Welcome.
My name is Carrie and I am a licensed professional counselor and a mindfulness teacher.
And so,
Um.
.
.
Bringing videos that combine psychological insights with mindfulness principles.
And today I'm going to be talking about the idea of skillful insignificance.
And let me just start by defining this idea of self-concept.
In order to be a psychologically healthy individual.
You have to have a defined sense of self.
A certain coherence around what differentiates you from someone else.
And this happens through.
Childhood.
And sometimes it doesn't happen.
Sometimes.
An individual does not have a defined sense of self and that causes significant dysfunction and despair into adulthood.
But for most of us,
We do have an understanding of sense of self.
In our Western culture,
We are.
.
.
Obsessively narrating around ourselves.
We are.
Constantly.
Characterizing ourselves and others.
Kind of seeing ourselves as playing out through a movie.
Especially for young people because of the.
.
.
Emphasis of social media and just entertainment culture.
We have established a culturally reinforced tendency,
Mental tendency.
To over-consider our sense of self.
And this over-consideration or this obsessiveness.
I'm not even referring only to those who obsessively think positively about themselves.
I'm also referring to people who think obsessively,
Negatively about themselves.
Because it's still this obsessive narration about self.
We have to be able to toggle out of power.
We have to be able to immerse in.
The pure experience of being without that vigilant scrutiny of who we are as the character living this life.
We have to be able to just live.
A good example is that the pro athlete.
Needs to be able to immerse themselves in the actual experience of the sport.
Without.
Or alongside their understanding of who they are,
Their stats.
How other people view them.
Yeah,
That's necessary,
That's inevitable.
But in order to actually hit that 100 mile per hour fastball.
They have to be outside of that ego.
And I desperately wish someone explained that to me.
When I was in high school playing softball.
Because I was so in my head.
And it was pervasively negative.
I was mostly overthinking.
And catastrophizing,
But I couldn't stop it.
And people would tell me,
You know,
Don't think so harshly of yourself,
Think positively.
But even thinking positively.
Wasn't the medicine I needed.
I needed actually to learn how to stop thinking about myself.
And that's.
.
.
Can be a dog chasing its own tail if you're not equipped with the skills of presence.
So.
.
.
This idea of insignificance.
Allowing yourself to feel into your felt insignificance.
First,
It might feel like a threat.
When I say that,
When I say you are insignificant.
You might feel this kind of righteous defensiveness against it.
No,
I am not.
I am not insignificant.
Look at all this that I have to show.
Or you might feel kind of this dejected.
Victim state of like,
Yes,
I have always been insignificant.
In the same kind of narrative quality.
Both of those are just characters.
Neither is the actual felt experience of insignificance.
Which is.
.
.
Simple.
And steady.
And small.
Put Nora to field.
That as a refuge.
You have to decouple that experience from a threat.
And it's not your fault if you think it's a threat.
I think a lot of us were.
Trained to.
Pursue significance at all costs.
And so any mention,
Any inkling of our own insignificance feels like an absolute failure to that goal.
But of course,
A lot of people will sit in my office.
Reflecting on the ways that they are either.
Obsessively pursuing significance.
Or obsessively trying to contextualize.
Where this feeling of insignificance came from and who's to blame.
And both are just great pervasive.
Spaces.
Mental suffering.
And so there's a way out,
And it's through presence.
It's through felt experience,
And it's through training yourself to.
.
.
Prioritize.
The finite experience happening around you.
Over the infinite expanse of mental fluctuation that you can access through your thinking mind.
And it comes in really handy a lot of times.
When you made a mistake,
For example,
If you only know how to iterate on significance.
That mistake will haunt you.
Versus if you can settle into your own smallness.
Your own insignificance relative to this.
Churning of the world.
You can pass.
And not in this dissociated denial way,
In this true.
Weather passing through the sky kind of way.
It also really helps in a relationship.
Because there are ways in which.
You are not everything to that other person.
And again,
In a culture that emphasizes.
Fairy tale true love.
Me saying that to you.
That you are not everything to your partner.
Might feel like I'm insulting you.
Threatening you or saying something.
Derogatory.
But I'm not.
I'm inviting you into the experience.
Show reality that you are not everything for them.
And when they deviate from togetherness,
Of course I'm saying so in a way that's not harmful.
There are ways to deviate in a way that causes harm,
But there are plenty of ways to deviate from togetherness.
In a way that's not harmful.
Can you sit in your own insignificance?
Without.
Your mind fragmenting into the chaos.
Of trying to find a crevice of significance in that moment,
Trying to kind of make significance where it is not.
Because whoo!
That will cause.
.
.
That will cause a lot of distress in the relationship.
A lot more separation.
It also,
Like I said earlier,
It really helps with performance.
To be able to access that.
Egoless state to be able to step outside of considering yourself is necessary for any kind of performance.
Driven activity.
Athletics,
Theatrical performance.
Or eating.
Academic performance,
There's plenty of.
Examples,
But you do need to be able to step outside of considering your fixation on self.
In order to access that more flow state.
So let's practice it.
Find a comfortable spot.
You can be seated.
You can be lying down.
You can even be standing if you prefer.
But let yourself settle,
Like imagine your bones could get heavier.
And they can settle down.
Notice if there's any tension in your shoulders.
Soften there.
Notice if there's any tension in your face.
Soften there.
No one's looking at you.
You don't need any particular facial upkeep.
And then start to notice your breath.
Might be helpful to lengthen out the breaths slightly.
But the goal is to very specifically notice.
The rising and falling.
And as you're doing that,
Your mind's gonna jump somewhere else.
It's gonna think to everything that you have to do.
It's gonna think to what's happening outside of the room.
It's gonna think to the problems that need solving.
And those are attempts for the thinking mind to maintain significance.
You can say,
Thank you,
Thinking mind.
But you are a projection on a screen.
Continue to notice.
The actual feeling of breath.
It's very finite.
When you're breathing in,
You're only breathing in.
When you're breathing out,
You are only breathing out.
There's no second guessing.
There's no decision paralysis.
It's just you and breath.
And then specifically bring in this idea of insignificance,
Of smallness.
You are this body.
On this chair.
In this room.
You are limited.
And that is not a threat.
If you notice your mind defending against it.
No big deal.
Again,
We've been.
Told over and over to feel limitless.
But you are skillfully reconnecting to your own limits.
You are letting your attention gather.
In this smaller frame.
Let that feel freeing.
Let it be freeing to be just this.
Let it be all.
Kind of invigorating and peaceful at the same time.
To know that you are just this.
Just this.
And in these final few minutes,
If your mind has started to narrate again,
Whether in the form of,
Oh,
This is so stupid,
I'm so bored,
I have so many other things to do.
That's its habit.
It's trying to protect you.
But it's trying to protect you against something that is inherently malthreatening.
Your own significance.
Let it be boring.
Let it be simple.
If it's hard,
That just means there's more room for training.
There's plenty of time.
And you'll gently start to return your attention to the room around you.
Maybe by noticing the temperature of air on your skin.
If you had your eyes closed,
You can open them.
Notice the colors.
And the shape.
And the shadows.
And then take it with you,
I encourage you to.
Encourage you to use it.
Not as a shield.
But as a refuge.
As a place of safety.
That's yours to enter.
And leave.
You can't remain there forever.
But you do have the key to open that door.
I encourage you to use it.
