’re actually present? What percentage of most people’s time are they actually present and not thinking about the past or thinking about the future? If you looked at that where people are truly present, it would be a tiny fraction of any given day. As they are thinking about the past and as they are concerned about the future, they are actively wasting time. They’re not truly focused on what is occurring right here in the present moment. That bouncing back and forth between past and future, not being connected to yourself, not being connected to your breath, bouncing back and forth, creates mental exhaustion, which then creates the feeling of, “I have to go home and pass out or watch TV for three hours, tune out somehow.” What they’re trying to tune out from is their own thoughts and their own feelings. If you breathed and stay present, then you can sustain your energy. You can sustain your focus throughout the day without feeling the burden of your own mental data crunching.
Landing On Your Feet: The focus of attention means everything in terms of the quality of work that you can do and achieve.
Those are two big things there. The reason we’re so tired at the end of a workday is not because the work was particularly grueling or even mentally taking its toll on us because we had to think so hard, it’s because our thoughts drain the energy out of us because we weren’t in the moment.
When you’re not in the moment, that automatically means you’re not connected to your breath. If you’re caught in your head thinking about past and future, you can be guaranteed that you’re not going to be sensing your breath and your breath is how you stay connected to your fuel source in your body because your body is the fuel source for your energy. As you’re breathing, you’re constantly recycling that fuel source into your body.
You’re bringing more life into your body. When we’re just breathing in our normal habitual way and we’re not paying attention to it, we have enough breath to stay alive. We have breath for our organs to keep functioning, and for our minds to keep functioning somewhat throughout the day. When we consciously breathe, then we’re consciously connected to the fuel source, that is our body. That is creating the energy that we need to be able to move through any kind of situation and not get caught up in our head and losing touch with what’s actually occurring in the present moment.
That element of productivity is also very interesting because the more present you are, the less you’re trying to multitask. Do you want to speak to that a little bit?
We can’t multitask and anyone who tries to, I don’t think is doing it at any given moment. You can only focus on one thing at one time. That’s not to say that you can’t have multiple things occurring at any given time, but the quality of your focus can only be looking at one thing at one time. We tend to convince ourselves that we can multitask or that we need to multitask, and ultimately, we end up putting less quality focus into the things that we’re doing because we were trying to focus on too many things at once. Nothing ends up going as well as it could if we were to choose to stay connected to ourselves. Focus on the one thing that’s right in front of us. Know that there are other things happening simultaneously that are going to require our focus but choosing where you are placing your focus of attention. For most people, they’re not choosing where to put their focus of attention. They’re bouncing back and forth between things, but the focus of attention means everything in terms of the quality of work that you can do and the productivity that you can achieve.
It sounds like you’ve got this idea that you’re turning into a book about landing on your feet from someone who can’t even feel his is the working title.
That was a catchy title that I thought it would be good for the podcast. My working title right now for the book, and this may change, is Why Not Me? which is like the antidote to the “Why me?” mentality. That’s our biggest problem. The biggest challenge that people face is having this underlying sense of why me? Why do I have to go through this? Why is it me who has to go through divorce? Why is it me who has to go through a job loss? Why is it me who has to deal with this god damn spreadsheet? All of the things that we, “Why me?” about all day every day, it’s, “Why not me?” puts it in perspective. As many times as I asked the question, why me following my paralysis, the only answer I ever got was why not me? Why shouldn’t it be me who goes through paralysis?
There are different forms of deep suffering that are occurring around the world. There are seven billion forms of suffering going on. Why shouldn’t I go through this particular form? There’s no reason why. Buddha said, “Life is suffering,” but it didn’t end there. You said that life is suffering and it’s that suffering that can serve as the catalyst for freedom. You have to first embrace the suffering before experiencing the freedom. The freedom that we are seeking is on the other side of the suffering.
[bctt tweet=”Your thoughts are not real.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Most people feel like if I can avoid the suffering, then I’ll feel free. You’re saying and so is Buddha, that you’ve personally had to embrace the suffering, figure out what you can and can’t do and make the best of that situation and that’s how you land on your feet.
