Uncomfortable Conversations with Gregory

“As soon as I use words to describe myself, I limit myself.”

Today’s guest, a young man named Josh Plotkin, enters the conversation with a prepared script of the identity (or his case non-identity) that he wants the public to associate him with. The longer he talks, the more clear it becomes that he uses generic descriptions of himself to cover the fact that he doesn’t want to limit himself through specific values and actions. He meanders from thought to thought without any consistent meaning or theme. When he talks about himself, his words are ambiguous and light hearted.

Most people are so afraid to define themselves to any meaningful degree that they are forced to fall back on a generic definition they inherited. They prefer to think of themselves as being “one with the universe”, a manifestation of “God energy”, or expressing their “highest level of consciousness”. What these generic terms do is function as a safety net from real analysis of values and actions. They safeguard us from having to take real risk and put our chips in one place, for better or for worse. They nullify heroism in all its forms.

What mental gymnastics do you perform to avoid making definitive statements about yourself?

Are you afraid of moving beyond the all-encompassing blanket statements that apply to everyone?

We live in a world that encourages us to acknowledge only the bright and positive parts of ourselves. We are trained to ignore or outright deny anything capable of causing great sadness, sorrow, suffering, rage, or negativity of any kind. We run from the dark side of the force.

David portrays himself as an overly positive man in his thirties. But under that shiny surface in another world of emotional capacity. Among other things, he is afraid to admit he is like his father, who he resents for not being a good husband to his mother. Many of the same patterns show up in his own relationships with women, though he doesn’t equivocate them at first.

He is ultimately afraid to show his negative emotions in anything other than a neutral tone and a list of synonyms to eloquently express his unhappiness. He resorts to describing his negative feelings only one word at a time in a very controlled state. “Skeletons in the closet” and “demons” are conceptions of the past that we refuse to let fade away with the natural flow of entropy.

Society teaches us to appear comfortable even when you are deeply uncomfortable so that no one around you will know. We believe it is necessary to be in a safe and supportive space when we reveal our demons to the world. Too much awareness to quickly can cause us to rearrange our constructs of self to show us the only real terror is us. The monster is you.

We fear the social repercussions of sharing our weaknesses publicly. Personal development seminars and other safe spaces offer limited personal growth so that we don’t have to take it out into the real world. What is the story you are so desperate to uphold for others? Doing things publically makes them real because it changes other people’s perceptions of us. We cannot easily return to how things were before because expectations are different.

The longer you wait to clean your skeletons, the harder it will be.

What are the dark things about you that you struggle to keep hidden from yourself and others?

What would you lose by being completely authentic with even your own darkness?

Greg Curtin left America in his twenties to see what the world could offer him with hardly a plan to means to sustain himself. Now in his thirties, he has traveled around the world eagerly taking jobs wherever he could find them, always finding a way to keep himself afloat and pursuing his myriad passions.

This lifestyle has carried with it obvious and non-obvious challenges alike. Aside from constant acclimation to new cultures, Greg learned that he could never reintegrate back to where he came from. He experienced extreme alienation from your own peers for seeking an unconventional path. Because he dropped out of school, he would never be able to easily return to the standard education or career path. He now existed in a cultural void where there was no carved out space for him and he was free to act however he wanted, for better or for worse.

We are all unconsciously shaped by the role our immediate culture carves out for us. Our skin tone, gender, attractiveness, and a million other little things contribute to the immediate impression others form of us, and therefore what they will allow or expect from us. We must consciously choose to remain curious and enthusiastic about all the new experiences life can offer just outside our comfort zones, especially as the world changes at an accelerating rate.

How are you currently imprisoned by the cultural expectations of those around you?

How do you use the accident of your life circumstances to your advantage?

We all conceive of the world through generalizations and broad categories. It’s necessary for us to function as rational beings. But sometimes the categories we inherit actually hurt our ability to see things accurately. Sometimes we can defy conventional categorization. We must work against the social pressure to conform to the stereotypes that other people cast for us in their limited mentalities of who we really are.

Anastasia from Ukraine, who has known Gregory more intimately than most, joins the conversation to discuss how being perceived in society as beautiful has contradicted other parts of her persona, such as her fantastic intellect. She’s never felt the freedom to develop her rational mind to its fullest capacity, yet she thinks she is obligated to remain as physically attractive as possible to keep up her carved out role in society. The identity that others chose for her is crushing who she really is, and she suffers deeply as a result.

Ultimately, Anastasia realizes she has a real fear of rejection for her authentic self. She has been lacking adequate encouragement and desperation to go after what she really wants from herself and life. She leaves the conversation unashamed of identifying as an intelligent person on a mission to express herself fully.

How you compare yourself to other socially accepted generalizations? Do you forsake who you really are to live up to what others have chosen for you to be?

Simone Sauter is life coach specializing in getting over heartbreak. She joins Gregory to discuss a recent bout of heartbreak that took even her by surprise. Together, they try to make meaning out of the mess of emotional turmoil these recent events have left her in. Over the course of their uncomfortable conversation, Simone gets the opportunity to reevaluate how she acquired the conceptions of relationships she has, how they are harming her, and ultimately how to replace them with something better.

Join in on the conversation in your own mind as you consider the negative associations in your own life, why and how you seek companionship at all, and how to move from a place of pain to one of power. None of us has to live our lives by the standards and false beliefs of other people. External judgment is idle. Take back control of the meaning of the words you use to define yourself and your life.

What are you actually looking for in a romantic partner? How quick are you to project those standards onto the suitors you entangle your life with?

