I am endlessly fascinated when in someone’s story there is that story of going to a monastery and leaving the world that we often know here to go deep within themselves and so I’d love to hear a little bit of the Genesis of what was happening in your life at that time
And how did you come to making that decision and that big commitment to such a radical change yeah um well I was living in Asia at the time when I discovered meditation and mindfulness I was living in uh Thailand and China traveling throughout Asia buying Antiques and jewelry and
Furniture and uh working seven days a week and um it was a really difficult job it was something I kind of wanted to do I idolized Indiana Jones growing up I watched that movie like hundreds of times and I always had this um fantasy of traveling around Asia looking for artifacts and
Um and just exploring the world and it was there that I ran into some uh Buddhist monks and also some doist Masters and I was really struck by the contrast between how they were as people uh versus how a lot of us live in a busy culture uh where we’re focused
On um a lot of the externals the monks and the DST uh Hermits were focused on the internals and I felt through my first meditation practices how transformative this could be if I really dove in and I was inspired by my teacher’s way of being with their sense of compassion groundedness sense of
Peace um that was so inspiring to me that I thought that you know whenever I die I want to have cultivated those ways of being like that was my new priority um it wasn’t travel it wasn’t money it wasn’t um girls it became these values of character and the ways of being
And because I didn’t know when I would [Laughter] die um I decided to dive in head first right then so you know I don’t have any disease or anything but you know one of the most powerful mindfulness practices is mindfulness of death and sensing into this breath is possibly being my last
And so what better time to devote to mindfulness and meditation compassion peace PE wisdom than right now and um because I was already living in Asia I was familiar with Buddhist monasteries and I didn’t know of anything back here in the US that could
Train you know a young guy um so I found a monastery that you know welcomed me and I got a oneway ticket shaved my head and uh and ordained as a monk so you have this innate adventurous Spirit it sounds like that Indiana Jones evoked in you and while traveling in
Asia what it sounds like to me it’s less that there was something significantly wrong maybe there was an overwhelm maybe you were working too much but it sounds like it was almost more of a pull towards something else rather than a moving away from something you don’t like am I reading that
Accurately it’s interesting because at the time I would have agreed with you that it was more of a pull the more removed I am from that time of my life I recognized that there was also um sort of a danger that I saw in myself um
That I needed to move away from there was this um sort of prioritization of uh the externals and um wanting to um like wear nice clothes and um eat at fancy restaurants and um you know date the most beautiful women and um and sort of earn my way to more spending
Power you know to get better jobs and um and I saw that I was cultivating a sense of greed and also a sense of sort of delusion in the sense that um those things weren’t ultimately what would provide fulfillment or happiness or peace um and so there was a a significant amount of
Suffering involved in that that I think I was suppressing and wanting to Um yeah ignore by distracting myself with all these you know glitzy things and so the more removed I am from that time of my life the more I recognize that there was a significant amount of confusion um um say anger and um greed and those were I think slowly eating away at me
Internally for teachers who may feel a pull towards potentially joining a monastery what for you at least in your experience what was a day in a life like and maybe or what was most challenging and what was most beautiful and maybe those two are the same things yeah um in general I recommend
It uh there’s more and more monasteries that are open to short ordination windows and so a lot of people get a get value out of ordaining even just for a week or two just to kind of get a taste of the life but for me um I really appreciated the amount of
Space and time that one has to cultivate uh mindfulness and you know there’s a lot of silence for you to enjoy to sit in Long stretches um you know you have to be careful what you ask for though too because that silent can um drive you crazy sometimes because there are no
Distractions um you know there’s no music no movies no food after 12 noon um obviously no women no no touch I wasn’t even allowed to hug my mom um but the Simplicity of the life can really help to settle the mind it’s like being on retreat but the retreat never
Ends and so it’s a wonderful opportunity to settle the Mind open the heart Um to meet all of the stuff that we might bottle up uh by being busy um um that stuff will come out um anyone who’s done a silent Retreat knows that it can be really challenging and a lot of Tears can be shed but you know that’s where we
Grow and um that’s how we become more self-aware and that’s how we build resilience and self-compassion um one of my favorite things about the monaster is a sense of Brotherhood that grows as a result of living with other men who are going through challenging times as well
