25: Suicide Attempt Survivor to Comedy Star & Meditation Teacher // The Story of Sarah Taylor

I wanted escape. My teens were very, very difficult and when I was 14, I tried to kill myself. You know, we don't know a way out, we don't know another way. So we turn to something that can help us escape this life. When I began meditating in my 30s, things began to shift and I started having direct experiences of my true nature and of one's awakened nature. And so things started falling away.

Welcome to From Rock Bottom to Rockin It. I'm your host, Eric Gilbert Williams, and this is the podcast where we explore personal stories of people who hit absolute rock bottom, then got back up, wiped off the dust, kicked failure to the curb, and now they're rocking it like you'd never believe if you didn't hear it. Live right here we cover subjects in business, sports, and life in general. If you like this podcast, please share it. These interviews are intended to inspire, to motivate, to give hope and vision. So please share this episode with someone who needs it. Use your Instagram account, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, hand signals, trained pigeon sent smoke signals up in the air. Use Morse code, whatever you like. Just share the love and share this episode. Also, email me anytime. Podcasterrickgilbertwilliams.com Send me questions you would like to have asked of future guests and I will incorporate them. Or just send me some suggestions on how to run a better podcast. Or just say hello, I'd love to hear from you. That's podcasterrickgilbertwilliams.com I know you're going to love today's interview, so let's get started. Yeah. Well here we are in the garage doing a recording on this beautiful day and just before coming on here with you, I was looking through your your TED talk and some of the interviews did on YouTube. Anyone who hasn't seen Sarah talk before, check it out on YouTube and tell me like what's happening in your life right now you're really focused on healing and meditation. Tell me in your words, what are you up to these days?

Well, I work as a meditation teacher. I go to companies and teach meditation. Although these days it's through zoom that I teach meditation for companies. But I also work with individuals. I'm a spiritual mentor and an energy healing practitioner, which sounds super woo woo, but I'm pretty down to earth. So my background is in Buddhism and the Buddhist practices and meditation and that's what really helped transform my life, meditation and these great enlightenment traditions of the East. And so I mentor people who are also on a spiritual path and I do stand up yeah, well, and I.

Want to hear all about that, too. And on that subject of Buddhism, if I was to really condense it down into one little phrase, to my understanding, Buddhism is about living in the moment and being fully present. Is that about rights?

Sure, it's a facet. It's the experience that happens when you'd say the Buddhist practices and teachings start to kick in and start to work. You are more present. You just simply are present. I mean, we're all present. We're all living in the present moment, but being in our minds obscures that. So Buddhism is sort of like this stripping away. And these other Eastern traditions of enlightenment are about stripping away all the layers that obscure the fact that we're right here, right now.

Right. And we're living in this time right now, where there's fear and panic on essentially unprecedented scale globally, on a single central theme and topic, which is obviously COVID 19. How does living in the moment and being present apply to something like this? What's your interpretation on that?

Well, I'll tell you what my direct experience is, because due to some of the shifts that I've gone through, I'm extremely present. I kind of can't help but, but be present. And from this place of presence and fully sinking into this moment right now, from this place, it's extremely powerful to plan, to create, to respond. But when we're in our head and we're thinking about what's going to happen, what will people think? Will people like me? Will people think I'm weird? Well, what will happen? What's going to happen? You know, we're constantly kind of in the future, and it obscures the power that we have right now. I mean, Eckhart Tolle wrote a book called the Power of Now, and he's kind of right. He took that great title because this is where we have our power, is by being present. So it's not that. When we went into lockdown and stuff or leading up to it, it wasn't like I was so present. I was like, okay. It's just whatever happens, happens. I mean, there's an acceptance and a full embrace of whatever unfolds in life. And also I was like, here's what we need to do. Let's break out the earthquake kit. Let's get the hand sanitizer. Let's da, da, da, da, da. I've got some face masks from our earthquake kit. We need to go to the store and get some eggs. You know, you can prepare and plan from the present moment. Far more powerfully than when we're in our heads living from a place of fear. And if fear arises, that's fine too. We don't want to fight it. That's part of being present as we don't ever want to fight any emotion that's coming up. It can arise and then it falls away. Everything changes. Every emotion, every experience, everything's always changing.

Right. That the whole world is always changing. It's changing a lot right now. And there's some people, when I talk to about these philosophical subjects, some people interpret living in the moment as another word for being passive or just letting things happen. And I think that my own interpretation is that, well, that might be a part of it, in letting things happen. And it's living in the moment is also being aware of what's coming up in the future and where am I actually headed and what path am I actually walking on right now on purpose? And it's about understanding where would I like to go versus where I am now. And let's not get upset if it gets a little bit derailed and we have to course correct every day. That's a part of life. Would you say that that's in your words, where we're going with this?

