Mental Health conversation centered around 12 step recovery and related topics. We talk about spiritual living, living with addiction and growing in the 12 steps. Find us on our home at https://recoverysortof.com/. If you want to join the conversation, email us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RecoverySortOf, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/recovery_sort_of/, or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Recovery-Sort-Of-112376247161866/?view_public_for=112376247161866.
Simplicity is a spiritual principle. We have Jenny on to talk about simplicity and how it impacts and effects our lives. Have you ever considered simplicity in your daily practice of spiritual principles? How do you practice simplicity? What does that actually look like? We tell people to “keep it simple” and take it “one day at a time,” but is that the whole of practicing simplicity? How do we keep it simple? Do we do less things? Think about things less? Life is not simple, so how can we best use this spiritual principle to help us stay focused and positive? We examine all these questions and look at times in our lives that we might be able to practice simplicity more. Included is some tips for helping move toward simplicity in your life. Join the conversation by leaving a message, emailing us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, or find us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, or find us on our website at www.recoverysortof.com.
—
Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/recoverysortof/message
Simplicity is a spiritual principle. We have Jenny on to talk about simplicity and how it impacts and effects our lives. Have you ever considered simplicity in your daily practice of spiritual principles? How do you practice simplicity? What does that actually look like? We tell people to “keep it simple” and take it “one day at a time,” but is that the whole of practicing simplicity? How do we keep it simple? Do we do less things? Think about things less? Life is not simple, so how can we best use this spiritual principle to help us stay focused and positive? We examine all these questions and look at times in our lives that we might be able to practice simplicity more. Included is some tips for helping move toward simplicity in your life. Join the conversation by leaving a message, emailing us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, or find us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, or find us on our website at www.recoverysortof.com.
Transcript:
recovery sort of is a podcast where we discuss recovery topics from the perspective of people living in long-term recovery this podcast does not intend to represent the views of any particular group organization or fellowship the attitudes expressed are solely the opinion of its contributors be advised there may be strong language or topics of an adult nature
welcome back it’s recovery sort of i’m jason i’m a simple man and i’m billy i am a person in long term recovery and i’m jenny and i’m pretty simple too but i’m also in long term recovery so yeah we’re going to talk about simplicity today but we’ve been we have a backlog of things to talk about first that i i keep missing so uh stephanie reached out to us a while back after one of our episodes and she was telling me that they had a policy meeting at her home group and there was a big stink about what jobs and positions people on maintenance were allowed to have but the the big problem they were having like i get this you know if somebody is on uh uh mat therapy or of some sort and maybe they look in a way that reminds us of being high it might be kind of weird to have them sitting at the front of your meeting leading the meetings yeah that could be a little strange right right but this was about key tags and she said that somebody said how can you hand out a key tag for clean time when you don’t have any and i’m like pretty easy you just put somebody’s hand right give him a hug and so she said that isn’t that the same thing as a person with six months handing out a black key tag to somebody like they still don’t have that how can they give it out like that didn’t a point didn’t make any sense to her and so she was arguing that people on maintenance should definitely be allowed to give out key tags and there were she said there was people concerned about people looking high doing it and what that would mean about their home group for key tags yeah and she said that the problem you know would solve itself because most people who abuse mats would just stop showing up eventually so i don’t know i i thought that was interesting you know it kind of feeds into i don’t to me i’m like yep this is exactly why i say the stuff i say like i don’t get it well and i would think in my home group i mean if we had a newer member because there’s a couple of us that have a lot of time like that would be one of the things we would immediately give them to do of course we probably wouldn’t even care if they secretaried the meeting like look as long as you’re not non now i mean if you’re not now we’re going to kick you out but of that position but like but short of that if you show up you could do it yeah yeah i thought it was an interesting one but i i think it ties into this like uh complex that our our program or people in our program at least have with this this mat idea right this can people really feel included while they’re on mats when there’s seems to always be this controversy of can they do this are they allowed to do this can they work steps can they it’s like i don’t know man why don’t we just treat them as equals and but see what happens yeah true but i think part of that’s the autonomy of the group because different groups will make weird rules about all kinds of weird [ _ ] you know you can’t secretary the meeting unless you have so much time you can’t i mean when you said about a person with six months giving out a black key tag i’m like who gives a [ _ ] well that was her point they were saying that if you were on mats well right she was saying that you’re saying mats people don’t have clean time so they can’t give out any of the key tags and she was her counterpoint was if you have six months clean you give out black key tags you don’t have multiple years right so what the hell is the difference like you’re still giving out something you don’t have so yeah yeah i don’t know but that stuff you know like our home group is real formal we don’t even have positions now whoever shows up does whatever you know we try to keep in touch with make sure somebody’s going to show up and open a meeting short of that we don’t have an assigned position for anything or limitations or rules i i’m sure that that there’s varied uh you know beliefs and around this in different areas and different home groups but i will say in my experience at least that the prevailing attitude kind of follows this idea of like oh no we can’t let these people do that and it’s that these people kind of idea i think that’s where a lot of my stance comes from uh that’s where us making sure developed members have to create a new a new program us enlightened open-minded people uh and then john from from instagram reached out because he was talking about the enabling podcast and he felt like uh that i was saying that we should just allow people to do whatever they want and live in our house if it keeps them alive and i think we kind of addressed this in an episode after that it might even been tradition nine episode after that that like that we weren’t saying just let people do what the [ __ ] they want that was not the goal and if it came across that way i i’m definitely sorry that was not the intention i think our belief we kind of both kind of came to the same place of like it’s very varied you know individual situation to individual situation and have your boundaries for sure and and don’t let them be crossed but at the same time we shouldn’t just rush into either tough love or let them do whatever they want in in any case right like those are two extremes and i’m sure jenny would say you know buddha’s a middle path right like that’s what we got to do i would say that yeah or even the tough love i mean the whole idea behind that is like at least my understanding is it’s like kicking people out and not talking to them and all that stuff i mean you can even have a little more nuanced version of that maybe right right well and i think doing it in the name of tough love is the wrong concept right doing it in the name of hey look i just can’t accept you’re ruining my life doing this so i can’t accept that and i gotta put a boundary up it’s one thing but to just say nope tough love’s the answer that’s what they tell us to do with you addicts right love you love you the right to life god damn it um oh another i just again wanted to thank everybody who’s donated especially sarah and julie we haven’t mentioned them for a little while maybe a few episodes but they have set up monthly contributions that come in regularly and that’s great i always appreciate that and then we had uh we had somebody reach out on instagram and they said hello we’re looking for cat models to join our meow lives team i’m in i mean
