Rainier Wylde - Self-Acceptance, Purpose, And How Men Can Show Up

Foreign.

Welcome back to the mantalk Show. I'm Connor Beaton, and joining me today is a previous guest, Mr. Rainier Wild. I had him on the show a few years ago, probably just right before the pandemic. So if you enjoy this conversation, definitely head on back and listen to that one. Rainier is a teacher. He's coach, podcaster, and author who creates the conditions for deep change in people's lives. He has studied under leading Western psychologists, Eastern mystics, and contemplative teachers. So I could tell you a little bit more about him, but I think it's probably just important to tell you what we talk about in today's conversation. So we go deep into the notion of self acceptance and self acceptance being a gateway and access point to wholeness, to a sense of strength, to a sense of our masculine core. And then we talk about men and modern times. So we dive into some of the modern workings of what's happening within our world today through the lens of men's work, through the lens of the individual psyche and the collective psyche. So this one is a deep dive into current events, but also current events within yourself, within your own mind, within your own body. So without any further delay, please welcome my guest, Mr. Rainier Wilde. All right, Rainier, welcome back to the Mantalk Show. How are you doing today?

I'm doing good. I'm glad to make this work and be here with you.

Yeah, likewise, likewise. I'm glad that we could dive in and normally I ask the question. I was saying before I normally ask the question, tell us a story about a defining moment in your life. But I've had you on the show and we've talked about that and actually remember what you talked about. And so for all the people that are out there, you can head back and listen to my last interview with Rainier to get that scoop, in case you missed the initial one, because we had a great conversation last time, actually, about relationships and your personal story. So, yeah, I guess maybe we'll start with the kind of joke that I said beforehand, which is, how's your pandemic been? How's the last couple years been? Because I think I interviewed you pre pandemic, right before the pandemic, probably not too long before that, if my memory serves me correctly, which sometimes it doesn't. But how's the last couple years been for you?

Oh, it's so interesting.

I love thinking about this question. And to be honest, I was prepared for you to ask the repeat of your question that you normally ask. And so I had this wonderful memory of being three years old, which I will not tell and we will not bore your listeners with.

But.

But I think this is a much more salient question because it kind of gets to the heart of something that has really been having me scratch my head for many, many years. And it's kind of been a driving part of a lot of the work that I've done, both personally and then professionally, which is this idea of when calamity happens, when crisis happens, when hard times hit. Why is it that some people thrive? Why is it that some people seem to grow and change and even be transformed into their most magical selves? And others wilt, others fall, others falter. And really, quite unexpectedly, perhaps that is what happened to me. I remember getting the news of some of the first shutdowns and maybe it was even just a sense of there's going to be some shutdowns and there hadn't been any where I lived yet. And I remember walking with my two oldest sons who were then both, I think, ending middle school. And I remember saying to them, the world is changing. The world will no longer be the same. How will we change with it? And I remember that moment as catalytic in my life and thinking to myself that this is a moment that is calling on all of my resources. And that's really how I feel as I look back across the last several years, that there was a sense of deep calling. The world showed up on my doorstep and I had been prepared to meet it. I mean, that's really how I felt. And so when I look at the pandemic for some people, I know that it was soul crushing. And for me it was to step into a deeper sense of purpose. It was to step into a deeper sense of unfolding or ripening. And it brings me back here to your doorstep, actually.

Wonderful. I appreciate that. I would agree wholeheartedly. I think there are. I've seen a lot of people during the pandemic sort of spring into action, go into a place of deepening into themselves and what these times are asking for from them, what troubled times are asking for, what chaos and crisis are asking for from us. And then I've seen other people just move straight into panic mode and sort of lose themselves and their identity into news cycles and the latest thing that needs to be cheered for and controlled and all of those things. I mean, we could just go down that rabbit hole. And I think it's always been like that to some degree. But it does seem to me as though the dial of intensity has been turned up exponentially on the crisis side of things, on the turmoil, on the troubled times. And I think that people feel that. You know, I've often talked about how things Internet and social media is kind of like an extension of our nervous systems. And if we're not careful, we can offload our personal nervous system for the collective nervous system. And right now, the collective nervous system is a mess. You know, it's a shit show. And so we have to be conscious of that. But, you know, I think one of the things that I really wanted to discuss with you was talking about, you know, what does it look like for us as mental health in these times of trouble to find a sense of purpose, to find a sense of meaning, to find a sense of contribution, or are those things even meaningful? So maybe I'll just open up with a very sort of broad question, and then we'll drill down from there.