Yeah, I mean, you know, there's like a negative and a positive aspect to everything. Right? So if we really find ourselves being present, but there's still a lot of mind chatter and analysis about the present moment, we can go into passivity and we can go into a story about how nothing matters anyway because everything's changing and it's all meaningless and it's all empty. And what does it really mean?

We're all living in a dream, right? How do we even know what real is?

Well, yeah, there's that too. So we can start to become passive, we can become resigned. And resignation is different than surrender. Surrender to the present moment is a real aliveness and an alertness. So the state of awakeness that Buddhism and Vedanta and all these great traditions are pointing us toward, we're not being pointed towards a state of being where we're just giving up and we're dead. It's an aliveness, it's an alertness. There's such a responsiveness to life as it's happening when we're truly present.

All right, so let's rewind for a second. I mean, you're in this place where to me, your energy feels grounded, you're aware, you seem happy, there's a good vibe. And if we just rewind all the way back, tell Me, in your own words, what was your struggle? For me, my struggle was when I was 15 and 16. I think you were around 14 when you really hit what we might call. I mean, this show is about rock bottom to rocking it. So what's your rock bottom? Tell me the story.

It's interesting because you started having a really tough time around 15, huh?

That was my time. I mean, obviously that was what I call the climax. The climax was when I was 15 and I snapped and I left school, never went back, by the way, and ran away from home, lived in a drug house, got in a lot of trouble and ultimately had to find my way out or die, basically. Look at you now. Look at you now, right? You've gone through and you've come through to the other side and found this beauty within you, latched onto your passion. But obviously the issues didn't start at 50, and the issues started a lot earlier, and they weren't nearly as bad as some people. It's just, I think that child's mind interprets situation and events with a very narrow perspective and a ton of emotion. It turns it into something so much bigger than it has to be.

But.

But that's the reality of a child. So, yeah, it took a long time to build up to that breaking point. What about you?

I would say the same thing. I mean, a 3, 4, 5 year old is trying to make sense of the world. And if your world is kind of unstable or there's, you know, upheavals or, you know, I came from a pretty tumultuous background. I mean, my family is very loving and they're great. Everybody did the best they could, but there was trauma growing up and tumult and an unease and so, of course, a child's mind, just like you said, just like you mentioned, interprets it as there's something wrong with me, right? That there's something about me. And that's often why people can become depressed or even turn to drugs. You know, in your case, you're on the other side of that. For me, I wanted escape my teeth. Teens were very, very difficult. My childhood was difficult. Loving family, but it was difficult. And when I was 14, I tried to kill myself because I didn't, you know, we don't know a way out. We don't know another way. So we turn to something that can help us escape this life. So we were just talking about the present moment. The present moment is very painful. If we have a lot of pain, it's like we don't want to open up to the present moment, because our mind interprets it as a very unsafe place. But of course, the irony is, as you know, later on, when I was in my 30s and I started discovering meditation and I started building a relationship with the present moment, you could say I was like, oh, wow, this is the safest place we could ever be. But at 14, I didn't know that. I just wanted out. So I took a bottle of sleeping pills and I lay on my bed. I was like, this is it, I'm out. And I was doing what. What could be called meditation. I think I came into this lifetime kind of having a facility and a relationship with meditation, but not really calling it that. I used to just lie on my bed and follow my breathing and just be with my breathing. And I would be taken into a very expansive presence, beautiful state of being. And so I was doing that as I was laying on my bed and drifting off. And there was a lot of silence and a lot of stillness, a lot of space and a kind of surrender to what would happen. But now I'd look back and there's sort of a resignation of my life. But then there was also a beautiful surrender that opens up, which is different. And in that kind of surrender, I was able to see a vision that came forward. And I saw myself on stage. And I'd wanted to sing and act and do all these things at 14, but I was very shy and I was very uncertain about myself and I didn't have any confidence.

I never would have known. By the way, that's really cool. I want to talk about that too. Yeah, it's fascinating.