Um and you know for women in uh monasteries where there’s nuns which there’s more and more monasteries for women that sense of Sisterhood is really beautiful and so I met fellow brothers on the path who um brought me a sense of Brotherhood that I didn’t have growing up and um and that
Felt yeah it felt really good to build that sense of intimacy with other men of emot intimacy spiritual intimacy and um supporting each other along the path um that’s a major part of being a monk is that kinship that is developed with your other monk friends and so I was ordained with
People my age um men who are significantly older and um boys who are significantly younger and there’s a sense of family that develops um that’s really beautiful and those relationships are um you know cherished for me it sounds really beautiful and it’s reminding me and bringing up this thought of
How we’re all yearning for that and we in some ways maybe are subconsciously finding it like for me I joined a fraternity in college and that of course is a Brotherhood and you go through pledging which is the challenging thing that brings you together and there is that love because you’ve been through
Something with someone now there’s a lot of toxic things about that whole situation but at the core is is the same somewhat of the essence that you’re you’re getting at here and I can see it also in in military right joining the military and going to war with someone
There’s that’s such such a um just wildly connecting intimate scary thing that that binds you and to to think of doing it in the ser and the intention of developing spiritually and and that challenge is is really inspiring and beautiful it’s almost like a different
Level of the same thing um when for you did the spark to teach come was that like did you know as you were dropping in for those two years like wow this is something I really want to share or was it kind of a more Clickety Journey after
Coming back and trying out other things yeah it’s a great question um while I was a monk I I had no intention of teaching for at least 10 to 20 years part of that is the tradition that I ordained in TI terada tradition um doesn’t allow monks to
Teach for at least say 12 years and you know and I kind of dove in head first relatively quickly so I didn’t have that much experience before I was a monk and so when I was a monk it was a fast track to learning and I tried to
Absorb as much as I could from my teachers who were significantly older than me they could have been my grandpa and they kind of were my grandfathers in a way but um I had zero intention of teaching when I disrobed when I left the monastery fortunately luckily I got a
Job at Spirit Rock Meditation Center um where I supported the teachers and the community sort of a liaison between the two where I would support all the teachers with their classes and workshops and answer questions from the community and um there it was it was another five
Years of learning where I started to learn how to integrate these practices into Western culture into daily life um with work uh with family um how to integrated it um you know men’s groups um all the different facets of life and I learned from some of the most amazing teachers including Jack
Cornfield and Sharon salsburg and Tara Brock and um after say the fourth year at Spirit Rock I started to feel like I was starting to feel ready to start sharing mindfulness through my own lenss and I didn’t really know what that was going to look
Like but I felt like I had enough of a practice and enough of um toage under some of the world’s top teachers that I would be able to start helping people um and I saw a flyer for learning how to teach mindfulness in prisons and the flyer had images of these
Two um like bodybuilders behind bars meditating and and it said learn how to teach men in in prisons like Maximum Security death row type stuff and um and I felt compelled to learn how to do that um and to help these men um who were in a really difficult situation and um
The teacher of that program to learn how to teach mindfulness in prisons was a uh highly rapable kind man who was very well respected uh in the Spirit Rock Community and in Northern California and so I decided to apply and I needed a full scholarship because I was not making very good money
By Design I was very happy being poor but um but I signed up and um started to realize that it’s not rocket science um and that if I speak from the heart speak from experience and have a few tools under my belt that um hopefully I’d be able to help start
Making a difference and um that’s kind of how it started was the teacher Vinnie Ferraro no I know Vinnie um and I think he’s amazing but the the teacher is jacqu Verdun who um has been um instrumental in bringing mindfulness and meditation to prisons uh around the
US um Vinnie I never co-taught with Vinnie but um but yeah I really like his style any I was on a my first silent retreat was with Vinnie and for those that don’t know him I I recommend just listening to a Dharma talk because he’s so hilarious
And down to earth and also really powerful and loving and he I I I fell in love with Vinnie during that Retreat which it’s it’s sometimes easy to fall in love during your retreat at least in my limited experiences yeah he’s so authentic and poetic
And real yeah but he also walks the talk and you really feel that and yeah he is really inspiring since you brought up the making money piece around this work I can imagine going from being in a monastery where where I didn’t know exactly do if you give up all your
Possessions and and money it’s not really a thing there and then coming back into our society here and having to make a living what how is that relationship to money transformed or how or yeah just how has your that relationship been from kind of leaving a
