Meditation

I’m going to go out on a limb here: I posit that most of you would say that the number one problem in your life is worrying. About your kids, about your financial situation, about your health, about your retirement, about your marriage, about death, and on and on.

A more compelling way of putting it is: Imagine your life if ALL worrying were eliminated. Try imagining that for a few seconds…It’s the be-all, end-all, isn’t it? No stress. No anxiety. Just inner calm.

Worrying drags down so many of us. Every day. We worry while we’re driving. While we’re eating. While we’re talking with people.

The 4 a.m. worry flurries

We even worry in the middle of the night! I can’t tell you how many people have told me they wake up at 4 a.m. and start worrying, their minds racing with thoughts about every potential doomsday scenario they’re convinced lurks around every corner. It’s torturous.

Bottom line on worrying: It causes great suffering and afflicts almost every human on earth.

Which begs the question: Why do we all worry so much? The short, ‘I don’t have 100,000 words to express it,’ answer is that our egos are the culprits.

The ego: everything we’ve held onto

What is the ego? One way to describe it is it’s the sum total of all of the experiences we’ve had that we’ve held onto.

For example, I lost a tennis match at age fourteen and saw the look of disappointment on my parents’ faces afterward. Instead of experiencing that and letting it go, I held onto it. I stored it inside.

Tennis worrying in my 50s

Decades later, I’m in a tennis tournament and my stomach is in knots about the match I’m playing in an hour. And I think to myself, “What the hell is wrong with you? It’s a stupid tennis match. Why are you so worried?”

I’m worried because of what I stored in there decades ago. It’s stored energy that never goes away unless we let it go when it comes up.

Now multiply my tennis story by thousands to come up with all the experiences I’ve stored and not let go of in my lifetime.

My first girlfriend

Here’s another example that’s more relatable. I had my first serious girlfriend my senior year in high school. It was fantastic for a few magical months…Then the potion wore off.

The truth is that I wasn’t into it anymore after about four or five months. But I felt like I’d made a commitment to her and didn’t want to let her down. So I hung in there for another six months or so. And felt terrible that whole time. Which was all my fault, not hers.

A relationship that never ended

I finally headed off to college and fell apart so badly that I had no choice but to break up with her. And that was the end of it. Right?

WRONG! It was the end of our relationship, but because I stored that experience and didn’t let it go, it tormented me in relationship after relationship…for DECADES. I’d get into a relationship, things would get rolling and then I’d freak out that I was going to have to break up and let the current girlfriend down. Time after time. It was debilitating.

Needless to say, worrying is never a good idea. The problem is that our egos constantly trick us into thinking it is. “I have to worry about keeping my job. If I don’t worry about it, I may lose it and then I won’t be able to pay my rent and buy food!”

Wrong. That person needs to NOT waste his/her energy on worrying and focus ALL of their attention and energy on doing the absolute best job they can.

Eckhart Tolle summed it perfectly by saying:

“Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.”

Fine, so worrying sucks. My attitude is, let’s not complain about it. Let’s address the problem.

What’s the solution?

Thinking logically, if our egos are the root cause of our worrying then…wouldn’t it be smart to chip away at our egos? Of course it would.

How do we do that? The first order of business is to work on getting quiet inside. How? By regularly meditating and practicing mindfulness.

What does that accomplish? It enhances our ability to watch/observe our egos rather than get swept up by them.

In the tennis example, my true, conscious self would observe that worrying/pit in my stomach an hour before my match. Instead of diving down to my lower, egoic self and being swallowed up by it, my conscious self would lean away and say, “Okay, my ego is worrying about my match.”

And that’s it. Not “Jeez, my ego is such an a-hole. Why does it worry about a dumb tennis match?” No. That’s placing a judgment on that feeling.

What meditation and mindfulness teach us is to look at ALL the elements of our present moment awareness in a nonjudgmental manner. With consistent practice, that worrying feeling becomes no different than the sound of the airplane flying overhead or the bee we see pollinating a flower. They’re just things happening in our present moment awareness.

Letting go is crucial

In addition to meditation and mindfulness, we also work diligently at letting go of those worrying situations when they arise. When that worried feeling comes up in my stomach regarding the tennis match, I lean away and watch it. And then let it go.

Then rinse and repeat this process every day for the rest of our lives on the myriad worries that prop up in our consciousness so frequently.

Amygdala shrinkage

I’ll conclude with some good news. Ever hear of the amygdala? It’s the part of our brain responsible for fight or flight and emotion regulation.

To massively simplify things, think of the amygdala as the worry wart center of your brain. The larger and more active yours is, the more neurotic and worrying you are.

Well, studies, including this one from Harvard, have shown that meditation causes our amygdalae to shrink and become less active. I can confirm through one anecdotal piece of evidence, ME, that this is accurate.

How? I can say with 100% certitude that I worry far less than I did ten years ago before I started meditating regularly.

The takeaway

So if you want to take a real crack at reducing how much you worry, start a meditation practice. Seriously. Do it.

If you’re looking for a place to start, go to my website, davidgerken.net, where I have a free, simple, easy-to-follow program. Or sign up for Calm.com or Headspace.com.

Do it for you and for everybody around you, like your kids, spouse, friends, parents, work colleagues. Because all of those people, especially YOU, will benefit immensely from you cutting back on worrying.

As incentive for you to take action on this, let’s end by again contemplating this hypothetical:

Imagine what your life would be like if you didn’t worry…

Ram Dass taught it. So did his guru, Neem Karoli Baba. And Eckhart Tolle. And Mickey Singer. In my book, it’s the supreme teaching. This is it:

Traveling the spiritual path towards awakening needs to be the primary focus of our lives.