Yeah. Yeah, I was. I was shy. I was very self conscious, and, you know, I had really bad self esteem. But I saw myself on a stage talking to an audience, and I knew in that moment, like, oh, I'm acting. Well, I want to do that. And I was filled with this sense of purpose with this. And now I could look back and say, well, you know, it was the next step. It was, you know, maybe the divine put it in front of me to say, hey, this is the next thing for you. Because there would be so many things after. But we can only be in the step we're in. And the step I was in then was, hey, you know, get up, get off this bed. There are things you want to do. You want to explore acting and performing and expressing yourself, do it. And I was filled with this sense of purpose. And I. And I got up, I sat up. I was groggy, of course, but I had a sense of Peace about me. An energized piece, I guess you could say. And I walked into the living room and I was like, hey, mom and Dad, I have good news and bad news. The good news is I'm going to be an actress. And the bad news is I just swallowed a bunch of pills, so can you take me to the hospital? And of course they were freaked out. And I go, oh, my gosh. You know? And they took me to the hospital where I had my stomach pumped. And it was odd because I had felt like I had shed some sort of shackles, something that had been inhibiting me. And I was like, you know what? I really want to do this. And so I. That fall, I signed up for drama in high school and I began to sing. And my parents were great. They got me singing lessons, which I'm so grateful for. And I studied with an opera coach for a while and then did a bunch of musicals. And. And there was this nice sense of purpose for a while. So I do think it's important to say. And it wasn't like my life was all great after that, you know, and everything went perfectly. No, I mean, I still had to untangle a lot of wounding and a lot of pain that I wouldn't start to unravel till I was in my 30s. I kind of hit another rock bottom. But we can get to that. But, yeah, so I went away to an acting conservatory. I went to act up in San Francisco. You're up in Northern California right now. And then I went to California Institute of the Arts and then was unleashed on Los Angeles to try to find my way as a. As a struggling actor in my 20s, but.

Right. And it sounds like LA like, embraced you in. You were unleashed.

I was unleashed being a waitress and being a cocktail waitress and being a telemarketer and being a flower deliverer and all sorts of things.

I was a telemarketer too, by the way. I feel you on this. We're resonating on the same levels here. That was crazy. And lots of lessons, too.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I know telemarketing. I think I had that job maybe five days. And I was like, I can't do this anymore.

I made it about two months. And talk about learning how to deal with rejection. It was so intense. And I would never be a telemarketer again. But there are some people that are really good at it and they're good at it. Yeah. And some people can do it with ethics and with morality, and other people are on the other side of the fence. So, you know, it depends on the person and depends on the company, but yeah. Anyways, sidetracked there for sure.

No, no. That's so funny. Maybe we've had a lot of the same jobs. You ever deliver sandwiches?

Not sandwiches, but I did. One of my first jobs was when I bought my first motorcycle when I was 16. I did deliveries on the motorcycle to companies around the area in Canada.

And.

Yeah, so I was a motorcycle courier delivery guy. Yeah. Just strap it on the back and barrel down the highway.

Sort of weave in and out of traffic.

Yeah. Well, I dropped out of school. Right. And similar to you, I didn't know how to talk. I was terrible at keeping my grades up. People beat me up and picked on me and made fun of me and I had no friends and it was really difficult. So when I ran away and found some happiness and found laughter is kind of the core here, I found people that helped me laugh and it didn't matter to me. Yeah, it didn't matter to me that they were in the drugs and that maybe they were headed down a bad path because I didn't know what a bad path was. To me, a bad path was the path I was on where I was feeling depressed. Right. And if I get to go on and be on a motorcycle all day and ride around like a crazy man instead of go to school, I am all in. That was the mindset back then. Right. And of course it's been a long. It's been a long journey since then. But back to, back to you here, what's the second rock bottom? What's that all about?