are they saying i look like a [ _ ] is that what they’re saying are they i don’t know so yeah so that was fun and i uh i don’t know i had to mention it just because i didn’t know we were models yeah we’re cat models so tradition nine we’re talking about tradition nine and we mentioned that simplicity was the spiritual principle in it and i think both of us were kind of taken aback like oh is that a spiritual principle who knew uh and so we decided we were going to do an episode about simplicity actually jenny decided we were going to do an episode about simplicity because she loved it so that’s what we’re doing today so if we want to get into the definition simplicity the state of being simple wow thanks webster’s you’re so [ _ ] you can’t use the word in the definition of the word i’m sorry the state of being simple uncomplicated or uncompounded yeah that doesn’t help uh two second definition lack of subtlety or penetration uh i’m gonna tell all my kids to be simple to avoid sex no sex be simple um freedom from pretense or guile directness of expression restraint and ornamentation i don’t even know what half this [ _ ] means uh so that’s the definitions for what they’re worth i don’t think they’re all that useful it was mentioned right before we came on that simplicity is the first word in na’s prevailing literature the basic text it talks about our symbol it says simplicity is the key to our symbol and it mirrors the simplicity in our program i just think this is fascinating like as a guy who you know was part of starting a podcast because i like to not be simple about the way i think about things uh damn i’m not doing it wrong yeah do we need to shut the podcast down do we over complicate things by talking about it more i you know so i had a sponsor who frequently would say to me when i was asking questions and inquiring and being curious and exploratory and you know delving in depth with my thinking he would say man you just got to keep that [ _ ] simple and you’re getting like and i don’t know there there is a draw for me in all that thinking but is that not a good thing i mean there was also a draw for me to do heroin and that didn’t work out i think i believe it comes back to stuff we’ve talked about before as far as understanding that like my ideas and all that stuff that whirl around in my head and i’m kind of stealing this this isn’t my original idea is that like all these ideas that whirl around in my head they aren’t me you know what i mean they’re just ideas so i don’t have to be married to them to the point that we need to come to blows over whether the methadone person can hand out key tags or not like it’s not that like that’s just an idea that i have and a belief that i hold right this moment if we can talk about it we can argue about it i’m willing to consider other points of view but those are just ideas i think where it gets dangerous is when we get so stuck in our thinking or rigid in our thinking and you know we allow all those crazy well i shouldn’t say crazy we allow all those ideas that we’re all around in our head to like i don’t know like we just get so stuck on them that we we can’t move past what we think so so maybe it’s not about how much i overthink it’s just the fact that i question everything helps me not be stuck in any idea yeah or how do you act on that over thinking i think it feels simple still it feels complicated but you know what i and and listening to this new book i’m listening to that’s got some new ideas that i’m hoping changed my life um i feel like my exploration and curiosity and and questioning of things doesn’t really complicate my life it makes for complex thinking but i feel like it leads me to simpler understandings of what i really want in my life and who i am and what the world means to me and like so it’s more of a reevaluation of what matters to me than anything when i’m doing that yeah and to relate it to what’s going on in the world right now with like covet and vaccines and masks and all this other stuff that’s kind of still seems to be lingering on i try to use this principle of simplicity to come back and be like all right what am i really trying to do here well i want to be safe for myself and i want to be safe for other people so should i wear a mask shouldn’t i wear a mask should i get vaccinated should i not get vaccinated like i can get so caught up in all those ideas that i’m almost paralyzed with fear and then i go out into the world and like i’m confrontational with everybody that doesn’t see things my way or i just try to educate myself and do the research and then say all right what do i feel like is the best way for me to be safe for myself and other people like i need to like i just keep that as my focus i mean just for myself now i’ve been wearing a mask in the store i don’t [ __ ] know why it feels like the right thing to do so i just do it i don’t really know if it’s great or not but in the research and information and stuff that i’ve done it’s like i’m mostly concerned with just being safe and i don’t need to get into how many particles i’m breathing out and whether this or that like i’m just trying to be safe for myself and other people can i just keep it there at that simple level and try to move forward the best that i can one of the things that i had read said that the need for simplicity arises from the fact that what we are dealing with is not simple life is not simple people in relationships are not simple god is not simple and i was like huh that’s interesting so the need for simplicity arises because things aren’t simple to begin with you know we talk about that whole simple program for complicated people maybe we were like over complicating everything before and so the need to keep it simple arises out of that to combat it yeah for sure focusing on getting back to focusing on important things you know like we get so lost in the nuances of self-centeredness you know thinking about every interaction all right i’m going to do this and they’re going to say that and then what’s going to happen and how are we going to deal with this problem and what do we do about that whereas a program brings us back to all right you know what’s in front of me this is the problem in front of me what are the steps i need to do to move forward instead of trying to predict and persuade and coerce you know we just live practice the principle and leave the outcomes alone i feel like a lot of our cliches are based around simplicity
make a foundation there and then you can regrow your life as a recovered person yeah one of the things i had looked at about this was about uh it gave some ideas what simplicity is and a lot of it boiled down to having a purpose that said simplicity was being able to find your purpose because once you can do that there’s ways to lay out what’s your priorities and then know what’s your secondaries and that helps keep decision making simpler yes because like i i know what’s important to me what’s important to me oh for instance what’s important to me today on a sunday well i want to record the podcast i want to watch football guess what’s on my agenda today i’m recording the podcast and then i’m watching football like that’s what i want to do uh american football for for you europeans and others out there um it’s just something i like so i knowing that those things are like high on my list you know now now granted there’s higher things on my list so if they were to come up or whatever i might have to cancel these plans but i have an idea of that priority list in my head sometimes yesterday dropped my daughter off at softball went to the gym i’m like yeah get my workout in i’m all happy about that i get one exercise in i get a phone call oh she hurt her knee and has to go to the hospital and even though i know my priority is my kids i was pissed i was like god damn i want to get my workout in like this is [ __ ] why’d she hurt herself right like she did this to you i’m conflicted and and my brain is saying like she’s not really hurt she don’t need to go to hospital she just needs to sit on that goddamn bench until i’m done my workout all right um so i i don’t always like my priorities but i do generally know where they are i mean what did i do i left the gym and angrily drove over there and went to the hospital with her and she’s fine of course god damn it
