Powerful, precise energy is the key to transformation. This week on Acta Non Verba transformational coach Sam Morris reveals the key to utilizing Zen philosophy in business and in life. In this episode Sam and I will discuss why the term Zen Warrior is not a paradox, how being non-reactive can serve you in daily life, and how understanding your priorities will help you focus on inner fulfillment.
Sam Morris is the founder of Zen Warrior training, a transformational coaching program for high performing entrepreneurs and creative professionals. Sam is an internationally known leader in the field of personal transformation with 20 years of experience studying and teaching the ancient wisdom of Zen philosophy, meditation and breath practices. Sam coaches high performers and corporate clients on how to master their inner workings of the mind, body and spirit, and live from a place of presence, purpose and resolve.
Connect with Sam via his website: https://zenwarriortraining.com/
Episode Transcript:
00:32
Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions, not words. If you wanna know when somebody truly believes, don’t listen to their words, instead observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson, and my guest today truly embodies that phrase.
01:00
Sam Morris is the founder of Zen Warrior Training, a transformational coaching program for high performers, entrepreneurs, and creative professionals. Sam is an internationally known leader in the field of personal transformation. With 20 years of experience studying and teaching the ancient wisdom of Zen and Dallas philosophy, meditation and breath work practices, Sam coaches high performers and corporate clients how to master their inner workings of the mind, body, and spirit, and live from a place of presence, from purpose.
01:30
and resolve in their businesses and in their lives. Now that’s a fantastic intro, but there’s much more to Sam Morris than just that small bit. There’s a story, and that is why we connect so well. You see, in 1999, Sam began a rare journey of empowerment, but not by his own choosing. An accident caused by a drunk driver left him paraplegic. Life tested Sam to his very core.
01:58
but determined not to be a victim of these circumstances, Sam embraced his own hero’s journey and came back with treasures to share. Sam Morris, thank you so much for being here today. We’ve known each other for a little while, but this is the first time we’ve actually got to get a recorded conversation. So thank you so much for being here today. It’s an honor to have you in our presence. I’m so happy to be here, Marcus. Thank you for inviting me. We talked for the first time. We’ve…
02:26
been on social media together for years, but was it two years ago that we had our first actual conversation? I think we FaceTimed or we Skyped or something. Two or two and a half years ago, something like that. Yeah. I remember where I was living in the time when I hadn’t lived there for at least two years, maybe a little bit more. So yeah. Yeah. So it’s been, it’s been a while since we’ve chatted, but we’ve stayed connected over social media. And like you said, we’re we’re cut of a similar cloth and it’s always so funded.
02:55
follow your journey and to see what you’re doing. Because I just resonate so deeply with how you’re living and the work that you’re doing. Well, thank you. And I absolutely agree. The Zen Warrior training that you’re doing, again, it’s very similar to what my story is and the very essence of that hero’s journey. And I love the content that you put out. When Sam puts things out, it’s very deep. And the nice thing is you can take it from a superficial level because of the Zen and Dallas components.
03:25
If you’re at a place where you’re willing to go a little bit deeper, there’s much more there. So it’s the understated elegance that I really appreciate it. So there’s the ruggedness is a stone at the Dallas mentality, but there’s very much that treasure hidden within if you’re willing to deep dive, if you’re willing to unpack that question and allow it to unfold as it will. So I can’t recommend your stuff enough. And like I said, I love your material and I’m so excited you have your podcast going now too, right? Yes, which you’re going to be a guest on soon. I am indeed.
03:55
It’s going to be phenomenal. So it’s about time we’ve connected like this. We’ve, uh, it’s been a while. So just to ask you about the Zen warrior component, a lot of Westerners may not even understand what Zen is and then their notion of what Zen is may be this very passive person who kind of smiles and turns the other cheek all the time. So in their mind, when they envision a warrior, they may feel that those are diametrically opposed. Can you sort of explain to us?