Place where it’s so not a part of the conversation or maybe it is in different ways but to having to like okay now I have actual you know needs and I need to support myself yeah great question yeah and this comes up all the time with mindfulness
Meditation teachers like how do I relate to money here um yeah so at the monastery I wasn’t allowed to touch money ask for money spend money have a bank account had zero possessions outside of a alms Bowl uh robes and um some medicine basically and maybe a pair of
Sandals wasn’t even allowed to ask for food you know the only thing I could ask for was uh water uh when I worked at Spirit Rock I was you know my salary was very very low um obviously I I didn’t work there for the money I I work there to support
The teachers and the community and to learn and to practice um and I was very happy with that um I had zero intention of making a lot of money um I really liked that you know Jack cornfield told me once like spir rock has kind of been your halfway house after the monastery
Um and he was right um and then I met a girl and I fell in love with her and we got married and then this Instinct kicked in it’s like oh I need to help provide here and my celery at Spirit Rock might not cut it you know
And she didn’t marry me for money but an instinct took over where I felt like I needed to help pay the bills and then we had a baby and that instinct [Laughter] doubled and we got a puppy it’s like oh you know I need to afford dog food and
So so there were the sort of NE necessities of um you know needing to help take care of a family um and this instinct to um provide was very strong for me I think partly because my upbringing you know my my parents were very hardworking and they did everything they could to
Kind of help lift us from uh Um say lower middle class that’s um you know if that towards middle class um and they wanted to provide me with a college education which they didn’t have and um you know I’d like to do the same for my daughter but um this Instinct took over um I read an essay by Ken
Wilbur uh I’m pretty sure you’re familiar who he is partly because of your althia training but probably because of just your involvement with so many self-development um Arenas But Ken Wilbur wrote a essay called Write bucks which I encourage mindfulness meditation teachers to look up sometime but it kind of makes a case
For um charging money for your teachings if you if you want to um and kind of outlines the history of um how people have related to Um compensating teachers who share these practices these teachings um and makes a case for for um mindfulness teachers making a living doing this in modern society um working at Spirit Rock was very helpful for me in the sense that they’re very generous they don’t turn people away for
A lack of funds from for 90% of their offerings they have uh scholarship opportunities and they have sliding scale donation um practices and so when I started teaching mindfulness I adopted a lot of their ways of of charging so when I started teaching mindfulness um I had a philosophy of leading with
Generosity leading with heart if people couldn’t afford things that was fine I would still teach I would still share um I would invite people to make donations based on what they felt would be doable for them or fair to them um I would have scholarship applications which I still do I
Um had sliding scale payment windows and uh for people who uh wanted to pay more if they had the means I would certainly welcome it with gratitude um and so I think that’s really important to not move into this field and start charging a lot of money from everyone on
Excluding People based on their ability to pay but rather have a mindset of generosity of compassion um providing value to anyone regardless of income and finding ways that feel fair to both sides as much as you can love that you mentioned that right bucks article it’s one that someone
Shared maybe it was in your newsletter maybe not I feel like I’ve clicked on it within the last two months and I’m like I can’t wait to read this and then it’s one of those things where I click on it and then I totally forgot about it and I
Haven’t read it so for those interested I’m going to make sure that it’s linked in the show notes and I’m going to look forward to the reading it after this because Ken Wilbur is a fascinating teacher and his body of work I think takes a a big devotion I heard a friend
Kind of explain it and it it it felt right on where he didn’t even want to start getting into Ken Wilbur because if he did he would feel like he’d have to devote all of his his time to what he’s his integral Theory um it’s it’s really
Fascinating so if that that calls to you um definitely check him out I loved his interview with Tammy Simon on Cosmic Consciousness that they did for sounds true I think that gave like a good introduction and overview to um what he’s all about AB I want to come back
To business in a second I think that’s really helpful for someone thinking about teaching and how to go about starting to charge and and grow and have offerings that are free have offerings that um have scholarships that have flexible payments there’s a a question um a part of a teacher training right now
Meditation schools I’m a co- teer in in there um with David gandelman and there’s a student in there who is having a lot of Doubt around being a teacher and she listens to this podcast so I’m pretty sure she’ll listen to this and she asked me to do an episode on this