and that is one of the things recovery helped me to do was sort through my priorities and not treat you know everything the same like i’ve through this step work and through the process of recovery i’ve learned to identify like all right what things in my spirit are make me feel the best so like you could have ignored your kid and done your workout and been like [ _ ] it she’ll be fine for an hour or two and i’d have better yeah well would you so and i don’t know maybe it would but like for me a lot of times i recognize that i’m selfish and i don’t live according to my values i live according to my immediate gratifications that was the problem in addiction i always gave into the gratification and i didn’t follow through on you know my my principles i knew it was wrong to be dishonest i knew it was wrong to lie to my family i knew it was wrong to steal from my parents like but i did those things anyway because it got me what i needed to get in the moment you know and it seemed like the right thing to do impulsively it was leg day bro nobody wants to do leg day it was a sacrifice already for my personal well-being right like i you couldn’t do squats at the hospital ah yeah i guess i could have but there wasn’t a whole lot of space they might have looked at me funny they might have put me on the fourth floor but no i so here’s my thing i tend to believe and maybe this is all made up because i just want to [ _ ] work out and do what i want to do right maybe i made all this up afterwards but my belief is that the world has moved into overreacting a little bit and i think everybody at the field all the adults maybe my wife too overreacted like to me it’s like look okay she hurt her knee is she in danger of death no is the hospital really gonna do anything for a situation like this besides tell you hey you should probably go see an orthopedist sometime next week no so what is the [ _ ] rush like i just didn’t get it like sit her on the bench let her sit there let her rest i’ll take her home when i’m done my workout she’ll sit around for the weekend and if it doesn’t feel better then we’ll make an appointment monday and you know bearing that out we went to the hospital we laid there she got an x-ray x-ray was negative and they said hey here’s an orthopedist you might want to call if it doesn’t heal up by the middle of next week and it’s like well that to me just says yes we didn’t need to rush to in a [ _ ] ambulance to the hospital like what were we doing that for we knew they weren’t going to do anything i just i don’t know but i i also feel the guilt of because everyone else has this semblance of overreaction if i don’t i’m like ostracized and pushed out of the group and so then i feel pressured to do what i don’t believe in right did you struggle did you talk to them about your concerns like did you say hey you know why don’t we go home and put some ice on and put it up for a little bit and see what happens they had already called the ambulance ambulance yeah they put her in an ambulance to drive her three blocks she was in elkton and she was three blocks from the hospital and they put her in ambulance so i’m now gonna co-sign your overreaction
if the leg wasn’t like if the foot wasn’t hanging off or the limb wasn’t you know i mean apparently i mean we’ve seen some gruesome football injuries you know you’ve seen ones where it’s like ooh he needs the hospital but there wasn’t even a collision or anything she stepped on home plate it was slippery she hyper-extended her knee is the league get sued or something i don’t know but she apparently she went to try to stand up and couldn’t and so they i guess they got freaked out they stopped the whole game i mean i pulled up 15 minutes later she’s still laying behind home plate i’m like
let’s raise it because well whatever but yeah that seems a little bit overreacting and look it’s not like a tough guy like oh suck it up and rub some dirt on it it’s like help her ass off the field to the bench and play the goddamn softball game like we don’t need to all lay here and watch her or watch her lay there behind home plate like that’s it just seemed i get your knees in pain but i don’t think that means we can’t move you your back or neck okay maybe yeah right your knee like okay we’ll we’ll hobble you off like we’ll put you on our arms like they do anywhere i don’t know i didn’t feel like i was being unreasonable but either way well so if it was me i probably would have still would have left the gym and went there i would have done that well i did but i didn’t want to yeah i thought so where i was going with all that was for me personally like if i didn’t and then i went home that night i would feel bad if i didn’t you know what i mean if i had stayed at the gym and worked out i’d have been like i probably should have showed over mike well and here’s the other thing right as i’m leaving the gym angry of course that thought always creeps in well that’s god’s will buddy you were about to hurt yourself if you’d done three more exercises you were gonna pull some muscles your knee out with squats and i was going to be out of the gym for months and you would probably really need it sounds simple i was like i guess god saved me by doing this
i mean that’s i know that’s my view on life that that’s exactly what was meant to happen and and that’s my little take on the reason why it was meant to happen maybe there was some other profound reason right maybe but maybe how simplicity works is you go all right what is my value that’s what my action needs to be you know and it’s not a judgment so i don’t know you know your own values like my values have changed over my recovery different ones take priority at different times and they ebb and flow and change in my life you know but how once i know what the value is all right this is the value this is the action that needs to go along with that stop [ _ ] thinking about it so so the the reality for me is yeah i want to show up for my kid but i didn’t want that [ _ ] to happen right there’s just frustration that it happened right the the ego the part of me that uh is not okay with what is yeah and that’s what it was i no why the [ _ ] did you hurt yourself you should have been more careful uh some they should have wiped off home plate so it wasn’t slippery like something like something should have happened that that did not happen in that moment because it interfered with what the [ _ ] i was trying to do right that’s all so yeah i i i think i can do the the simple action and follow what i’m supposed to do just not happily i’m just going to do it crumbly so your actions are simple but mentally in this stupid situation well see that’s where your overthinking comes in you just go you know what my kid was hurt i showed up i did the right thing they know i’m there they know i love them i’m there to support or that’s that i would assume the sentiment you’re trying to send that would be me the sentiment i’m trying to send look you’re hurt you need something i’ll stop what i’m doing and come help you that’s all it was the rest of it the overreaction and stuff yeah it probably was but do you want to get hung up on that or do you want to get really hung up on well i did the right thing and according to my values it was the right thing to do for me it was the right thing to do for my kid and i can just let it go and be happy i can’t keep it simple in this situation because there’s other factors god damn it here’s the complicating factors we just spent six weeks running back and forth to hospitals and inpatient treatment centers to help this kid since she’s been home for a whole two weeks now every day there’s something that makes my day harder right whether that’s driving somewhere extra this is the second trip to the hospital in two weeks this is you know phone calls throughout my day and i’m trying to take in between sessions with people in the little 15 minutes i have to call back oh what’s going on at school why did you have to call and it’s like every [ _ ] day and here it is it’s supposed to be saturday in a softball game where i don’t have to worry about school or something going wrong and it’s one more thing it’s like yeah if i can just erase my memory from the last two months this probably is a real simple thing sure okay damn something happened that’s awful but it’s every [ _ ] day and i’m over it so jenny could probably tell you i i guess it’s okay to say if not we can take this out but having a kid with a disability you just get used to that that’s just part you know is it like when you don’t not every day but when you get periods of time like you have like three or four days where you don’t get a call or you don’t have something going it’s like man it’s been a good week