04:23
what that looks like and how we can be a Zen warrior and how that can have a beautiful coexistence. Oh, yes. And first of all, I love the diametrical opposition of those two. It does appear on the surface to be paradoxical. And yet, if you really look at it, they’re not paradoxical at all. In fact, when we think about warriors, when you think about the warriors of the East, where
04:50
Zen and Taoist philosophy and principles and practices emerged from in Asia. When we think about the samurai, a samurai is the ultimate warrior archetype in the East. Now the samurai, while they are absolutely vicious on the battlefield and focused in everything that
05:19
doing it with grace and doing it with honor and doing it with incredible power and precision. I mean, when you think about the samurai, that’s the kind of energy that you connect with is that powerful, precise energy. You do not wanna mess with a samurai. And yet their inner state is one of total serenity, total peace, total quiet.
05:49
Their inner world is a world that is not conflicted with mental chatter, with the type of just ruminating thoughts that distract most people on their day-to-day lives. They are non-reactive. They’re not overthinking about things. They’re not reacting to things. They are maintaining a peaceful, calm, serene state
06:19
so that as things are happening on the battlefield, they’re able to respond just like that. Cha! Everything is happening in the moment. There is no moment that goes by where there isn’t complete calm, serenity, and the ability to respond in a moment’s notice to whatever is occurring. It’s that level of focus. And that level of focus is something that is cultivated with the samurai.
06:47
from the time that they’re very young children. So they are meditating on a daily basis. They’re at work. Every movement of the sword is a meditation. Every breath that they take is a meditation. Everything is about emptying the mind. And what Zen, the practice of Zen is really about is it’s about emptying the mind. It’s about being in a place that is so empty of content that you’re able to respond.
07:17
in a moment’s notice to anything that is occurring around you in a peaceful, graceful, centered way. Brilliant. I love that. And as you know, I’ve studied martial arts since I was 11. So 30 some odd years of martial art training very much. I echo that sentiment entirely again, Budo Bushido, the idea of the samurai. And again, everything was about, it was a practice and presence again, when you’re moving that blade, when you’re blocking, when you’re turning, when your body moves.
07:46
It’s all in alignment and it’s all intentional. Nothing’s superfluous, nothing is extra, nothing is flamboyant. And again, I love that texture that you build about the idea of the samurai where I ate of just the ability to draw the sword, that’s an art form. Yet there’s other art forms such as poetry, calligraphy, flower arranging, a tea ceremony. And they saw the commonality and the overlapping of all those truths together.
08:16
So they would stack in this very powerful way so that every motion stacked upon and reinforced the philosophical The physical and the emotional component of Zen so there was no confusion. There was nothing that was Outside these realms it was confusing it all came back to that same path And I think that that is a great explanation that you gave for that. Yes It’s all about the simplicity when you think about a Zen garden it’s a very simple space or a Zen if you talk about a
08:46
a home being made with a Zen design. It’s designed in a minimalist way, so that it’s mostly space. And what emerges from that space is then highly intentional. If there is something that is put in that space in a Zen home, it’s not done so with clutter. It’s done so because it’s the most intentional use of that space to compliment the empty space. So everything is about breaking things down
09:16
emptiness being and the emptiness and the formless being the fundamental, you know, taking up most of the space, the emptiness and the formless, so that whatever is added to that is added with such intentionality. So if we think about it in terms of a very Zen room, you know, we might look at a pretty much open room with very little in it, except for maybe a couple of pieces of art or, you know, one little
09:44
flower arrangement or one little sculpture or a fountain or something like that. But if we then translate that into the human body and the human mind and we think about it in terms of the types of practical things that we are doing on a day-to-day basis, we can take it to the level of the executive. That executive being in a space that is primarily empty inside, primarily just open spaciousness inside of themselves, aware
10:13
open so that they can be aware of what is happening inside them and around them so that the action that they do take is highly intentional versus erratic or reactive or Coming from a place of having a cluttered mind. So this is the way that the Zen translates from You know the martial arts studio or this the home or the Zen garden
10:42
and translates into the boardroom. That’s very powerful. And those that are into Taoism or Zen are they’ve, even if they’ve seen any beautiful Chinese or Japanese art, especially like a scroll, for example, you will oftentimes see this beautiful landscape, this beautiful scene, and then very small, near the bottom, you’ll see the human figure. And again, it’s because of this notion of all that beauty that’s there. Or again, like what you’re saying,
11:10
If I have a lot of things in a room, it becomes busy, it becomes cluttered. And if I have a dozen things that are going on, not all of them can have the same volume, the same capacity, the same impact like the mind. But again, like you say, if you have this beautiful centerpiece, whether it be something as simple as a stone, something as simple as a formation, or just the fact that it’s the color, the dynamics, that splash of that color, that makes a much more powerful impact.