Well, I think this sense of passion and purpose really drove me, but I also sort of developed this kind of identity around being the actress. So once I had tried to kill myself and I realized like, o, this is what I am, I clung to that identity. And when we cling to whatever these identities are that we take ourselves to be like, you know, I'm the good student or I'm the rebel or I'm the screw up, or I'm the pretty one or I'm the nice one or like whatever, you know, there are all these identities that we can become very attached to. It became everything. And because it had sort of saved me from killing myself, I had to make it work. So I was putting this pressure on myself to graduate from college and become this huge success. And what I ended up doing was just sort of crumbling under the weight of it because I had, you know, a lot of unaddressed trauma in my system. You Know, I work as an energy healer, as a spiritual mentor for people now. And so in working with other people, you know, I'm always reminded of my own journey that we have to kind of get to know what kind of imprint has been left on us. And then it's our responsibility to see through that, to untangle it, to break it apart, to integrate the pieces that are true and to let go of what isn't and to reimagine ourselves, I guess, but really just. Just let go of who we, who we thought we are in order to be who we are right in this moment. So I got into therapy and I got put on antidepressants and a mood stabilizer and that I was kind of getting worse. They weren't really helping. The psychotherapists that I worked with years later were like, yeah, you shouldn't have been on that medication. It wasn't the right thing. You had unhealed trauma. And so I began a journey of really kind of reclaiming, Reclaiming myself, my true nature, as they say in Buddhism, right? In discovering who I truly am. And so there were. There were some rock bottoms. I mean, I remember in my. In my 20s, I was like, paralyzed. I couldn't. I couldn't do the things that I wanted to do that I knew were part of my purpose and my journey. So I felt really stifled. And it wasn't until I was in my 30s, after some rock bottom moments. I mean, I spent years, them, the couch years, where I just sort of sat on my couch and I did my kind of day jobs in la and people would say, well, why don't you take an acting class? Or why don't, you know, do you have an agent? Yeah, I have an agent. You're going out on auditions? Yeah, a few. But, you know, and I booked TV gigs and film roles and I became a SAG actress and, you know, did plays and stuff like that. But I was unhappy. And it was like I was always sabotaging any type of success that could happen because there was something deeper that I wasn't getting in contact with. And in order to get in contact with that very deep, true place, I had to start sifting through what was covering it up. And what was covering it up was a lot of trauma and a lot of pain that I never allowed myself to fully process. When I began meditating in my 30s, things began to shift and I found a good therapist and I started doing trauma healing work and I started working with energy healers and I started having direct experiences of my true Nature and of one's awakened nature, which is what Buddhism is pointing us to. And so things started falling away.

And then you found your. I mean, there's a jump that you did here to go from wanting to take your life into embracing this passion. And when we come back from this short little break, I want to ask you and talk a little bit about your rockin it moments. You know, being on stage, winning your award. Right. Being an actress and living that dream. Because so many people listening to this or can relate to someone or know someone who. Who have just an inkling of what their passion really is. And in a way, you were blessed to have this vision of this is what I want. And I think people can relate to that.

Right.

We have this, all right? This is my passion. I can feel it, I know it. What do I do about it? And to have that passion realized fully as you did is an amazing process. So when we come back from this little break, I wanna ask you about what was it like to live that passion and see it manifest and also how to bridge that gap from then that. When we come back from this little break here at From Rock Bottom to Rockin it. You know that I love to support and encourage the growth of organizations, people, and of course, charities that support positive change and have a positive impact in the world. And Jack.org is definitely one of those organizations. Jac.org is Canada's only charity that's training and empowering young leaders to revolutionize mental health in every province, province and territory. Through the Do Something, the Jack Talks, JACK Chapters and JACK Summits, young leaders identify and dismantle barriers to positive mental health in themselves and in their communities. And through ambitious innovations in youth mental health like bethere.org, they give people the mental health resources that they need to educate themselves and help better the world. They're working towards a Canada where all young people understand how to take care of their own mental health. I really could have used this when I was a kid. And to teach them how to look out for each other at the same time. The vision here is a Canada without shame, where all those who need support get it and get the help that they deserve and that they need. The movement is empowered by tens of thousands of advocates and allies across every province and every territory, all through Canada. And they're just getting started to get involved in their revolution. Just visit jack.org and now back to this powerful interview. Okay, we're back now and Sarah, thank you again for joining us. Tell me about your Rockin It Moments when did you know that you had finally achieved this dream? And I know that there was an identity struggle here, but what was the best moments here? Being on stage, like, whatever it was. Tell me that part.

Well, first of all, I think I have to be authentic and say that I don't think there's any finish line ever.

Right. I agree.

And I think we can really feel very unsuccessful and feel like we aren't doing life right because we haven't achieved some sort of like rockin it moment that like, you know, I haven't won an Oscar, I don't have a million bucks, I don't have a beach house, but I'm happy.

Well, fulfilling the dream is different than fulfilling society's expectations. These are different subjects.