this doesn’t even have to do with her disability but i get a call from the school nurse like every other day yeah she’s like you know we’re on a first name basis like hey karen hey jenny yeah yeah but it was you know when we had our it was there was con whether it was a behavioral thing or a medical thing or a doctor thing or you know it just there was always stuff yeah i didn’t know it was that daughter that had the softball accent yeah no wonder the alarm bells went off everybody’s probably very sensitive around her you know even if they don’t know what’s going on they just know something’s going on so so is it is it it’s everyday i just need to adapt i need to get better it’s not every day forever it’s every day for now yeah two years and nine days well so we’re all you know eight days kill us meditators right you know like we’re all practicing to train our minds you know we all have our personal practices so can you work on like your mind got spun off like so as soon as you got the call you can’t work out anymore your mind went into like your kind of selfish desires if you don’t mind me calling it that you know like i mean can you train your mind like nope you know what simple my priority is my children workouts second so boom i don’t want to waste any more mental energy on that it’s simple i got to go take care of the kid work out later and see that’s part of my meditation process so i’ve been tried a lot of different things but currently what i do in meditation is try to just for exactly that reason but i try to sit and be present in the moment like i’ll sit in the room what sounds do i hear what’s the air feel like do i feel my breathing can i feel it coming in and out am i fully present in this moment and everything that’s going on or am i thinking about 15 other things that i got to do at work later and what about after work and what’s for dinner and all this other [ _ ] like none of that matters in that moment what matters is what’s in front of me right here and now those other things can be taken care of later well and going back to the polyvagal theory episode i mean my my meditation looks pretty similar to that not exactly but it’s a it’s a lot about the awareness of now um and that poly bagel theory you know of like where’s my nervous system at in this moment and that’s i mean i recognize it a lot of times so far but i i have not yet gotten to that next level of like oh i’m in that sympathetic nervous system i’m irritated with everybody around me reaction i see it i’m still just gonna go with it i’m not too uh thwarting it than doing something else or or you know just allowing it to exist quite yet i’m not i’m not there i had an a sponsor and she said this one often be where your feet are and i i like that one that stuck with me be where your feet are i did a grounding meditation one time and i do it with a lot of my people now where you know it’s just really a general body scan mostly superficial on the outside like can you feel your socks can you feel the weight of your pants on your legs as a material course is it soft whatever we work our way up but the the grounding truth in the end of it is like this is your truth this is what your experience is right now and all that story you make up in your head is fake like it may or may not be real at some later point in time when you’re there to deal with it but at this moment all that my kid’s unsafe in the world is my marriage okay like all that has made the [ _ ] up the truth is you can feel your feet that’s the reality and so it’s similar concept uh and i do like it yeah and sometimes i i mean to calm myself down i just try to remind myself like i have food i have shelter you know what i mean like all my basic needs are met i am okay whatever’s going on right now it’s gonna be okay i don’t know why in those moments i can’t be like life’s entirely [ _ ] made up and fake anyway who gives a [ _ ] what does it matter if i’m doing leg presses or i’m [ _ ] going to the hospital i have a cupcake what’s the difference it’s all the same [ _ ] it’s all made up huh all right
this episode has been brought to you in part by voices of hope inc a non-profit recovery organization made up of people in recovery family members and allies together members strive to protect the dignity of those that use drugs and those in recovery by advocating for treatment harm reduction and support resources and mentoring please visit us at www.voicesofhopemaryland.org
and consider donating to our
calls uh back to simplicity a little bit not that i think we’re too far off the topic so another reading i found was it said so when we say that a a is a simple program we need to be clear on what we are saying a a is a simple program and i imagine that’s all 12 steps a a is a simple program in that it gives us a set of simple tools to deal with what are in fact complicated matters we use these tools to work our way through the real complexities of life and in the process simplify it and come out on the other side of those complexities so just reiterating that theory of like life is [ _ ] complicated it’s hard there’s so many aspects even though they are all made up and the more we can get kind of grounded into that purpose of being and what matters to us and how to live in a way that honors that and and i think you know i always feel [ _ ] like i should go hang out with the starbucks horoscope chicks when i say things that honor this or honor that but but yeah like i would like to meet those starbucks horoscope tricks but where where was my purpose in life my only purpose in life when using was using right and so in recovery like am i gonna let my only purpose be some of these other methods of acting out or am i gonna have this purpose of like discovering what matters to me maybe it is my kids maybe it’s not and you know what if it’s not my [ _ ] kids that’s okay as long as i’m okay with it but i just feel like our society doesn’t leave a lot of room for that like even if you feel okay with it it’s hard to be okay in yourself when everybody around you is kind of looking at you with like oh this motherfucker’s crying well and of course i have an opinion about that too kids are a tough one only because like they didn’t ask to be in that situation you brought them into this situation so now you bear some responsibility but as far as like jobs and houses and all that other [ _ ] that’s all totally gonna argue with this one my kids give me that [ _ ] when i when i’m like you guys are asking for too much you’re asking for too many rides to see too many friends and on there like well we didn’t ask to be here i’m like [ _ ] i didn’t ask to be here either so don’t give me that [ _ ] like oh yeah i don’t necessarily mean about that the ride well just in general i mean like that that idea that oh my kids didn’t ask to be here so i need to show up for them well i didn’t have to [ _ ] be here either and i didn’t even ask for them to be here i just had sex like i just i liked having sex that’s not i don’t know but that’s a consequence of your action it is but i mean if i didn’t ask to be here to begin with how can i be held responsible for somebody else not asking to be here like that’s weird that’s a weird concept like that’s a weird argument to me oh they didn’t ask to be here so you’re responsible for taking care of them like well one does i mean to me like they both make sense but one doesn’t justify the other one like the fact that i didn’t ask to be here all my responsibilities you know what i mean like i didn’t ask to be here but that doesn’t mean i held no responsibility for my decisions and actions it’s kind of like addiction and trauma like you aren’t responsible for the trauma that happened to you but you were responsible for fixing it right so you got to hold off on that one for a second okay yeah uh okay yeah i agree just because i didn’t ask to be here doesn’t absorb me of responsibility for my life i totally agree i say the same applies though when you say oh well your kids sitting has to be here okay and they need to take personal responsibility for their [ _ ] life some people’s responsibility for their life is the fact that they had [ _ ] parents yeah well once they’re okay like now my kids are older so i can i do put some of those responsibilities back on them but it’s a it’s a balance you know like now my kids have more freedom because like they drive and stuff or like my 17 year old she wants to run all over the place and she’s been lazy getting her license and i’m like dude i’ll do what i can but i’m not cancelling my [ _ ] plans and rearranging my whole day to make sure you can get somewhere like if you need to get there i can tell you when i can do it and that’s gotta work or you make other arrangements you know so there is some give and take there it’s not like my life is enslaved to my children i just need to clarify for the record i have five kids and i love them very much and i do my best as a dad oh you do you are but i i i do fall short it’s [ _ ] hard it’s very selfless parenting is a very very selfless thing and it’s difficult yeah i hope they all have kids and pay for their [ _ ] childhoods what was your point again now what did you say oh um when you were talking about trump and being responsible yeah because you said um well i didn’t want to i didn’t want to be here either you know like you didn’t have to get born either and here i am but you know i was just saying that you know you weren’t responsible for the trauma that caused our addictions but we are responsible to uh heal it so and that’s an interesting thing i think that’s a concept maybe for another episode where we we don’t explain that very well we say that like you’re not responsible for your disease but then you are responsible for everything you did in it like that’s an interesting way that we kind of view that right like you’re not like we say that you know addiction is not a moral failing and and you come to the program it’s like look man you couldn’t have done anything different you didn’t know any better like now it’s just about getting on track and learning and all that stuff but then we say oh yeah but all the [ _ ] you did yeah you’re totally liable for all that like you definitely got to go to jail you definitely got to pay up your debts you definitely got to own a responsibility for the wrongs you did yeah but my opinion of that i mean that’s all 100 true my opinion or or my experience with that is that is more for healing for myself and not for like some abdication of the wrong i did or whatever it’s it’s really to to heal the guilt and shame that i have from those things