11:39
And again, bringing it back to the executive, to the CEO, to the C-Squid executives. If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. Exactly, exactly. So by executing the things that really matter, being intentional about what really matters, again, and in the West, if you wanna call it the 80-20 principle, if you wanna call it Occam’s razor, semantics don’t matter, the truth is the same. And the most important thing is not getting caught up in the semantics of that, but looking for the underlying truth. So…
12:09
For people like Sam and I, we are constantly looking for, our goal is to absorb truth irrespective of source without judgment of what that source is and just sort of run it through our own truth filter, our own resonance within us. And if it makes sense, I’ll absorb it from anybody irrespective of religion or lack thereof, philosophical component or lack thereof, even political ideology or lack thereof, because if I can absorb that, it allows me to one, keep my ego in check.
12:38
It could be a piece of information that could help somebody else. Bruce Lee’s protege is named Guru Dan and Osanto, and I’m an instructor under him. And he was telling us during an instructions course, there was a technique that we were learning against a blade and there were multiple defenses to this. And he said, for some of you in here, the first defense will work really well. For some of you, the second defense will work really well. For some of you, none of these defenses will work except for these fourth or fifth.
13:08
He says, but it’s important for you to know all of them as an instructor because what works for you may not work for somebody else. And what works for you when you’re 25 may not work for you when you’re 35. And what works for you when you’re 45 may not be the choice that you make when you’re 60. So it was about this practice. It was about this learning. It was about this journey without the intention of getting to a destination, but more about the texture, the quality of that journey.
13:36
of that lesson and again being present with the movement, blending with the energy, respecting that energy, respecting the technique, respecting the person who throws the technique. Again, all those things come into this place of Zen, of Taoism, of putting it into texture, into context towards what you’re trying to make happen in that moment. I know that Stoicism is very popular right now and I love Stoicism clearly, but I think that
14:02
for a lot of people, if they would unpack a little bit of Zen, a little bit of Taoism, a little bit more, you will see Taoism influencing Bruce Lee’s teachings. You will see Taoism in Sun Tzu’s art of war. You will see all that because that was their influence. And by knocking it down to the common denominator, that’s when we can get to the real source of it. That’s absolutely very true. Very true. You’re absolutely right about these different eras of life.
14:29
and these different stages and how these evolutions take place. And I find that a lot of clients that I work with have gone through decades of kind of structuring their identity and what they think is appropriate or inappropriate or their shoulds, the things that they think should be a certain way based on sort of an old model or an old paradigm of who they were. Say,
14:54
back in their teens or back in their 20s or their 30s, and they kind of keep on stacking these various different expectations about how reality should be based on their prior experience. And if you continue to do that, it’s kind of like having a home with only a certain amount of rooms in that home, and you keep on adding new clothes to that home, you keep on putting new furniture in that home,
15:24
The old furniture never gets taken out. The old clothes never get taken out. There’s boxes everywhere and books that you’ve never read keep accumulating. And you just keep accumulating, accumulating, accumulating, accumulating. And the next thing you know, you’re in your 40s or in your 50s, and you’ve got all of this unwanted stuff inside of you. But instead of being inside of your physical home or inside of your office,
15:53
It’s inside of your psyche. It’s inside of your mind. It’s cluttering your mind. It’s preventing you from feeling a fresh energy. It’s preventing you from feeling inspired. We should be able to be inspired and feel fresh energy every single day. And yet so many people get so used to adding to the clutter in their minds day after day after day, year after year after year.
