Watch this video to see why “The Truth” won’t set you free.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Years ago in my early days as a martial artist and as a fighter, I was obsessed with finding out the truth. The truth about the right technique, the truth about the right style or system of training.
I had to know what the truth was, so I had lots of great coaches and instructors and trainers who all had the truth. They all knew the right answer.
And then it became overwhelming because I realized that some of these truths were contradicting each other. One trainer said you should train this way, another trainer said you should train this way, and it began to confuse me.
Not only that, but at that particular time in my life, this search for truth was bleeding into every other area of my life. Truth about the universe, truth about myself, truth about purpose, and the path that I was on, and I think that in some ways this is something that we all are experiencing, we are all experiencing a craving for the truth.
And this is where things get a little bit tricky, because there’s no shortage of people in the world who know the truth and who are happy to tell you what the truth is, and in fact, you’ve probably absorbed a lot of this in your own path in life.
And what do we call it? We call it history, and we call it scientific fact, and we call it statistics, and data, and that’s cool. Nothing wrong with any of that.
But I’ve also observed that this addiction to the accumulation of truth also creates lazy thinking, because once you know the truth, you don’t have to seek any more. Once you know what the answers are, you stop asking questions.
And this is when your mind begins to atrophy. This is when your natural curiosity, the intrigue that we’re all born with, that keeps us seeking and striving and growing and expanding, well, that begins to fizzle out once you know what the truth is, because you’ve already arrived at the conclusion.
And then, this is when people begin to compete with the truth and they already know what the truth is because their brain’s already said, hey, check that box, I already got it, and then they can compete with other people’s finished answers and then next thing you know, you’ve got a whole bunch of people that all know the truth that are all arguing for who’s got the right truth.
But what if the truth wasn’t the important thing here? In fact, what if we stopped caring about truth altogether, and instead of focusing on what’s true, we begin to focus more on what’s useful?
I’m very appreciative to have had this experience in my early days competing and training and fighting in the ring, because I stopped caring what’s true and I just started testing and I started observing what’s useful. I stopped paying attention to the history, and I began to focus more on my own experience, and this is a philosophy that has served me incredibly well.
This philosophy of asking what’s useful instead of arriving at some conclusion. Instead of focusing on history, what if you just focus more on your story, on what is that’s important to you right now, what is it that you want to create right now, what are the puzzles that you have in your life right now?
What are the areas of your life that aren’t exactly the way that you want them to be, but you can make them better? And you don’t make them better by focusing in the rearview mirror, you don’t make them better by focusing on what’s old and what was.
The past is gone. In fact, the past doesn’t even actually exist. The future doesn’t even exist. What exists is now, and whatever now you find yourself in, whatever moment you find yourself in that present moment is all that you ever actually have.
Right now is all you actually ever have, so instead of history and facts, and the truth, what if you can just take all those and hold them sort of lightly in your mind while increasing your focus on what’s happening for you?
Where are you? How do you feel? What feels right for you right now? Knowing that that’s changing all the time, trusting yourself even more to authorize your own experience, to be the author of your own life, and instead of focusing on the truth and carrying that with you, what if you could practice a little bit of strategic ignorance and just open up a little bit more to your own actual experience of life right now?
I think you’ll find that that’s where the energy is, I think you’ll find that’s where creativity lives. This is where innovation is. Direct present moment experience, and that’s something that you can own.