People are constantly trying to avoid suffering and I’ll include myself. I’m oftentimes totally trying to avoid suffering. Then I realized, “I’m already suffering, but I might as well just embrace it.” There’s nothing to avoid. It’s just a matter of welcoming the experience because once you welcome the experience, once you truly do that, it neutralizes the energy of the situation. You’re no longer in a state of judgment where it’s wrong or right or good or bad that you’re experiencing what you’re experiencing. There is no longer an attachment to a label about the experience. It’s just the experience is what it is.
Do you have any last thoughts about how we can land on our feet, embrace disruption, whether it’s happened to us or hasn’t happened yet?
Trust your process, connect to your breath, connect to your body, connect to your energy source. Get out of your head not by thinking other thoughts or trying to think other thoughts but get out of your head by getting into your body, into your energy source because it is inside. They say the power is within. It truly is within. It’s not within our thoughts, it’s within our physical body and our energetic resources that we have available to us.
Get out of your head by getting into your body. So many of us think the answer’s in our head, “If I can just think about this enough, I’ll come up with an answer,” and that’s probably not where it is.
That’s trying to find an easy way out. When you’re trying to find this logical answer. It’s just like, “What’s the easy way out? How can I just get out of this situation?” You can’t get out of the situation. You have to go through the situation as opposed to get out of the situation. Otherwise, the situation will just keep repeating itself in new ways.
Landing On Your Feet: A lot of people compare themselves to an idea of how other people are doing.
Sam, how can people follow you? Give us your twitter handle, your website, all that good stuff.
My Twitter handle is @ZWTraining. Instagram is @ZenWarriorTraining as is Facebook. I do have a few spots open for private clients who are very committed to working through their own disruptive experience in their lives and using the challenge as a catalyst for growth into their next level of potential. They can contact me and apply through ZenWarriorTraining.com.
I was fortunate enough to get accepted and it changed my life. I can’t recommend that enough. Thanks again, Sam.
It’s been a pleasure, John.
Important Links
- Sam Morris
- Sam’s other episode – Sam Morris’ previous episode
- @ZWTraining – Twitter
- @ZenWarriorTraining – Instagram
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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Zen Warrior with Sam Morris
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary
Today’s guest is Sam Morris who is the founder of Zen Warrior Training and if anyone has earned the right to call himself a zen warrior, it’s Sam. He is paralyzed from the waist down from a tragic accident caused by a drunk driver and he said, “While my legs are paralyzed, my mind is not.” When Sam talks about controlling how you react to circumstances and then how you think about what you can do in your life and not stop and not take excuses, he knows exactly what he’s talking about and faces challenges that most of us thank goodness we’ll never have to face but he’s faced them and has gone on to create a zen warrior training program, a keynote speaker and he really gives people insights into the tenacity and grit it takes to deal with whatever life gives you and figure out a way to make it happen. Enjoy the episode.
Listen To The Episode Here
Zen Warrior with Sam Morris
Hello and welcome to the Successful Pitch. Today’s guest is Sam Morris who is the founder and owner of Zen Warrior Training. What a great name. In 1999, just after leading a bicycling trip for nine teenagers across the US, Sam was in a car accident caused by a drunk driver which left him paralyzed from the waist down.
Rather than becoming the victim of his circumstances, Sam learned and created a system of mental and physical training that brought him more vitality, clarity than he ever had before his injury. In addition to coaching private clients in Zen Warrior Training, he hosts a Zen Church event in Santa Monica and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him and believe me, he is someone that you are going to be inspired by. Sam, welcome to the show.
Thanks. It’s great to be on John. Thanks for having me.
Well, you’re just such an example of someone who doesn’t give up, right? I mean, I think that would really be … If I had to sum you up in a few words, that’s the first thing that pops into mind. How do you describe yourself?
Well, actually my tagline for Zen Warrior Training is let nothing stop you and that’s the motto that I’ve been living with shall we say for my entire life but especially over the past 18 years since my spinal cord injury. Yeah, I’ve been through thick and thin and spent over three years bedridden of my life and had to deal with those challenges, multiple surgeries, this and that.
[Tweet “Let nothing stop you.”]
A lot of not knowing what the future held for me and through all that experience that I had, developed this attitude of perseverance that I now use to train others with Zen Warrior Training.
Well, so many of us have our excuses from day-to-day. “I’m not in the mood to go work out.” or “This is too hard.” or “Man, I’m getting all these no’s when I’m pitching to get a new customer or pitching myself to get funding or pitching myself for anything. I won’t give up.” Right? Then you look at someone like you who has mastered the art of perseverance which I really think it is an art form.
