The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Sara Webb, Meditation Coach, Author, Speaker, Spiritual Activist on The Power of Meditation

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Sara Webb, Meditation Coach, Author, Speaker, Spiritual Activist on The Power of Meditation Sarawebbsays.com Biography Sara Webb is an author, speaker, and meditation coach. She collaborates with successful leaders with closet anxiety to take back control of their lives by teaching them to relax, so they can have more energy, and focus on what’s important. Sara empowers clients with high-functioning anxiety to find their own inner resources, their power within. She teaches pocket-sized techniques to process stress, improve daily happiness, and bring the best versions of themselves to their own lives. Her book “LOOK LUSH” is a collection of poetry outlining her rise from the ashes after a multi-man rape, coming out of the closet, and getting sober / healing addiction through the power within ourselves in conjunction with nature. Sara has a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership from Purdue, bachelor’s degrees from LSU, and has been an entrepreneur since 2015. She lives in sunny Florida, traveling internationally for workshops and speaking engagements.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

The Chris Voss Show.com. My voice is giving out, ladies and gentlemen. Two to three shows a day, or a weekday. Four to five, what is it, 10 to 15 shows a week. I'm losing it, people. It's Friday. And so I'm just cracking up here. We're just coming back into the atmosphere,

and the shuttle's just cracking up as we do it. Anyway, guys, thanks for coming on the show. We really appreciate you guys being part of the show because without it, we'd just be sitting here talking to ourselves into mics, which is, I don't know, something to do on a Friday. So there you go. As always, the Chris Foss Show is a family that loves you and doesn't judge you, but part of the deal is,

part of the gig is, part of the obligation, there's a small obligation, the show is free, but the small obligation is please refer the obligation there's a small obligation the show is free but the small obligation is please show the pre please refer the show to your friends neighbors relatives dogs cats get everybody you know just i want you to go down to the street i sound like that guy from the network movie i want you to go down to the street open your windows and scream i'm not going to take it anymore no don't do that uh I want you to go down with a cardboard sign and hold it on Fifth Avenue saying, subscribe

to the Chris Voss Show or else. Don't do that. That sounds like something's going to end up in trouble. But refer to the show. And it's so easy. You don't have to do that. You can just call your friends and say, hey, subscribe to the Chris Voss Show. See you. Bye. There you go. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrissvoss,

linkedin.com, 4chesschrissvoss, youtube.com, 4chesschristmas, linkedin.com, 4chesschristmas, youtube.com, 4chesschristmas, and chrisfast1. I probably said 1 twice there. I don't care because it's Friday. We have an amazing guest on the show, and I'm excited to have her. We've been bantering back and forth with lots of energy in the green room, and so you're going to be excited as well because if you're not folks then don't make me come back there uh just like your dad used to say with the car uh we have sarah webb on the show with us today she's a meditation coach author speaker and spiritual activist and she's going to be joining us to talk about all of her wonderful things i'm excited to hear about this because i've been talking i've been talking and thinking a little bit to myself there's a lot of talking between

the seven personalities. You know, there's that one that says kill, kill, kill, too. And Judge says we can't talk to him anymore. He can't talk to us. One of the two. He is a restraining order. One of them is holding a sign on the corner. I saw him.

There is. I think there's another one. That's a new one we just added today. So, but anyway, I've been listening to a lot of Sam Harris. And he's had a few meditation people on, and now we do. So we finally, we're going to one-up him by having Sarah Webb on the show with us today. Now, she teaches successful leaders with closet anxiety to take back control of their lives by teaching them to relax. Don't do it when you got it. Oh, wait, that's a different song.

She's going to teach them to relax so they can have more energy focus and uh doing what's important she empowers clients with her high functioning anxiety to find or i'm sorry with their she here let me recut that sarah empowers clients with high functioning anxiety to find their inner resources, their power within. She teaches pocket-sized techniques to process stress, improve daily happiness, and bring back the best versions of themselves to their own lives. Welcome to the show, Sarah. How are you? Thank you so much. I am smiling, thriving. I am choosing happiness every single moment. There you go. I need to tattoo that on my arm. I'm choosing happiness every day.

So welcome to the show. GiveUsYour.com so people can find you on the interwebs, please. Thank you. You can find me at Sarah Web Says. That's S-A-R-A-W-E-B-B-S-A-Y-S. That's also my Instagram handle, Sarah Web Says. There you go.