16:21
without ever emptying that clutter. So what the practices of Zen meditation are, or anything that brings you into a mindfulness practice, it doesn’t have to be Zen meditation, it could be breath work, it could be very intentional yoga, could be a number of different martial arts. These embodiment practices bring you into that space of focus in the present moment, where the clutter that you’ve accumulated over the course of the years and decades
16:51
begins to go away. And then you can decide, you can be in a space of more emptiness in the moment and say, okay, I’m here now. I’m 50 years old now. I don’t have to think about who I was when I was 20 or 30 years old or the content of what was going on in my life. I’m actually in this fresh place, this empty space. Now, what do I want to put in? What is the intentional piece?
17:19
What is that sculpture I want to put in the sculpture garden of my mind? What is that one little piece of furniture that I want to add to the room inside my psyche that will actually help me to live life in a more simple and intentional and more powerful way? But the challenge is, is most people don’t know that they actually can empty their mind and start fresh. They think that they start to identify
17:48
just like they identify with the objects in their homes, with the books that they possess, and the clothes that they’ve had since high school, etc., etc., they do the same thing with their own unconscious thoughts. They identify with their own unconscious thoughts that they’ve been identifying with for decades. And the more we do that, the longer that happens, the less fresh we feel, the less spontaneous we feel.
18:15
and the less available we are to ourselves to make empowered decisions in the present moment. It’s so true and there’s so much wisdom within that. The things that got us to where we are right now, we’ve always heard, what got you here won’t get you there. But the reason why is oftentimes because it’s unsustainable. Yeah, it was never meant to be. Yeah, it was never meant to be sustainable. It was to help us get through that phase in our life. So almost like a person who’s traumatized.
18:43
whether it be a soldier or a sexual violence victim, you can get through that place. But once you get to a place where you’re kind of safer, that’s when you have to begin to unpack these things because if you don’t, it will bubble up to the top. And like you said, all this stuff is attrition. It all builds up. So it doesn’t even have to be something traumatic. It can be something about this fixation on this expectation that may or may not have been met. This is why we see so many executives that had this very high expectation for something.
19:13
they achieve it and then it doesn’t mean what they think it meant or they don’t feel better or they don’t feel fulfillment because they’re so concerned about chasing this carrot that they don’t even understand that they’re the one holding the stick. Right. Exactly. We should definitely be very weary of any kind of thought about things will be better when. If you have any kind of thought playing inside of your head about things will be better when check yourself right now because
19:41
What that does is it puts expectations on a hypothetical future situation that has not happened yet. And in the meantime, you’re actually, essentially you are kidnapping your own sense of inner fulfillment and you are placing it on a future expectation, hypothetical situation that has not happened and will likely not happen. And then what happens?
20:11
You get to that point, say that the best case scenario, the thing actually happens. Then what? Then your life isn’t that different. Why? Because you’re still in the habit of doing the same thing. You’re still in the habit of telling yourself things will be better in the future. So even when that thing happens and you experience that surge of dopamine or whatever that makes you feel good that that experience has happened, that goal has been accomplished.
20:39
Soon as that neurological, neurobiological condition has now subsided and you’re back to be with yourself, you’re gonna go back into the same unconscious pattern of thinking that told you things would be better at some point in the future. And then you’re gonna wonder why that doesn’t feel any good anymore. It’s like someone who gets a brand new car and it feels great for the first few weeks. And then after a few weeks, it’s just, that’s just now the car that you drive and it no longer feels great.
21:08
It’s like, well, things will be better when I get another car. And this is what we perpetually do to ourselves as we keep on thinking things are going to be better in some sort of hypothetical future situation that never happens. And we keep on moving the goalposts farther and farther away. In the meantime, here, our bodies and souls are missing our presence. All we have to do is bring ourselves into alignment. And
21:37
connection to ourselves now and say it’s my choice to be fulfilled now and Yeah, it doesn’t mean I’m not going to go towards a goal But I’m going to go towards that goal from a place of fulfillment and centeredness inside of myself. I’m not going to place my expectations on a better future I’m going to take charge of my own inner fulfillment and choose it now
22:07
Beautiful. Choose it now. I love that. And I like how you sort of touched on, I’ve had people that have come to me and say, well, if you’re philosophically bound by this dogma of Zen or Taoism or Stoicism or logic or Confucianism, whatever it is, they make it sound like you are either at this place where everything is minimalistic, you can’t have any sort of expectation, you can’t work towards this goal, and that you’re sort of within the confine of this.
