The Morning Checkin Clay Johnson

Hello Old Friend,

Sometimes life gets in the way. Routines get disturbed. Things slip out of your fingers, and before you know it, those routines become nearly impossible to find again. For me, I try to go back to them, and I wonder why I can’t do what I did. There was the time I did the same workout every day for a year, and lost 40 pounds. I looked and felt amazing, and then, life transitions happened. I’ve tried for six years now to go back and do that thing again, only putting it off until tomorrow. And little by little, those 40 pounds found their way back.

For a creature forged out of billions of years of adaptation, I seem to really resist adaptation. I always want to go back to the way things were when I was doing the thing. And rarely do I ever recognize soon enough the need for me to adapt.

I think it’s an ego thing. Adapting means surrender. It means admitting that my circumstances have changed, and accepting that I cannot change them back to how I would like for them to be.

So instead of changing my circumstances, I must adapt. And this ego has a hard time with that. I

So I’m adapting. I’m adapting this podcast a bit too. Instead of stretching at the beginning, we’re just going to jump right in and give you something to think about. And we’re just going to give your mind one thing to think about while you meditate for a minute.

Today we’ll start:


What are you trying to go back to that you need to adapt to?

Sometimes figuring it out isn't all it's cracked up to be

You know when people stepped on my toes or wronged me in the slightest, it used to upset me for a long time. Years. And I'll tell you, the surface area of where I could get hurt was disproportionate to my actual size: if people voted a certain way or believed a certain thing, it hurt me. If people sent their kid to a school with a particular name, it hurt me. Personally. 



And if I'm honest, I wanted that hurt. I wanted to be in a constant state of outrage because it made me feel powerful. Important. Bigger than.  It took me too long to realize that grudges will kill me. That sense of power I get, not just over being right, over being wronged. I used to cling to that because it made me feel powerful, and like other people were just hugely immoral compared to me. 



Here's the thing about outrage -- it destroys us at the cellular level. Recent research shows that it leads to mitochondrial level. It starts screwing with our hormones, and that can spill into our blood stream and cause actual disease including hypertension and type 2 diabetes. Not to mention stress coping mechanisms like drug and alcohol abuse and all the problems that spill into that.



It's taken me a long time to learn that outrage is a drug and an emotion that I can not afford to hold on to for very long. It's taken me even longer to realize that the only way through it is forgiveness. Forgiveness is a wellness gift I can give myself Just like exercise or a healthy meal, I have to practice forgiveness -- even if the other person never knows they're forgiven. It's required for my survival to forgive. 

Stuart Smalley. Remember him? That character Al Franken played on SNL? He made kind of a mockery of this idea that if you just look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you're good enough, smart enough, and gosh darnit, people like you, then it would all happen. 



I'll confess something to you now, so we can get it out of the way. I've tried it. And I mean I've looked at myself in the mirror and really tried to sell it. And maybe I'm just too cynical. Maybe I'm just a bad salesman. But I look in that mirror and tell myself that I'm good enough and can't help but just think of the ridiculousness of it all.



But I do wonder what would happen if I did believe all that stuff. 



Focus on your breathing. 



What if you believed there was nothing wrong with you?



What if everything around you was perfectly acceptable as it is?



Why are you beautiful?



What are you grateful for?

Good Morning!



This sunday podcast has turned into a place for me to spiritually center myself on a weekly basis. It's a place for me to take a deep breath, relax, and take an inventory of what is and is not inside of my control. Where I can express gratitude to the miracle of coincidences it took for me to exist in this moment in time, and release my expectations for those people, places, and things around me that may not do exactly what I want them to do. 



I start with my body. I spend the week kind of beating my body up. But I am grateful for it this morning. I'm grateful for my breath. My ability to stretch. I'm going to do that now by reaching up to the sky. I'm grateful that my knees, shoulders, hips, and elbows all seem to be in working order. And I'm grateful that all five of my senses seeming to work just fine. 



Then I move on to my people, places, and things. I'm grateful for my family, my two little boys and my wife. I'm grateful for my friends and family around me, and I'm grateful for all the people who have led me to this point in my life -- even those that may have hurt or upset me. Because without any of that, I wouldn't be here today.



And finally I'm grateful to be here in this moment today. The miraculous set of cosmic coincidences it took to have me exist, right here, at this moment. Every driver on the road that chose to stay on his side of the street, not just for myself, but for my parents and my grandparents and great grandparents, all the way back to wherever we came from --- those miraculous coincidences that led to right now, me here, speaking into a microphone, to you for this podcast. What a miracle it all is, and how grateful I am for it.



And I'm grateful for you, too, dear listener. I'm grateful to be of service to you, and I hope you enjoy your day. I have no questions for you today, but rather a request: spend the next minute contemplating gratitude. What can you be grateful for, and how vast is that space for you. Take the minute, and I'll talk to you tomorrow on the morning checkin podcast.

The Saturday Wrap-up