Heroes in Business - A Master at Beginners Mind

Episode Date: April 24, 2021

We are all experts & all beginners. Even when we are experts, we are still beginners. The key is remembering what is fundamental & foundational. When we fall off, it's part of the process. Get back on in this episode of Guided Self Healing Fearless Living with Dr. Andrew Hahn    

Hi, this is Dr. Andrew Hahn again. And this is the ninth episode of the podcast, Guided Self-Healing, Fearless Living. And this episode is called An Expert at Beginner's Mind. I want to tell you, I had told you in our last episode, this is April 23rd, 2021. I told you in our last episode that I was going to continue talking today about patterns and these universal themes. and a conversation just came up a little while ago so I'm going to take a prerogative and talk about something else that right now is very deeply touching my heart and the conversation that I had I've actually had two of them but the conversation was about being an expert and remembering what it's like to be a beginner. And we're all experts and we're all beginners. And I think the key for any expert is to know and to remember what it's like to be a beginner. So I'm a beginner at a lot of things right now. I'm a beginner at

exercising. I'm a beginner doing podcasts, beginner at a lot of things. I'm not a beginner at doing life centered therapy, which is what our work is called. I've been doing that for 28 years. And I'm not a beginner at teaching it and guiding people because I've been teaching it now for 24 years. And, you know,

students come in and they witness me do it and they feel challenged. They'll never be there. And I say, look, we all are beginners. And I tell them a story. And I'm going to tell you the story because that's what's here right now.

Which is when I was going on a whitewater rafting trip. And I had to meet a group. when I was going on a whitewater rafting trip, and I had to meet a group. And the group was at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. And I had to hike down from the top of the Grand Canyon to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Suffice it to say, even then, when I was a fair amount younger, I wasn't in the best shape in the world. But I had tried working out, and I got some some hiking boots and I thought I'd broken them in. Well, I hadn't.

And it's about an eight miles vertical walk down. That's a winding path. That's all very rocky and pebbly. And about a mile down, I was in excruciating pain and, you know, my toes were killing me. And I decided I would, I had two choices, which was to stay in the hiking boots and to walk down and to be in excruciating pain or to take them off and to have to walk down in my stockings, in my sock feet, all the way to the bottom on this very pebbly path. So I took them off and I started walking down. And suffice it to say, I couldn't even then walk anywhere as fast as I could when I was in my hiking boots and I was not a hiker to begin with. So, and it was like, you know, very, very hot day.

And even though I had brought quite a bit of water, I was quickly running out of it as I was going down this path. But I was determined. But it was taking me a long time. I knew I was going to be late for when I was meeting these people. So what was very funny is like when I was probably about 80% of the way down, they had sent out people looking for me because I was late and they were worried about me and some rangers followed me. And one of the rangers had been on this path for 15 years, she had said,

and she started laughing hysterically. She said, I've been here for 15 years. I've never seen someone walk down this in socks. And I said, well, I understand. So she radioed down to them and said that I was found and that I was going to be there in a while. So I get down to the bottom and I'm like woozy and, but I made it. I said, I'm going to get down there no matter what it takes. And I got down there because I can be tenacious when I'm tenacious. And they'd been waiting for me for well over an hour. And the person who was leading the trip starts saying, you know, we've been waiting for you. And he starts giving me all these instructions. And like, when he got up to like the sixth instruction, said i know all of this is making sense to you and i really don't understand a word you're saying and he said

get in the boat and hold on tight and roll towards the waves. I said, I can do that. Beginner's mind. So, and I have clients now who say to me, you know, you guide us. What about for you? I've had students do that. I've had clients do that. I said said you know

i'm not asking you to do anything that i'm not doing and you know i've been doing this healing work now for a long time and i still you know i know how to do it and but sometimes i don't do it. And sometimes I want to avoid things. And sometimes I make a commitment to doing it and I don't do it. Even after all this time. And then I work on that. And even though, you know, I know a lot about what it's like to be doing the work, I'm still in beginner's mind. When I'm still facing some of my deepest fears, you know, I tell them like, you know, I'm just a guy.