It is an art absolutely.
It ties into Zen philosophy. Let’s talk about the combination of Zen and being a warrior because for some people they might think, “Well, aren’t those mutually exclusive?” How do you combine them?
Yeah, well that’s part of what I love about the brand too is they appear to be paradoxical but they are actually not paradoxical at all. When you think about how the more peaceful and present with yourself, the more grounded you are, the more powerful you become, then you’re able to conquer the challenges of your life.
It’s only when you’re in reaction towards your life’s circumstances that you become powerless. Zen and warrior actually sit perfectly together because it’s all about being peaceful, centered, grounded and then conquering challenges from that attitude, that mindset.
[Tweet “The more peaceful and present you are, the more powerful you become.”]
We’re going to tweet that out. The more peaceful and present you are, the more powerful you become. That’s a great, great take away right off the bit. Well, let me ask you, Sam, have you always been someone who’s been present and peaceful even before the accident?
Before the accident, yes I was definitely present, peaceful individual. I was an outdoor leader and had just finished leading a bicycling trip across the US for nine teenagers, and I was an expert skier and snowboarder. My whole life revolved around being in the outdoors. I was peaceful, I was present, I was vital, I was excited to be alive and when my injury happened, I had to step it up a notch. In fact, after leading the bicycling trip across the US I thought, “How could any challenge ever compared to the challenge that I’ve just been through?”
Ironically, it was only two months later that my spinal cord injury happened and the challenge was far greater than cycling across the US. I really had to step it up a notch to be able to have a good attitude despite the circumstances of my life and then a few years later, I ended up hospitalized and over time, it ate away at my will and spirit looking back over the course of those years.
It was really, really, really challenging for a long time. I went through a decade plus of not really knowing what life had in store for me and being the victim of my circumstances despite my best efforts to keep a good attitude about what was going on, but eventually I just transcended all of that and found, “Wow, I’m creating my life right now. The circumstances of my life are one thing but it’s how I’m interpreting the circumstances of my life that make all the difference.”
That is what’s actually going on. It’s not the circumstances of my life that are happening, what I’m doing with what’s happening to me that is actually happening.
Well, you have so much credibility in saying that because a lot of people can say, “Oh, just control your reaction to being stuck in traffic or what have you.” Don’t get stressed out, don’t get angry but your situation is such that a lot of people can’t even fathom what they would do let alone how they would cope.
Yeah, yeah.
You have so much more credibility than other people would just say, “Oh, you know, just work on your interpretation of the event.”
Yeah, yeah.
It’s so much more meaningful. One of the things that you have on your websites Zen Warrior Training that I just love and there’s seven points that I want to cover that you talk about that involve the system of meditation, awareness training and breath work that would have some real return on investments and the first one you talk about is seizing the moment. Can you talk to us about how do you seize the moment in your everyday life, you’re in the wheelchair and yet, you’re able to figure out how to do that?
Yes, yes, seizing the moment, being in the now moment is my only source of happiness. If I am stuck in my projections about the future or my thoughts about the past, I’m numb to my present situation. By being in the present moment, it’s not about … For me, it’s not about positive thinking. I don’t teach positive thinking to people. A lot of people ask me is it about positive thinking and so forth and I say, “It’s about neutral thinking. It’s about being grounded and centered and neutral so that positive things can actually happen to you so that you can actually experience positivity.”
That takes a lot of discipline, mental discipline to ground in the present moment and take advantage of the present moment because it’s the only moment we’ve ever got so you might as well take advantage of it. That’s the seizing the moment part. People talk about being in the now and so forth but I really think it’s about seizing the moment, really taking the moment back and making it your own.
[Tweet “If you’re stuck in the past or worrying about the future, you are numb to the present.”]
We’re going to tweet that out. If you’re stuck in the past or worrying about the future, you are numb to the present. I love that word numb that you used Sam because I’ve never heard anybody describe it quite like that and that’s really what it feels like your foot falls asleep, right? In this case, your brain falls asleep. You’re unconscious. You’re not even in the … you’re just numb and you’re numbing out with food, alcohol, drugs, TV, sex, whatever your choices so you really help us seize that moment. That’s fantastic.
