Occasionally, when we push ourselves hard during a workout, we hit a wall. I don’t mean collapsing, I just mean stopping.
Sometimes it happens without us noticing. We just find ourselves standing still, panting, hands on hips instead of running. Sometimes we can push through and find some strength to continue when we’d usually stop. We might chalk this up to some new mental mindset or technique, but a lot of the times we don’t know what worked.
In all these situations, the person giving up is the same person we’re all used to being. You. The person who tends to think the same thoughts. The person with your genetics. Your habitual consciousness.
I know myself pretty well at this point. If I leave the situation in the hands of my typical self, I know what’s going to happen. When I’m swimming laps, I might think, “OK, I have one more lap in me.” And that’s what will happen.
But in that particular moment, when we just need to run for a few more minutes or lift that weight one more time, do we have to be that same old person? Is that habitual frame of mind the best one for the job?
When we ask that question, another follows. Who might it be more helpful to be?
Maybe we need to briefly become someone or something else, or briefly stop being ourselves. This might happen spontaneously. Like, you’re in the pool and for a minute, your leaden legs filled with lactic acid start to slash through the water like a tiger shark’s tail.
To make this sort of thing to happen, we need to find ways to give up control and allow it to happen. Then, and only then, do we open up to the possibility of something different happening.
December 26, 2024 @ 3:09pm – Mt. Martha, Australia
I bet they’d love your sparkling personality – Carol Sturka, Pluribus
The easiest way to piss someone off is to poke fun at something they take personally. Their haircut. A pair of brand new sneakers. Don’t do this. They will get annoyed. Because when something is personal, it hurts.
The personality is a project that we’ve all poured a lot of time and resources into. It’s what we show off in our elevator speech or on a first date. It’s our personal trivia, odd quirks and what we’ve tried to desperately iron out and improve with therapy, self-help books and travels abroad.
Take me for example. I’ve always liked to ride bikes. I might even say that I’m a cyclist. But if someone thought that I was riding 50km/h in a bunch of fitness freaks every morning at 4am I would get a little upset. That’s not me, I’d think. I’m not that kind of cyclist. Even if it’s close to the truth, I’d feel a bit annoyed and misunderstood.
I also have this blog called Buddha Bike. You should read it! But I’m not a Buddhist. I don’t know any prayers or have a favorite sutta. I don’t wear robes (unless my dressing gown counts). I would get upset if I was introduced as Buddhist. That’s not me! At least, that’s not how I think of myself. Writing this blog is tied up with my personality, so I’d take those comments personally.
It hurts when we take things personally, but it also hurts more when we take things too seriously. When I’ve written (here and here) about taking things seriously, I meant it in a much more positive way. Like “singing like your life depended on it”. That’s what a concentration camp survivor told David Lee Roth, who then followed that advice for his whole career. Or it’s like when we participate in a race and we don’t care about the result, we just try and do our best (even if our best might fluctuate wildly). This is what we should encourage kids to do. This is what growth mindset is. It’s wholehearted. Maybe we could call this healthy seriousness.
In comparison, unhealthy seriousness is cringing, defensive, overly sensitive, fearful, neurotic, self-conscious and self-absorbed. Sounds like fun, right? It’s a fragile attitude and position to take on life. Like a tiny quivering half-blind Chihuahua, it’s got no choice but to end up scared and barking at a streetlamp. For example, if one takes their appearance very seriously, they’re suffering every time the wind ruffles past their hair. If you take the formatting of your word documents really seriously, you’re suffering when someone comes in and changes the font size. You were too serious. You clutched onto it too tightly, and now your hands are bleeding.
To escape this pain, people have found all these different ways of taking themselves less seriously. There’s the extroverts who seek out the attention, turning their faults into fame and enjoying a heavy reality distortion field. But they can also be dangerously unhinged and narcissistic. There’s the monks who have switched off their personalities but live alone in a cave and are scared to turn the lights on. There’s preppers who don’t trust or need to rely on anyone, but end up paranoid and alone. And there’s the few who have been able to unplug themselves from society’s rules but end up disconnected from themselves and others, making normal relationships and jobs impossible
Although I can admire these types from a distance, purely for their ability to shed self-consciousness and sensitivity, many of these ways of living don’t seem that healthy or appealing.
