Gino Wickman (00:00):
Welcome to the Shed and Shine podcast. I am Gino Wickman. This is where Rob Dube and I help driven entrepreneurs shed their shit, free their True Selves, unlock true entrepreneurial freedom and shine. We truly appreciate you taking the time to spend with us and we hope to make a huge impact on you.
Rob Dube (00:21):
Hey everyone, this is Rob Dube. I'm back here with my good friend, Gino Wickman. Gino, good to see you again.
Gino Wickman (00:28):
Hi Rob.
Rob Dube (00:30):
I was hoping you'd do sexy voice. So today we're talking about discovery number two: decisions are made from love or fear. And under that, there are four levels and we're going to be focusing on level four, the awareness level. Be aware of which type of decision you are making. And when we say decision, we're talking about emotions, thoughts, feelings, and decisions. And so Gino, I'm going to start off with a few thoughts and then hopefully you'll just vibe off of me from here. Does that work for you?
Gino Wickman (01:02):
I love it.
Rob Dube (01:03):
All right, great. So when we think about awareness, there's actually two types when I was putting together my talking points. There's a general awareness that we all have, and this involves being conscious of our surroundings, our activities, our thoughts. Oftentimes it's mostly surface level and reactive. This is just how we go about our day-to-day lives. We have some sense of awareness. But now we go into pure awareness, which is what we're talking about. It goes deeper. We're referring to a state of being where one is fully present and observe it without attachment or judgment. It is the consciousness that lies beneath our thoughts and emotions, observing them without getting entangled. And then one last thing I want to say about this is I looked up the word awareness and the suffoc ness, means the presence of, so the word awareness simply means the presence of that which is aware. And it, meaning I, is the common name we give to this aware presence. So with that in mind, any thoughts coming to you Gino as I start us off?
Gino Wickman (02:18):
Did I just hear you say suffoc ness? I felt like we needed to do an edit. It sounds like a swear word or something. I don't know. There's something about that.
Rob Dube (02:26):
The suffix ness of awareness. Does that make sense? Truly?
Gino Wickman (02:32):
It just came up. It doesn't matter as long as the audience loves it, I love it. So with that, you prompted a few thoughts. So what I love about how we do this and when we work with an audience, there's sometimes we don't agree. And I'm not agreeing with your two things to define awareness, but they're great. And what I love about that is I know it hit a lot of people in the audience and it helped them understand this. So it doesn't matter, I roll it all into one big thing, but then again, sometimes I just oversimplify to a point where it's not beneficial for the student to learn. And so I want to start there by just saying, to me, it's all awareness, whether it's the general type of awareness that you described, which is almost like more of a tangible outer world thing, or this being fully present maybe an internal soul level thing.
(03:24):
So again, it's all the same to me. It doesn't matter. But I wanted to make that point because, again, I just love how sometimes we say it so different, but again, we're talking about awareness. It's all the same to me. And so the way I think about this is I'm going to try and now describe awareness maybe different than I've ever described it before, because I feel like we describe it really well in the book. And so I see awareness as getting to this place where you're just simply observing yourself and the world. And that's where we're rolling it all together.
(04:03):
And it's almost like you're watching a movie. If you can somehow pull yourself out of you and just watch the whole thing as a movie. And now let's go to those four words. And so now you're being aware of thoughts, feelings, emotions, decisions, as you're watching this movie and as you go through life, when a thought pings you, when a feeling pings you, when an emotion pings you, when a decision, which just means there's a stirring, there's something that happens, you're somehow triggered, you now can detach from that thing that happened right there and just go, "What was that?"
(04:41):
And so what I find for me is, in relationships, it's like with my wife and I, I'll realize that she said something that pinged me or I'll say something that there's just something that didn't feel good about it, I can step outside of that and observe it. And what it's helping me is it's just helping me become better, because I'm so aware. And when she says something that pings me, I can then look at what was that thing? Because whenever we get triggered or pinged, if you take anything away from this episode, take this away, it's you.
(05:15):
In other words, if you are, let's just say, enlightened, because we talked about that in a previous episode, but again, if you're at this place where you're just fully your True Self and you're free, it's impossible to be pinged. It's impossible to be triggered. And so the only way you can be pinged or triggered is there's something going inside of you that you're still hanging on. And so then what happens is is when Kathy pings me, or a friend or a family member or an employee or whatever it is, I now can go, "Okay, I can watch the movie. What was said? What was the point I got triggered? And let's go find out what the hell that was, because there's something going on in me. Another way it's described out there as the mirror. And so it's always a mirror. Anything you're bitching and complaining about in the world, it's you. All roads point to you. Zig Ziglar said, "When there's a finger pointing at the problem, there's three times as many pointing back at you." So that's the power of awareness. Just start to become aware.
(06:14):
And all that said, I have no idea what suffoc ness is, and I just can't seem to, I'm hanging onto that. So I have a block now. I have a suffoc ness block.
Rob Dube (06:21):
Suffix.
Gino Wickman (06:23):
I'm kidding. So kidding.