All right, so let’s talk about the second one which is owning your power to conquer challenges. Clearly, there are some challenges you’re facing. How do you own your power?
Well, I realized early on in what had happened to me that there was no one to blame that the only … that I couldn’t blame myself, I couldn’t blame the person who was responsible for what happened. It just was what it was and you can either look at things through the lens of this is a terrible thing, this is this awful thing that happened. Yes, it was challenging but if I judge it as terrible, I judge it as awful, then I stay stuck in that situation.
I’m not actually owning my ability to be present with myself and to generate new energy and create and really focus my mind. Owning your power is really about taking back the power of, “Nothing can happen to me that I don’t allow on some level to happen to me.” If I am in a situation like when I was bedridden for months and months and months on end.
The longest period I was bedridden was seven and a half months. I did not get out of bed, lying flat on my back for seven and a half months. When that happened, I was fully cognizant of the fact that there was no one to blame, there was nothing to blame. I was just there having an experience. I was owning my power by being fully accountable for the experience that I was having.
I might not have liked the experience that I was having but I was being accountable for my feelings about the experience that I was having and a lot of people don’t … They fall in and out of accountability for the experiences that they’re going through.
Well, that’s everything, isn’t it? Especially in the business world, right? If you are going to take accountability for not hitting your numbers that you project or not being on time or all the 101 little things that we need to be accountable for. What I really hear you saying Sam is when you stop blaming other people or other things for where you are, you let go being a victim.
That’s right. That’s right. That’s absolutely right and it’s hard for people to own their feelings sometimes. Sometimes people will have these feelings where they’re really irritated with what’s going on and they’ll feel awful about like you said not making your numbers or whatever and they’ll go into a reaction, it has to be because of something else, it has to be because of someone or something or some situation because I couldn’t possibly be creating this in my own life but it’s just feeling.
All it is is feeling, it’s just sensations in the body and if you can get used to making room for those feelings to be there in your body, then you can learn from the experience rather than reject the experience and then have to repeat it over and over and over again until you finally learn from it.
Well, when people are pitching to get funded or pitching to get hired or pitching to get a new customer, they can sometimes go into this little pity party for themselves, right? This isn’t working. I don’t blame everybody else. You more than most people had to pitch yourself on not giving up and your third point here is let nothing stop you. How did you pitch yourself if you will with your internal thoughts et cetera, to not let anything stop you from being happy?
I’d tell you when I created Zen Warrior Training back in 2013, it was really with the commitment to myself that I wanted to lead a Zen Warrior life and that I wanted to hold myself accountable to that type of standard. I pitched myself, I pitched my own business to myself basically. I decided, “Hey, if I’m just doing this for a living, if I am creating value, Zen Warrior value in people’s lives then I have to be always pushing myself to be living at my edge, to be taking my mind to new heights and to be engaging more with the world and conquering more challenges and also relaxing more, relaxing so that I can have more power in me to be able to conquer challenges.”
I really pitched it to myself as the perfect opportunity for me to live the life that I wanted to live and knowing that as I work with clients, if I’m not living that life to the best of my ability, I’m not able to bring very good value through to my clients. My whole approach is I want to bring as much value through to my clients as I possibly can and in order to do that, I have to be very, very present with my own life.
Well, you’re a living example of how to not let anything stop you and then from there you say, “Okay, nothing’s gonna stop me so I want to live at the edge.”
Yes.
What does that look like?
That’s all about treating life as an adventure. It’s all about really getting out of the mindset that it’s just the burdensome experience and a lot of people can unknowingly get caught in that mindset, that life is just a burden and it’s never living up to what their expectations are of it and your job isn’t, living up to your expectations, your relationships aren’t living up to your expectations but that’s a very anti-adventurous spirit.
Living at your edge means pushing yourself forward, always pushing the envelope, always looking at what the next thing is, how can you engage with the adventure of your life? How can you be totally the hero of your own journey? It’s really about training your mind to be the hero of your own journey.
Can you tell us a story of how you have an adventure now?
The Adventure that I am on right now is scaling my business, to really create a really solid online platform where people can get Zen Warrior Training through and I don’t have to be working with them privately or in groups or workshops or whatever or speaking gigs but they can get video content and audio content and so forth. That’s the adventure I’m on. I’m looking for fresh new content, stuff that hasn’t been done.