Sarah Web Says. I love it. And you have a second site this is sarah webb says or else that's right or else there's gotta be a thread in there yeah meditate or else meditate or else no one gets hurt if you just uh act responsibly i guess the or else is the callback joke for the show this time. So Sarah, give us a 30,000 overview of who you are, what you do, and what you do for your clients. I'm passionate about meditation, which might sound like an oxymoron, but I am passionate because meditation saved my life. It saved me from myself. I didn't know for years that I had and still have high functioning anxiety. And that's not something you're going to find in the

DSM. You'll find generalized anxiety. But high functioning anxiety is a very specific kind of anxiety. And we typically suffer in silence. We end up incredibly successful. We seem very confident on the outside. We are leaders. We're overachievers. But we suffer from a heavy dose of perfectionism. We tend to have that itty bitty shitty committee in between our ears. Lots of self-doubt. We end up taking on too much because we have trouble saying no to people. And we've set a standard for everybody expecting so much out of us. So we take on, we say yes when we mean no, we say no when we mean yes. And then we end up overwhelmed. And in the hospital, like I did at the young age of 28, I thought I was having a

heart attack. And I very calmly walked over to my colleague's office and said, excuse me, I think I'm having a heart attack. Can you please drive me to the emergency room? Of course, she called 911. And I got the siren ride all the way to the hospital. And that doctor, 15 years ago, said, you should try meditation. It took me another seven years to find the kind of meditation that worked for me. That's why I do what I do, because I really want to help people to be able to, first of all,

combat the high functioning anxiety, but also to try every single kind of meditation out there and to find the kind that works for them. Because meditation has been scientifically proven to reduce blood pressure, reduce pain, increase pain tolerance. It improves memory. It improves focus. It improves happiness. I mean, there's literally no side effects to meditation. In fact, a lot of leaders, some of my clients are like, I don't have time to meditate. Because they're focused on productivity. Studies show that when we take time out of our day to meditate, productivity increases

by 120%. Wow. It's a no brainer. You know, we don't take, we don't spend enough time just contemplating the universe. We're always busy with all of our noises, right? Our phones and everything else. Well, yeah. And so many leaders are focused on self-optimization. They want to improve themselves, but how much time have they actually spent with themselves? They're focused on these people out here and these new gadgets and let me go to this new guru or whatever. But if you just get quiet and listen within, it's possible to have these things dropped inside your head. I mean, let's say that you are incredibly religious. I mean, I tell my people who go to church every single Sunday, well, prayer is talking to God, but meditation is listening. And the reason why we can actually listen is highly

scientific. So we have 11 million sensory receptors in our bodies. 10 million out of our 11 million sensory receptors are attached to our site. We also have billions of bits of data all around us. And our human brain processes around 11 million bits per second, which sounds incredible. But we're only conscious of between 40 and 50 of those 11 million bits, not 40 or 50,000. So 11 million bits per second coming into our brains, we're conscious of about 45 of those bits. I did the math. That means we're conscious of 0.04% of reality. 99.96% of all the information that's coming into our brains, coming into our bodies is coming into the subconscious. So if we can just shut off 10 million of our 11 million sensory receptors

and spend a little time with our bodies, with our brains, with ourselves, then we can have access to that 99.96% of information. That's why we get gut feelings. That's how we know things without actually knowing it logically. So meditation is that key that can help a lot of leaders become successful. There you go. And that totally makes sense. So you went on a journey after being diagnosed with high-functioning anxiety,

and you said it took you seven years to dial in the right meditation. So were you trying different variations of meditation at that time and nothing was clicking? Right. I would go to a yoga studio and try some sort of guided meditation. Or I would sign up for a Deepak Chopra online course. Or I would go to a place where they do Zen meditation and just nothing really resonated. It just, it felt really hard. And that's the reason why I've become a meditation coach. I mean, I love working with people individually and finding the kind of things

that resonate for them. I was a high school teacher years and years ago, and then I taught finance to adults and I have a seven-year-old, so I've been teaching her. And meditation has always been my passion. I actually learned to meditate when I was five months pregnant. And the thing, I hired a meditation coach and learned from a private coach just like I am right now. And the thing that was so fascinating is that at five months pregnant, just meditating for 20 minutes twice a day, my emotions all smoothed out. My ex-husband was astounded. He's like, where did you get that? Where can I sign up? Where is this meditation coach? You are a different person. And it's because I was taking time and I had a really beautiful birthing experience because I used meditation leading up to it.