Yeah, totally. So I'd say the rockin it moments for me kind of happened after I started meditating and having therapy and doing the healing work, because I began to actually be able to soak in the joys of being on stage, being on a film set, being on a TV show. But I do remember my first SAG job was on a TV show and I'm going to date myself. It was Murphy Brown in the 90s, I remember. Yeah. And I had like two lines or whatever. But I remember walking onto the set, I had my little script with my two lines and I was ready to do my. My read through with the cast, you know, and I walked onto the set, I saw all the cameras and everybody getting set up and I felt completely at home. I felt like, yeah, I'm at home. Yeah, I've got two lines. Yeah. You know, I'm in my late 20s and I'm. It's just starting to happen that I'm getting my SAG card and work. But something about it felt like home. Like, yeah, I'm supposed to be doing this now. I think it gets difficult for people though. And you probably have found this, that just because we found kind of what our passion is and what we want to do, what we feel called to do, doesn't mean it's always going to be easy and that it's going to get delivered to us on a timeline that really works. Because I'd say it wasn't until probably the last 10 years that I feel everything kind of coming together. I created a show called the Divine Mess show that I take on tour, which is a comedy show, which ends with a meditation. So I make the audience laugh for 45 minutes and then I guide them through a meditation with Reiki energy. And when I'm up on Stage doing that, knowing that the audience is there to laugh and lighten up and go deep afterwards into meditation. I feel like, yeah, this is coming together, but you know, my 14 year old self would never have dreamed of this. So I think we kind of have to be open to where our purpose and our path takes us and the mind gets ideas about what it all means. Right. You know, like, well, it's going to mean this, it's going to mean I'm on a sitcom and it's going to look like this and it's going to. And it's like, you know what? Maybe you know, these are breadcrumbs and you know, I did the sitcom and it's on then this and then that and then that. And somehow I find myself creating something that's uniquely me now. Bringing spirituality and comedy and live performance together. My 14 year old self would have been like, what?

Yeah, doesn't make sense then.

Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. So I think we kind of have to be open, just open to where life is taking us. If we get really rigid and we're like, yes, but this is who I am, this is what I am, this is what I'm supposed to do, then we totally miss the little breadcrumbs that the divine is dropping for us and we go, well, maybe I'll go over here for a while. Like, I remember when I started doing standup in my 30s, I'd gotten into Buddhism, I started meditating and I also was like, I have to do stand up comedy. Like it just was like suddenly from being this, this like musical theater actress turned Shakespearean actress turned theater actress turned sitcom, kind of TV and film, bit part actress. Yeah, A Buddhist community. Then suddenly I was like, I have to do stand up. Not that I was talking about like meditation and stuff on stage when I started, but I didn't think that I'd start doing stand up comedy. I mean, I always was sort of like freaked out by it. And I can't really say I listened to a lot of it or watched a lot of it. But something told me like, you have to get on stage by yourself in front of people, write your own stuff and talk to them. So I just listened. You know, I think I've gotten better at just listening to where my soul says, now it's time to go over here. And I was like, okay, this makes no sense, but I'm going to go explore.

Yeah, I have a question I want to go into. But first, just out of sheer curiosity, did it ever not work? Bringing, let's Say Buddhism or even just the subject of meditation into a comedy act. Did it ever just. Sure.

Oh, God, please. Oh my gosh. In 2015, I said, started doing the Divine Mess show here in la and it was, it was a train wreck. It was not. I mean, and I also think the climate was different then. In 2015, people were like, what? She's a meditation teacher and a comedian. It's totally changed. Now I have a monthly show at the Hollywood Improv. I've done a show called Cosmic Joke at the Hollywood Improv, which is stand up comedy, myself and other comedians with a meditation at the end. But I also do this show called Weird Advice at the Improv.

I like that.

That's a cool name where we find out from the audience, like, what's the weirdest advice ever gotten? And people drop it in a hat. And we sort of make fun of it throughout the night. But it has an element of, I guess, you know, self help or, you know, I kind of don't like that term, but self help, but. And meditation and sort of inner getting to know yourself mixed with comedy. And it works now. And when I go on tour with the Divine Mess show, which is a different show because it's a longer meditation at the end, and usually the people who ask me to come to their community to do the Divine Mesh show, like yoga studios, spiritual centers, you know, they're really open to like a 20 minute meditation at the end. But when I do the show here in la, it's like a five minute meditation at the end because it depends who my audience is. So when I started doing comedy with meditation, I hadn't figured much out yet. And so with an LA audience, I was asking them to come see a storytelling and stand up show because it was storytelling and stand up back then. And then I would guide them through like a 15 minute meditation at the end. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Often, though, I knew I was on to something because it felt like such a strong calling to do the Divine Mesh show here in LA in 2015. And then from there I got to work out the kinks. I mean, I got to figure, like, do I put the meditation at the beginning or at the end? What do I do? If people have never meditated before? Should I be instructive or just dive in and just let them follow? Like, I've just learned through the years all these little ways. And also, you know, I think it depends who your audience is. Like, as a stand up comedian, you have to know who your audience is. If you're doing stand up comedy in a bar with a bunch of people who are drinking, you might get a little dirtier, you know, gets their attention. If you're doing it in a theater with a crowd of 500 and they've paid, you know, $30 a ticket or whatever, it's a different audience. So you always have to know your audience. So with blending the comedy and the meditation, now I work with who my audience is. So if a yoga studio is asking me to come and do it, I kind of know that they're familiar with this already. If I'm on stage at the Hollywood Improv here in la, people just show up, they're like, oh, it's a comedy show, I'm just gonna come. Sometimes they've been like, wait, there's a meditation at the end. And they're delighted. And I think one time a woman walked out, she was like, what is this? You know, but she, she sort of came in towards the end of the show. But by and large it works.

