Recent Magic - The Lightning Conductor
What to learn about intense self development, identity changes and growing a YouTube channel.
1. Lightning conductors [0:02]
2. Building a log cabin [1:34]
3. All thoughts are driven by emotion [3:02]
4. Intense self-development [3:52]
5. When your practices are not working [4:18]
6. Identity changes can be difficult [5:09]
7. Learning about YouTube - 5 to 1200 Subs [7:13]
8. Summary [8:44]
Transcript of Video
[00:00:00] Okay, so what's been happening the, do you know how sometimes a, something in your life becomes a lightning conductor for your stress and your annoyance? So something, someone will say something or you'll get an email and you'll keep going back to that and I, it's all the lightning of your annoyance and.
Frustration and boredom just goes onto that thing. Well, well, I've had that, but it's been about an actual lightning conductor. So for one of my companies, uh, it was selling a property and we had to get a Lightning Conductor test. And long story short, we got the quotation and. When the company turned up to do the work, they said, actually this quotation is wrong.
It's gonna be three times what we said. And then they send an invoice for that day, a 600 pound invoice. So I think they've misquoted. [00:01:00] I'm getting really annoyed, and I don't think I should be paying for their, for the day they turned up. Uh. So, yeah, so it is been an actual lightning conductor has been the source of my rumination and frustration has all gone into that.
I keep thinking about replying, um, to this, this guy, even though I've already replied, and it was just taken up my time. It was going into my day, into my evening. I was checking my emails and just overthinking about it. So now I'm building a log cabin. So I've always had this idea of building a log cabin, you know, somewhere in the woods where you can get away from everything, be in nature.
I don't know if you've had dreams like that, just being away from everything. Well, now I'm kind of doing it in a, in a way. So this, this, this, this event with the Lightning conductor quote is, has, has, has [00:02:00] invited me to look at how I manage my time, how I check, when I check my emails and I'm putting it off.
I'm building a log cabin of peace by putting off. When I check my emails, I'm only checking 'em in a certain time. I'm only using my phone within certain times, and that is like me going deeper into nature. Finding a place to build this log cabin, the longer you leave it between checking emails or having these ruminating thoughts, every time a thought comes up to do with something that stresses me out, this Lightning conductor, I.
Step back from it and get on with what I was doing. That's me building this log Cabin of peace in the woods, and it's a place I can always go to. Wherever I am, I can always just back off from the thinking I can back off from. Checking emails from checking my phone to get some dopamine to be distracted from boredom or frustration, I can always go to this log [00:03:00] cabin in the mind.
And so this stuff that's been happening is making me think about how all thoughts have an an emotional content to them. All thoughts are driven by emotion. So if you think how many thoughts we have in a day, a lot of them we just forget about at the end of the day. 'cause we're bored of them. They don't have an emotion attached to them.
The ones that we keep ruminating on have like a stronger emotional connection. They have a stronger emotion behind them. And this is good that we have emotions connected to thoughts because otherwise you wouldn't do anything or think anything. Emotions are like the fuel for life and. We can spend a lot of time just being annoyed that we're thinking about stuff, annoyed that we're having emotions, but that's like just being annoyed at your own aliveness.
The stuff that comes up is fuel for life. It just depends how you use it. And I've had quite a lot of stuff coming up for me. I've been doing some quite deep work going into the lower [00:04:00] part of the body to the energy centers, feeling more grounded for feeling more present in the body. And yeah, that's brought up some stuff.
Um, and it has brought up more energy, more aliveness, more emotions, and I'm feeling. Like, it's easier to get stuck into thoughts. Uh, and, and some of 'em, my practices haven't been working. Some of 'em, my meditation practices haven't been working as, uh, as they have been doing in the past, and this has been really strange for me.
It's been a bit difficult. Uh, I've had to use other practices like breath work, cardio, pushing myself at the gym, inner child meditations, uh, different stuff because my meditation practice where I sort of go to sort of just step back from the thoughts was just too. It was just too e energized. I was needing to move too much.
