the zurkie show - why losing control scares you so much

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

⁠I feel the need to control it, even if I can't.but in my adulthood, I've learned that doing so does more harm than good. I've found myself worrying about the mistakes I've made instead of doing something to change my future.be conscious about the decisions you make, but don't feel like you need to steer the outcome to your favor each time. the more you focus on what you can control and not if it will go your way, the more you can be present in living a meaningful life.sending you all lots of love and peaaaaaaaaaace!https://stan.store/thezurkieshow⁠

You can't control everything in your life, and I don't think you should. I don't think you should. I have had the most peace in my life when I have let go of everything that I cannot control, and I have allowed myself to do these two things. Just be. What? Just be? How can you just be? There are a lot of things in this life to do.

There are credit cards to apply for. There are crushes to get ghosted by. There are accolades, things that we look for. We want to get recognized for the hard work we do. We want to feel like our life has some kind of importance to it. But oftentimes we let go of the most simple thing existing. Because we want control. We want control.

That's really what it is. For me, a big thing was I wanted to control the perception of others. I wanted to seem like I had everything figured out. I wanted to seem like I was perfect and I am not. I am not perfect. I am flawed. I get angry. I recently had a crash out where I dropped a pan on the floor in my house and I kicked the pan into the oven and I shattered the pan.

And I felt embarrassed and I felt like a loser. and I felt like I was a man child. But I also recognized that that was a moment. And that moment doesn't really define me as a human being for the rest of my life. I'm just going to be. I'm just going to exist. And I'm going to take that moment with a grain of salt. Now, was I pissed off, you know, having to buy a new pan at the grocery store

and, like, awkwardly telling my roommates what happened to the old? pan because they liked the old pan? Yes. Yes, it was really embarrassing. But that in itself taught me a lesson that maybe visibly showing my anger and like transferring my anger from the foot of mine to the pan was not a constructive way of like using using my anger. Maybe it could have been better to actually take that moment and be like, why was I really mad? I was really mad because I was cleaning the house and people weren't helping me clean the house. And I should have asked for help and I didn't. I did not. So did I even have the right to be mad? I mean, you know, it was cool to be mad, but honestly, it was pretty, it was pretty avoidable. I've learned that there is something

special about existing. And obviously we cannot just exist all of the time, right? What I mean by that is like you cannot just be present all of the time. No, there are seasons of your life where you are going to need to focus. There are seasons of your life where you are going to need to lock in and study for something. Try to obtain a financial goal. Maybe you're stressing about money this month and you have to sign up for DoorDash or something to make some extra bread. Yes, these are things you will deal with. But I think that we do not give ourselves the break and the grace to just be, bro. To just be.

To just kick it with ourselves. To take a break. To relax. I was in the Uber today talking to a guy who designed clothes for a living. It was super cool. Super insightful. And one thing he mentioned was that he was reading the artist's way. I haven't read this book, but there's something about doing

a artist date in the artist's way, which is like you take yourself out on a date. You go to some kind of museum, you go see a movie, you go listen to an album while you bike around your neighborhood, something like that. And it's funny because I can't tell you the last time I really took like an artist's date for myself. I really enjoy films. I really enjoy movies. Actually, okay, I did take a break recently and I was about to rot at night after having

like a long day of work. And I decided, you know what? I'm going to watch a movie that I wanted to watch forever. Akira. Which is insane. Okay? I don't know if you've seen Akira, but you think that movie is about bikes. Spoiler.

The bikes are in the first half an hour to an hour of the movie. The rest of the movie is just, I'm not even going to spoil it. You should watch Akira. It's crazy. And I've heard that's like the tip of the iceberg when it comes to, uh, to like anime movies or just anime in general. Like, what is going on, dude? Do I need to tap in?

Is unk is unk? You know? Is this being gate kept for a reason? Like, what's going on? Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time. Let's play. Feel the fun with Play Ojo.

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Let's celebrate! 19 plus Ontario only, please play responsibly. Concern about your gambling or that if someone close to you, call 1-6-531-2600 or visit Connexontera. Or, visit Connexonario.C.A. But anyways, it was a really good feeling to just be. I was sitting on my couch. I had my laptop bumping the movie, you know. It was really nice.

You don't have to be productive all the time. You don't have to be productive all the time. You don't have to feel like. Like everything has to have a meaning to it. No, you can exist. Like, you as a human being have the right to do that. I know that there is a pressure to be the optimal human being at every point in your life. And I get that life is precious, but you are missing out on a lot of the key parts of life if you don't just allow yourself to be.