Before getting into that, a little background on why I’m writing about this. A few days ago I was in that place of “What should I be doing? Continue writing articles on Medium? Try branching out into doing video talks on YouTube? Create an online course? Try a TEDx talk?” It’s that macro strategy talk I have from time to time, usually when I run out of gas in coming up with Medium article ideas!

Spiritual work is the main thing

After lots of frustration, it dawned on me: What I do vis a vis writing, talks, courses, etc., is not the main thing. The main thing is to keep my own spiritual awakening front and center in my life.

What I, and many others do, is allow that focus to slip. This recalls the brilliant quote by the great Stephen Covey:

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”

The reason my focus consistently falters on the primacy of spiritual work is because the compulsion to do and produce and be something “big” has always been my Achilles heel. As such, my ego lures me into perseverating over all the different paths I might pursue.

It’s insidious though because if I do succeed on YouTube or whatever else, more people will be helped by the spiritual teachings I put out. And that’s great.

My ego’s always lurking

But lurking behind, always, is my ego licking its chops with, “If video or the others hit big I’ll make good money! And maybe I’ll even achieve great notoriety. Maybe someday Oprah will interview me for Super Soul Sunday!” That’s the constant battle going on inside my whacked-out mind.

Why do I believe that the most important teaching of the great beings like Ram Dass, et al, was keeping the spiritual path front and center? Because all of their other teachings — staying present, not resisting life, nonattachment, impermanence, letting go of ourselves — won’t be realized unless we make them our life’s priority. It’s the sine qua non of spirituality.

So what do we do? We use our lives for growth. Here’s how Ram Dass put it:

“What I’m suggesting is that after a while everything in your life becomes grist for the mill for awakening, and your priorities change. Instead of, ‘Am I awakening through my work? Am I awakening through this relationship? Am I awakening through this drive? Am I awakening through how I take care of my body?’ The journey of awakening begins to dominate the terrain. There is clearly an inner shift of priority, and then you start to use your life that way.”

I’ve heard Mickey Singer say in several of his talks some version of, “This isn’t stuff you find time to work on and fit in with other pressing life matters. This is work you need to do every second of every day for the rest of your life.”

I’m putting this practice into practice right now. My wife’s mom, dad and sister are visiting for a few weeks. I don’t have any big issues with them, but the fact is that my life is upended when they visit. The parents stay in my office. I sleep at my brother’s house because there isn’t room for all of us at our place.

Using our lives to grow

So what am I doing? Using this situation as “…grist for the mill” as Ram Dass says. Taking more deep, cleansing breaths when I feel uptight and uncentered. Being present with the instability. Letting go of the impatient me when he rears his impatient head.

And also using the visit as an opportunity to serve. My father-in-law is 78 and not in great health. His favorite thing out here is a Balboa Bar, vanilla ice cream topped with chocolate sauce and peanuts. I picked one up for him yesterday on the way home from my brother’s house and he was in heaven.

My mother-in-law likes my salmon so I fired that up last night for dinner. The good vibe this engenders in me makes me think I benefit more from this than they do. But again, it’s just daily spiritual work, in this case, serving others.

The takeaway

Do we need to plan and make decisions about where and how to focus our work? Yes. The mistake is allowing that planning/scheming, or anything else, to supplant the true main thing: Our basic, everyday spiritual work.

The good news is that when we do keep that main spiritual thing the main thing, everything else falls into place.

Just writing that makes my insides unclench and relax…

First off, where did all the hair go?! I’ve been bald as a cue ball for 25 years. Actually, a cue ball with a little fuzz on the side. On the bright side, I spend a total of an hour, and $0, per year on hair care (my wife shears what little fuzz that does grow every six weeks or so. Takes five minutes.).

Now on to the great Ralph Waldo Emerson. As a 22-year-old senior at Princeton University, this is the quote I chose for my yearbook page:

“Absolve you to yourself and you shall have the suffrage of the world.”

It obviously meant a lot to me then, but all these years later it means far more.

Emerson’s mid-19th century prose can be hard to understand. So here’s my rewrite using modern language:

“Dedicate yourself to being the real, authentic you and you will live a thriving life.”

By ‘live a thriving life’ I don’t mean that you will become President of the United States or the richest person on the planet — although that could very well happen should you chart this path. I mean that you will be energized, enthusiastic and content.

How do we discover the real, authentic us? It’s a three-step process. First, we get quiet inside. Second, we listen to the silence.

The great Persian poet Rumi put it best:

“There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.”

That is the voice we listen to in the silence. It’s the sacred voice that people refer to as God, the Universe, the Supreme Being and a host of others. Whatever it is, it is the deepest essence of us.

So we get quiet. Then we listen to the mysterious voice. The third thing we do is act on what the voice tells us. How? We follow our intuition. We follow our nose.

Finding our path in life usually doesn’t come in one ‘listening’ session. Mark Twain, perhaps the greatest of all American writers, serves as a salient example. Twain didn’t become a writer with one youthful epiphany. It happened in stages.

Mark Twain’s circuitous path to writing

When he was twelve, a measles epidemic decimated Twain’s Iowa town. He was so sure he’d die that he snuck out of his home and got in bed with his friend who was deathly ill from it. Twain got very sick but lived.

His mother was so upset with him for doing this that she sent him to another town to be an apprentice to a printer. This introduced him to reading and books.

In his late teens, Twain found a fifty-dollar bill on the ground. After nobody claimed it, he used the money for a trip to the Amazon, a fascination he’d developed from a book he printed. To get to Brazil he needed to take a steamboat down the Mississippi. And that was when he fell in love with the Mississippi and the boats that traversed it.

These events and many more led, decades later, to Twain writing America’s greatest novel, Huckleberry Finn. And it was all the result of Twain listening to the voice within. Following his nose.