There'd just be so much emotion there, and so that's okay, [00:05:00] but it's just, just taught me that it's difficult when something changes, when you've had something that works and then it doesn't work in the same way. It can be really difficult and it, it's been doubly difficult for me in an identity way. So as a meditation teacher.
I have not been teaching meditation and I have also changed my relationship with the practices. So this is, is is doubly difficult when something. Changes your identity. A meditation teacher that is changing his practices, uh, and doesn't have the same way of talking about them, doesn't have the same use for them.
They're not, uh, they're not the catchall for everything. Um. But this leaves me more skilled with dealing with people in the future. But I just wanted to notice, notice, tell you that this, when anything changes your identity, like your job or what you think you're good at or, [00:06:00] or anything like that, it's, it's really difficult.
It really brings up questions about. Have I made the wrong life choices? Uh, what am I doing? Uh, it can really make the ground move be beneath your feet, but when you've moved through it, you'll get a deeper understanding. So now I have a renewed, uh, empathy for people that are starting meditation. Uh, I, I'm, I'm reconnecting with that, that feeling I had when I first started where.
If you've got anxiety or you try meditating and it's just awful. It's just really hard at times. You're just hearing about these people that are finding these zen experiences and you just do it and you can't sit still for 30 seconds without being just plagued by thoughts. It's reconnected me, me with that, and that's how I experienced meditation when I first did it.
And so yeah, I now have a bigger empathy for people that are starting out, so I have grown from this. [00:07:00] And I would say if you are experiencing similar, get a mentor or, or reach out to someone that's been through a similar experience and they will have some sage advice for you on how to navigate that. So something else that's been coming up for me, uh, is that I have.
I've been involved in four YouTube channels and one of them has grown really rapidly. It's gone from about five subscribers to 1200 subscribers in a week, and I'm learning so much by working on these channels and trying different things. You might notice on this video I've added a, a contents, uh, page at the start and then the little chapters.
So within the first 30 seconds, you'll. Get some information on what's coming up, uh, uh, so you know, so you know what to look out for. And the other thing we've been experimenting with is creating shores from the longer videos and using that as a [00:08:00] feedback loop. So you create the longer video, then you create the shores, and you find the, the main points that you made, the, the most interesting points, the best sentences, and you put them into shorts.
But by doing that process, you are. Feeding back to yourself what the most interesting part of the video is. And so you can use that process to then improve the next video and to, to work on it that way and create a feedback loop and to do that as soon as possible. So rather than waiting a week before reviewing, do the, create the short straight after you've made the video, and then you'll have it fresh in your mind.
And then ideally create the next video, within a few days or a week. So another thing I'm. Exploring is adding a summary at the end. So, to summarise this video, what is your lightning conductor? Or have you had a lightning conductor in the past that has taken all your boredom and frustration and tiredness and it [00:09:00] just, that became the problem that you ruminate about, but you're actually kind of just bored.
And for me, with ADHD, I just. Want to find something to be bothered about, to put all that energy into. And the second point was about the log cabin. So what is a dream that you have? And it's a bit of a fantasy escape from things. So I. Go and make your dream. Go and build a log cabin. But what can you build now?
What can you build that can help you get away from the stuff that stresses you? You can build this structure in your mind. You can build these boundaries in your life that allow you to get that place, whatever that looks like. Can you bring that into your everyday life with practices? And then there was a point about.
Events and people that challenge your identity. So whenever what you do as a job is challenged or whether you think you're smart at something and then that [00:10:00] is challenged or everything is going right and you have these practices and then they don't work in the same way and you have to question what you, you believed and you have to tweak things and and grow, um.
That can be very challenging. Anything to do with identity as who you are, what you are, what you do. We can be have this grasp of that. We can have this firmness that we hold onto. We make our identity solid when actually everything in nature and in the world. And in us it is just replacing. It's just popping up.
It's just happening. Even the body's replacing itself every seven years. Nature never stands still. No identity stands still. We grow old, we decay. So the best way to live is to accept that and to go with the flow of time.