I'm not a guru. And I've been working and working and working. And I think I'm freer. But, you know, I still have mountains to climb. freer but you know i still have uh mountains to climb but i'm not asking you to do anything that i don't have a willingness to do myself so you know when i deal with my deepest fears around things that we'll eventually be talking about because i think that there are certain kinds of fears that are universal and they're sort of the deepest fears we have to admit about ourselves and then all the ways we try not to feel those fears and i think that is a lifelong and lifetimes

journey until finally you face all of the things you're most afraid to experience at which point we call you something. We call you the Buddha, or we call you Kuan Yin, or we call you Mohammed, or we call you, you know, Christ. But even Christ, right before he's Christ, as Jesus, is still facing his fears, you know, and he's been working on them for a long time. You know, he's still right before he's going to be crucified. He's still screaming at his father, so to speak, saying, why have you forsaken me? And he's reactive. He's angry.

And he's confused. And he can know his fate, but he doesn't want to have to face that fate, which is really his destiny. Because we all get occasionally identified with something, and we're really afraid to go beneath it and let go we hold on so i still hold on for sure i haven't quite got yet to the place of like forgive them because they know not what they're doing they're just ignorant they're blind but by the time christ says that he knows that they can kill his body, but it's just

not even his body, it's just a body. Because he knows at that point there's no such thing as birth and death. He knows. Not intellectually knows, he just viscerally knows the truth. So I still have my mountains to climb for sure when it comes to my own fears of being ordinary and defective and having to get people's approval because that's my particular personality or needing to be special or needing to connect deeply. I keep working on my fear of inner disconnection or my fear of not having a head and being undiscerning

or my fear that I'm just ordinary and defective. I still work on it after all these years and after having developed a way of working with these kinds of fears you know um so and the thing is none of us i guess really like to admit the things we're most afraid to admit whatever it is you know that i'm just an ordinary guy which i am or that i'm much less than an ordinary guy which is what i usually think i am even though i won't try to announce that to the world so you can know my little secret um

you know or that i'm defective and I'm ashamed of how defective I feel sometimes. And I want to prove that I'm not, as opposed to accepting all of who I am. But I work on it. So I'll say, at least I'm tenacious about that. And, you know, it's much easier to be an expert than to say, you know, so to speak, as one of my teachers once said, you know, when people called him an expert, he said, I know I'm only among us chickens. I've always liked that line.

A man named Mu Joy said that line. So I feel that way myself. I'm only among us chickens. so I feel that way myself. I'm only among us chickens. Um, so I still know what day in and day out it's like to have beginner's mind and so many things, you know, I spend all my time trying to understand people in life and how to help them heal.

I'm doing my workout programs and I'm still such a beginner and I don't feel like sometimes I'm making progress and I make commitments and I usually keep them but sometimes I don't. I have to say, okay, I have to get back on the bicycle, so to speak, literally and figuratively. And even in the work as I say that I do, you keep facing new things that you haven't been able to handle. You can't just say

yes to. I'm still reactive. But I keep making a commitment to it. And I keep making a commitment just being Andy. Because I really am Andy. Even when I'm Dr. Andrew Han, I'm really, from my point of view, Andy. And I still do beginner's mind in the work I do. And that's what I want to invite you to do, too. What's beginner's mind in the work I do. And that's what I want to invite you to do too. What's beginner's mind?

When there's something that you're reactive to, just notice you're reactive to it. If you're judgmental of yourself or other people or you compare yourself and say I'm better or worse than them, and you have judgment about yourself and them, or when you need to understand something as a way not to experience it. Or when you have symptoms that you just are railing against and saying, God, why did you do this to me? Or when you have anxiety about something and you can't take things in stride, you know.

For some of us, like public speaking, we say, I'd rather be dead than have to get in front of that crowd of people. I'm so anxious. All beginner's mind says is, it's just something that couldn't be handled, taken in stride and integrated. And the way to do it is to find the sensation that is there when you focus on the anxiety or the shame or the judgment, as in not discernment, but judgmentalism, or the comparisons and the envy or the denigration

or the compulsive need to understand. Whatever it is that your reactivity is or whatever symptoms you have that you're feeling judgmental about or whatever you know you can't just say okay it's part of life i may not like it but it's part of life because that's the key freedom is to just be able to say i can say yes to this including the changes that i hope will happen without reactivity. So when that happens, find the body sensation and choose to bring all your awareness to it. So you're going to choose to become it.