I loved the quote but didn’t live it

Why does the Emerson quote resonate more with me now than when I made it my yearbook quote? While it struck a deep chord back in 1987, the fact is that I didn’t live Emerson’s quote for several decades.

I got a job in Washington, D.C., after graduation and allowed myself to get swallowed up by the political power game. “I’m a legislative assistant, which is cool, but so and so is the legislative director for a congressman. I need to be that!”

Then it was onto lobbying and measuring myself by how many dollars I made. Needless to say, chasing power and money always left me a few French fries short of a Happy Meal.

Still short of fries in Hollywood

Then it was off to Hollywood where I chased creative glory. Everything was measured by who had what writing job on what show and at what level. Yet again, I was wanting for fries.

It wasn’t until I discovered meditation, mindfulness and the spiritual path that I truly felt that I had ‘absolved me to myself.’ That’s what those practices push us toward — quieting down our insides so we can hear, as Rumi wrote, that “…voice that doesn’t use words.”

Which has led to my feeling that I have ‘the suffrage of the world.’ That is, I’m allowing the true me to come through me. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the world keeps showering me with good fortune.

The takeaway

So what does this all mean for you? Get quiet inside. Drown out the external mind noise.

The real, authentic you is in there, dying to be heard. Listen for it. Let it take over the steering wheel of your life. When you do, ‘you shall have the suffrage of the world.’

A pillar of the spiritual journey is determining who you are and, just as important, who you aren’t. The problem plaguing humanity is that most people identify themselves with something they aren’t: Their minds.

This mind versus consciousness topic is wide-ranging and can be examined from a multitude of perspectives. This piece is about juxtaposing the mind with our conscious, true self through the analogy of a flashlight. How does that work?

We can flash our light on whatever we want

Our consciousness, us, is like a flashlight. We can flash it on anything we like. You head to the beach and are gobsmacked by a sublime sunset. So gobsmacked that your flashlight shines on that sunset.

After marveling at this for a while, your growling stomach tells your flashlight to shine on the picnic basket you and your wife brought with you. It shines on the cheese and crackers that you prepare and then gobbles down.

Cheese, crackers, and dolphins

While chowing down on the cheese and crackers, you see a pair of dolphins loping gently through the water hunting for their dinner. So your flashlight quickly turns its focus to the dolphins.

After a few minutes of dolphin watching, you-know-who pays a visit: Your mind. It creates thoughts about the presentation you have to give at work in the morning.

“I think I’m prepared. I spent all day yesterday and today on it…But I should probably go home and spend four or five more hours on it just to be sure.”

It’s not a hugely significant presentation. The boss won’t even be there. Nevertheless, you turn to your wife and tell her it’s probably a good idea to head home soon.

What happened? Your mind created thoughts that were so powerful they attracted your flashlight to shine on them. And not just then, but as you were packing up and also on the drive home. Mind, mind, mind. Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts.

Your mind demands that the light flash on it

Lucky for us the mind only attracts our flashlight periodically…NOT!!!! Our mind is so loud and so alluring that it lures our flashlight to shine on it almost all the time.

And that’s where our discussion turns to who we are and who we aren’t. Let’s start with that entity most of us think we are: The mind.

What is the mind? It’s the sum of our learned experiences.

To take our picnic-goer at the beach as an example, those thoughts about needing to polish up his presentation didn’t appear out of nowhere. They came from myriad prior experiences.

Here’s a big one. His dad, who grew up during the Depression and was always afraid that starvation lurked around the corner, beat into his head a thousand times the Ben Franklin quote:

‘By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.’

That fear of under-preparation burrowed deep into his psyche and still calls the shots several decades later.

Your thoughts aren’t you

Here’s the thing: Those thoughts that generated the fearful response of fleeing the beach are not who he is. They’re just another element that attracted the attention of his flashlight/consciousness. Those thoughts his mind produced are no more who he is than the sunset, the cheese, and crackers, or the dolphin.

That brings us full circle back to humanity’s biggest challenge: Our minds are so loud and powerful that they attract our flashlights to shine on them almost all of the time.

“Shine on me! I’m worried about my presentation!”

“Shine on me! I just looked in the mirror and hate what my body looks like!”

“Shine on me! My nine year old failed his math test and I don’t think he’ll make it in this harsh, cruel world!”

So what are we to do? Commit ourselves to weakening that fearful, complaining, relentless mind we all have. Why? So that our flashlight/us won’t constantly be drawn to shining on it and putting it in the driver’s seat of our lives.

A quiet mind allows the light to flash on the moment

When we’re successful in weakening and calming that mind, guess what our flashlight shines on? Whatever the heck we’re doing in any given moment.

Having dinner with our kids and actually being there at the table, listening to them.

Writing a work memo.

Playing tennis, golf, the piano…

Looking out the window and actually seeing and experiencing the trees and the birds.

In other words, we gain the ability to be present, the highest gift any of us can give to ourselves.

How do we calm/weaken our minds? Any of you who’ve read my articles know the answer to that: We meditate, practice mindfulness, pray and do anything else that strengthens our presence and creates separation from our “not-me” minds.

The takeaway

So remember: You’re a flashlight. Meditation and other spiritual practices will strengthen your ability to choose where you flash that light.

Wouldn’t that be great? To be able to place your attention where you want it?

I know I often write that “This is it! Just do this and you’re on your way to spiritual bliss!” Well, this Ram Dass teaching is it! Do it and you’re on your way to spiritual bliss!

Seriously, his teaching on the heart is a game-changer. And as usual, it’s simple as pie:

Ram Dass urges us to do our best to keep our hearts open.Under any circumstances.

Key here is what it means to ‘keep our hearts open.’ Obviously, it doesn’t mean visualizing our aortas or ventricles in some open position.