And I I haven’t yet but I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on it and her question is in in a broad sweep is do you have to go through through something in order to help someone with that thing and her example is I feel she feels
Unqualified to help someone or to do meditations around work life balance family balance to help someone if they have family relational issues because she is single and doesn’t have a family and so she’s just in just in that one specific example she’s feeling this sense of unqualified in order to help
Someone yeah I think not necessarily I think um you know that’s the power of of reading and research and interviews that you learn a lot of the um fundamentals and and uh experiences um sort of secondhand um and then share the learnings with with others I
Think the level of Rapport may not be as strong as it might be with someone who’s actually gone through you know family life and work life balance juggling everything May for a little bit you know I think in that specific case um the say the teacher trainer would probably want to lead with
Lots of questions to really empathize with the student or the mom or the dad who whoever it is that they’re helping um to lead with lots of questions to build empathy context and Rapport Um but I think that person can certainly learn a great deal through Reading podcasts and then share learnings that can be supportive um I think with mindfulness it is a little bit different though you know work life balance is one thing mindfulness is another in the sense that when we teach mindfulness in Meditation I think it’s important and crucial that we have that firsthand experience that we know how to meet what comes up with presence and you know you can share a lot of the bullet points you can regurgitate what you read or what you’ve heard but it will soon become apparent
To your students whether or not you can meet what’s here with non judgment with curiosity um with an appropriate response with grounded presence and you know so with mindfulness and meditation how we are and how we teach can often say more than our words and it’s this like being the example that can
Teach more than what we say my first teachers barely spoke English like barely spoke English and yet I learn more from them by their way of being and I felt M It In My Bones like that is it that presence and so you know some things I think you can
Teach without having gone through it but I think mindfulness and meditation is one of the exceptions I think that’s an important emphasis that our beingness is is felt and it’s where we’re speaking from that ultimately matters more than what we’re speaking of and I think of
Like uh Raman Mahari I don’t think he had much of a teaching he was just and even like narim CIB Baba like Ram das’s Guru like these these high Master beings that they it was just being in their presence being in that love that was a
Reflection of of the love that it was within their own Essence so I think just always especially in this you have to be embodying it and practicing it and I know this one person is practicing um and continuing to practice but of course we have our own unfolding we have our
Own Journey that um you know that we have to go through in different ways and um you know i’ be there’s also I have a theory I don’t this might be misguided in some ways but maybe someone who isn’t as let’s just use a a term that we can all somewhat
Understand as awakened as uh Raman Mahari right to just you know I don’t want to go super super far but um like there’s would you say that there’s an opportunity to help someone at a different level like someone might be attracted to this person even though they don’t have a high level of
Embodiment but it’s still helpful to that person right and as that person continues to like unfold in their Journey that they they start to be able to support different people different levels of their Journey so it’s almost like yes we don’t have to be a jack cornfield when we start and the teachers
That go to Jack right are are going to be different than the people that go to me for example or and or whoever it might be so does that make sense do you like agree that at some level there’s potentially like you could still help people but there’s also I can also play
My own Devil’s Advocate that like you know healed people heal people and then Hur people hurt people so there’s also like the potential um yeah like you know the blind can’t lead the blind so I I’ll I’ll play both arguments in my head and then hear what you have to say on
It yeah yeah I think well even Jack cornfield will say in a very humble way that you know every day is different in in terms of how present we are or how um much we can help another person like you know even teachers have good days and off
Days um you know just before this podcast we took a moment to settle and practice um uh because if we don’t practice every day um then our teachings may be impacted and and so you know so yeah so even with ram Mahari I’m sure he had moments where he may not have
Been uh well suited to convey that presence you know 100% um you know utmost respect to him maybe he he was uh fully capable 100% of the time but but yeah to the essence of your question I think that we don’t need to wait to be fully awakened to teach that if we
Have first and foremost a sense of compassion for people and that when we’re teaching it that it’s not about ourselves it’s not about impressing people it’s not about fulfilling a contract it’s about helping them and so say beginners or intermediate practitioners may have some very valuable tools and