And that way it's like you're fully it, but you're also, it's like becoming an actor or an actress. It's like you're going to choose to fully enroll yourself, but you no longer identify with a role as being who you are. It's just a role. You're saying for one moment, I'm going to be sick to stomach and hear what it has to say. So much so that I'm living it or I'm seeing it or I'm sensing it. But I know ultimately it's just an experience that's being had. It's not my identity. My only identity that I aspire to is the one who says, I'm with you.

I can be here. I can hold you. I can be a witnessing host. But I'm not you. That's when the teachers say, you are having experiences, you're having feelings, you're having thoughts, but you aren't your feelings, you aren't your thoughts, you aren't your body, you aren't your symptoms, you aren't your judgments. Who are you really? Beginner's mind. One who says, I can notice my reactivity and I can find that aspect of being that's being reactive and say I'm here with you. I accept you. Because that's all it is. Just say, I accept you. I'm aware of you. I allow you. I bring my attention to you. And I accept you. And if all any of us ever got was every discomfort in our bodies, knot any anything like that any pain any queasiness any emptiness

anything at all is just an aspect of life that has gone from its pure form which is energy to its dense form it's gone from c squared the speed of light squared to one equals mc squared right energy and matter are the same thing except energy vibrates a lot faster than matter and the way we turn ourselves from energy which is a verb into matter which is an, is just when there's something that we can't handle. So we turn it into a thing. And by doing that, of course, we turn ourselves into a thing. And we're not things.

We're verbs. We're love. We're love. We're peace. We're the things you can't point to. We think we're the things you can point to, but we're not the things you can point to. So anytime you find something in your body you can point to, just say,

tell me what you've come to share with me. The me that's just here with you. That's beginner's mind. Everything else is just window dressing, you could say. So we find every part of ourselves that can't just say, I can be with what is, without reactivity, and we say, I'll be with you. without reactivity and you say I'll be with you because if I can be with everything

then I can be walking acceptance and I can accept myself and I can accept others without judging them because if we find someone that we judge it doesn't matter if we think we're judging the judger because we're better than they are or whatever. We're still back in judgment. It doesn't mean we can't be angry or we can't say, you know, I'm going to make a difference. Because we get to commit to what we believe. We just can't think that because we believe something and we're committed to it, that makes us right.

It just means that this is what is our truth. It doesn't make it the truth until I suppose we're someone that I don't know what it's like being like Kuan Yin or Christ or Buddha. But it's something to aspire to, you know. It's like aspiring to a North Star. So I want to leave you with that message today that I never ask people to do something that

I don't have a willingness to do it. And sometimes I don't do it. And then I have to find the part of me that doesn't do it and that I have judgment about and say, I'll be with you. But at least then I have to find the part of me that doesn't do it and that I have judgment about and say I'll be with you but at least then I don't like run the show more you know you're just anxiety either because there's something that I couldn't handle before that you reminded me of or I've hit a developmental milestone so I have to go to the next layer you know

not all anxiety is just the reliving of trauma. Some of it is, you know, you're just doing something for the first time. And when you do something for the first time that you've never done before, you can be anxious. But you just have to remember, just lean into it and hold on tight. So this is my message to you today. And who knows what will happen next week because I thought this week we're going to continue to talk about universal patterns and it's just not where life took me.

So it's not where I'm going to take you today. But thank you for coming on the journey with me. And of course, as always, I welcome any comments, any reflections and anything that touched you or any disagreements, please write my address, A-H-A-H-N, Ahon at lifecenteredtherapy.com. And of course, if you want to know about our work, just go to lifecenteredtherapy.com. And of course, if you want to do our trainings, which would be a pleasure always, we do online trainings now and we teach all of this stuff. All you have to do is go to go.readyforamerical.net backslash free-training. So go.readyforamerical.net backslash free-training.

If you want to learn more about how to do this for yourself and for others. And meanwhile, I will look forward to having a conversation with you again next week or whenever you listen to this because you're probably listening to me as a podcast. So we'll go on our journey continually and we'll know that we may be in different places but that just means we're in different boats in the same lake so be well and goodbye