Rob Dube (06:25):
I just want to be understood. It's one of my things. You know that. The movie's so great. There's a person by the name of Rupert Spira, I don't know if you've ever heard him?
Gino Wickman (06:35):
Never heard of him.
Rob Dube (06:36):
And so he talks about, I'm sure many others have as well, but you are at a movie, you're watching the movie and it's going. Those are your thoughts. The movie stops, you are the screen. So the thoughts are just what's going on in one society. It's just you. So I wanted to talk about how cultivating this awareness helps us shed layers and get closer to our True Selves.
(07:06):
I have a couple of talking points here. First, just that there's a profound internal focus that we've got to have and it allows you to perceive the root causes of your thoughts and emotions, building on what you were saying, fostering this deeper understanding of yourself. So when you get pinged, as you said, you can start to go deeper. This awareness allows you to observe the layers without judgment, without getting caught up in them and make it easier to release them. Shed your layers, release them, and move towards your True Self, your authentic self, or however you would like to say it.
Gino Wickman (07:43):
Love it.
Rob Dube (07:44):
Any thoughts?
Gino Wickman (07:45):
I don't. That's one where I don't know that I could add anything. And so I'm just going to bite my tongue and shut my mouth. That was really good.
Rob Dube (07:52):
So what about practical ways when you are in the midst of chaos? I'm going to share an example that's coming to me. The other day I was speaking with my wife, Emily. Why are wives always pinging us? What's going on?
Gino Wickman (08:08):
Well, we spend-
Rob Dube (08:08):
They're our teachers or something?
Gino Wickman (08:09):
... Spend the most time with them typically.
Rob Dube (08:11):
No, I'm just kidding.
Gino Wickman (08:13):
And yes, they're our teachers.
Rob Dube (08:15):
Yeah, right. So we are going to be in the Detroit area, we don't live here, in a couple of weeks. And she started making all kinds of plans and with some other people as I was standing there, and I was thinking to myself, this is making me uncomfortable. For example, there was a dinner that was going to take place around 7:30, that's just too late for me. And I was getting anxious for this potential dinner, which wasn't even for sure. And I'm sitting there getting anxious and I'm watching myself with this and I feel like I'm outside of my body watching and saying, "What's going on here?" And so this is the chaos. So now I get to choose how do I react to this? How do I want to handle this? Do I need to handle it? So I don't know. Anything coming to mind [inaudible 00:09:05]?
Gino Wickman (09:05):
There is something that comes to mind and I just want to speak to what you are dealing with in that specific situation because it's so powerfully simple. Because in the grand scheme of the universe and the next billion years, that's not a real big issue. But humor me because I want to make a point on that. But it is for you and your soul and your True Self. And so you do need to become aware and go, "Why is it causing me so much anguish?" Because I would suggest to you, and so I want to make a really big extreme point here, is that if your soul does not want to do 7:30 dinners every night for the rest of your life, and I'm making an extreme point, and your wife keeps booking 7:30 dinners every day for the rest of your life, that may not be the wife for you.
(09:56):
Now that's the point that I just pissed off 10% of our audience, but I'm trying to make a point. At the end of the day, we cannot ... It's this balance thing. We can't be all things to all people. At the end of the day, we got to know who we are. There's 6:30 dinner people and there's 10:00 PM dinner people. And so it's just opportunity to learn more about you, come together with your partner and figure out what works. And so in some cases you just go, "Rob, suck it up, you wimp. Would you just stay up an extra hour?" And then in some cases, if it's the 10th time this month, you are not showing up as the best version of yourself this month because of that. And at some point you get to say you control your life.
(10:38):
So now I just want to respond to that and I want to give another example. And the example I would give is I always want to start with context because I believe context is the greatest teacher. But a lot of times I do so much context, people will say, "Gino, come on, you got to give us one specific." So I want to just start with the context because you just gave us a great specific, I don't want people to lose sight of the context, which just simply says, "We're talking about awareness here. Just be aware. Watch the movie that is you and pay attention to thoughts, feelings, emotions and decisions." So that experience with your wife, there was a thought, a feeling, an emotion and a decision. So great example, but let's not lose sight of that context because there are a thousand of those if we get caught up in this one. And so I just want to give one for me that I'm experiencing right now, because one of the things I'm experiencing right now is I'm spending too much time worrying about family members.
(11:40):
And what I'm doing here in this example is I have not yet solved this. Right now it's coming up in my chest like you would not believe. Because what you're asking is, "Hey, Gino, what insight do you have? How can you help us with this?" What I'm doing with you right now is showing you real time I've got this thing going on in my life where I'm worrying too much about family members and it's having an effect on me. It's having an effect on my energy. And I don't know the solution yet, but what I have learned is, every time I confess all of my sins, every time I share this stuff that's uneasy on me, whatever it is, shedding light on it solves it. So I'm just being aware, wow, why so much worrying. Wow, why this sensation in my chest? And the more I will spend time staying aware of that, meditating on it, contemplating on it, praying on it, whatever the thing that works for you out there, it goes away.