Teachings to help people who are just starting out who are just learning about mindfulness and you know you can share some of the fundamentals of mindful Brea breathing mindful walking mindful eating um you don’t necessarily need to perfect those before you start sharing those practices with people um I think it’s important not
To overstate your practice or your experience or promise the world um but you can certainly share a lot of the fundamentals even if if you’re not um a jack cornfield or a monk that um if you have been practicing what you want to share and have explored it and have been ideally
Trained on how to teach it um then um you can certainly help a lot of people who are just starting out and who want to do what you’ve done to that point Sean you named my blind spots of impressing people and making it about me
And as an anagram 3 as the achiever as the the I don’t know if you’re familiar with anagram but um it’s it’s it’s a constant looking at motives and intentions and um super helpful for for me in doing this work because um yeah we have to look at those things and
Sometimes there’s some hard pills to swallow when we get honest with oursel of what we’re doing here and how we’ve been doing things so um not to to get into just too far down a rabbit hole I’d love to spend the rest of our time talking a little bit about mindfulness exercises.com.au
Like was it how did even start there’s so much that you have there’s so much content so much so much that is there and and to someone that’s just starting out they may look at this and be like wow like this is a huge body of work
This is a lot like how did it begin like what what was the Genesis yeah um so when I was at Spirit Rock uh part of my job was to record all the teachings and meditations from the teachers onto audio files and share most of them freely um on a website called Dharma
Seed which I recommend to everybody um Dharma seed though um was Buddhist in flavor and a little hard to navigate sometimes and I wanted to create something for people who may not necessarily resonate with Buddhism um but who wanted to learn from these amazing teachers
Um and so I asked dhed you know can I share a lot of these recordings on my own site for free they said sure as long as it’s still free um that’s totally fine so um I created mindfulness exercises.com.au um I uh I went in debt paying for it for the
URL um but it started as just wanting to share these practices freely I had zero intentions of like starting a business out of it and um and so I started sharing and started creating posts on on the website and um and then over time I started thinking through
Well what about in written form what if people wanted some simple practices to do that they could print out so I started creating PDFs of mindfulness worksheets uh using practices I had been learning over the years and those were free I just let people download those
For free and then um I started learning a little bit about entrepreneurship and business and scaling things and said well what if I started collecting emails like email addresses in exchange for letting people download these free PDFs and then I started creating an email list and then I started a
Newsletter and then I thought well what if I kept all these worksheets for free but I said you know like if you want to download say a couple hundred of them then maybe I’ll charge like $40 or $30 and surprisingly people paid like 30 bucks 40 bucks for this collection of
Downloads and that’s kind of where the business side of things started which helped me to afford the website and um graphic design work and you know um an email platform and you know I wasn’t really making profit but I was making enough to kind of sustain the website what year
Just it’s kind of started 2013 2014 got it um and then I started learning about marketing and business and um kind of kept scaling from there but it really started as a way to share as many of the teachings from my teachers as widely as possible um and then it kind of segwayed
Into offering coaching you know I went to New Ventures West and studied under Steve March thank youting under Steve and um uh started to share other kinds of things on the website um letting people download my own audio um wrote more blog posts started um thinking about ways to
Support people with their own mindfulness Journey as well as people who wanted to share mindfulness with others um one of the common complaints I would hear from uh being at Spirit Rock where I interfaced with hundreds of thousands of people it’s like well I want to share these
Practices but I don’t know how or where like how to how to do that and um at that time there weren’t many teacher training programs out there um and so um uh so I started to create my own um certification program uh to help meet that need to help people teach
Mindfulness uh in practical ways without you know spending $10,000 or um or wanting to teach mbsr specifically uh wanted to create something new for for people who wanted to share mindfulness um uh outside of those circles there’s so much to ask around business I know we’re coming up a little
Bit on our time so I’ll I’ll broad sweep a question that you talked about in when I asked about like what you’ve learned about business and You’ mentioned a couple things about keeping things simple focusing on the actual challenges of the customer speaking to the end goal
Um I’d love to hear you expand on on any of those and also in learning marketing and learning email marketing and scaling like also are there other teachers in the business world that you found helpful um for people that might looking for more of those resources um you know courses or books