Yeah. And everyone's got their own path and their own journey. And earlier you alluded to, you just kept feeling this intuition, impulse, voice, whatever it is, passion, inspiration, whatever you want to call it, to do this. And when I talk to my friends about intuition or inspiration, a lot of the feedback I get initially is about confusion. Oh, well, here's an inspiration that I have, but here's all the reasons why I shouldn't. And. And then it becomes this never ending dialogue and argument inside the brain of this is what I want to do, but don't do it. And then ultimately a lot of my friends end up getting confused and distracted about which voice is the true one. If there's two arguing, they can't both be true. One's got to be right or the other. And for me, I like to use the analogy or the visual of the first, the third and the fifth voice are the true ones. The second, the fourth and the sixth one are the untrue. So the inspiration is the raw, this is what I want to do. And then the ego or the untrue one is, well, no, you can't, because fill in the blank. And then the inspiration, the true voice comes back and saying, yeah, but I'm going to do it anyways. And then there's the argument back. So the first, third and the fifth to me are. That's how I go back and unwind.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when you unwind, if you're in it, then you can get to in your head like, well, wait a minute, Is this the fourth voice or is this the sixth voice?

Or how do you know which one's inspiration? Like, how did you know that you were actually following inspiration and not anything else?

Yeah, I really know my intuition now. And it's because I know how to be with silence and stillness. And the mind is very noisy and very loud, and it's always shouting at us, usually messages that. That we've picked up from society, from our family, from our peer group, voices we've internalized. It sounds like our opinion, our thoughts, our feelings, but it's really a lot of noise. And what meditation really has shown me through direct experience is that the mind is crystal clear, silent and still. Which doesn't mean that it's wrong to have thoughts, but we have to be able to see them for what they are. It's just a thought. It's not the truth. So because I'm able to be at ease and at peace with silence, stillness. And I'm a big talker. I mean, like, you get me talking, I'm like. But I'm able to be quiet.

Just like this. And right now there's this little silence between your words, which I'm sure you've put in on purpose. And when I'm. And observing my own thoughts as, like as you're slowing your speech down to present what silence looks like, people listening to this have that opportunity to reflect on their own thoughts. And so it's interesting how you've essentially just demonstrated this concept of silence right now while we're on the show. One of my favorite little quotes, you know, I don't remember what movie it was anymore. It was about a submarine, military commander, you know, whatever, whatever. And they came up to the surface for a little bit of air. And the commander, or the captain was looking at the sunset, and his first mate came up and stood beside him and he didn't say anything. And the whole movie is silent for about 10 seconds. And finally the captain looks over and says, thanks. And the first mate says, for what? And the captain says, for not screwing it up by saying something.

Right. What movie is that?

I don't know. I gotta find it. I'll message you after the show and maybe I'll even put it in the show notes to the episode.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's what meditation allows for, is the direct experience of silence and stillness. And that's actually what we are. Our whole essence is this silence, this stillness. It's like a canvas out of which or upon which there are thoughts and feelings and emotions and Yearnings. And, you know, we move forward, we move away, but it's all happening against this backdrop of stillness and silence. So if we're always trying to fill the space, space is another way of saying it, right? Or emptiness. In Buddhism, people don't like that word because they're like, well, that just. That must mean it. You know, emptiness must mean something's bad. But emptiness really just means the absence of clutter, you know, and it's also the space of pure potential, pure potentiality. So if you know how to rest with that space, that emptiness, that silence, that stillness, you can clearly discern what's arising. A thought arises that says, oh, I want to do this. And then there's something deeper that says, maybe you think you want to do that because that's what society is telling you. Let it go. Let it go. Move deeper. Silence, stillness, space. Let there be nothing. Let there be no answers. When we can really rest in not knowing, that's when knowing arises.

And we're talking about vulnerability here and about authenticity and just acknowledging that we're all humans on a planet here trying to figure out what to do. And we can pretend that we know what the answer is. But hey, you know what? None of us have been here before, right? Not in the exact precise way.