But here’s the great thing: I’ll bet that every person reading this understands what Ram Dass means by keeping the heart open. It’s hard to explain with description so I’ll explain through examples.

EXAMPLE #1: THE ARGUMENT/FIGHT

Let’s start with the most classic example of all: You get into a fight with your significant other. Aren’t those fun?!

I just had one the other day. What it was about isn’t important. What matters is, do we keep our heart open or close it.

Closing your heart in this scenario is the usual “Screw it, I’m not talking to him/her. That was just unacceptable what he/she did.” We then shift into cold shoulder, averted eyes mode for the next…hour? Day? Week? Hopefully not month.

Ram Dass would describe keeping our heart open here purely in relation to its opposite: Closing the heart. In other words, we don’t necessarily do anything to open the heart, other than prevent it from closing. I hope that makes sense.

Ducking from the cream cheese projectile

How does this manifest in our example? You get in the fight. You scream at each other. Or throw a small tub of cream cheese at your significant other (yes, my wife did that to me once. I had to do my ‘George W. Bush duck from the shoe that the crazy Iraqi guy threw at him at the press conference’ move). Then you part ways, both mad as hell.

What do you do now? Even though you’re mad, maybe even rightfully so (has there been an instance in human history when anybody thought they weren’t right in a fight?), you say to yourself, “Yes, I’m mad, but let’s keep our heart open.”

Which doesn’t mean you’re over it or you’re forgiving the other person. It just means that you haven’t closed down. It’s a subtle but significant difference.

EXAMPLE #2: VLADIMIR PUTIN

Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has been denounced by virtually the entire world. Most think that Putin is an evil human being; someone who has little regard for innocent human lives, whether they be Ukrainian soldiers, Russian soldiers, Ukrainian civilians, Russian journalists or opposition political figures.

Closing our hearts in this scenario would be allowing our egos to take over and feel deep anger. “I hope that a-hole Putin rots in hell. Maybe he and his hero Stalin can belly up to the bar down there for a boiling Martini that burns their tongues to a crisp!”

This doesn’t help matters. It only serves to inflame our lower selves, which is never a good idea.

An open heart with Putin

So what does keeping our heart open vis a viz Putin look like? We acknowledge his evil but don’t become inflamed over it. Because what happens when we become inflamed? We lose our present moment awareness and dive down the ego rabbit hole.

Remaining present makes us more effective in every way in dealing with Putin. If you’re a soldier fighting in Ukraine, you’ll make better decisions and perform more skillfully if you have your presence about you. And if, like me, you’re just an American talking about this stuff with friends, family and acquaintances, you’ll contribute to the discourse in a healthy way that doesn’t inflame the egos of your interlocutors.

EXAMPLE #3: DEALING WITH THOSE WHO ARE SUFFERING

I saved the most significant for last. Because dealing with those suffering was where Ram Dass used this open heart concept most powerfully.

Ram Dass devoted a large part of his life to helping sufferers, especially those with terminal illnesses like AIDS. How does the open heart approach work here?

Well, most people find it so excruciatingly hard to be around someone in severe pain (mental, physical or otherwise) that their heart shuts down. Not from lack of empathy, but simply because their heart ‘can’t handle it.’ It’s too much.

And that’s not good for the sufferer. What’s good for the sufferer is to be with someone, like Ram Dass, whose heart remains open which then allows them to offer true compassion.

Two souls having a conversation

Ram Dass looked at those sessions as two equal souls meeting and having a conversation. The body housing the sufferer’s soul was in bad shape. But the soul wasn’t. And it was from that place that Ram Dass met these people. He said this resulted in some of the most beautiful, moving and loving experiences of his life.

This is by far the most difficult of the three examples to master. Why? Because our egos are what freak out when we’re with a suffering person. Our minds go to, “Yikes. Is this what it’s like to die? What if this happens to me? I don’t think I could handle it. Let’s get outta here!”

So how do we do it? Mostly it just takes the strength to say, “No. I’m not shutting my heart down. Is this hard? Yes. But I’m going to stay open and remain present with this suffering person.”

But the ultimate solution is to strengthen our presence power by regularly practicing meditation and mindfulness. Those practices serve to weaken the ego’s grip over us, thereby making it easier to keep our hearts open in any situation.

The takeaway

This is one of those tough pieces to write because the open/closed heart concept is so monumental and wide-ranging. I think I got the broad strokes of it.

As for the practical takeaway, it is this: Whenever you feel like your ego is about to, or already has, closed your heart, practice becoming aware that this has happened. Whether you’re in a fight, discussing Putin or talking with someone in pain, notice if your heart has closed. If it has, simply do your best to open it up again. And if it hasn’t closed, be mindful about keeping it open.

The work of our lives involves keeping our hearts open 24/7/365. It is the heart’s natural state.

Let’s get right to it. Someone does something or says something that upsets you. Or some bad driving stranger cuts you off.

What most of us do most of the time when this happens is… get upset. “I can’t believe she said that. What a bitch!” “What an idiot! Who drives like that?!” Etc., etc., etc.

Our voracious egos

We then allow our egos to dine out on the delicious meal of anger/upset/grievance stew we’ve served up. We let it fester and burrow in, the end result being the spiraling down of our mood.

Doing this over and over, day after day, month after month, year after year, has a marked, negative impact on our overall well-being. And it doesn’t have to be that way!

The main reason so many people respond like this to upset is that they don’t know any other way. “Somebody did something to upset me and I felt terrible for a while. That’s life. What the hell else is there to do?”

My simple idea: frame the situation

That’s where I come in, with my umpteenth, ultra-simple suggestion for helping yourself. The idea centers on creating a framework for dealing with the upset so you can jettison it rather than allow it to bring you down.