To they could they could find so um long question multiple questions um I’ll let you take it where wherever the the spirit moves you sure yeah and we can go longer if if you wish to that’ be great yeah sure Um I think it’s important to ask a lot of questions from the people who you’re wanting to serve um I think it’s important to share surveys and request feedback back and um ask people to fill out forms about what their pain points are what they’re looking for
Um what their goals are and to try to think of new ways of serving your students or your clients um and for mindfulness teaching and teaching meditation I think it’s important I think the most important thing for people to consider when they’re searching for their own teacher is a sense of
Trust so when you’re looking for a mindfulness teacher it’s not about how famous they are it’s not about how many books they’ve sold it’s not about whether everyone else likes them or not it’s about do you trust them do you trust them to help guide you through this journey of being
Present with your experience so trust is crucial and not every teacher resonates with everyone you know not everyone loves Jack cornfield or the dolly Llama Or Ram Mahari um because everyone’s a little bit different they have their own preferences own Styles and and so to help build that trust it’s important
To share your voice so you know if you’re in the business of sharing mindfulness and guiding meditations it’s important for people to get to know you for them to hear your voice for them to get a sense of who you are what you’re about how you you teach how you guide
Practices and I think it’s really important to share your voice um allow people to get to know you freely before they invest and so that can look like you know all sorts of things it can be recording a webinar that’s kind of how I got started really
With scaling the business is is just recording 90 minutes of myself sharing about what I care about who I am ways that people can grow and then how can they work with me and um and that was that was key and people got to know me that way not Everyone likes me and
That’s fine but those who took the time to really um hear me and and if they resonated with me then they would contact me and want to work with me in different ways you know recording videos for YouTube podcasts um putting audio on insight timer um sharing even blog posts you
Know I do recommend audio and video as much as possible for them to really get a sense of you but being generous with your teachings um I think is a powerful way for for growing a business and also being generous at the same time
Um so I think that would be my main um suggestion for people whether they’re starting out or just wanting to grow is to put yourself out there um and people who like you will want to work with you what would you say if someone’s response to that is I just hate social media
I just I don’t want to be on on these apps but I want to to to get myself out there I’m just starting out I just took your certification now I’m trying to like okay what do I do yeah um you know there’s lots of opportunities for teaching people in your
Neighborhood libraries are typically open to people sharing uh meditations and mindfulness teaching community centers um there’s lots of in-person opportunities um you know you can teach some of your friends some of your neighbors kind of get your feet wet um uh you know you could um have your
Own website you don’t necessarily needan social media but um you know I’ve invested a lot of my time learning um search engine optimization and learning how Google can refer people to you um and so you could rely on SEO for um scaling your website presence and attracting people there um you don’t
Necessarily need social media um you can also Outsource it to people through work exchange or finding people on upwork.com or Fiverr or something where you can ask people to take care of that for you um when I started teaching mindfulness for companies and um attracting say higher profile
Names I started by sharing free workshops and I I just told people Word of Mouth through you know my friends list on my email um you I’m to give out a a free keynote a free dayong um Workshop even a free two-day workshop to any team or company out
There who could use some mindfulness training and just through my friends list um I lined up like four different free trainings that I gave out and in exchange for those free trainings um the uh professional uh would give me feedback they I asked them to take my photo teaching them that
I could use for um sort of publicity um I asked for um referrals endorsements testimonials um and based on those free trainings then I started to gain momentum and confidence teaching others so you don’t necessarily need social media um but but I also encourage people to sense
Into why they don’t want to use social media and certainly there’s plenty of valid reasons for not supporting um certain companies that may not be uh that wholesome for our culture but but but I also encourage people to sense into um possible fears that they have of being seen um fear of
Judgment sensing into whether they feel any like self-confidence around being a teacher or being seen as a teacher um to sense into the feelings that we have around self-promotion um and work with that with mindfulness and really get a feeling for why we’re averse to social