Instead, we could be finding ways to relax this seriousness, like author Robert Moss writes to “look at your issues and life choices … without judgment and always (I trust) with a sense of humor.”
One way to do that is finding ways to laugh at yourself. Can you laugh at how you are rewriting that post on social media? Can you laugh at yourself picking out the right shirt to wear? Can you admit that you’re being a little bit too serious about it? Some of us have turned something like a profile picture into a matter of life or death.
But unlike seriousness, humor always feels like relief. Laughing deflates. Releases pressure and tension. Unclenches. You’re basically laughing at the world not ending. Annoying stuff still happens. Disappointing stuff still happens. But we don’t need to take it seriously1.
Remember which seriously I’m talking about here. Not this one. ↩︎
November 23, 2025 @ 3:52pm – Camberwell, Victoria, Australia
Here are some notes, quotes, songs and writing from last month. This is probably my last post before the end of the year. At some point in January I’ll compile all my notes for the entire year.
Thoughts
Motivation is important, but it’s difficult to drive forward if there’s a part of us that has their foot stamped on the brake. We tend to set a louder alarm clock when there’s a part of us that is tired and wants to rest.
It usually comes as a shock when we recognize how similar someone else is to us.
If technology had a slogan, it would be something like “there’s still a few bugs to work out”. It’s never finished.
I think there’s a real cost to watching hours of television every night, especially for younger people. Streaming makes the problem both worse and cheaper. It’s like subsidized rubbish. At least a Blue-Ray is unsubsidized.
If you can, acknowledge your tiredness. It’s not even unpleasant. What’s unpleasant is ignoring your tiredness or not even knowing that you’re ignoring it. Say to yourself, “Yep, I know, we’ll go to sleep soon.”
There’s spontaneous conversation and then there’s the pain of wanting and wishing the next conversation to be the same.
Hell is not giving yourself space between ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’.
There should be a decent reason you are only giving 40% effort.
Any time I’m doing something that requires me to wait a few minutes, like boiling a kettle, my hands leap at the opportunity to fidget and scratch.
A sleep cycle is about 1.5 hours. If you wake at some ‘odd’ hour in the night, translate it to cycles instead: Oh, I’ve just woken up after sleeping for a few cycles. It makes more sense.
I’m automatically assigned ‘team leader’ for a day. It’s hardly got any power or real responsibility. It’s more a contact person if anything. But almost immediately people emerge from the group who want this job and don’t want me to have it.
There’s been a stain on my bathroom door for months. I finally look at it closely. It’s mould. I clean it, sand it, wipe it, paint it.
I swim crawl much better when I breathe despite the water, meaning I don’t adjust my position so much. Usually I’m breathing around the water, gasping to fit a breath in without swallowing water.
I remember a bumper sticker I saw when backpacking years ago. It said something like “Life: This isn’t practice.” I think you can read this and feel worried, or just read it as an important fact to remember.
A lot of modern weight loss techniques are about going fast. Whizzing smoothies, interval sprints, flapjack burpees. But you can lose weight doing everything slowly.
This year I opted to not be part of my apartment buildings’ committee. Most issues have quietly resolved themselves without any intervention from me. I wonder if wars are what happen when groups of people can’t help but intervene.
Kids use great language. A kid playing soccer with his brother exclaims “if you kick it with force it goes like a slingshot!”
If someone wants to lose weight ask them what will happen once they have lost the weight. Most of the time we don’t actually think about what will happen once we get the thing we want. We are too busy wanting the thing.
A basic experience of freedom: stop a habit
Quotes
If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years left to live. – Einstein
Even these nihilist guys, they’re trying to provide meaning even if it’s an anti-meaning…they’re enchanting the world with nihilism. – Grant Morrison
True creativity is when you have a sense that your pleasure could be legitimate wherever it lies. – Alain de Botton
We’re all put to the test. But it never comes in the form, or at the point we’d prefer, does it? – The Edge (1997)
One of the best ways to discover what you really believe in… is to watch your own behavior. – Robert A. Johnson
The moment a friendship feels like it’s a sort of tit for tat, it’s no longer a friendship – My mother
Jet lag is your soul being dragged around by your body. – William Gibson
When I am having difficulty getting into a task, when I am writing, repairing something around the house, frustrated by difficulties, or literally breathless from jogging. The phrase will come into my head—“I am just warming up now.” I usually find more energy available after this. – The Teaching Tales Of Milton H Erickson
True science results when (with common sense)… people know what kinds of experiments to conduct. – Rudolph Steiner
They were sending me kids who couldn’t sit still. Well, they could sit still when they were listening to me, because they realized I was giving them something valuable. – John Stokes
January 11, 2025 @ 11:08am – Bolinda, Macedon, Australia
It’s a shame we take our thoughts so seriously.