First thing is, don’t deny that you’re upset or quibble about whether you have the right to be upset. “So my coworker told me I looked like I’d gained ten pounds. So what? She probably didn’t mean anything by it.” No. She said that you got upset and you had every right to feel that way. This isn’t about lying to yourself. That only compounds the problem.

So the upsetting event happens and you get stirred up inside. You’re pissed. Your adrenaline starts pumping. Your thoughts start gushing. What do you do? I’ll explain it through the dialogue I suggest you have in your head:

“So and so just made a snide comment that really pissed me off. But let’s see if we can frame this in a helpful way. Does it feel good to feel this way? No. I feel terrible inside. Would it be helpful to me if I kept pursuing and ruminating over this snide remark for the next minutes, hours or days? No, not at all. Okay, so I have a choice: I can either, 1. allow myself to keep feeling pissed and upset, or 2. I can let it go. I choose option #2.”

The crux of this idea is to frame it as a choice between doing something good for you or doing something bad for you. And the logic on it is unassailable. Tell me how it can be good for you to walk around stewing about something—Ninety-nine percent of the time that is NOT good for us.

Beware: the ego won’t give up easily

This isn’t to say that our egos won’t fight like hell to get us to stay on the warpath. “Sure, I could let this go, but come on, that was just plain rude what she said. I can’t let her get away with that and act as if nothing happened! I mean, come on. She does this to everybody…” And on and on it goes in your head for the next minutes, hours, days, and yes, sometimes years.

That’s when you, your conscious self, need to ride in and save the day. “I agree, ego, it was a terrible thing she said. But I’m asking, is it good or bad for us if we let this feeling fester?”

When you choose in your head to do the sensible thing and stick up for your well-being, the next step is crucial. What NOT to do is get impatient and say, “Alright, fine. Let’s just forget about it. It’s not worth getting in a bad mood over.”

That’s too abrupt. In most cases, the feeling of upset won’t be expunged that easily or quickly. Our egos are too strong.

The answer is to LET GO

So what do we do? Right after deciding to do the right thing for yourself, you start the process of letting go. What is that process? I’ve written about it many times, but it’s worth going over again.

First, we relax. All over, but especially in the head, neck, and chest areas. Then we take a few conscious breaths. Then we find the upset feeling. I feel most things in my stomach. Others feel in their chest/heart area. Just find the feeling.

Then lean away from it. Give it space. Then watch it. Don’t do anything to it. Don’t judge it. Don’t try to push it out of you. Just watch it. Keep breathing with it…then let it go.

Depending on the level of upset, you’ll most likely have to do this at least a few times, if not many. I don’t know about you, but my ego is a stubborn little sucker and doesn’t give up easily. It keeps summoning the upset, prompting me to do the letting go process again. But with vigilance, the feeling will wane.

Treat it like a game

It can also help treat this whole process as a game, a contest where the two contestants are always the same: The conscious, actual you versus your ego.

I find this really helpful. I get upset about something. I become aware of the upset feeling. Then I say to myself: “Okay. I’m pissed. And I feel angry and shitty. So who’s going to win here: me or my ego? If I relax and let go, I’ll feel better. If I submit to my ego, I’ll be in a crap mood. Who’s going to win?”

That will then prompt me to start the relax and let go process. Again, it’s all about framing and setting up a scenario where you have a legitimate choice: Let go and feel good or get sucked in by your lower self and feel bad. It’s in our power to choose.

I’m not recommending you rollover

Don’t take all this to mean I think you should roll over any time somebody does something to upset you. If there’s something to be gained from confronting the “upsetter,” do it.

Again, though, the only criteria that should factor into that decision is: Would this be good for me? If someone at work keeps lobbing snide remarks your way in meetings with your boss, take them aside and tell them you’re not cool with that. Then let it go.

But if it’s your old, miserable mother-in-law driving you crazy and you’ve had it out with her many times over the years, it’s probably best for you to relax and let it go. If it’s a stranger who’s cut you off and driven away, never to be seen again, it is 100% in your interest to let it go.

The takeaway

The key here is setting up a scenario where we give ourselves a choice. We can get upset and let it torment us (chalk up another win for the ego) or we can decide to stick up for our wellbeing and let it go.

It’s not easy because the ego is strong. But the more we side with letting go, the easier it gets. And the better we feel.

When we think about ‘being of service,’ we typically go to the bigger, macro versions. Like saving whales, feeding the poor or working to protect rainforests. But I’ve been trying something of late that works on a much more micro level.

It’s about actively and consciously trying to be of service in everyday situations. And I don’t just mean micro, micro things like waving someone into your lane who’s trying to get over or helping someone pick up the groceries they just dropped in the parking lot.

I’m talking about things like dinner parties, family gatherings, business meetings and the like. Let’s take an example.

Tense tennis

I play a lot of tennis. This past weekend I played doubles with some friends, one of whom got as high as world #18 in doubles and reached the quarterfinals of Wimbledon. And this guy still takes his tennis really seriously even though he’s in his late 50s.

These matches with him can get intense, to the point of becoming uncomfortable. I used to come to these matches all fired up to play well and “kick ass.”

But I’ve changed my attitude of late. I don’t walk on to the court all psyched up to play well and win. Now all I do is come with one intention: To be of service to this particular group.

Keeping the peace on the court

How does that manifest in a doubles match? Keeping things light. Joking around. Not getting bent out of shape if I think somebody made a bad line call. Complimenting the other players when they hit good shots. Another way of describing it is I’m simply trying to bring a good ‘vibe’ to the group.

Of course, I try hard and play as well as I can. But that’s not my primary intention now.

I’ve also been doing this with dinner parties, heading out to dinner, watching my son’s lacrosse games with other parents…anything where I’m in some smallish group.