22:34
And to those people, I sort of expressed this idea that, to me, philosophy is simply truth. And it’s just truth that has been named for that specific era, for that specific geography and time. So a truth that you will find in Zen and Taoism, you will probably find even before that, before recorded history, in the teachings and the verbal conversations people have had for centuries telling folklore.
23:02
Or even, you know, stoicism and then modern stuff as well. We see how it sort of repeats itself. And the reason why it seems new to us is because we either haven’t lived long enough or we just haven’t been paying attention or studied in the process and put it to play. Yeah. What you speak of, I have encountered a lot and there have been times in my own life where I’ve sort of questioned how to have drive or ambition from a state of a total appreciation of the present moment.
23:31
But I always find that what that is, is it’s taking something that is philosophically grounded in a place of truth, just like you explained, and then turning it into a religious kind of dogma that somehow we shouldn’t have desires or we shouldn’t have ambition, which is very different because it comes from judgment. Now for me, when I’m in a place of
24:01
presence with that centered peaceful disposition when I realized that Fulfillment cannot come in the future and that fulfillment is something that only can be found in the present moment It actually makes it taps me more into ambition not less it makes me more intentional about my ambition and It makes my ambition come from a different place Not from a place of needing to prove myself
24:30
and not from a place of feeling of self-judgment that I’m not better than I am, or that I need to accomplish certain things in order to, you know, prove myself to myself or to other people or to gain status or whatever. It’s not from those places, that place of judgment, but from a place of inspiration. Like from a place of, to me, being in that place.
24:56
Now I’m not coming from a place of self judgment at all because this part of my brain would judge myself is now quiet. It’s all good, it’s fine. I’m just present. I’m just here. So now I actually have ambition that comes from inspiration and the inspiration is to serve. I wanna be of service because for me, that’s my most natural disposition and I actually don’t even really care what that service looks like.
25:26
I know that if I show up and I’m present with someone, or if I’m present with a group of people, I am going to serve in some way because that’s a value that I connect with. And because I have my own needs dealt with, because I’m not trying to prove myself, I’m not judging myself, I simply wanna serve because I’m already content. So now how can the cup overflow with or whatever? You know?
25:55
I just want to take that full cup and give from it versus trying to take. And so we live in a culture that’s all about taking. Take, take, take, take what you can get. We have a very scarcity-based mindset. It says unless I take more, unless I take more status or take more this, take more that, unless I build this.
26:23
more, you know, it’s coming from this place of things are not enough. Things are not enough. Things are not enough. Things are not enough. There’s never enough money in my bank account. There’s never enough this. There’s never enough that. I think that that is creating a culture of anxiety and depression because it’s out of alignment with truth. The truth is there is always enough. The truth is we are always enough.
26:52
And when we are in alignment with where we are already enough and where we have already have enough, then we come from an entirely different disposition. Then we come from a place of, what can I do with this energy that I already have plenty of? What can I do with this intelligence, this intellect that I already have plenty of? What can I do with this money that I already have plenty of? Now that then generates from a place of abundance versus scarcity.
27:21
totally different models, totally different paradigm. And it comes from a place of inspiration. And if I’m bringing that inspiration in with my colleagues, or if I’m bringing that inspiration to my family, they’re gonna feel it and then they’re gonna be inspired and then they’re gonna wanna give from a place of abundance too. So there’s that ripple effect that happens simply by recognizing that I already am enough and I already have enough. It’s so true.
27:47
For those of you that need an example of this, there’s probably somebody that you can think of either right now or somebody that’s been in your life where they enter the room and you feel this elevation in the spirit of everyone there because that is a person who in that moment of being present, there is that abundance. And when we’re talking about, again, filling the cup or it overflows, here’s what presence does. Here’s what being present does. It’s almost like the tea in this cup.