They distract and pull us away from what’s actually going on. They sneakily absorb our attention without us noticing. Spiritual teacher Osho goes further, calling them “parasites”.
If we could just take a step back and find a little distance, our thoughts might have less influence over us. We might be able to live without instantly reacting or getting caught up in their stories.
This is possible with a little mindfulness, and shows us there’s nothing there to worry about.
With “humility and the patience”, Richard Rohr says, “you will say 98% of your thought patterns are repetitive and useless.”
So what do we do with them?
Even if they are mostly negative or trivial, it’s not possible to stop the tap of thoughts. Instead, the usual advice is that we should treat them kindly.
It’s good advice. Letting your thoughts float by without clutching onto them or harsh judgement helps to de-potentiate their energy and prevents one from acting them out. Altering your nervous system with a long walk or a cold plunge can also help.
But it’s not easy to be kind and understanding, especially when we are dealing with persistent, ‘sticky’ or uncomfortable thoughts.
So here’s another approach.
Your thoughts are racing, they’re really distracting you, and pretty soon you’ll be completely carried off by them. When that happens, try saying this:
“Yes? What else.”
Let’s say you’re upset about the dinner you’ve cooked for yourself. Thoughts might show up like:
“I should have planned this better.”
“I should have eaten that yesterday, now it’s going to go bad.”
“I wish this looked more appetising.”
Step 1: Say “Yes?”
Firstly, affirm the thought by saying, internally or out loud, “Yes?”
When you say this, try to take on the attitude of someone who is patient, a little bemused, and on the verge of exasperation, like someone dealing with a person who doesn’t quite know what they’re doing.
“Yes?” is a statement of recognition. You’ve grabbed hold of something that usually lives in the dark and you’ve brought it out into the light. And you want to do so without being judgmental. We’re not wishing it away or demanding it be different.
The thought may not feel very nice to touch. The thought might have a feeling tone of desperation, or sadness or some other emotion. If it’s something annoying, problematic or scary, you’ll probably want to drop it and do something else. Eat some food, watch YouTube, whatever. Or you might fall back into the old pattern and get carried away thinking about it.
Step 2: Say “What else?”
If you can stomach one thought without distraction, see if you can handle a second.
After you say “Yes?” then say, “What else?”
Another thought might arrive.
The attitude should be the same. Slightly impatient, but non-judgmental.
When you do this, you’ve made the choice to grab some more stuff from down in the drain.
We keep that attitude going. We’re rolling our eyes at ourselves. We’re nodding. It’s not scary. It’s maybe even a bit boring. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just more thoughts.
When big, heavy thoughts appear
Sometimes really “big” thoughts will come up.
“I’m never going to be able to cook something nice.”
“I’m a loser.”
“It’s never going to change.”
“I’m going to be broke forever.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
They might feel scarily true, like facts rather than opinions. We might call these beliefs. A belief quietly trains you to expect certain things from life. Like a child might expect to see Santa on the roof on Christmas Eve. But they’re just thoughts too, just ones you’ve probably thought a lot of times in your life.
And what do we say to beliefs? Same as we do to any other thought.
Yes? What else.
When we say “What else?” we don’t treat one thought as more special than another. And why should we? I didn’t choose any of the thoughts that arrived in my head, so why should I honour some over others?
By doing this over and over, we’re teaching ourselves that we can handle any thought.
Tips and caveats
This is a slow process, and we shouldn’t need to rush into it.
Start small It will feel stupid at first. You are talking to yourself. Start with small, everyday thoughts, before trying this with bigger beliefs. Practice while washing up.
