When I set out to learn about anything, be it wellness, spirituality, science, business, or one of the seemingly endless fascinations I find myself going down rabbit holes with, there’s always a hard “no” - a consistent red flag for me. When someone says you MUST do something. Especially if they say you MUST do it every day.

Aside from breathing, there’s literally nothing you must do every day. As a teacher, I always try to offer people my greatest scientific understanding of a topic and then marry it where applicable to my own personal experiences. So if someone asks me, “should I go vegan? Should I meditate? Should I start doing yoga? Should I start doing cold baths?” I will always answer, “I don’t know, what do you think?”

This can be frustrating to some, I get it, we are all seeking for answers and I am positioning myself in a way where I tell people I can help them find answers. But that’s just it, an important distinction is that I offer people to FIND answers, not tell them I have all the answers for them. 

In fact, there’s only ONE thing I suggest people do every day. One thing that I think is supremely important to all other endeavors. Spirituality invites you to do it. Religion invites you to do it. Yoga invites you to do it. Philosophers invite you to do it. Even some new-age business coaches will invite you to do it. 

Figure out who you are and practice living in joy. The former being the prerequisite for the latter, so really it’s just one thing. So simple, yet so complex.

The most important relationship you will ever have, more important than your job, your significant other, your kids, your parents, anything, is the relationship you have with yourself. Once you believe that to be true (many of us think this, but how many of us believe it / live it?) the question then becomes, what brings you to a greater understanding of yourself each day? And if we extrapolate that further, how do we become masters of knowing how we want to feel? If we know how we want to feel and master that, surely we will know how we don’t want to feel. And finally, if we know how we don’t want to feel and become obsessive about how we do want to feel, we will become hyper sensitive to when we get knocked off course and then the true mastery is simply how quickly do we get back on course. 

So how do we do that?

In my experience, these are the things that have helped me the most,

Meditation

So many of us think of meditation as a place to relax and quiet our minds. For a long time I thought (and practiced) that meditation was almost torturing yourself to sit still and not think. True, relaxing and slowing the mind is the prerequisite to the “meditative state” – this is where brainwave and nervous system functions change and we begin to access deeper levels of ourself like our subconscious mind and traumas. But once we access that state, then what? Sit there and wait for the timer go off? Repeat mantras or affirmations over and over again? 

That state is made for you to experience what you need to experience and go in and plant seeds for yourself on how you want to feel. That subconscious mind is constantly keeping record of everything you have ever thought and experienced, has a chance to unwind and become more clear. The parts of your brain that house your intuition become more active and you as a result, become more aware.

When you’re resting on the couch and focusing on watching TV, television programs (there’s a reason they call it programming) are literally programming you on how to feel. Here’s the drug that will make you feel the way you want to feel, the car, the clothes, etc. 

Meditation is simply gaining an understanding of yourself so then you can become more clear on how you want to feel. Meditation literally means “to become aware of” so when we become more aware of how we feel and how we want to feel, we become more sensitive to when that’s not the case when we are living our day-to-day lives. So when you reach a meditative state, you can ask yourself in the morning “how do I want to feel today?” or at the end of the day, “how did I do? When did I feel the way I want to feel? When did I go off course?” 

These answers get more and more clear with time, practice and a good teacher can be a huge help. When you have these moments throughout the day, you can use them in your meditation practice! You can literally program and condition yourself towards feeling the way you want to feel (this is backed by science!)

This becomes exponentially easier when you remove the external environment and stimulations that guide most of our decision making to start and end your day, which is why I love meditation as a tool. 

Doing hard things

Doing hard things is deeply important on a physiological level to our health and longevity but it is also an incredible tool in self discovery. When we live our lives dictating our behavior solely based on the thoughts in our mind and sensations of our bodies, we lose touch with a deeper part of ourselves. You can call it the soul, the will, god, energy, universe, consciousness, it has many names but we know it when we experience it. It is that deeper part of ourselves that can experience the outside world, the world of the five senses and not be run by it. It is that part of you that is able to overcome challenge. 

No great story goes, it was easy, then it got easier, then it was easier in the end. They don’t make hollywood movies about that. Challenge is an inevitability of life, yet we have a choice of how we experience challenge. You can either choose it on your own terms, become more self aware and more resilient, or, you can wait for it to find you. The latter usually doesn’t end well. 

Whether it’s exercise, yoga, cold exposure, learning a new skill, meditation, or anything that pushes you out of your comfort zone, you will inevitably learn something new about yourself. It can be as simple as going to sleep earlier and waking up earlier (this is a challenge for me!)

Be honest with yourself

We know when things aren’t in our best interest and through the last two practices, we get even better at knowing what those things/people/places are and aren’t. Radical honesty will lead you down a path that is equal parts fun and horrifying. For the longest time I made every excuse that smoking weed was totally fine for me, in my heart of hearts I knew it wasn’t. But I had a LOT of things tied up in it. It was how I coped as a kid, it’s how I made many adolescent friends, it’s how I coped as an adult sick of his job and it was even how I made money to afford my rent when I got laid off. The deeper my relationship became with myself, the more honest I got about what was right for me. Not knowing where my keys were, eating half the food in my house, struggling through hard workouts, it all started to become clear this small amount of pleasure was nowhere near the downsides.

So what can you do to strengthen your relationship with yourself? Well, what do you think? What things do you do that bring you joy and don’t need any extras? i.e. they're not dependent on anything but you and your ability to be fully present with them. How can you take time to check in with how you feel? How quickly can you shift when you don’t feel the way you want to feel? What things/places/people add to that feeling? Which bring you away from that feeling? How honest can you be about what needs more of your time and what’s got to go?