28:17
If I allow it to steep and just be present and stay there, it becomes concentrated. It becomes powerful. It becomes abundant. So now it’s beyond just being abundant as you’re saying. It’s like you’re talking about serving. Now in my cup, because my cup is so powerful, I don’t have to empty my cup every single time to help somebody. I can literally just get droplets and give them this very concentrated.
28:46
very precise, very surgical, powerful, either wisdom or coaching or conversation, and you’re smiling because you understand that’s what presence does. That’s what being comfortable, being present with ourselves does. And if we aren’t willing to do that, or if we aren’t willing to, because there’s a lot of discomfort required to get to that place. And I’m not saying that, you know, I’m at that place and I’m just saying that compared to where I have been.
29:15
I can see the leaps and bounds that I’ve improved. So I think that that’s a very powerful thing. Fantastic analogy. I just love that. I love that, yeah. I think that that’s the way I’ve thought about it for a long time because I’ve had a lot of people that say, well, how can you serve more people? How can we do more things? And as entrepreneurs, we’re talking about scaling a lot of times, but to me, it’s about, again, having that concentration. And if I can have that concentrated effort or piece of information.
29:43
Again, and that’s very what? Laconic, that’s very Zen, that’s very minimalistic, but that’s where the power lies. If you can give somebody that, that’s why you have these beautiful quotes on your social media. There was one that comes to mind, you made this comment, you said, don’t hide behind the veil of humility when it’s actually fear. Don’t justify the behavior and say that it’s humility. And I feel that there’s a lot of that going on now where.
30:09
Maybe somebody goes through something there, they’re working to build something, whether it be a business or a relationship or whatever, and they run into that hardship. And when they hit it, they just, they kind of stop. And then they say, oh, well, I really didn’t want that, or I didn’t need that, or, oh, I have enough money, or whatever, but there’s a very, again, that’s literally the embodiment of the victim mentality, the embodiment of this fear scarcity idea, and that’s not at all what you’re talking about, is it? Not at all. Pretty much everything that I share on my,
30:39
Instagram or whatever is because I’ve had a dose of the experience myself. I’ve had a dose of having done that, which I am sort of maybe leading people more towards, or maybe leading people more away from the humility thing is a big thing for me. I grew up in New England and there’s a lot of very puritanical values that are there in New England. It’s in a lot of ways, there’s a lot of beauty to
31:09
the sort of the focus and the value of humility. And I consider myself a humble person and I value that. I value that attribute. And yet at the same time, I’ve also felt where I have bumped into places in my life where I have, I think unconsciously, use in humility as a reason why I was unwilling
31:37
to step into my next level of influence. And as we step into levels of influence, it does challenge us. We are going to be more exposed. We are going to be more open to criticism. It’s going to create more vulnerability potentially in us as we become more influential. And so I was discovering that happening in myself where I would
32:07
sort of have the feeling of, well, I’m just a humble person. And that’s why I have not expanded more. That’s why I have not gotten out there more. When really what it was, was fear of greater exposure, fear of greater vulnerability. And so these principles that I speak to are principles that I have.
32:32
personally experienced and had to process inside of myself. And a lot of it’s very deeply rooted stuff where, you know, when we grow up, we grow up in a kind of like a tribe. I mean, we, as individuals, historically, we grew up within a family and a tribe. And now the family and the tribe has now become
33:00
the culture of your environment where you grew up, not only your family, but also the town or the community that you grew up in or the city, the regional kind of vibe and sort of the unconscious ways in which that particular region thinks and behaves. Like New York has a very different regional vibe than Los Angeles does.
33:26
People growing up in Los Angeles have a very different experience with growing up than people in New York. And those people have a very different experience than people growing up in Houston, Texas or in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or whatever. They’re going to have a regional experience that is going to inform how they think and how they behave. And it’s going to, and that feeling of going outside of that is going to be scary. It’s going to feel like a threat.