(12:31):
So I will shed and solve whatever this thing is, but it starts by me just realizing, "Holy cow, the last 30 days, all of a sudden I'm worrying about family members more than I have in such a long time. What's going on with that?" So I hope that's clear. And then you mentioned the term chaos. That's a personal example. Chaos, let's go to business. We driven entrepreneurs, I mean it's going on all day every day. There are hundreds of those potentially in a week. And so the idea is just start to become aware real time. That's why we talk about your one place in that discipline. Put everything in one place. That's your opportunity throughout the day. Have it ready to write. When you feel a sensation, jot it down immediately so you can start to pay attention to all the triggering, all the pinging in the chaos. Because it's moving so fast, we can't always keep track of it. You won't remember it at six o'clock tonight, the thing that pinged you at 9:30 in the morning. So hopefully that helped.
Rob Dube (13:25):
It's so good. And thank you for sharing some of the things that you do from a practical standpoint. Some thoughts that I had was I thought about discipline number four, be still, actually. Prayer, meditation, contemplation, journaling. Personally, I believe that prayer and meditation are the most impactful when things like this come up. For me, meditation is the thing that I seem drawn to in my life. One of my favorite definitions, actually, of mindfulness, that has a relation to pure awareness, is from a person by the name of Jon Kabat-Zinn. He's the creator of the Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction. He says, mindfulness is a pathway to pure awareness as "Paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally." And I feel that that really helps me with my emotional regulation when somebody's talking to me, like my wife, about a 7:30 dinner that may or may not take place two weeks from now.
Gino Wickman (14:35):
And I'm not suggesting you get divorced, so please, Emily, that's not my advice to him. Please.
Rob Dube (14:40):
She knows that. That's not happening unless she's leaving me, [inaudible 00:14:44] please. Gino-
Gino Wickman (14:47):
Well, let me say this while you're looking at your notes because I am literally sitting here real time processing this thing that I shared. I mean, so I'm half with you and I'm half processing. So for what it's worth, if I'm looking through you or you're looking through me, this came to me and because this sensation of my chest is so powerful right now, it's not leaving. And so it's good. It's processing. I'm shedding a layer right now in front of everybody. But here's what I believe in my soul. You couldn't beat this out of me. It's so clear to me. And what I know is when my True Self is free, when I'm fully living my soul, when I'm fully enlightened, and again, I use that word so loosely, I know there's no need to worry about everybody. So I already know that. And so now what I got to look at is this gap.
(15:46):
So I know I'm going to get to a place where I don't need to worry about. I won't worry about everyone someday, once I shed and figure out what's the root of all this worry. Because what I believe and what I know, is that all the worrying in the world is not going to change whatever's going to happen. Now with that, I'm going to love those people to death. I'm going to help any way that I can help without sacrificing myself or doing damage to myself. But I know that it's not necessary to worry. The worry's not solving anything. So all it's doing is killing me. All it's doing is taking hours, weeks, months, years off my life. And so I've got to figure out what that thing is. I've got to shed it and become free of worrying, because there's no value in worrying in my humble opinion.
Rob Dube (16:44):
Yeah, I agree. And it's a practice without question. One of the things that I'm always thinking about is allowing them to have their journey and allowing things to unfold the way it needs to for them, but being there in the way that Intuitively, I feel like I need to be. Now, I'm not saying I do this perfectly because believe me, trust me, I do not. But there's an awareness around that and there's a letting go that comes along with that.
Gino Wickman (17:14):
And you're prompting something. I don't want to [inaudible 00:17:16] you.
Rob Dube (17:16):
No, go.
Gino Wickman (17:16):
Because what else you're prompting is another thing that I've become pretty good at, but I've learned a lot about in the last 10 years, is exactly what you said. These are their lessons. This is their life. This is attachment. I'm worrying so much. I'm attached. I've got to get my hooks out of them. Whatever's going to happen, it's for them to learn. And what happens is we, especially driven entrepreneurs that are the greatest problem solvers on the planet, we think we're helping them. We get in the way. We actually take the learning experience away from them by solving it, whether that's writing a check, giving them the solution, doing it for them. Whatever it is, we just stole that from them. And what we did is we just lengthened their pain. So now they got to wait for the lesson to come around again because we screwed it up for them. So anyway, for what that's worth, I know that as well. So this sensation in my chest is so powerful right now. So thanks for letting me shed in front of you. What fun. I'll let you know how it goes.
Rob Dube (18:24):
Keep us posted. Gino, I think we've said it all. Do you have any other thoughts?
Gino Wickman (18:30):
I agree.
Rob Dube (18:31):
All right, well, as always, thank you for joining, for listening in today or watching us on YouTube. We'll see you next time. And as always, stay focused and much love.
Gino Wickman (18:42):
Thank you for listening in today. We truly appreciate you taking the time to spend with us, and please tune in for the next episode. Until then, if you'd like to see where you are on your True Self journey, go to shedandshinepodcast.com to take the true self-assessment and receive personalized guidance. If you're all ready to begin your inner world journey with Rob and myself, please join us for the next round of the 10 Disciplines Group Coaching Program. We wish you all the best in freeing your true self, stay focused and much love.