Set your intention before heading out

The game plan is always the same: Make a conscious intention before heading out to be of service. What that typically means is placing my wants/desires/preferences behind those of others.

If people are debating where to go to dinner, I say anything is fine with me. Flexibility is a big part of it, something that wasn’t in my repertoire for most of my life.

Really listen to people

And while at the dinner, instead of listening to your ego’s desire to let everybody at the table know how brilliant your views are on the war in Ukraine, you step back and listen. Not phony listening. Real listening where that other person feels heard by you.

If I was reading this, I might find this whole thing sanctimonious. “Gee, what a great guy. He sacrifices his wants for everybody else’s. What a selfless saint…Gimme a break. BARF!!!”

I’m about people feeling better not becoming saints

But hear me out. As I’ve written many times before, the thrust of my writing is aimed at helping people feel better. And happier. My intention is not to turn my readers into saints.

A lot of the advice I give will have the effect of making people better. Getting quiet inside through meditation and mindfulness has that effect on most people. But again, my main objective is to help people feel better in life.

Being of service will make you FEEL better

And that’s the case with this sanctimonious-sounding spiritual exercise of ‘being of service.’ How? I am certain that you will feel better going into those dinners, doubles matches and anything else if you come at them from a place of selfless service.

Think of going out to dinner with a group. For most people, me included, the intention we set is usually ‘What can I get out of tonight’s dinner? Well, we better go somewhere I like. If I hate the food, that’ll suck. And the people better be fun to be around or why not just stay home and order in?”

If you go into that evening with the intention of serving, you might get all of those things — good food, fun with others, etc. But at the very least, you’ll feel good because the entire evening wasn’t about satisfying your ego’s wants. I’m telling you, that feels good.

Another way of looking at this is to set the intention of presence. You’re not stuck in your mind constantly asking, “What do I want now? What do I want now? What do I want now?” You’re taking in each moment and serving it as best as you can.

The takeaway

So here’s my proposition: Try this once. Pick some event where you’ll be with friends, family or even business associates and go into it with the singular intention of being of service to that group.

And when your ego inevitably tries to intervene — “Wait, I don’t want to do a huge sushi share plate; I want my own, separate meal!” — just ignore it and say, “Great, let’s do that.” Listen to others and be present with them.

Just try it once. I don’t like to make guarantees, but I’m confident that those who try this will love it.

Finally, some of you might be thinking, “Why only be of service at dinners and meetings, etc.? Why not be of service all the time? In everything we do?” Well, that’s precisely what people like Ram Dass, Eckhart Tolle and Mickey Singer teach.

But let’s start with small bites…

My dad was an advice geyser so paring this down to five lessons was no small task. Everything from driving (“Never back up farther than you have to.”) to tennis (“There’s no excuse for double faulting.” More on that later.) to dealing with difficult people (“Never take shit from anybody.”)

Born in 1922, he grew up in New Rochelle, New York. The central motivating factor in his life came when his dad lost any money they had due to his gambling addiction. The resultant economic ruin humiliated my dad and planted a seed of ambition in him that sprouted quickly and never stopped growing.

A quick Walter B. bio

After stints in the Wisconsin State Budget Office and Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, he took a job in 1967 at Pacific Mutual (now Pacific Life — the one with the whale commercials). He became chairman and CEO in 1975, serving in those roles until 1986.

When he died in 2015, though, the New York Times and other obituaries treated his Pacific Life work as secondary. Why? Because in 1969, when he was the CFO of Pacific Mutual, he was instrumental in creating PIMCO, currently the world’s largest bond fund investor.

PIMCO was a subsidiary of Pacific Mutual in the beginning and for many years. My dad gave the reins of PIMCO to three young guns who worked for him at the time, Jim Muzzy, Bill Podlich and the legendary Bill Gross. That trio rode PIMCO to the heights of the bond world, which currently manages $2.2 trillion.

So that’s the Walter Gerken back story. Here are the main nuggets I learned from him.

1. INTEGRITY ABOVE ALL ELSE

This one stands head and shoulders above the rest. From my earliest days I can remember dad beseeching all six of his kids to be honest and do the right thing.

He was handsome, powerful and relatively wealthy, but I am absolutely certain that he never cheated on my mom in their 57 years of marriage. I remember him saying on several occasions growing up that the main reason he was faithful to my mom was that he knew he couldn’t live with himself if he ever cheated on her.

What Theodore Roosevelt said could easily have been said by my dad:

“I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do.”

As a corporate executive, he adhered to the axiom: Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want printed on the front page of The Wall Street Journal.

I’ve done my best to follow dad’s lead on the integrity front. I’m not perfect, but I do sleep well at night, and always have. And it all started with dad’s example.

2. HAVE THE COURAGE TO TAKE CHANCES

In the summer of 1967 dad was offered the job at Pacific Mutual in Los Angeles. At the time, he was a VP at Northwestern Mutual Life in Milwaukee. NML was a highly respected company and he enjoyed working there. The problem was that he had risen as high as could get. The CEO job was out of his reach.

The other “problem,” was that he loved his life in Milwaukee. My parents had great friends, he’d been elected to the Milwaukee school board and he enjoyed living there.

Pacific Mutual had told him that the board didn’t see anybody currently at the company who would assume the CEO position. In other words, if he did a great job, he could make it to the top.

But there were lots of unknowns. He didn’t know anybody in California. And who knows what the people would be like at Pacific Mutual?

In the end, he decided to toss caution to the wind and head west. It turned out to be the second best decision he ever made — the best being his decision to marry my mom.

Speaking of which, my mom played a major role in dad deciding to take the job. She told him that, as ambitious as he was, he’d never forgive himself for not going somewhere that he had the chance to be CEO. But still, he made the call.