for some of that yeah going to prison for 10 years after you’ve been clean for three years because of something you did in addiction does not feel like it’s anything for that person yeah that’s a that’s terrible right but that’s but we we do believe that though you had oh well you did it right well you did it yeah but you did it when you were [ _ ] high and you were not responsible for that apparently so it’s just an interesting concept i think it’s weird um so going back to simplicity a little bit you know some of the things that came up when i was reading about it minimalism right like uh and i’ve looked into minimalism before like not needing attractive things i only have three shirts right one shirt what are you talking about i’m just shirtless on sundays when i watch your laundry every day or you wear the same shirt well look you bring up laundry right laundry bathing these kind of ideas like i think we probably overdo this i don’t want to you know there was that big thing about some actor and actress who don’t make their kids wash enough or something in the news recently and i was like wow i probably fall on the side of this that is going to get judged like you don’t need to bathe as often as we bathe we’re crazy about this [ _ ] i’m not going to judge you i mean if the pandemic taught us anything it’s that showering’s overrated well it’s just i mean it’s incredible that like we look at history of the world and animals and how much they shower or clean and and then you just look at the history of like modern man and like bathing the way we bathe is not the norm and all of a sudden overnight we just accepted this myth like oh yeah you have to shower every day and wear these perfumes and deodorants and blah blah blah it’s like where the [ _ ] did that come from and why the sudden do we all buy in when i worked i used to shower every day but as a stay-at-home mom it’s just you know so yeah no it’s not something a little bit i’ve heard not to get way off on a thing about that but the little bit i’ve heard about that is a lot of that is our like sort of lizard brain primal uh like mating habits mating rituals because if you aren’t the one that showers and wears a perfume and puts on the makeup the other woman is and look at the lady that showers every day and her hair is all done her makeup’s all done she’s gonna get she’s going to attract a better man then and it’s some it’s some primal competition you know subliminal competition yeah well and it ties into that book i was just telling you guys about that i’m reading about this idea that our generally like lizards whatever they did 100 million years ago it’s still what they do because without a change in dna they can’t change their their natural habits right like chimpanzees just do the same [ _ ] they’ve always done and without a long-term span and change of their genetics they will always just do what they’ve done they can’t do anything different but humans have the ability to do something different we can change overnight not maybe overnight literally but really really fast yeah just waiting at a time we make up a new myth right and one of the things and i i don’t know why but this is one of the only ones that comes to my mind is i was in high school and and girls had pubic hair like that was just what they did yeah right and then i graduated high school and overnight yeah it was all bald vaginas and it was like holy [ _ ] what like yeah even in the 70s and 80s like when you saw like playboy magazines they had i mean it ruined so many good construction site sayings you know like like you can’t call it a beaver anymore like that doesn’t make sense and you can’t you can’t say that when you put something up and it’s a little wrong you can’t say oh it’s just a [ _ ] hair off like nobody knows what they are anymore i know it’s a terrible thing sorry jenny but but it was one of those like overnight changes and i imagine it was probably the same when women started shaving their legs like it just happened so sporadically in their underarms and like these things we look at them today as if they’ve been there forever but our society just has the ability to shift overnight our beliefs our cultures our values and ideas and and i think some of simplicity is really stepping back from that to evaluate what really matters to us right all about like feminism and new ideas and and people who don’t want to go into the process of shaving i get it shaven’s a pain in the dick i don’t even like shaving my face right it’s a pain and yet at the same time i know what i value is what i grew up with and that’s the fact that i would personally like my partner to have shaved underarms and shaved legs like it just it’s not as attractive because that’s what i was programmed for and i get that but the ability to step back and say hey look yeah you don’t have to do it but for me i’d prefer it and and some women prefer it and that’s fine like so is that part of simplicity just the ability to step back from what our society says all the time because we just come up with this [ _ ] even though it feels like it’s been ingrained in us forever like all this is pretty new yeah as far as like the uh what do you call that materialism stuff you mean materialism or just any of our values our values shift way quicker than we realize and we just we hold on to them like they’re the most important thing ever for my mother my mother will say she feels a terrible guilt for not sending someone a card that lets them know she thought of them on a special occasion well guess what hallmark hasn’t been around that [ _ ] long so like cards have not been around that long so that’s a new concept but she buys in as if it’s been you know from the beginning of man if you didn’t do this you’re wrong and she has never stepped back and said oh maybe i can evaluate if that’s right for my life or not or maybe she has and she just decided it was but like i just think most of our values and concepts and ethics they’re all [ _ ] made up but we change them over time and we grasp onto them like well this is all that matters yeah so i’m just curious if like part of simplicity is stepping back and saying what really matters to me like i need to keep it simpler well and i know for us having that ex so we had the experience i think i’ve talked about it on here maybe not um a few years ago we sold our house and sold all our stuff and we moved into a camper and we traveled around the country just living in a trap you know big fifth wheel camper and when we went through that process so before we did that i was like there is no way like we had a house with a couple of acres of property and all the stuff that comes along with the house and you know washer dryer all those things washer yeah all those things and it was nice to have this big yard and a playground in the back and thought how are we gonna have you know how do you live without all of this [ _ ] and what we ended up doing is we put our house up for sale and we took our camper and just put it at a local campground that was like five miles from our house and we stayed there one whole summer we just said all right let’s see if the five of us can live in this camper for a summer because i thought we’re all going to want to [ _ ] kill each other we’re going to be on top of each other there’s not going to be any space we’re going to be fighting over the one tv you know all that and after that summer i was like oh my gosh i love this this is [ _ ] incredible i can’t wait to get out of this house because what would happen is you know we had the camper it took probably