And during. Wow. This is a breakthrough for women if they can get through it for everybody. There comes a point when the pain is so intense. But leading up to it, I mean, my ex was like, are you sure you're in labor? You're really, really calm. Like this can't be. And I was transitioning at the time.

And by the time we got to the birthing center it was a different story but i do imagine this give me that epidural damn it oh no no epidural i did it all i did i was really wow there you go there you go i get one on fridays just for fun um so there you go it helps roll into the weekend uh i have one after the show i I guess. So, uh, when you coach, uh, your clients and you're, you're teaching them about meditation, do you, do you just pretty much pitch the meditation form that works for you? Or do you recommend you, do you, do you try and figure out what types of meditation might be good for them and what might be applicable and then steer them that way? Both. It's a yes and. I have a number of different methodologies depending on the module that we're on. And if some people, like for example, if they're coming to me with

high blood pressure or any kind of heart palpitation or anything cardiovascular, there are certain types of meditation that we shouldn't do. So we really try on all of the safe aspects. But if someone is a high powered leader, they're incredibly healthy, then we can really go for the gusto and try some of the more advanced techniques that I personally utilize in my meditation now almost eight years from a daily practice. So I've been meditating for a long time and I've gone to a lot of different meditation retreats, been trained in a lot of different modalities. I've been a yogi for over 20 years and I do teach yoga on the side

just because it's a lot of fun. So sometimes if a client comes to me and they're really wanting to get back into yoga, I might throw in one of those sessions for them. Because I always tell my clients, if you're having trouble sitting still, movement is a really great way to just get out the wiggles. I say sit down sweaty. I mean, you can put down a towel. But if you sit down sweaty, you'll usually have a lot better time being able to focus. Although we really don't have to focus. Most of the modalities that I offer have some sort of an anchor. So whether that's the breath or a mantra, you can call it an affirmation,

something that we can kind of lightly focus. We have just, we hold it very lightly, but that allows the brain to kind of do whatever it wants. And then you have this anchor that ties you to right now. And then you might realize, oh, I'm not focusing on my breath anymore. And you just gently bring yourself back. And that's where the magic happens. When we just sit and turn within, that's where we turn that downward spiral into an inward spiral,

and we can create our own magic. There you go. And do you mostly work with CEOs, CXOs and entrepreneurs? Usually you do work with anybody. I have taken some people who are incredibly motivated and do suffer from high functioning anxiety. I tend to attract a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs and yes, CXOs of all kinds, managers and big companies, you know, fortune 100s, because a lot of times they hear my message and maybe their spouse doesn't even know that they have anxiety. And I start talking about high functioning anxiety, which is a newer term. It's like, we live in this fast paced world, right? We're on the beach and people are emailing us

and text messaging us. It's like, we don't know how to turn it off. And most people think it's totally normal. And that was me. I thought I just have stress and this is totally normal. But when I found out that I actually have a condition, I was like, oh my gosh. And I actually found out what high functioning anxiety was after i had majorly remediated a lot of the issues because the anxiety doesn't go away right

it's just what do we do with it that's the key there you go and and how does the human body process stress why why is it screwing us up with all the stress that we feel in life? The human body is ancient as far as from a genealogical perspective. You think about hunters and gatherers. We go into a stressful situation that is thrown upon us. We go into that fight or flight. Maybe we have to fight a tribes person or flee from a saber-toothed tiger or a jaguar. Well, today we don't really have very many life or death situations. I mean, some people might argue that Thanksgiving dinner with their mother-in-law feels like a life-threatening situation, but it's really just our body that's telling us that we feel like this is something that we can't handle. So our ancient physiology takes things like our spouse or our kids or sitting in traffic or

deadlines, whether they be from the outside or self-imposed and turns it into this situation where we literally can't breathe because our ancient physiology has made it such that when we go into fight or flight, we begin chest breathing. We're only breathing from this part of our chest, which means our brain is not functioning. Now, if you actually have to fight or flee, that's fantastic because then we've got blood and oxygen going to our extremities so that we can fight or flee. But when we're in a stressful situation in modern life, we need to breathe. We need to oxygenate our brain, our heart, our cells, so that we can actually respond to the situation at hand with what my grandma used to call a full set.