His example made it easier for me, in 2000, to pull up stakes and move from Washington, DC, to Los Angeles for a career in entertainment writing. I had an easy, lucrative life in Washington, but knew I had to give my creative side a chance. There hasn’t been a day that I’ve regretted that decision.

3. USING EVERYDAY ACTIVITIES TO STAY GROUNDED

It’s 5:30 in the morning. I’m 16 years old and sound asleep…KNOCK, KNOCK! About .001 seconds later my door bursts open:

DAD: “Dave, be sure to put the trash cans out. It’s garbage day.”

SLAM! The door shuts and he traipses his way downstairs, dashes out the front door and into the backseat of his car where his loyal driver, Ed Reguero, waits patiently in the predawn darkness. Off they go to Los Angeles and whatever high-profile meetings await.

Me? My thought was always something like, “Are you F-ing kidding me?! Did you really have to wake me up for that? You ever hear of writing a note?!”

That’s what I mean by focusing on the little life stuff. Here he was, busy and stressed from his high-stress job, and he’s thinking about the garbage cans. He wasn’t developed enough to know it, but those little things helped him stay grounded.

He’d make a big deal out of picking something up off the ground and putting it in the trash. “If you’re the one to see it, pick it up and throw it away!” There are countless examples of this.

I picked up on this and ran with it in my adult life. I’m always putting dishes in the dishwasher and heading to the grocery store to keep us stocked with milk (my five year old still drinks it like it’s going out of style!) and other necessities.

And I love it. Keeping our eye on the little daily things strengthens our mindfulness. I credit dad for my doing that.

4. LIVE BY THE EGO, DIE BY THE EGO

This one is different. This is one where dad’s example taught me what NOT to do.

Again, his driving force was to become “big” in the world because of what happened to his dad. And boy did my dad succeed in becoming “big.”

The problem is that he banked most of his self-worth on that “bigness.” “I’m CEO of a huge company. On the boards of several other huge companies. I know senators and governors and have met with presidents at the White House…” And on and on.

When he retired, all that eventually went away. He wasn’t Mr. Big anymore. And he didn’t handle it well.

I’ll never forget one glaring example of this. For decades, one of his board members used to send him a case of wine for Christmas. Once dad got off the Pacific Life board, the wine gift stopped coming. I remember him being visibly angry about this.

The lesson I learned was to not identify with positions, status or job titles. Just do your best work and let it go. And do your best to keep your ego out of the equation.

5. EMPHASIS ON HUMOR

So as not to end this piece on a down note, let’s take it up a notch by diving into my dad’s love of humor. He used humor to lighten things up and not take himself too seriously. Most CEOs are sticks in the mud so dad was unique.

I remember many a morning walking by their bedroom and hearing my mom laughing uproariously, usually because of something stupid my dad did. I learned that humor, especially the ability to laugh at yourself and your spouse, is crucial to a healthy marriage.

Unfortunately for dad, 95% of the laughs he got were from being the butt of others’ jokes. He was the Rodney Dangerfield “Can’t get no respect” member of our family. Two golden oldies and then I’ll wrap up.

-Dad was a terrible athlete, which never stopped him from dispensing advice to his six kids who were all actually good athletes (thanks for the genes, Mom!). Way back when I was a little kid he played in his first tennis tournament. He was nervous as hell. His opponent was a guy with ONE arm (seriously) who could barely hit the ball with his one good arm. Dad lost 6–0, 6–0, which is the worst score one can lose by in tennis. Our family dined out on that one for the better part of fifty years.

-One day dad, two of my brothers and I played golf. Dad admonished us before we teed off that today we were to be on our best behavior. “No rancor!” he ranted. Translation: No teasing me about how terrible a golfer I am.

He hits a beautiful drive off the first tee and is all smiles as he barrels down the fairway. On his second shot, Dad takes his three wood back…and swings. But the club hits before the ball, goes over the ball and then hits the ground again. In golf that’s known as a “whiff,” and it counts as a stroke.

Upon seeing this, the three boys immediately fall on our backs and literally laugh uncontrollably. To this day, it might be the hardest I’ve ever laughed.

Dad, none too pleased, quickly hit the ball, charged on and did not say ONE word to us for the rest of the round. That’s four hours of silence!

The takeaway

My dad was a good man. For oodles of reasons, I was fortunate to win him in the ever-so-random Dad Lottery that none of us gets a say in. He died in 2015 at the age of 93.

Dad, I know you’re out there somewhere, somehow, in some form, reading this. Thanks for the lessons. May they rub off in ways big and small on those reading this article.

You have your mother-in-law over for dinner. As she’s leaving, she makes a subtle, ever so passive aggressive comment about the quality of the dinner you served. And you get so pissed you want to wring her neck. Then she’s gone. Out the door. Out of sight.

But five minutes later. And a half hour later. And an hour later, you’re still seething about what a miserable jerk she is.

That’s an example of, she was gone from the outside, but she wasn’t gone from your inside. In other words, she left. She wasn’t there anymore. But you kept ruminating about her anyway.

We all hold on to stuff

Every single one of you reading this understands this example. We all become infuriated or bothered by outside stuff and then hold onto it even after it has passed.

Someone honks at you, flips you off and then drives away. Ten minutes later you’re still upset about it, your heart pounding. Still brooding.

This is a Mickey Singer idea

I heard this idea of ‘gone from the outside, gone from the inside’ from, no big surprise to any of you regular readers, the great Mickey Singer. He mentioned it one of the talks on his Temple of the Universe website.

[BTW, you’re NUTS if you don’t go to his site and listen to these talks. Every one of them is a gem. And they’re free! You can find them at tou.org.]

So the idea is, when the outside cause of your inner disturbance is gone, don’t let it stay on the inside. And how do we do that?

We let go.