Don’t go deep There’s no need to spend any time trying to understand or intellectualise the thoughts. This isn’t depth-psychology. All I’m suggesting is three words, plus a basic, non-judgmental attitude.
Watch out for moods If you’re in a really good mood, you probably won’t want to do this at all. If you’re in a really bad mood or feeling very reactive, I wouldn’t recommend it either. We’re adding attention to our thoughts, which might fuel some flames unnecessarily.
Why this works
One big reason this sort of practice is helpful is because it’s the exact opposite of what we usually do. Most of the time we do one of the following with our thoughts:
Buy it totally and get completely identified with it
Resist and rage against it
Run from it, numbing out with food, tv or other distractions.
But to simply look at a thought, raise our eyebrows, keep looking, and calmly ask for more, is a complete 180. And we could all do more 180s.
A desire to understand is wisdom; desiring a result is greed.
Sayadaw U Tejaniya
It’s June 20, 2022. As usual, I’d arrived at my therapist’s office in a rush. We talk about feelings. Feelings I’ve had for as long as I could remember. Feeling different. Disconnected. Feeling like a fraud. A deep, disorienting sadness.
These were sensitive topics for me, but I was trying too hard to do therapy correctly. Asking clever questions. Speaking carefully. Thinking a bit too much. That doesn’t get you very far. It’s not really talk therapy. It’s not even proper talking. The performance prevents anything real to percolate. You’d be literally better off talking to a tree.
My therapist changed tack. She asked the partof me that was blocking her questions to sit (imaginarily) on a (real) empty chair and tell her why it was actinglike that. Why was it so defensive? And what in particular was it protecting?
When I spoke as that part, which we named The Controller, I repeated the same evasive, critical stance I had taken before. The crucial distinction was that it was now a separate part of me. Before the exercise, I was identified with it. I was it. By naming, placing and conversing with it, it was now a separate part. It had its own form. It had moved from subject, to object.
Unofficially, this was parts work, usually associated with Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. In No Bad Parts, Richard C. Schwartz rejects a “mono mind paradigm”, dividing up our interior world into many parts or “little inner beings who are trying their best to keep you safe.” There’s different types of parts, like Protectors, “the parts of us usually running our lives” and Exiles which “we have tried to bury”, burdened with difficult “emotions, beliefs and memories”. There’s also the Self, which is like our mature and ‘spontaneously compassionate’ side, that we all access once other less healthy parts move aside.
When we talk to, listen to, and gain the trust of these different parts, we can restore peace and order inside us. Exiled parts can emerge from the shadows when we no longer find them disgusting or dangerous. Harsh, defensive parts like an inner critic can relax. By talking to The Controller, I learned a little about what it cares about (identifying threats), but also that it’s tired of this job. This attitude, this protective stance started to sound like an extremely expensive insurance policy, written for imaginary risks.
Outside a police academy, plainclothes officers whoop and horse around like new graduates. Two run straight at each other and collide, bouncing off unhurt like stuntmen. A policeman tells me they’re practicing to be criminals. Dream – August 5, 2025
No Bad Parts, written by IFS founder Richard C. Schwartz, is a decent, slightly bland introduction to the theory. But like a book about basketball, it’s probably better to start practicing. Schwartz recommends finding an IFS trained therapist, which is a good start, although any mental health practitioner would be able to walk through a similar exercise to mine that I shared.
Since most people probably don’t have access to a therapist, or the concentration required to sit quietly and listen to themselves, it’s worth experimenting with other approaches. For example, if you have a practice of recording your dreams, you might consider thinking of dream characters as parts. Dreams have no need for conscious visualization or monk-like concentration. All you need is a bit of memory.
Dreams are naturally vivid and emotive, effortlessly delivery images and potent symbols for you to review each morning. A dream of a meeting with a confused, miserable teenager might be showing you an Exile that you banished years ago for being too embarrassing. A dream of policeman, horsing around in plain clothes might signal the relaxing of a habitually judgmental attitude.
Parts work uses different language than Jung, but the thought is the same. It doesn’t matter if you recognize a part in a dream or in an empty chair. What matters is getting free of the habitual identification, with the confidence and assurance that “you will never find anything in the unconscious that will not be useful and good when it is made conscious and brought to the right level.”1
Buddha Bike 