an hour to clean the thing from top to bottom you had one small bathroom you had one small living room you could clean everything there was a minimal amount of dishes that would fit in there so when you use [ _ ] you had to wash it you know fairly right away you couldn’t let things pile up in the sink and we just got away from a lot of the modern conveniences but it made life so much simpler and easier and i could go do my regular job and come home and be like oh [ _ ] i get to like enjoy the rest of my afternoon because i don’t have grass demo and a [ _ ] washing machine that needs fix and laundry to do that was the other thing so we would take our laundry to the laundromat and let them do it because we didn’t have a washer dryer so you just take it there and pay them to do it i [ _ ] loved that i mean that was incredible let’s cut the little green spiky things in the backyard so that we can cut them again next week when they come back right right and just that experience was i would have never thought that going into it but then on the other side it was like oh yeah that minimalist thing and there’s trade-offs to each i mean there was some inconveniences to to having not a lot of space and you know not having a lot of the modern stuff right in your house um but there was a great benefit too i thought of this a lot of times in my house it’s just it would be way easier to upkeep cleaning up if we just didn’t have [ _ ] like a and and maybe that’s a very i don’t feel like cleaning up kind of view but it’s like there’s just so much [ _ ] laying around and i’m like we don’t never use any of this like let’s just get rid of it and we don’t have to keep putting it away because it doesn’t keep getting pulled out so that’s one of the things we we had put a whole bunch of stuff in storage we took all this stuff we had to put it in storage and [ _ ] paid a storage bill for like a year and a half and we never went and touched any of that stuff never and so at the end of like a year and a half we said you know what i don’t think we need that storage shed anymore and all the [ _ ] in it can go there was like one or two like sentimental things that we might have kept but we got rid of like all the rest of that [ _ ] in that storage [ _ ] and we’re just like we don’t need all this [ _ ] how you described your camper experience that’s exactly what i love about camping it’s like when you wake up you’re like well what am i going to eat today what am i going to do today that kind of sim that’s vacation that kind of simple existence i have a fantasy of doing like a retreat you know just like a meditation retreat you know and just the real simple like wake up eat meditate walk you know i can just and it’s not for relaxation but just for like clarity of mind clarity of purpose one day i’ll do that but i think that’s one of the huge attractions to the whole homesteading movement and why people love that nowadays if you see there’s shows about it and that’s what i want to do um it’s just your your responsibilities not that they go away because there’s a lot of them but they’re on base level things like how am i going to get my water today how am i going to get my food today how am i you’re not trying to contemplate like how am i gonna solve this problem with bob in accounting over the reconciliation of the budget like you’re not none of that matters like i just need to go get some [ _ ] berries and shoot me a squirrel like it’s so much easier because i want to eat i just talked to somebody who was hunting squirrels and eating them i think that’s a weird concept it seems so weird yeah i don’t i am you know it’s interesting to watch you two talk about this because i’m like looking at your lives camping probably means simplicity right there’s so much less for you to do and i’m like as a guy who doesn’t do much
it actually sounds harder for me because i’m not avoiding anything that i already would be i mean i avoid all that [ _ ] now like i just don’t do it now so to go camping just means i have less luxuries it doesn’t really mean i get to avoid any of the the trade-off so the the trade-offs of a simpler life are a lot of your decisions get reduced you know what i mean like we didn’t but you’re giving up conveniences so like when we were camping in the camper like we had one television and we didn’t even have cable so what you [ _ ] watched on tv you didn’t get a lot of choices you had whatever tv stations you could pick up at the time some of the campgrounds we would stay at would have cable whatever but just something so stupid like that it just drastically reduces your choices i’m not trying to choose between 130 channels of three different movies that might be interesting or this sporting thing or that sporting thing it’s like nope i’m just not gonna watch tv i’ll do something else can i do i get to pick the channel because if i can i can live with one i just want one channel but i want to be able to pick which one it is but the idea being you’re giving up the luxuries which seems inconvenient but the mental anguish that you go through that you don’t even recognize trying to decide what to watch or what to eat or when to do your laundry or when to do it when all those shit’s taken away it’s so much easier i gotta be honest i feel like my life set up in a way where i am only giving up the luxuries like i don’t feel like i don’t feel like i’m actually getting rid of anything i’m like damn i feel like you guys talked about this before like does more choices mean more freedom or is it less choices you know the simple math yeah i think that came up before i don’t know i have a lot of gratitude right now though for my life like i’m feeling bad for you guys your major inconvenience is having to leave the gym too early i know i had to sit at the hospital for an hour and a half god damn with my loved ones pretty good yeah it was really it was honestly i’m i’m pretty amazing it might have been two hours tops i was like holy [ __ ] this was quickest ever maybe that’s compared to the ambulance if you should roll into
yeah i’m just going to go in an ambulance from now that’s the only way to get there cut my finger i need right nine you guys gotta come take it uh so another idea besides minimalism was just doing less and i thought that was interesting because i i don’t so i don’t personally choose to do a lot and yet with five kids there’s a lot to be done i mean four of them are in sports three of those four are on two different teams one for school one for rec like we have practices or games every week night friday night half of saturday just listening to your schedule is stressing me out yeah yeah yeah and it’s it’s a lot and i i honestly do not like it i love that my kids get to be active and play competitive sports and at the same time i hate that we don’t as a family have the ability to hang out on friday night and say what do you guys feel like doing tomorrow like do you want to go do a corn maze do you want to go to a pumpkin patch do you want to go take a hay ride with some warm cider do you want to go take a hike somewhere like what are we feeling like oh god hey there’s a new fare over there that’s open this weekend we should go check that out you know what there’s a reptile show and it’s an expo why don’t we go like walk through that lizard like i just i wish we had that capability more often or or hey let’s go see my mother and spend some time with her we don’t see her all the time and i feel like my schedule is so busy i was just texting a guy today was today october 17th texted him this morning he was talking to me about uh the last episode or the one that just came out with with jen the pure one right and me uh arguing with her and and he was like man we really need to hang out i was like we we really do i’d love to see you go get something to eat whatever and i looked at my calendar just to get some ideas and i was like what do you think of november 20th like that’s the next day where i really feel like there’s space to even think about putting something else in and i’m like it’s been that way for a month and a half now i guess and i’m like i [ _ ] hate it so i frequently tell people like we’re and i’ve told you this a lot we’re kind of on the other side of that now our two older daughters they’re kind of done with sports they’re out of that they do a lot of their own independent things i mean my 17 year old hasn’t quite got her license yet but she’s working on it and uh it’s so great i mean no but what i would say about that and i frequently say this to people is i don’t regret re investing that time in their life like yes it did make it chaotic yes it it was hectic and in the moments i [ _ ] hated it i was overwhelmed it felt like a lot i felt like i was never doing things that i wanted to do but in hindsight it’s like most of the tough decisions that we make in life it’s like in hindsight i can look back and