33:57
If you were to have gone outside of that at an early age in that social community, you would have been seen as an outsider. And that actually in our DNA, that feels threatening to be an outsider. Even if we think differently than our community, it can still sometimes feel threatening. People will still try to gravitate towards the values of the community because they feel like, if I don’t follow along,
34:25
with the values of the community, either my family is going to judge me or my community is going to judge me, and I won’t be safe. And this is something that most people live with for their entire lives. They continue to unconsciously reinforce a lot of that cultural conditioning from their early childhood, which prevents them from living into a dream, living into more potential. And so one of the big stretches for me in my life
34:55
was going from growing up in Maine to spending, starting at the age of 25, spending most of the last 20 years in the Los Angeles area, in Southern California. Very different value system, very different. On the one hand, I always love my Maine values and how I grew up in this way where I was very connected to nature and…
35:22
There was a strong emphasis on hard work and humility and so forth. And yet had I stayed there, I would not have reached a level of potential that I have been able to reach through living in Southern California. And so in a certain sense, I’ve been taking what worked and throwing out what didn’t work, what didn’t serve me, and I’m still in that process.
35:48
even still now at my current age, I’m still at the process of flushing out unconscious beliefs that have me staying at a certain level of influence. And I want to have greater influence now, not because I feel like I need to prove myself. I want to have greater influence because I want to serve more people. And I know that what I am connected to has so much value that I just want to serve more people with it.
36:16
And so, but in order to do so, I have to shed a lot of that unconscious conditioning. It would have me playing a smaller game because I’m afraid to have more influence. And that’s part of the hero’s journey, the entrepreneur’s journey, the creative’s journey for sure. I found myself in that place, in that dance with humility many times. And it’s very easy to bullshit yourself and fall back on a philosophy as a crutch.
36:45
It’s very easy to be humble when you haven’t done anything or when you haven’t pushed yourself to do anything. And that’s one of the reasons why I don’t like it when people hide behind an ideology or a religion or philosophical notion and use that as the justification for their bad behavior. What they just need to do is just be honest like you and I have had to be and I still do it like you said. I did this morning where you had to be very honest with yourself and say, you know what, I’m bullshitting myself. I lied about this. I said that I was going to do these things.
37:15
And I wasn’t able to do it and I could have done it had I done other things, but I didn’t set everything up the way I should have. So because I didn’t choose to take the right actions to do it properly, this is where I’m at. And instead of saying, Oh, well, you know, it wasn’t meant to be, or, Oh, you know, I wasn’t supposed to do X, Y, or Z. That’s not what it is at all. And it’s, it’s a big Zen mirror. It’s right in your face and it makes you see how have I allowed this to happen? Why am I continuing a lot to allow this to happen? If it’s a pattern.
37:44
And I think that that’s, again, where that notion is so important. When we cut everything else away, let’s look at what’s really going on. Uh, let’s look at that, that mentality. And I think it’s also something that maybe people don’t look at. I know a lot of people that will talk about humility and they’ll cling to it. And that humility will create ego. I’m the most humble person in the world.
38:12
That’s right. Just listen to me. I’ll tell you. Just ask me. I’ll tell you how humble I am. And that’s it. They cling to it so stringently that and then we know that anything in excess becomes its opposite. So that’s what they’re doing. Like this humility and they’re saying, I’m going to open the door for you and be humble. And somebody else is like, no, you go first. It’s like, no, you go first. Now all of a sudden you’ve again, you’ve become the opposite of what you’re you’re endeavoring to do. And again, that’s the case. And if you’ve done that, and if you’ve done that,
38:41
And I think people that are listening may have done that. If that’s the case, then what did Sam say earlier? Check yourself, step back, take a breath, check yourself. Let’s disengage. We know that emotions assassinate the truth. And if we can step back and take our emotion and our intention out of it and just look at it, we’ll be able to see what’s really going on. And now we can make the correct decision or at least have the knowledge to make the right decision. And you know, everything that you’re speaking to is why these embodiment
39:10
such as meditation and breath work are so key because it’s not just about all the mental chatter, it’s also about you know even the most seemingly noble of intentions can actually be derailing us from our truth, actually be taking us away versus putting us more on the path of our truth. It may seem noble
39:38
to keep on engaging with this idea of humility day in and day out. But what actually may be happening is that’s actually coming from a place of fear, of a fear of moving forward. And if you don’t slow down enough to breathe and connect and to see and to kind of look from an objective place of awareness at your own thoughts and your own unconscious conditioning, you may just continue along that
40:08
what you perceive as a noble path that is actually not leading you in any sort of noble direction at all whatsoever. And so this is, the mind is so tricky. And I think the fact that we are 95 to 97% unconscious, that our thoughts and behaviors are 95 to 97% unconscious, and yet we think we’re behind the wheel driving? No.