I’m not trying to regurgitate anything that any other coach has ever created. It’s really about coming from my unique essence and what I have to share and that pushes me to live at my edge.
Well, that goes right into the fifth point you talk about which is honoring your truth and that’s really what you’re doing here, isn’t it?
Exactly, exactly. Being totally genuine with yourself all the time and I’ve got this contract with myself and really, all of these seven principles really create that contract. I’m committing to being authentic, I’m committing to being genuine, I’m committing to noticing when there is a tendency to want to be less than genuine and going what’s that about? Where did that tendency even come from? What can I learn from that tendency so That I can bring it back home to my authentic truth.
It sounds like you’re not trying to resist it so much, it’s just look for the lesson so that you can move on as supposed to fighting it.
Exactly, exactly. If you resist it like they say, what you resist persist. You just keep on having to experience that same basic theme coming up over and over and over again in your life until you actually get haters learning here for me. This is a good thing for me. All of this irritation that I’m going through is actually the perfect experience for me to learn whatever there is that I have to learn to become more self-actualized.
Well, it’s almost like you’re saying, “Don’t have a tug-of-war with yourself.” Right?
Exactly.
Let go of your end of the rope a little bit and just say, “Okay, what’s happening now? And what am I going to learn and I’m still going to move forward and make the most of this.”
Exactly, which leads us to our sixth principle.
Yes.
Yes.
Freeing your mind from the obsession with the past or worry about the future. Right? So many entrepreneurs talk about, “Oh my God, I get up at two in the morning with sweats worrying about how I’m going to make payroll or am I ever get a client? Buy this or how am I going to get … whatever.”
Right, then they’re actually training their minds to keep doing that and they’re training themselves to stay in that state of paralysis by doing that.
Wow.
It’s a subconscious experience. All of those thoughts are happening through the subconscious mind, the primitive parts of our brain that are trained and trained for survival basically and it triggers these thoughts and feelings that there is a lack of safety and that lack of safety oftentimes doesn’t go anywhere.
If you train your mind to focus on that and without knowing it, not that you would ever choose to train your mind to focus on that, but if you’re repeating that pattern enough in your mind, you’re perpetuating that experience and the next day you’re going to feel that way or you might make some money and your temporarily alleviated from that experience, but then a month down the road, you end up having the same experience again.
It’s really about noticing that tendency and noticing what I love about Zen mindfulness is it helps you to remove from the identification with the thoughts and feelings. You’re observing them but you’re not in them. If I’m observing, “I really have some nervous energy right now around this deadline that I’ve got three weeks from now.” or whatever. Where is that originating? Where is that coming from?
Is that actually … Is there a logical reason for me to be nervous? Am I just feeling the pressure of performing and being on? Or is there something that’s deeper than that? Is it a survival instinct that I need to be aware of so that I can start to not identify with that survival instinct so much.
Well Sam, you more than most people, when you talk about perseverating over a thought over and over again of negativity and fear that we put our mind into a state of paralysis, it has so much more meaning coming from you because you are paralyzed from the waist down.
Yeah, exactly.
Right?
Exactly.
I’m not going to let my mind be paralyzed too and neither should you.
Exactly, I realized early on and this … I realized this conceptually, it took me many years to really fully be able to experience it experientially but I learned early on in my injury that while my body may be paralyzed, my mind was not paralyzed and even the term paralysis just means stopped movement. There’s the physical paralysis but then paralysis in someone’s psyche paralysis in an organization, paralysis in a company, anywhere where there is stopped movement, now that’s a mindset.
[Tweet “My legs are paralyzed, but my mind is not!”]
Yeah.
It’s a mindset that there is stopped movement. There’s never stopped movement. Nature doesn’t occur that. That’s just not how nature works. Now, there might be a lack of sensation, physical sensation and motor function with me physically below my level of injury but that’s not paralysis. That’s just a lack of sensation and motor function.
If you take that analogy and I just happened to be a living metaphor, if you take that analogy and then you apply it, anywhere in life you can see that it’s only our own minds that create the feeling of paralysis which then triggers old subconscious responses and reactions that are actually undesirable and prevent us from living in the present moment and handling whenever there is to handle.
Speaking of nature not ever allowing things to stay static or not move, can you tell us about the blog you wrote about the bird that got trapped and if you keep trying to get out from where you are, you’ll wear yourself out and you’ll get free?