go man i’m glad i did that for my kids now they’re getting to be adults you know what i mean they know i love and support them that support that they need is way less now and it’s way easier right um and like my son is the only one left in sports and it’s so much easier well well and the truth for my life is that like a lot of that is handled by you know my wife and her parents help out sometimes when neither of us can do it like i work two evenings a week i have a meeting one evening week so like i’m not a huge part of the chaos it’s just the times when i don’t have something to do i do have something to do and that’s frustrating for me but i do i have been reminding myself that like just and i could be wrong but projecting forward i think this is as busy as it will ever get like i think once these sports seasons end next month it will never be this many sports teams at the same time again because my daughters are getting older and so those two won’t be doing as much and you know i think i’m going to do a better job of one sport a season for the other ones like right now there’s seven sports teams and that’s yeah that’s [ _ ] a lot but but reminding myself like okay this is as much as it’s gonna get and there’s a month left not even a month so it’ll be okay and then it’ll get better and it is funny the grasses sort of always looks greener on the other side of the fence because now like with my son i’m always like oh man we should have signed up for travel ball and we should have done this because now he’s only playing like two or three times a week and he would like to play more and i like don’t always rationalize that out to be like all that commitment of time is also my commitment of time and then talking to some of the parents you know that were on the travel ball like they actually ended up pulling their kids because they were like man we were traveling every weekend it was like we would have to go and you’re spending money for a hotel because it’s seven hours away and then that’s your entire weekend and if they win a couple games then you’re there [ _ ] all day you know saturday and sunday and you’re not getting home till late sunday night and they were just like it’s just a lot every weekend and i was like huh yeah i’m probably glad we didn’t even try like i’ve been in sports tournaments where i wasn’t rooting for my kids team to lose but i was kind of hoping i’m ready see i can’t if i had that spiritual schedule i mean that sports schedule it would knock me off my spiritual balance beam so we you know i’ve chosen not to do organized sports with my kids i you know i schedule out we’re getting into the holiday season i try for like one event per weekend it’s like i schedule space because if i you know there’s always something between like us hanging out the down syndrome association or like family or just community events like i could sign up for two two things every weekend and then i i’ll get off my spiritual balance beam and then [ _ ] happens so i just schedule one thing per weekend and then there’s room for impulse if you’re like maybe i do want to go to that you’re like i feel okay we got enough sleep let’s go do that you know right and i’m really lucky i my wife is good at scheduling those things because i’m the other way just i’m not a person that likes a lot of down time and i don’t know that that’s good for me but i’ll [ _ ] work every day and just oh yeah just work i mean i’m doing nothing so that means i need to be doing something and then i drive myself nuts after three or four weeks of that i’m like i [ _ ] hate my life i hate everyone and this is too much and what am i doing to myself but that like that that’s the indicator that when i start feeling like that like depression or down or hate in my life i’m like hey you got to take a [ _ ] look at what you’re doing right but even i’ll take like a weekend or two and do nothing and then i’m like oh this feels terrible jenny mentioned uh spontaneous right and like through my history in my life i am not a spontaneous person like if it’s not well planned out i’m not doing it i don’t do [ _ ] spontaneous and but i’ve found that i’ve moved more to i wish i had time to do spontaneous things now i don’t know if that’s just like some dream i’m making up about how how good i look in spontaneity you know if i’m not busy like maybe that’s just a fantasy i’m telling myself but i i do feel like i’m much more able to be spontaneous now like hey yeah we’re just sitting here why don’t we get up and go do that thing and we did actually like a weekend or two ago we did go do a corn maze and got to do that and play around get some ice cream i imagine with what seven of you it’s probably hard to find things that everyone wants to do like we’ll do things a lot where it’ll be just three or four of us you know occasionally it’ll be all of us but usually like one of the kids will be like i’m not so interested and we just let them not like we don’t force them to do stuff but see i try to make times where we’re together because i don’t feel like we do a lot as a total family and i’m fine with when we don’t like like the corn maze one of us had to miss because he was off at a birthday party for some other kids doing a zoo in a corn maze or something so it’s i’m all right with it but i do try to make uh like we had a softball game friday night and my sons definitely did not want to go they wanted to stay home and play on their games and i was like nope i’m taking the baby you two are coming we’re playing and once we got there they ran around with the kids they had a blast like all the other kids at the field so i don’t know i’m a i’m a forcer sometimes i’m like i only got a few more years two years younger kids that’s the difference mine are older so they can stay home by themselves i mean and my 13 year old i can give him a couple of hours by himself he’s all right well yeah i can i could have left him there was uh there was adult supervision in the house i just i’m like while i got a chance i’m gonna force you yeah right well and they’re still at that age we’re getting them outside like you you know and we used to go through that with my son too like we would drag him to the games for the girls and he would complain but then he would get there and see his other kids that he knows so another point where are you gonna say something oh no i was just gonna back you up being a forcer like sometimes the kids don’t want to go boating they’d rather play video games i’m like no you’re coming you know i can’t leave you home well now you can bring the switch on the boat but that’s because the video games are addictive uh yeah well you know they bring it for like comfort and they don’t always use it it’s just like now there’s the option and then once we’re on the boat yeah they’ll get into crabbing and you know whatever we do on the boat right right another idea and i brought this up a little earlier was the idea of having a purpose so that you know your priorities and you know your secondaries right and this particular site was talking about listing the priorities on purpose so that way you can like study them from time to time yeah remember like i’ve done that through these are the four top priorities of my life in this specific order and now i don’t have to think when situations come up i can look does it apply to any of these because you know i know the order that they matter in my life it’s funny i it took me like 15 years in recovery to realize that recovery is about having a purpose like i didn’t know that that fit into a step and it wasn’t until i did a step working guide outside of our program step working guide where it made a big point in step three to talk about this is about finding purpose in your life and i was like is it i was never told that yeah and the other interesting part and i’ve said this a lot about like ongoing recovery and staying in the process of recovery for me has been some of those values and beliefs have changed over time you know what i mean i can look at behavior and be like well this is you know this is a belief that i was running on for a while but it doesn’t seem to be jiving with my spirit so much so maybe this isn’t as important as it should be and and then i reshuffle those priorities and reshuffle those values right right so uh one of the talked about some ideas of how to be simple how to get simple things that help with simplicity in your life one of it said was schedule your time put the big rocks in before the small ones and i kind of like that if you’ve ever heard the analogy of like how to fill up uh a glass you know and you have big rocks small rocks and then sand and then water and you know if you try to do it in any other order besides big to small they don’t all go in but if you put the big ones in first and then the little ones kind of mix in the little holes in there and then the sand mixes in where that doesn’t fill