Websites mentioned:

https://frompaintopower.de/

Very often, our greatest suffering stems from our ability to conceive of things we cannot obtain. The explorers who feel this great pain must either suffer with it internally or learn to branch out and pursue what makes them happy in greater landscapes around them. Gregory is joined today by a reader of one of his books (Travel As Transformation) who is seeking new sources of personal growth and fulfillment in his life. Alexander feels frustrated because he does not know where the next great challenge for him lays, and he grows increasingly bored with the tools he has grown accustomed to in his ordinary world.

One of the topics we lay the foundation for the conversation with is Low Latent Inhibition (LLI), which is a set of psychological traits that make certain people attuned to taking in more working information from the world than others, thus increasing their ability to conceptualize all the different ways that things could be. Most famously, the character Michael Scofield from the TV show Prison Break was diagnosed as having LLI, thus accounting for his creative genius and insatiable need to solve difficult problems.

It has been said that every seeker must choose one of two paths: the path of yoga (inaction/abstinence) or the path of tantra (action/indulgence). Gregory advocates using external world experience to find the bearings of the self, whereas Alexander praises the virtues of tai chi and meditation. Ultimately, the two come to a consensus that it is vital for intelligent and ambitious young people to learn to differentiate between experiential and conceptual versions of themselves, and overcome the naivety of inexperience.

Do you feel stifled that there is a version of you that you don’t know how to embody? What bold actions into the unknown and uncomfortable can you take in your life right now?

Are You Willing to Abandon Your Sacred Cows at Any Age? Leaving the Jehovah’s Witness Cult and Your Own Family at 38.

It’s often the case that we assume any major revelations and paradigms shifts must happen very early in life before our mindsets solidify. Jonathan Lockwood, a world-renowned voiceover artist and lover of premium Mexican mescal, was raised a Jehovah’s Witness. Despite being a reasonably intelligent man, he even became a cult elder at age 29. For some reason, at age 38 he decided it was all kind of bullshit and weaned himself away from the only social structure he had ever known. With the exception of his 17-year-old daughter, he was excommunicated from his entire family and most of his friends.

Now at age 50, he feels mentally youthful and ready to question every remaining foundational belief in his own mind. Join our uncomfortable conversation, as we delve into the origins of cognitive dissonance and why people will defend pre-existing beliefs to the death before ever questioning why they think the way they do. Jon will also share his personal experiences with ayahuasca and other plant-based psychedelics, including how they have helped open his mind to new ways of thinking about things even relatively late in life. What unconscious beliefs lie at the base of your worldview? What would it take for you to completely reevaluate your life at any age?

Websites mentioned:

http://www.jonathanlockwood.com

http://www.howtobeavoicetalent.com

https://facebook.com/jonathan.lockwood1

The more familiar we get with one way of seeing things or interpreting information, the easier it is to forget that not everyone shares our perspective. This difference is perhaps no more obvious than when looking the distinction between those who identify as artists vs. those who identify as intellectuals. If the two are not actively seeking to communicate with open minds and empathy, it can be impossible to find any common ground at all. This means sacrificing the benefits beholden by the other side.

This show’s guest, Luciano, shares his insights into how the creative process affects him, articulating thoughts many of us have had better that most are able to. The conversation evolves over the course of three hours and a pitifully short poker game into themes of knowing the limits of your physical body, experiencing love as a shared sense of identity, lustful attraction vs. emotional attraction, sex with friends and strangers, the difference between a want and a need, why it is essential for adults to spend time with children, talking about what you do like you have the cure for cancer, what it would take to consciously violate your own principles, the futility of meditation, predicting a person’s actions by their principles, and the sacred cows that run our lives.

How do the limits of your dominion over life define you? How do you navigate the world of competing ideas and ideologies that could fill your time?

The more familiar we get with one way of seeing things or interpreting information, the easier it is to forget that not everyone shares our perspective. This difference is perhaps no more obvious than when looking the distinction between those who identify as artists vs. those who identify as intellectuals. If the two are not actively seeking to communicate with open minds and empathy, it can be impossible to find any common ground at all. This means sacrificing the benefits beholden by the other side.

This show’s guest, Luciano, shares his insights into how the creative process affects him, articulating thoughts many of us have had better that most are able to. The conversation evolves over the course of three hours and a pitifully short poker game into themes of knowing the limits of your physical body, experiencing love as a shared sense of identity, lustful attraction vs. emotional attraction, sex with friends and strangers, the difference between a want and a need, why it is essential for adults to spend time with children, talking about what you do like you have the cure for cancer, what it would take to consciously violate your own principles, the futility of meditation, predicting a person’s actions by their principles, and the sacred cows that run our lives.

How do the limits of your dominion over life define you? How do you navigate the world of competing ideas and ideologies that could fill your time?

Do you know what you care about? Are you so sure in you principles, mission, and values that you are immune to interference from the chaotic events of the world around you?

This show’s guest, Mariza, talks about how the aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidential election have affected her emotionally, even though no measureable difference has been made in her life. This leads into a broader discussion about how we let stories - not actual events - control our mindset and actions more than anything else. We all must take responsibility for what we care about, and not succumb to idle action for the sake of action, such as the case with those who protest or complain with no realize mechanism in place for getting what they want.

Mariza will share her story of how she left her former life behind to travel the world and pursue what she really wanted after an impassioned viewing of Eat Pray Love. The ultimate goal of the person identified with a mission or principle is to become the superhuman embodiment of that idea.

In ancient and modern culture alike, we have always looked up to avatars that represent something specific and extraordinary that we wish we could aspire too. Jesus is the perfect man, the representation of divine love and forgiveness. Superman is the hope we are all capable of, demonstrated through incredible physical power.

Whether as myths or real people​, they give us new standards to look up to. What do you care about? What is the ultimate destination of your identity, beyond your normal human life?