Where your head and your heart and your feet are all in the same place. So often our head is in that catastrophic thinking. We're thinking about how we're going to lose this client's business. And then this thing is going to happen. Then all of a sudden in our brains, we're homeless. And then our heart is perhaps in a past traumatic situation, whether that's big T trauma or little T trauma and our feet are here. So if we can do that full set check, like my grandma used to say, just make sure your head, your heart, and your feet are all in the same place, and then you're good to go. So you got to try those grounding techniques, that basic okayness that everyone talks about. Once you get past that, then you can employ some of these simple techniques

like just belly breathing or box breathing. And these things are scientifically proven to slow down our physiology and allow us to relax, allow our nervous system to reset. When we go, go, go, this is how people end up with autoimmune diseases because they haven't allowed our nervous system to reset. When we go, go, go, this is how people end up with autoimmune diseases because they haven't allowed their nervous system. Yeah, their nervous system goes into overdrive,

and their immune system attacks their immune system because when we're under fight or flight, our immune system is suppressed. It's not safe to rest and digest and repair because we're in fight or flight. There you go. I wonder if the same thing happens with people who have asthma. There's been said that a lot of people who have asthma have distressing childhoods or have anxiety childhoods. You know, parents are alcoholics or other things like that.

And I don't know if it really damages the lungs, but there's a mentality to it, which is kind is kind of interesting i don't know i wonder if that might be also a thing but i read a book by james nester it's called breath and he talks about specifically sleep apnea when we are mouth breathers or tend to breathe in and out of the mouth and instead of in and out of the nose so when to breathe in and out of the mouth and instead of in and out of the nose. So when we breathe in and out of the mouth, our lungs can't be as effective as when we breathe in and out of the nose. And so I have a client who didn't really know that she was a mouth breather and working with me, she has started breathing from the nose and she has vastly more energy just because of the simple

five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day that we're doing with in and out of the nose. Because when we breathe in and out of the nose, our lungs are about 99% efficient. That book by James Nestor is fascinating. I'd love for you to have him on the show. It's a recently written book. And oh my gosh, it's so fascinating. The things that happen when we are breathing out of our mouth versus our nose. He participated in a study that he funded himself where he plugged up his nose for two weeks straight and they did all the vital signs every single day. Really fascinating stuff. So I think that asthma is absolutely a correlation there i'd have to go

back to the book because it's been several months since i read it but i think you're onto something there yeah yeah we pitched him to come on the show yeah really we might have missed uh sometimes if we don't you have to get them just two or three months before the launch of the book so that you're on the tour um and I think we missed him or no, this was, I don't think we missed him. I think this was, maybe we missed him on the paperback relaunch,

but I'll reach out to him, see if it can come on the show. But you know, you know, what's interesting about what you're talking about is that, that sleep at anything. I had a joke there somewhere. What was the joke?

Oh yeah. On Tinder and first dates, I get called the mouth read a lot, mouth breather a too so i'm used to hearing that um but have you heard these things where people put this tape over their mouth now when they sleep there's like this sleep tape you can put over your mouth so you don't mouth breathe when you sleep here he he may have popularized that because that was that from him that he found found. So he did two weeks of plugging the nose and then two weeks of covering the mouth, except for eating. And he found that simple tape was the best way to keep his mouth shut so that he, during sleep, only breathed through his nose. Because his sleep apnea, which he already had, and all of the vital symptoms that come along with it plummeted like

his sleep apnea went up and all of his vitals went down when he started breathing only through the mouth and it's what's caused humans to have messed up teeth because of the change in our face physiologically seriously it's the reason for orthodontists. I swear to you, read the book. It kind of makes sense. I've had dry mouth where you wake up and your mouth is like sand because you've been breathing that for so long. It's the soft palate.

Yeah. Maybe I'll buy those. My mom and everybody I know has got those damn machines, the Darth Vader masks, I call them. I'm not a fan. Do you use one? I don't. I just do breath work.