I see this a lot in the United States. This is an American, I think, Americanized way of thinking. you live to work. A lot of people work a lot in the U.S. And it's interesting because growing up, I would split my time in the summer between the U.S. and Europe. I'm Polish.

My family lives in Poland, and I would go and visit my grandparents that lived in Poland every summer. They work to live. It's different. The culture feels as if there's more of an emphasis on intentionality and spending time with people.

Like, people go to the water park during the week to swim. People go and walk around their hometown or wherever they live because there's a little, we call it in Polish a Rinek, but it's like a town square. People hang out. There's this idea that you socialize. That's like a thing.

you do. And it's really beautiful and I really admire it. Because as I've gotten older, it feels like now I'm encompassing more of this. I live to work. But the more I work, the less I am able to just be. And the less I'm able to just like be bored. I'm like never bored because there's always something to do. There's always, oh, well, you know, you should be productive at this time, or you should do something. But I don't know, man, like some of the best ideas, some of the biggest inspiration came from when I was sitting on the couch in my grandparents' communist block apartment, you know, in sunny Krakuf, just hanging out, dude. And there was no, no pressure to do anything. And I just existed.

just hung out and that's really where I got the best ideas and in a similar vein like I get the best ideas or the best thoughts when I'm out just like taking a walk hanging out taking a hike when there's no agenda on the wall about what needs to get done and it's important that you work too it's like bruh like we got to like survive you know it's not like you can just hang out all day and not do anything I mean, if you can, dude, if you are unemployed for like full time, dude, dude, awesome. But I can't do that. I got bills. I got the Chili's on Klarna to pay off.

Oh, no, no, no. I'm trolling. I'm trolling. But it's weird. It's weird. It's also this whole, um, this whole idea that we don't have time. You know what I'm talking about? it's like we really are trying to be squeezed all of the time to do something because time is escaping

and you don't have a lot of it even though we're so comfortable with burning time burning time like when we know we should be present ah it's weird i i i saw it with um with some of the older people in my life like they knew that their time was kind of, um, you know, up. Then I was kind of coming to a close. And then they, they got hooked on like short form stuff. You know what I'm saying? On the reels. And they were locked in, bro.

They were consuming like crazy. Don't get me wrong. I want to consume stuff when I'm older. Like I want to be watching films until I'm old. And I want to be listening to the new music that drops, you know, in my VR headphones, uh, in my, 20-year-old avatar, you know, when I'm 85. No, dude, if I, okay, in the future, in the metaverse, I will have the avatar of the age that I am.

I have no shame in that. I think aging is a beautiful thing. Okay, I have no, there's no part of me that's like, I want to be young forever. Hell, no. Dude, when I get old, I'm going to do old head stuff. I'm going to have, like, you know, some ugly sneakers and I'm going to rock them. Like they're the coolest thing in the world. I'm going to get lost in the grocery store because I don't know where I'm going.

Dude, I'm like so hyped for that. I think it'll be a vibe. I think it'll be a vibe. Are you all afraid to getting older? I feel like you're afraid of getting older when you're young. When you're young because it's like you're adding new things. You're adding responsibilities. You know, like you have to figure out what health insurance is and how to get a dentist.

I'm like looking at my teeth and I'm like, yo, low key, that looks like a cavity. Oh no. I don't know. You got to take care of yourself too. You know, when you're younger, when you're in school, like you just have gym classes like baked into everything you do. Dude, I haven't gone to the gym in months because I have not made it a thing for myself to do. I've just been like, nah, like I'm busy. What? Yeah, it's odd. Odd thing. But maybe we don't want to just exist, just be,

because it also means that we have to sit with our own thoughts. And we actually have to, like, process what's going on in this cooked mind of ours. We have to realize that we're actually low-key sad or hurting or you know that thing that happened to us a few years ago that we didn't really think about well actually it's actually affecting us like today there's there's um there's no clock on on processing your emotions it's it's it's different for everybody you know i had a i had a pretty traumatic event happened to me when i was roughly like eight 19 and I went to therapy for it and it affected a lot of the way in which I interacted with relationships in my life, not just intimate ones, but also friendships, also just family. It was really something that messed me up. I didn't finish processing it. until two years after it happened.

And it's weird. Because I look at some of the things that have happened to people I know. And they really, in comparison, go through traumatic events. But to me, this thing hit. Hit different. Hit different. It did. It did. It hit different. And it's because I think it hit a part of me. that was very vulnerable at a very, very young, early stage of my life.