Yeah, I hear you. It's like if we can rest in not knowing, our deep, deep wisdom arises. But if we're always grasping at what to do and we want to fill the space and we want to keep busy and we want to do the next big thing, then we'll listen to that surface noise and we'll follow that rather than what is deep.

Well, when we come back from this short little break here, I want to ask you a little bit about. I think one of your favorite experiences or performances was at the Kennedy center. And I want to ask you about how to maintain this state of awareness and calm and vulnerability whilst in the middle of, say, being on stage or dealing with all this noise of life and how to do both at the same time. That when we come back from this short little break. Hey, Eric. Here on From Rock Bottom, the rockin it. On today's episode, I decided to help out the organization called the Mental health Colorado. That's mentalhealthcolorado.org check them out, check out their website if you're struggling, if you're in need. I mean, mental health is a subject that doesn't have to end tragically, right? There's resources like this out there everywhere. Just mental healthcolorado.org, there's resources out there to help you or to help your friends. I encourage you to check it out. They have a couple toolkits you can download. There's a school mental health toolkit. I would have been a big beneficiary of that if I had that when I was in school. Early childhood mental health toolkit. There's lots of good resources on here and there's a lot of support available to you. So please check out the website and maybe even most importantly, click the Donate now button in the top right corner of their website. It's a little yellow button. Donate a little bit. It goes a lot farther than you might ever possibly realize. So check it out. Remember, that's mental healthcolorado.org support them, support your friends. Support the community. Do what you got to do to help make lives better. And now back to the show. Okay, we're back now. And Sarah, thank you for sharing. I have a specific question for you. Two of them, actually, one of them is tell me about what it was like to be performing at the Kennedy center and how do you maintain this state of awareness and calm despite all the noise that goes around in life?

Well, I was very young. I was 17. And so as I mentioned earlier in the interview, I had attempted suicide when I was 14 and had that vision of like, go be an actress. And I was in junior college at the time before I transferred to the four year college. And I won this award called the Irene Ryan Acting Award for college students. And it took me to the Kennedy Center. I was flown to the Kennedy center.

To perform at 17, three years after. This is a short time span. Right? Okay.

So it's like I had that confirmation and you know, actually, you know, that vision that I had when I was drifting off during the suicide attempt, it really was quite similar to, you know, some pictures were taken of me on stage at the Kennedy center. And it kind of was that, it kind of was that image. Not that that was like the pinnacle of my life and then, you know, but it was like again, a breadcrumb being placed in front of me that I was like, okay, I'm moving towards that. And it was fantastic. I've always felt at home in front of like a very large audience. So it was a very large audience and you're just doing your thing. That's all you can do in those moments. And you had asked about, like how to, how to stay present when you're like on stage or when you're performing or when you're, you're just going around.

Life Dealing, you know, with life at an office or with kids at home or wherever it happens to be. Like, how do you do both at the same time?

You know, I'd say that one of the many ways we can drop into the present moment, which is always here, is to drop control, is to stop needing things to turn out the way our mind thinks they should. So we drop needing other people to be anything other than what they are. And I'm talking about, like, this is the first stop, right? Is we surrender our ideas about how this moment is supposed to be, and we just open up to it being just the way it is. And so we're not like, forcing, efforting, pushing. Somebody's having emotion. We give them space to have their emotion. Somebody has an opinion we don't agree with. There's a lot of room. There's a lot of space. So from that place of just allowing things to be as they are and not gripping so tightly, the Buddha, one of his first teachings was, you know, life is suffering. Why do we suffer? Because we grab. We grab on. We're trying to control everything. And if we can just loosen our grip, just loosen our grip a little bit, we can become more present. And in that moment of being present, we have access to our heart, to compassion, to wisdom, to inspiration, to creativity. So it's a funny little paradox, because we want to open up to life just being as it is right now. If we want to have any chance of making it into something that we dream of or that we're inspired by, we have to be very, very present. And in acting school, I remember, you know, the teacher always talking about being present. And that was years before I got into spirituality and meditation. But presence is key. You know, you watch somebody, you know, a pro basketball player, you watch a musician or a great actor, they're very present. They're just here.

I never thought about that before, but that's. There's some words for that. Flow state or in the zone, or, you know, keep your mind on the game, right? Get your mind on the game. You hear that said by so many coaches and so many leaders.

You're not thinking about, like, oh, what will they say if I don't get the shot? Or, like, what, do my pants look funny? You know, and then they try to make the shot like.