There you go. So you don't have to. You're just like, I did it today. I don't have to sleep with the Darth Vader mask on at night. I do Wim Hof. I do other kinds of intense breath work. And it's amazing. It increases the alkalinity in your body oh really

really so i don't have to drink all this alkaline water that i'm always drinking i do that too but uh god you do all this uh breathing man this fancy breathing i feel like i'm some sort of beginner like i'm just a i'm just some amateur breather well our breath is our life force that's what the yogis they interchanged the word prana and breath and if you think about it like that's what defines life when we come into this world we take a breath and if we stop breathing i mean we can survive for weeks without food a few days without water but only a few minutes without our breath is our life force. And when we change our breath, studies show unequivocally that changing your breath pattern will change the way that you process things, the way that you think, your health, your immunity. There are

literally breaths that you can do out there to boost your immunity. Some of them are contraindicated if you have certain criteria, like health concerns. And that's why I ask that whenever I work with somebody. There you go. I mean, I tried that breath tape. One of my friends on Facebook turned me onto it and probably had read that gentleman's book. And I was like, what are you doing? And I'm like, I know how I breathe at night. And I'm a bear as a human being. Anyway, when I get up in the morning, I wander around and no one should get near me. Because you say something to me and you're going to get pawed.

And then you're going to miss something in your lip. And it's like, every girlfriend I've ever had has been like, we stay away from you until you've had your coffee. And we do not mess with you. We just take a wide berth around you and let you do your thing. Then somewhere after about three, four hours, five hours, six hours, I'm sociable.

I can talk to people without having murder on the mind. I should try that. The only thing I'm worried about when I saw it and I contemplate, I looked it up on Amazon was I'm like, I'm going to end up swallowing one of those things. Like it'll, it'll come like halfway off and I'll,

you know, my sleep and then it'll, and it'll go right down the thing. And then I'll, I don't know. Asphyxiate completely. And yeah, I'll choke to death or I don't know which might.

So in order to make yourself more healthy, you've actually killed yourself. Most of my exes were testing my ability to breathe by putting a pillow over my face when I slept so there was a lot of ex jokes on the show um so uh lots of good stuff that you do here uh what are some other things um in your work and some of the ways you've helped clients and and things that that kind of stand out from what you do, opposed to maybe some other people that you've seen in the business? Well, I focus on the science. I'm not a scientist, and I'm not a doctor, but I read a lot, and I absolutely love employing techniques

that are scientifically proven. And, I mean, we know that we're only aware of 0.04% of reality. And we know that we have something called the reticular activating system that's constantly looking for whatever we're focusing on. In yoga, we say where focus goes, energy flows. And that sounds really cute and woo woo, but it's actually scientifically true. So all of the techniques that I employ with anyone, there's a study that goes behind it. And it's not just meditation. We were talking about the personal gratitude practice that I have. For three and a half years, I've been making a gratitude list. My brother was my very first gratitude partner. I started making a

gratitude list on my own. I sent it out to a few people via text and he said, I love this. Let's do it together and let's set a criteria of five things every day. And then one of my friends in short order challenged me and they said, how about 10 things and 10 people? I now have 15 gratitude partners and we merely text one another our lists every single day and sometimes there are affirmations or goals things we're trying to bring into our lives and sometimes it's just a simple list you know i'm grateful i didn't have to go to a laundromat today i'm grateful for quality time seriously i have a washer and dryer in my home yeah and do you know how many billion people

wash their clothes in the river and hang it up on a clothesline billions of people today and we have major first world problems i do that now you do just for fun with a washboard and everything i can do yeah i've got the old i remember my old uh great grandmother great great grandmother i used to have my great greatmother alive at the same time I was. And we went to her house in West Virginia, and she had the roller for the washing, the big tub and the roller. And then she had the washboard and stuff. We used to play with it, yeah. My grandma did have that, too.

But she really wasn't using it anymore. I don't know. Maybe she was a hoarder or something. It was in her yard in West Virginia, along with the still in the outhouse. So it was pretty novel. Yeah. West Virginia is a place. I'm from Louisiana.

There you go. They're similar states. West Virginia and Louisiana. I'm hungry now for crawfish. All right. Isn't it delicious? Oh, yeah. Red beans and rice.

All right. Now I'm getting hungry. All right. Now I'm getting hungry. All right. We're off topic now. So let's get back on topic. So it's good that you guys have this gratitude list. I'm really fascinated by it. You brought it up in the green room. And as you mentioned, I have a Gratitude Sunday.

And it's on my Google calendar. It says Gratitude Sunday, idiot boy. Remember, it doesn't say the idiot boy problem. That's how I think calendar it says gratitude sunday idiot boy remember um it doesn't say the idiot boy probably that's how i think of my head i'm like oh yeah i was supposed to be gratitude today i should be thankful for that whatever um i'm funny but i like the daily thing because you know throughout the week you get caught in a daily thing you know sometimes you have a moment where you're like oh man that hurts or you know you're like oh you know what happened you know something catches on fire you get some email somebody's you know you're like uh this

person's an idiot uh you get on facebook this you know and you're like everybody here's an idiot no that's not true i love all my facebook friends um you know you you turn on the news oh my god the whole world's an idiot, which is pretty much true. But I like the gratitude thing. And so when you send each other a text, it's a list of five things that you're happy for today. Is that what I understand it correctly? My brother is still my gratitude partner. He and his partner, we're in a little gratitude group and they usually stick to the five things.