Media and to work with that um with a sense of care and curiosity to um explore that in a visceral catic way and see like what are the layers of this what’s at the core of this um perhaps this is stemming from something from childhood where our
Parents said we’re not good enough or from fear of a friend saying who are you to teach mindfulness or um you know who knows there’s there may be a plethora of of reasons why we’re avoiding social media that we’re not really tending to at their core level so I do encourage that
Exploration uh and work with that and then we may feel um like we’re ready to to share these practices Um with others with this motive of helping people and I think that’s that’s something really important to focus on is that it’s again it’s not about you it’s not about how many likes you get or how many followers you have or um whether you think you know what
You’re doing on um the paid ads front or organic ads but rather how can I reach people who need help who are struggling who could really use some headspace and self-care like how can I reach those people and help them um because it’s not about the money it’s not about the
Fame um it’s not about you it’s about how can I reach people to help them that sounds like a a mic drop and some really profound wisdom and guidance to if you’re one you can do it without social media you can I love you saying that of offering free workshops getting
A company now you have some testimonial support you can go to another company and say hey I just did this workshop with soand so and I’d love to bring this to you I charge maybe you just do a little bit you charge a little bit right just getting over that hump sometimes is
Is a is an energy right psychologically to be like oh wow I’m actually being supported and then um kind of take it from there and to to look at ourselves and and question yeah what’s what what’s really happen Happening Here is is this about not liking Instagram or is it that
Like you said that one person I remember you know there was this one teacher and I would feel so insecure sharing stuff on Instagram thinking that this other person was going to see it like and I just imagine that person’s view looking at it and it would and it can really
Block us and it’s it’s a thing so that’s an important reminder for us to check what’s really coming up for me I always had a certain teacher from Spar Rock come to mind and I was afraid of him knowing I was starting to teach mindfulness and I thought if once this
Person finds out I want to teach mindfulness I wonder if you know what they’re going to think and I was afraid of their judgment and them saying who are you to teach mindfulness and I remember um I had a dream one night where I imag imag in myself or I
Was dreaming that I was in a grocery store and I was pushing my little shopping cart around you know putting things in my cart and then I was rounding the corner of an aisle in the grocery store with my my shopping cart and my shopping cart hit his shopping cart this this teacher
Who I was afraid of knowing that I was a mindfulness teacher and our carts collided and he looks up at me and says hi Sean I heard you’re wanting to teach mindfulness and I felt like you know paralyzed like oh no like my worst nightmare is happening and then something happened
Where I I looked up at him and I said yeah you know there’s so many people struggling right now and I know enough that I can share some tools some teachings to help some people and if they need help and if I help them in some
Way then who am I not to help them who am I to refrain from helping them who am I to avoid sharing these powerful practices with people who are asking for help that feels like a disservice to people who are struggling I want to step up and help Them I may not be able to help them with all of their goals or all of their struggles perfectly but I know enough to help them a little bit and when I said that in my dream he could not help but agreeing with me he saw the point and at that moment I
Felt more confident and more free and I kind of felt like I was allowed to do this not only allowed but encouraged to do this because it’s not about me it’s not even about mindfulness in my opinion it’s about helping people and as long as I can help people in some
Way why not do it Sean there’s no more words that that’s so beautiful what a powerful dream and message and reminder right of really what we’re doing this for and I think we always need those reminders because they can help us get out of our own way and
There’s some real things to to work with um but it’s something I know so many people struggle with with judgment from their their teacher judgment from from others and so um yeah that question of what was it it’s you know who am I not
To or it’s not about me it’s like am I making it about me or is I I making it about how I look or am I really doing this because maybe that one person when I started my journey I was like you know if if one person gets something valuable
Out of this then it’s worth putting myself out there and facing that fear and um you know before we get to many we start with one so Sean maybe we can have around to because there’s more practical technical kind of business stuff that I think would be helpful because you’ve
You’ve done a a a solid uh you birth something pretty powerful it looks like from the outside at least um so maybe we we we save that for round two and for now I think this is a great place to end this conversation so I thank you so much
For for joining um and just getting a chance to connect with you likewise though it’s a pleasure getting to know you and um thanks for having me on I appreciate it yeah all right everyone take care
source