Like, no, this is how I get the shot. This shot's going in. It's perfected. And that's, like, the only thing that needs to be on the mind, right?

That's right. And it's. And it's. Moment by moment, in this moment, there's a sinking down. I've never dunked a basket ever. But you know, my husband, my husband's great at basketball. But in this moment, there's a sinking down. In this moment, there's a rising up on the toes. In this moment, there's a release of the hand, like it's moment by moment by moment.

If we were to rewind here all the way back, maybe when you're 13 or 12, this will be kind of my wrap up subject here before we have to let you go. But for me, similar to you, actually, I was shy. I couldn't speak, I didn't have many friends, I didn't know how to communicate and I didn't know who I was. I had no idea who I was when I was really little. And it's hard for people maybe who are hearing me or seeing me right now to understand the magnitude of a shift that happened from when I was an early teen to where I'm at right now. There's no way to really tell you how it was if you didn't see me back then. So people that are listening to the show or watching this, I'd like you to have a little golden nugget here and acknowledge that there's two people right now having a conversation who literally were lost and struggling and were very, very shy. And I'm not a stand up comedian by any means, but hey, you know what? I've performed and done salsa competitions on stage and won first place in Las Vegas, right? And somehow I'm hosting this show. This would be an insurmountable concept to present to my 14 year old version of myself. Not a chance. Would it understand? So, so Sarah, my final question subject for you is if we were to rewind time like say like Hot Tub Time Machine style and go back to when you were 12, 13, 14, what would you say to yourself? What sort of advice might you have to your own self?

You know, there were so many ways I wanted to express myself. You're talking about the shyness, right? And the kind of like, oh, there's the sense that something is inherently wrong. I don't think everybody who's shy feels that there's something wrong with them. But I know for me I was very self conscious because I didn't want to say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing or upset people. And so that blocks us from sharing ourselves with others. So I feel like you and I are sharing ourselves with the world, with your audience, with each other. And I would tell that 12, 13 year old. You know, it's about sharing, not showing. You get to share yourself with the world. You don't have to show the world that you're good or talented or enough or lovable. You don't have to show anything. And I think sometimes this inhibition and this fear comes from that. We feel we have to prove ourselves and we feel that there's something flawed with us. And really if we can focus on sharing ourselves with the world rather than showing the world what we've got, it's about sharing. It's about sharing a piece of yourself, sharing your wisdom, sharing your inspiration, sharing your excitement. And that's what you're doing. You're sharing with people. You're not showing everybody what a great podcaster you are and how successful you are. You're sharing and that's a huge. It's a shift. It's a shift, but it's powerful.

I have no idea how much time and energy I spent on trying to prove to the world that I was better than my self image of myself when I was a little kid. It's been a. And in some ways it's an unhealthy motivator to be living life like that for so long.

Yeah.

Without realizing. Like when I had my construction company, you talked about identity. That was my identity. And you know, when I sold it and moved on, I had no idea who I was anymore. It was an anti climax and it's led me down this road to doing this podcast and doing a whole bunch of other really interesting stuff here in Cupertino and all over the world.

Yeah.

There's so much beauty in the spirit exactly as you are. And I'm talking to listeners and watchers right now. Exactly as you are today. Has an untapped potential. You're a beautiful person, you have an amazing spirit and I hope that you find the courage to let some of that out. Let it out, don't prove it, don't have to force it, just naturally let it out for yourself and for the people that are around you, but as a result of it being for yourself. So I hope that you gain something by listening to this. Remember to share this episode, put a like on it, subscribe to the channel, and most importantly, check out the other episodes that I have here on From Rock Bottom to Rockin It. And remember to check out Sarah Taylor as well. Check her out online, look at her TED Talk and go on to YouTube to see more and hear more about her. I'll have some links on the show notes to this episode here for you to find out how to reach her really easily. You don't have to memorize anything. And Sarah, as a closing note here, do you have anything you want share specifically with the listeners and watchers here today.

Just say what what we touched on is just don't be afraid of stillness. Don't be afraid of the space in which there are no answers right now.

I love it.

Just be with it. Something will come.

And on this moment of beautiful silence and self reflection, I'm going to leave you guys to have a rockin it day. We'll see you next time.

Bye.

And that's it my friends for this episode. We will see you next time. Please send me an email, say hello, give me some feedback, let me know what you think, give me some tips and suggestions. I'd love to hear from you. Also, please share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, doesn't matter, just get it out there. I really appreciate it and we'll see you next time on Facebook. From Rock Bottom to Rocking it. Have a rocking it.