But I tend to put more depending on the day. You're an overachiever then. I am. And it just flows so easily. And sometimes there are things that repeat. But when you get really granular and specific, then your reticular activating system continues to look for very specific things that you're grateful for. And I live in a state of gratitude now. In fact, when something shitty happens, Chris, I'm just like,

oh, look at this amazing thing that I get to choose differently. This is so amazing. It looks, but you know that they've done studies where people go on vacations and some calamity happens. And then the people actually look back on that potentially stressful situation as something that they reminisce about with a lot of glee. And so if we can just in the moment, and this has taken a lot of years of practice, just the moment say oh look at this amazing thing that i get to learn from because we're not going to learn unless it's hard it's just like when we work out in the gym it's only stressing the muscle literally ripping the muscle open that's what makes it grow yeah it's really painful when it happens but uh as long as it's not a pro

injury you're fine that's what it's when i'm'm up to at the gym ripping and tearing um you know i used to i i used to do a little bit of that i would come home every every night uh with stories of what all the hundreds of employees had done uh and you'd just be like you won't believe what what happened today and you'd have like five or six stories of just just stupid shit that happened in the office you're just like oh my god you get enough employees it's it's just endless like i don't know how somebody runs this is the ceo of a 45 000 member uh company because i'd just be like i just be like we need to write some books on this crap or have a podcast um and bring bob in hey bob tell him what you did today. You moron.

Tell him, tell him how you broke the copy or whatever the hell it was. Um, but no, I like this thing. Kids. Yeah. You celebrate the good. You celebrate the good in your life. You celebrate the good with the employees. You praise. I mean, people have turned around their children who were allegedly these troublemakers and

they thought that they could do no good. And if you just praise the one thing that they do, people respond very positively and our brains respond very positively too. Because our brains are wired to look for problems. And that's what's kept homo sapiens alive for thousands of years, because we scan the environment, we look for problems. What do I need to mitigate for here? And that's also, unfortunately, what we do in our daily lives. We've got this thing to complain about, this person to complain about, oh our daily lives we've got this thing to complain about this person to complain about oh my gosh i've got this ailment in my body and that's been keeping us safe but it's really not serving us anymore we have to look for and and appreciate

the good have you thought about scaling the gratitude list thing to like a slack channel or a facebook group or it's coming yeah stay tuned because that's what i that's what i'm thinking it'd be a great use for it. You know, maybe we'll use one on the show. We'll just, uh, every day,

you know, people can, uh, I don't know. They can, I'll call, come on and be like, I'm,

I'm thankful. I'm thankful for my audience. So there you go. This is my first one. Uh, but this could, I have a lot of friends and I have a lot of people I talk to and I, I'm really,

I'm that annoying friend who sends people all the, all the, all the, all the tick tocks andoks and you know and my friends are like seriously another one like you know I'm I'm that way and uh dancing yeah like anything I think is funny and I know what all my friends flavors are so like my friends who are drummers they get all the drummer jokes and then you know my friends who whatever their leadership or something you know so i i kind of i have them categories so i'm not i'm not a total fucking freak but i'm like we need to get a restraining or i have some friends and i'm like why do you keep sending me this shit this has nothing to do with anything i'm interested you clearly don't know me um but no i i like this and i think it would be a great slack channel might be

a great app um might be a facebook i might steal your little idea but i'll bring you into the group um but but i like the idea of it um because every day you know the more i'm thinking of it you know like you go through the day sometimes sometimes you just i don't know you get a little you know you get a little down sort of attitude problem you're like oh god you know uh what is this and you know i'm 55 now it's more like you wake up every day and you're like what hurts today it's like spin the wheel spin the wheel and there you go uh so uh any final thoughts on uh what you're doing how you're doing i know you have some workshops too and you have your book uh Give us your final pitch as we go out on the show. My mission in this life is to get the world to meditate. And I know that's a huge fucking mission. So I just ask people, try meditation, keep on trying it, find someone who knows what