And a lot of my fears came true. And it really made me look in the mirror. I had to really ask myself, does this event define me as a human being forever? And the scars will always stay with you. They will. But I think I was for a while living in that kind of fear that it would. instead of doing this instead of just being just being like yeah this happened I'm going to work

through this I'm going to figure out what kind of help I need and I ended up seeking professional help but I am going to exist that's my job my job is to exist and just be me right now and so I did that I did that and it was hard it was hard I had a lot of anxiety I had a lot of um A lot of weird stress, a lot of odd self-sabotage tendencies because of this thing. I learned to cope in a way that was so unhealthy. All of my binging habits came back. It's like rock bottom. Rock bottom.

But it gave me the tools I needed to realize, like, when things get bad, I know how to deal with them now. I needed to get thrown in that, you know, washing machine, and I needed to feel like I was, you know, like getting tossed around, like a salad, in order to be like, okay, I'm, now I know. Now I know. And now I know that, you know, I won't let myself get hurt like that again. And it has become a part of me. It has, you know.

It doesn't define who I am. I don't look at it that way because you don't. define who you are. That's the truth. Like your actions and your truth defines who you are. And you just being able to be and exist, that defines who you are, who you are as a person and the characteristics you embody and how you feel about yourself and your confidence and your person. Not what somebody else is trying to label you as or demonize you as. That's, it's not it. You can always take constructive criticism. I've had to take a lot of that in my life. I've had to listen to a close friend of mine tell me that this is the last

chance. You get no more because every time you have proven to me that you're not a good friend. And I had to acknowledge that's the last chance I have. I need to really show that I want this. I need to communicate better. I need to be a better person about this. I need this to be a part of me now. And it needs to be a part of my existence. I need to do it in a way that feels natural. I cannot kid myself and joke that, you know, oh, I'm going to be this person when really I'm not serious about it. I need to take it seriously. It's weird. It's weird. There's also this mundane hum to life. Life is not a highlight real. It never was. And, although we look through history books and we look through, you know, our feeds now and think

everyone else is having a goaded time, it's like, that's not how this works. How many plays in a game are there until you see, you know, a finesse shot from La Minia Mall? Jeez, oh my gosh, if you know, you know, Barsa versus Inter, you had to be there. I hope you guys are watching the next UCL games, man. Champions League, for those of you who are not, soccer fans, it's going on right now. Barcelona is playing Inter Milan and Arsenal is playing PSG. This is like, dude, these teams are, it's like anyone's game, really.

But there's this young kid, Yamin Lamal. You mean La Mien Amal, sorry. Dude, he's so young. He's young. He's like, he's 17? Oh, my goodness. He should be in school. But he is just existing.

He decided I'm going to be la minial. And he is different, bro. He's a different gravy. Anyway, stop the glaze. Stop the footy glaze. You know, how many plays are there in a game until somebody scores? There's a lot. There's a lot.

We only see the highlights. We only talk about the highlights. We only talk about the goal scores and the people who have the best games, right? We rarely think about all of the work that leads up to that. And, you know, it's, that's life, you know, what, like, a lot of those, those moments that are very mundane, like, they're boring. Oh, duh. Like, of course, they're very boring. So it makes sense why people don't glamorize that. But that's, that's really where you, where you, that's really where you, that's really where you figure out what you're made of, like what your character is built on.

That's where you learn to just be. And what being means to you? And what are you defined as? When everything hits the fan, what do you believe in? What are the characteristics about yourself that you know you can embody every single day? Because on the good days, when everything, things flying, it's like, that's awesome, you're good. But on the days where you are being tested by literally everything, what do you have to show for it? This week, I went from hosting a film

festival to going to my grandma's funeral to then being invited to an event in beautiful Los Angeles. And I was, I didn't expect any of it two months ago, let alone a month ago. And now I'm here. And I've cried. I've laughed. I've cried tears of joy. I've felt incredibly grateful. And I've felt like a part of me has left me.

The one thing I've allowed myself to do through all of this that I don't think in the past younger Zirki would be able to do is I just, I just allowed myself to be me. That's it. I was like, I am not going to judge how I feel. I'm not going to judge how long it takes me to grieve. I'm not going to judge how long it takes me to accept the reality, both the good and the bad. I am just here to be. And I just go through it, like one step at a time. And I'm doing all right.

I'm doing okay. am I doing incredibly well? Oh my, I'm over the moon. Yeah, moments. But then I'm on the plane, you know, sobbing my, like sobbing buckets because I'm listening to Elvis Presley and that was my grandma's favorite artist. Exist for me. You don't have to do too much more. You really don't.