Yeah, I had a bird fly into my house a few months ago and it flew straight over to the window and the door was wide open and that’s why the bird got in in the first place but it flew over to the window which was closed and it had a screen on it too so there is no way that the bird was going to get out unless I hold off the screen and open the window and so forth.
I was trying to get the bird to see, “Hey, look. Look, there’s this wide open door over here.” All you have to do is just look around. There’s where you came in, there’s actually an exit but the bird was fixated on the window because it was the closest source of light that it could find. It was just fixated on that and it was thinking, “Hey, whenever I’ve gone into the light before, it’s always worked. Now, what’s wrong now? Why can’t I go into the open space?”
It just kept banging itself against the window. It just kept on doing that repeatedly, repeatedly, it would have eventually died doing that if I hadn’t come over and wrapped my hand around it and brought it back over to the door and then put it out the door. And this is such an apt analogy for the way that a lot of people live.
There’s the space that’s always worked. There’s the thing that they feel like has always worked the way out, the way back into freedom but sometimes that door closes and banging their heads against that wall and feeling like, “What’s going on? What’s wrong? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with my situation? What’s wrong? Why can’t I go into that space? Why is it no longer … Why does this not work anymore?”
Then they start to freak out and panic just like the bird even though the open door is just one little turn of their head away.
Look at companies like Kodak beating their head against the wall or Blockbuster is another one, right? They could have done what Netflix did but they didn’t. You just keep doing the same thing and then when it doesn’t work anymore, you don’t know what to do and you won’t allow yourself to evolve.
Yes.
Really great stuff and the best way to evolve is to free your mind if doing things the way you’ve been doing them and say, “What else could I do here?” Right?
Yes, yes that’s right.
Nice.
That’s right.
Which bring us to the seventh and final alliteration of catalyst change. What does that mean? I love the word.
Yes, be a catalyst for change. It’s all about serving the greater good. It’s all about getting outside of our own ego, projections about what our needs are and into how can I be of service, what can I do to create value in people’s lives and if we start to look in that direction, there is infinite potential. As long as we are looking in the direction of how do I get my needs met, what do I need to do to get my needs met to be able to make this much money to buy the car to impress the girl? All that crap.
As long as you’re on that type of trajectory, you’re missing out on an incredible amount of opportunity to actually generate, to actually generate wealth. Wealth is in the value that we can create for each other. That’s the energy of wealth. It’s all about identifying that value. By initiating, generating that value for other people, you naturally create the energy of wealth that then comes back oftentimes in the form of financial payment.
Nice.
Yeah.
You have an example, obviously, your accident was a catalyst for change but what have you seen working with groups in Zen Warrior that’s been a big change for the group?
Well, a lot of things. A lot of changes that are happening for individuals and when they come together as a group, they can experience, “Wow, this is not just something that I am, where I am changing personally but this person is changing. This person is changing.” And each one of us is creating more value in our lives and more value for other people’s lives by being more present and that reflection that happens in a group is really pretty profound because it goes from being a concept to more of a truism of where people can feel, “Wow, there’s real truth to this.” It’s not just some nice idea about the way the world should work. No, this is actually the way that the world does work.
Nice.
Yeah.
Well, I can’t thank you for sharing these insights. As I said, your words of inspiration have a whole new meaning because it’s not just a theoretical concept for you, it’s an actual thing that you have experienced and written above.
That is true. Yes, thank you, John.
How can people engage with you to either get some private or group coaching, hire you as a keynote speaker?
Get on my newsletter. If you go to zenwarriortraining.com, just scroll down to the bottom of the homepage and there’s a newsletter sign up. You’ll get a free 11-minute guided audio meditation that I’ve created and that’s the best way to stay in touch with me and to hear what the current news and free offers are and that type of thing and you can also follow me on Twitter @zwtraining, Instagram @zenwarriortraining or www.facebook.com/zenwarriortraining.
Fantastic. Sam, thanks again for being on the show and thanks for showing us how to never give up.
Well, thank you, John, for inviting me. It’s been a real pleasure.
Links Mentioned
- Website: zenwarriortraining.com
- Twitter: @zwtraining
- Instagram: @zenwarriortraining
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/zenwarriortraining
- John Livesay Funding Strategist
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