they're doing, whether it's me or another expert, a friend of yours, get an accountability partner. A coach is great for that. And just keep on trying because when we're perfectionists, we think that we're supposed to be great at it. And we also sit down and we're like, isn't something supposed to be happening? And we get up and we're like, well, I don't know. I was supposed to get up enlightened. But we just need to do it. I mean, it's literally the Nike slogan, just sit down and do it because meditation is not about how we feel while we're doing it. It's about the results that we experience afterwards. And done is better than perfect. It is a meditation practice. It is not meditation perfection. It's not meditation performance. It's practice. And

when we just keep at it, keep on doing it. It's like if you've ever had a garden and you go away for a week and you haven't pulled the weeds, That's what happens when we stop doing it. So often people start meditating and then they feel better. So then they stop. They figure they're cured. And then they're like, oh yeah, I was feeling a lot better when I was meditating. That's right. Maybe I should pick that up again. But it's really hard to restart again. So I have people who come to me and they've had thriving meditation practices and they just have trouble fitting it in again. So I have people who come to me and they've had thriving meditation practices and they just have trouble fitting it in again. And then, so we work on that. We work on the habits and we employ a lot of the techniques in Atomic Habits, James Clear. Oh yeah. That was a

great book. Fantastic book. And I've always had really good habits, but I've read it many, many times because he has really great stuff in there about how to make these things into habits. And we get lackadaisical, lackadaisical, however you say that word. And we feel like things are fine or, oh, I'll do fine without doing that. And then one day passes and 10 days pass. And so that's the key. Just do it and keep at it. Those are my final words. There you go. Or else, as the callback.

Or else. There you go. There you go. Well, it's been wonderful to have you on. You know, I started thinking about this recently after a Sam Harris podcast interview that he'd done with someone on meditation. And they were talking about all the noise we have in our lives and i was i was realizing that i was doing stupid stuff like for me to go from my office to the kitchen i would take my phone with me and so that i could if i was making a salad i could play a video while i'm making my salad and it's like or you know i thought i was being efficient by let's just as mighty books while i'm in the car or while I'm going to the gym or I'm at the gym doing some stuff.

I was listening to audiobooks while I was in the sauna. And it started to hit me. It's like, you know, one of the reasons I'm in the sauna or in the jacuzzi is I'm trying to unwind. I'm trying to meditate. And I noticed people were coming in, making noise in the sauna. And I was like, it's really fucking irritating. Number one, I don't want to hear conversations. But I was like, why am I not listening in silence and just enjoying the peace of this moment in the sauna?

And maybe meditating a little bit because the sauna kind of has that sort of vibe. And I thought, why am I, you know, I'm on this neurotic space that we're all on with these devices where we're, we're trying to fill up our time and we're trying to, you know, like you mentioned at the beginning of the show, someone's phone beep and then ours beeps and we hold it up and stuff. And so, um,

and we, we mirror each of those things, but, uh, uh, so yeah, it's, it's,

I've realized that I need to calm the hell down and, and just take peaceful place and an empty space and just kind of enjoy the drive maybe look at the trees when i go to the gym see what's going out there and just kind of play it kind of plate life and let the brain wander let that subconscious mind go in as you were talking about yeah absolutely we are human beings not human doings i've found that I actually don't listen to audiobooks as much when I'm driving either. I like that

because it does allow you to do something with your mind and kill two birds and multitask in a safe way. But yeah, I find that just being is really freeing. And there you go. There's your poet for your poem for the day.

There you go. Sarah, thank you very much for coming on, inspiring us and giving us your energy and giving us some thoughts on what to do. And then I'm going to go on Amazon and get some tape for my mouth. You know, it's funny.

I've been having people on YouTube. Don't do that while you're taping. No. I've had people on YouTube for years telling me I should tape up my mouth, but that's usually when I want to go. Maybe I'll try it when I sleep too. Better. I'll just get someone to smother my head in a pillow,

which doesn't sound bad sometimes. Anyway, thank you very much, Sarah, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you. I had a blast.

Thank you. So did I. And so did our audience. They better have, or else. Anyway, guys, as always,

my first appreciation or gratitude thing is I love you guys as an audience. I appreciate having Sarah on and such wonderful guests. And I hope you appreciate it as well, which means you'll go to goodreads.com for Christmas, LinkedIn.com for Christmas, YouTube.com for Christmas, and what is it? Christmas 1 on TikTok. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

And we'll see you guys next time.