There they are. Those two beautiful, powerful, yet unceasingly perplexing and challenging words: Let go.

And how do we let go? I’ve read countless spiritual books, articles and essays and listened to hundreds (thousands?) of hours of talks as well. I still say that Mickey Singer’s teaching on this, which is really the only actual technique he teaches, is the best. Here’s my best shot at summing up Mickey’s teaching on letting go:

The moment you notice that someone or something has made you angry or upset, RELAX. Everywhere in your body, but especially your head, neck, shoulders and chest. Then watch yourself lean away from the feeling of upset. And then, instead of engaging with that feeling and crawling down your lower self rabbit hole, simply watch that feeling; as objectively and nonjudgmentally as possible. Breathe with it. Then let it pass, like a cloud in the sky.

So, the moment the door closes on your mother-in-law, you relax and let go by doing the above. The moment that car honking, finger flipping idiot drives off, out of sight, you relax. And let go.

It takes work

This takes a lot of practice and commitment, but the payoff is immense: The shedding of emotional baggage or the prevention of additional baggage burrowing into our psyches, there to stay for the rest of our lives unless and until we let it go.

As Mickey points out, this doesn’t only apply to stuff that happens in our daily lives. It also applies to deeper, older baggage.

For example, you’ve been divorced from your husband for ten years, yet you still get whipped into a frenzy on a regular basis whenever anything related to him comes up. ‘If it’s gone from the outside, it’s gone from the inside.’ He’s gone from your life. Let go of him. For your sake. For your happiness.

Use it as a framing device

The key is to use the ‘If it’s gone from the outside, it’s gone from the inside,’ idea as a framing device. When you get upset or angry about something, simply have that sentence at the ready.

And be your best advocate. Get tough. Say, ‘Screw it. My mother-in-law is gone and I’m not going to let her comment ruin even the next ten seconds of my life. I’m going to relax, breathe with it, let it go, then enjoy the rest of my evening.”

How this has helped me

I’ve found it hugely helpful to frame these stressful situations with some version of this conversation in my head, taken from an incident this morning:

“Okay, so my wife just told me I need to be at my kids’ school in five minutes for an assembly…just as I’m about to begin my writing session. I’m pissed. But I know I have to go. So I have a choice: I can go and be pissed at her, in which case I’m just screwing myself over because I have decided to hold on to these crappy feelings. OR, I can let it go, head to the school and make the best of it.”

Again, my wife was gone from the outside, so I decided to let go and not let it stay on my inside. I really am getting better at this. And by this, I mean not screwing myself over by choosing to give in to my ego, which only serves to make me feel bad.

The takeaway

To sum up, when you find yourself upset about something and the cause of it is gone, have this at the ready: If it’s gone from the outside, it’s gone from the inside.’ Then do your best to fight for yourself by deciding to let it go. Like anything, the more you do it, the better you’ll get at it.

It’s all about letting go. And letting go. And letting go. And letting go.

Until all that’s left is the beautiful, loving consciousness that is the real you.

I find that certain words and phrases come in handy when I’ve been knocked off my center. Lately, I’ve been reminding myself to ‘flow with life.’

What does it mean to flow with life? This could be explained in myriad ways, but here’s one. When we flow with life, we experience what life brings us then we let it go. Good or bad. We don’t cling or resist. We experience, then let go.

Here’s an example we’re all familiar with. Someone cuts us off on the highway. That’s an experience life has brought us. Flowing with that incident doesn’t mean saying to yourself, “Cool! Somebody cut me off. I love it when that happens.” That’s lying to yourself.

How to flow with life

Flowing with it would be, “Okay, somebody cut me off. That’s annoying. Maybe they’re a terrible driver, maybe they just screwed up. Doesn’t matter. Let’s move on.” That’s experiencing the incident and letting it go.

Not flowing with life would be leaning on your horn and screaming inside your car, to nobody in particular, “Nice job, asswipe!” Then ruminating about it for the next five minutes. And cramming those bad feelings into your lower self such that you will be more likely to blow up at your wife/kid/friend later in the day. That would be experiencing it and holding on to it.

Flowing and Taoism

This flowing with life concept has much in common with the basic tenets of Taoism, my favorite spiritual tradition. Taoists see humans as just another manifestation of nature. Trees, flowers, birds, humans…we’re all part of nature.

I find this useful because I look at how these other manifestations of nature flow with life. Let’s take geese, for example. When my five-year-old daughter runs like a banshee after the geese at the park, they run away from her. That’s natural. They’re protecting themselves. That’s the geese version of flowing with life.

Geese don’t remain flustered

But once those geese arrive at a safe distance from my marauding daughter, they stop, chill out and get back to doing whatever it is they do (search for food mostly). What they don’t do is freak out and remain flustered and antagonized. In other words, they experience my daughter chasing them, take care of it, then let go and get on with their lives.

Unfortunately, that’s not how most humans respond to stressful situations. Someone cuts us off and our insides go crazy, which then manifests in our outsides going crazy (horn honking, screaming and all the rest). What we don’t do is experience the incident and then let it go. We let it knock us off our center and into the talons of our voracious egos.

The takeaway

Next time someone cuts you off, or some other daily annoyance befalls you, try simply focusing on your breathing and say, “Flow with life.” Flow with the incident. Which, again, doesn’t mean you say it’s fun that someone just cut you off. You simply acknowledge that these things are part of life.

Just as a feral five-year-old chasing after you is part of a goose’s life. And rain is part of a bird’s life, so it seeks shelter. And so on.

When something stressful happens, imagine that you’re the goose running away and then promptly resuming your center and moving on. Or that you’re a tree swaying with the heavy winds, back and forth, just flowing with what nature has brought it.

Constantly flowing with life. Not resisting it or fighting it or complaining about it.

Just flowing with life.