And your existence, you're just being. it can it can be hanging out after you've worked a 12-hour shift in your apartment watching Netflix chilling your just be can be going on a hike with a friend that you haven't talked to in a while your just be can be drawing or sketching out a beautiful landscape painting something it's about finding what that is for you what what what What does existing and feeling good about being, frankly, alive mean to you? Because if there's one thing I've learned so far in life from a lot of people and from my own, we're all going to suffer.

We're all going to go through adversity. We're all going to experience things. But it's about how we experience them, how we decide to view these things, and also just like how we experience them in our own skin. Just be. Just be. But I need to be. You just need to be. There you go. You just need to be. You don't have to be X, Y, and Z. You just need to be. It's abstract, but it's really true. Maybe you don't even have any clue as to who you are yet. That's a great thing. A lot of people look at that and think, oh my gosh, you're cooked, you're done. No. No, that's a great thing.

It means you have a lot of exploring to do. No matter your age, you have a lot of things to learn. You have a lot of things to try for the first time. You know how many people would want to be in your shoes who have lived their entire life trying to be somebody they were not? If you are feeling this discomfort now, if you feel like, dude, I don't know, but this is not me. Being at this college is not me. Being in school is not me.

being a part of this club is not me trying to fit in with this group is not me then your job is to just be and see where that takes you but a lot of us a lot of us won't even go that far we won't even go that far to question everything we'll just accept that reality is the way it is and people are putting this pressure on me so I'm going to be that person and it's really unfortunate because I think a world in which people are truly expressing themselves and they're truly embodying the characteristics that they feel are true, that's a world I want to live in. And right now, we don't have that. And that's okay. I'm not complaining. There's two sides to everything, you know. There's a bright side, there's a dark side.

there's always going to be a yin and yang but I think you should know that your job is to just be man I think we overcomplicate this I think we try to set these expectations on ourselves that are just ludicrous what if your day just looked like existing

writing in your journal hanging out with some good friends doing your job doing your work coming home maybe going to the gym and what if that actually does make you feel content and it makes you feel happy

why are you like stressing that that isn't enough I think it is enough unless you feel called to do more and you feel like you're not rising up to the plate that's a different story that's a completely different story And if you feel that is the case, stop lying to yourself.

You got to figure it out. You got to add more to your plate. If you're feeling like, dude, like, yeah, I do all those things. But I want to do more. I really want to put myself out there more. I'm introverted. I want to be more extroverted. Or I'm doing way too much and I want to downscale and I don't want to have all this stuff on my plate.

It is your job to explore that. And if you don't change, If you don't even try to fix it, it won't change. And you will be the same. And you will just be. This is still true. But maybe you won't be comfortable with who you are and what you're doing. And Zirky Show, that's a rough time.

I'm telling you, I was there. I've played these games before. The best thing you can do is just explore who you are. and I mean that as in exploring what you like, what you don't like. Take an unpaid internship. Help somebody out. Dude, just get in a room with somebody that knows a little bit more than you. Try to find a mentor.

Try to find someone you look up to. If you don't have any clue what you want to do, that's okay. Rarely do people do. I am figuring it out. I'm doing this for the first time too. but if you do not try, if you do not just give yourself some kind of fallback of like, I'm just going to try this out. And if I fail, that's chill.

I don't think you'll be able to fully be in the way that you want to. It is a beautiful existence when you do put a little bit of pressure on yourself and you do ask yourself, what do I want to make of these years in my life? because when I asked my grandma a few months before she passed Babcha does it go by quick she told me

like you wouldn't believe like you wouldn't believe Zirky Show did you know that the Zirky Show is everywhere you go you can watch it you can scroll it you can stream it the choice is yours if you want to tap in this is the way to do it it's the Zirky Show everywhere we go all over the

Globe. So if you want to tap in, tap in. Mail Time with Zirki, episode one is going to be out very, very soon. Please be patient. It's almost there. But if you want to be a part of the next episode, this is the PO box. This is where to send it. This is all on your own volition for a chance to be featured on Mail Time with Zirky. Thank you so much for all the letters and the packages I've gotten so far. I am so excited to make a fire episode for you. But if you want to send something, This is the way to do it. Topper. Do the things that bring you joy.

Try something new. Seriously. Do it. Don't just tell yourself you're going to do it. Put yourself out there. Get in front of a crowd of people and be like, what's up? My name, Jeff.

Maybe don't say that because that's an old reference. And if you get it, you are unc. Other than that, just know that if you need somebody to believe in you, I believe in you. Zirki Show, you can do it. And as always, you already know this. I am sending you lots of love. and peace.