40:38
we’re not driving this car. We can get a little bit more conscious about who’s driving, but don’t ever think that you’re driving the car. Like we have to recognize that we are driving the car through habitual thinking and behaviors. And in fact, that’s a good analogy for those who might be like, this might be a stretch to think, well, what do you mean that I’m 95 to 97% unconscious in my thoughts and behaviors? You know,
41:07
For anyone who is questioning that, first of all, this is a known fact psychologically. This is not some random number that I’m just throwing out there. Psychologists all agree on this. And when we look at the driving a car analogy, you think about when you first started to learn how to drive a car, age 16 or whatever it was, for some of us who grew up in the country, it was the age of 12 on the hay field. But.
41:36
You go out, have to identify which key to use, and then you have to mess around underneath the steering wheel, looking under the steering wheel to find where the ignition is. You put the key in the ignition, and then you, and then for those of us who grew up driving a stick shift, you have to remember the combination of the clutch and the brake and so forth or whatever. And everything that you do, you have to think about what you’re doing before you do it, when you put the car into gear after you get the car on.
42:06
You have to think about exactly what gear that is, and you have to look at the stick shift, and then you have to remember to look in the rear view mirrors. Everything is one step after another. But within a few months after you’ve practiced for a while, all of that stuff is automatic. If you were to have to think about how to drive a car, every single time you drove a car, it would take an immense amount of mental energy to think about the step process
42:34
to drive a car every single time you drove a car. So the human brain is meant to learn something as quickly as it possibly can, and then make it unconscious. Just make it unconscious so that the body knows how to do it. As soon as the body knows how to do it, then the brain can free up its mental resources to think about other things and not have to focus on the thing that has already learned how to do. Now, when we use the analogy of driving,
43:03
we can all relate to it. Yeah, oh yeah, no, I don’t even, when I get out of my car, I don’t even think about it at all. I’m just, I get in and then suddenly I’m at my destination. I hardly even think about how to get there. Everything is just automatic, right? Well, we do the same thing with our thoughts and our philosophies and our day-to-day behaviors. We do the exact same thing, but we don’t realize we’re doing it. So thoughts that we keep on repeating over and over and over again.
43:34
or behaviors that we keep on repeating over and over again, day in and day out, they quickly become unconscious because the body wants to learn how to do those things automatically. A lot of people get up and go to the coffee maker without thinking, oh, I’m gonna have to go up to the coffee maker and make the coffee and da, da, da, da, da, da. They just go to the coffee maker. The coffee, it’s all automatic. The way they brush their teeth, it’s automatic. The same movement every single time. Everything, the body just knows how to do it.
44:02
You don’t think about how to brush your teeth. You don’t think about how to take a shower. You don’t think about how to make coffee. Everything is automatic. Your body just does it. But this is also happening with our own thoughts and beliefs. So we are reinforcing our own thoughts and beliefs over and over and over again, day in and day out, for weeks, months, years, decades. And then we get to a point in our lives where we’re like, why don’t I feel better?
44:27
Or why am I not more inspired? Why am I not doing more of what I want to be doing? And why am I just, do I have all of these challenges in my life and I don’t feel more free and inspired? I should be feeling better about my life. This is the land of the free, why don’t I feel free? You know, I’ve got the money and I’ve got the job and I’ve got the house and kids and the blah, blah, blah, but I still don’t feel fulfilled. Well, it’s because certain thoughts and behaviors
44:53
have hardwired themselves into the body and become unconscious. That was part one of my interview with Sam Morris, the founder of Zen Warrior Training. You can hear part two of the interview on the next episode of Acta Non Verba, when we discuss the Bushido wisdom of dying before you die to prepare yourself fully for what lies ahead. Later in the episode, Sam also reveals the adversity that left him paralyzed from the waist down and how he was able to overcome the feeling of being a victim.