up and then obviously water will go anywhere it can and i like that idea right if you schedule your time and that doesn’t mean have your time all scheduled out right not don’t make it look like my calendar because that’s awful but scheduling in like hey this is my space for nothing or my space for spontaneous or my space for whatever we feel like on that day maybe that’s laying around maybe that’s going out whatever but yeah putting the big rocks in if you try to schedule too many smaller things i feel like that could be an issue and i went the whole other way with that i was like i felt like for me just like my daily meditation my 10 or 15 minutes of meditation like i pushed that into my schedule that’s something i got to remind myself like that’s for me that’s just my time for me well but i think that’s a big rock no i don’t think that’s a small rock i don’t think it’s like the amount of time i think it’s like oh amount of time okay oh no no okay yeah so i’m glad you said that no i would i would look at this and say oh meditation’s huge for my life gotta have a spot first and it has like i’ve i wake up probably an extra 45 minutes early to make sure i have time to make sure i don’t miss that meditation every morning for the most part there’s some mornings it doesn’t work but pretty much every day yeah and it’s a big rock it’s like that’s got to be in there so somewhere else has got to move to to shift to make room for that yeah so making sure those things these big rocks and small rocks idea that it’s your more your priorities not the time yeah yeah it’s not like i gotta fit this hersheypark trip in or nothing right it’s all about what matters making sure they fall in first because you can do anything but you can’t do everything yes and every decision to do one thing is a decision against all other possibilities it’s so hard um another theory was decluttering your digital life they said that that’s one of those things we need to do like we get so many notifications so many you know get caught up on our phones there’s so much on there there’s so much for me at least there’s so much necessity to respond to that like yeah i’m not even getting to the point where there’s like the i can just scroll for hours or get lost in a rabbit hole of information like i’m just taking care of like responding to things that i think i call necessities they’re probably just gonna say i only have one what i would call a necessity and i neglected it yesterday and i got a [ _ ] earful when i got home from the white house it was her
but yeah this this idea of like how can we make our phones less intrusive on our time and space and mind and energy and resources right like i know for me i have gone through and it’s kind of been a painstaking process i i’m the guy who over time i will go through my emails and unsubscribe to all the [ _ ] i’m like i just i’m tired of deleting these every other week right unsubscribe but for my phone i did the same with notifications i went through as each notification came in over a period of like a month it’s like nope you’re not going to make sound or vibrate nope you’re not going to make sound or vibrate i don’t even need [ _ ] notifications from you uh and so now my phone rarely makes noise and doesn’t vibrate all that often either and and like it’s interesting i don’t notice that but then when i’m laying in bed and i hear my wife’s phone vibrate on the nightstand like every eight seconds i’m like what in the [ _ ] is wrong with you yeah i’m like turn that [ _ ] off and we talked about some of that when we did our our digital when we talked about the addiction to phones and stuff and i’ve done that i i don’t have any social media i do have instagram but i don’t get any notifications for any of that stuff i think maybe messages my phone and my calendar are like the notifications that i get you know and that’s it everything else is [ _ ] hard i don’t get notifications of emails and i never turn the ringer on ever it is always on vibrate i used to be like that but then i there were some things i wanted calls for so now i’m like all right i’ll turn it on noise i’ll just make sure most of the shits every now and again i missed something like it’s like oh i wish i would have got that right away but it’s usually not as critical as i think it is right and it’s so few and far between that like man good i strive to compartmentalize more with my you know like all right this is when i do my emails this is when i respond you know in my day i’m i’m i’m working towards that yeah i don’t check my emails all weekend like i check it at work monday through friday when i’m sitting in my computer at work that’s when i check my emails i don’t [ _ ] with emails on my phone unless i’m specifically looking for something or waiting for you know something i don’t i have like 11 email accounts and i definitely oh my gosh that sounds like a sickness man yeah i have a work one and then a personal one well and and i and i do have all the notifications on my phone i i mean for me it’s mostly just deleting the notification when it comes up like it’s not like it’s time consuming but i guess that’s time consuming just in itself of like nope that’s not one of those luxuries that you wanna you know can’t go camping with maybe yeah right maybe uh another idea it had was work when you work play when you play rest when you rest like be where you’re at right be where your feet are don’t be thinking about work like you don’t have your emails your work emails on your phone because that’s not what the [ _ ] you’re doing at that point in time and like that idea is really beneficial because how often are we thinking about something else we have to do which is not simplicity right when we’re there what i’ve found for myself over time is that just thinking and dealing with work stuff awful work hours did not make me personally better at my job it really didn’t you know i’m more i’m better at my job when i’m present there like when i’m at work that gets my attention that’s what i’m doing i’m working now when i’m home that’s what i’m doing that’s where my attention is instead of mixing all that [ _ ] up yeah remember when multitasking was like the push oh i used to tell oh i’m a great multitasker and then jen pointed my wife pointed out she’s like no you’re [ _ ] terrible at it you do five things shitty like that’s what you do but they’re done oh yeah you’re right yeah they’re done done knocked them out like you are right cross more off my list and the last suggestion was learn to say no which i think is one of the hardest ones it goes back to something we brought up earlier like when we think other people in society are going to look at us different yeah and they will they will right that is what i’ve learned that this is a really the path to simplicity is the path to self-acceptance and self-love right being able to like me enough to not worry about what other people are going to think and do what’s right for me in the moment and sometimes i do that sometimes i don’t um but i do a lot better with it today just that ability like nah yeah i’m not gonna do that and i don’t give a [ _ ] what the societal pressures are or how y’all are gonna think i am as a parent or a human or like it’s just not what’s right for me i can’t do that yeah i’m bad at that i say yes to all kinds of [ _ ] without even really thinking about it like oh you need something okay i’m like why the [ _ ] am i i don’t even want to do this i don’t know any final thoughts on simplicity you know i i i screenshot a quote that was on simplicity can i read it yes okay alan watts i love him the meaning of life is just to be alive it is so plain and so obvious and so simple and yet everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves
yeah oh that’s that’s that societal shifts we’ve had you got to be this you got to be that people in 1684 weren’t worried about being successfully rich or successfully powerful in the world they were worried about [ _ ] having food yeah and i think the more and more you look at how sick our society is when it comes to you know mental health addiction suicide depression you know all these obesity like it’s obvious that um to me i don’t know maybe not but it’s obvious like whatever the [ _ ] most people are doing it’s pretty wrong so maybe i need to take a look at that and be like all right what is everybody else doing maybe i need to do something different all right so that’s our study of simplicity as a spiritual principle go out there be simple don’t complicate your goddamn life and uh stay safe
did you like this episode share it with people you think might get something out of it check out the rest of our episodes at recoveryswordof.com also while you’re there you can find ways to link up with us on facebook twitter instagram reddit youtube anything we’re always looking for new ideas got an idea you want us to look into reach out to us