Yeah, that's such a great question. You know, when I think of that idea of a time of crisis or times of trouble, and how do I respond and how do we address who we are in those moments? I think that thing that sets apart those who flower and those who wilt perhaps, is this idea of radical acceptance. There's got to be a place where I look at the world and I see the world, and I see myself in the world as I am, where I see who I am, all of me. Not just the glowing, glimmering parts that I like to put on display, not just the scaffolding or the skyscraper that I like to be noticed for, but truly who I am, the totality of self. I think radical acceptance really is the differentiation point when we begin to consider how to show up in the world in times of crisis. You know, I think that word crisis is interesting. I've been turning that word over in my mind for some reason, and it traces back to a much older word which indicates a crossroads. A crossroads. I think those crossroads, those moments of decision, that really is a crisis. A crisis offers us.

A moment of decision. Will I escape into fantasy? Will I escape into despair? Will I escape into blaming? Will I escape into all the things I think you named earlier as well? Will I choose to be bitter, to be broken in my response to this? Or will I accept it? Will I see it for what it is? Will I address reality as it is? I think that's got to be the first step. And part of that, I think, gets to kind of what you're asking here, which is we have to see ourselves first. So how does a man respond in A time of crisis. How does a man respond in a time of trouble, when the world is chaotic, when the world is overturned? Well, first of all, he has to know himself.

He has to know the raw materials that he's working with.

Yeah, well, I feel like that's a very good response, but also a good launching point into probably the follow up questions that I could hear most of my audience asking, which is where do we begin with that? How do I start to see who I truly am? When we have a lot of sort of psychological and cognitive blocks into viewing the truth of who we are. It's really the more that I've gotten into this work, whatever modality it is, Jungian, Gestalt, cpt, that kind of stuff. It's astounding how many blocks and obstacles we have to actually viewing who we are in truth, in essence. And so I'm curious to get your perspective as you've done this work for a very long time. What are some of the natural obstacles that stand in our way? And we can talk just sort of generally as human beings, I think, unless you think that there's some particular blocks and obstacles that are specific for man. But what are some of those blocks and obstacles that prevent us from being able to witness and truly see who we are?

Yeah, I love this question. One of the things it really reveals is that the psyche, the self as we think of it, is so wired against scrutiny, doesn't like to be seen, doesn't like to be seen straight on and, and has rather ancient defense mechanisms that almost constantly come online to prevent that scrutiny. I like to think of it as sort of a large planetary body, like a planet, you know, and orbiting around that planet are these satellites that are automated, they're mechanical. And as soon as any kind of invasive force, even if it's friendly, comes in, these, these automatic sentries come online and begin to shoot down or take down these things. And largely these buffers against being seen are rather uncontrollable. They take us over, they conscript us, but we're not really aware of them. Think of them as being triggered by these elements because they're so profoundly unconscious. I think that they're fairly universal. They relate to this business of being human beings.

And actually they relate a lot to things that are wired into us even before we make conscious choices. So if you think about it, we, around three years old, roughly learn language. Our language centers come online. Now, language has been developing throughout human history for the past 70,000 years. And we uploaded 280,000 years of human progression into that language. So by the time a three year old learns how to say its first few words or how to conjugate verbs and nouns and adjectives together, they're actually learning 350,000 years of human culture rather effortlessly. And I think that it reveals something of what human beings are about in, in really the first developmental steps of a child. At around 3, the language centers come online. The human personality begins to develop. And what's one of the first things that happens to that 3 year old? They learn to lie, they start to tell untruths. And this is developmentally appropriate. I think it's hilarious, right? A child, like one of its first things is it says, I didn't do that. You know, it. It begins to deceive us. And why? Well, they're doing exactly what they should. They've learned that they have a self and that their self is different than yourself. And if they can use words to convince you of something that they want, then they'll get it. That's pretty highly developed, functioning right there. And it is at the root of being a human being. So you talk about defensive mechanisms. This is really the mother of them. This is the first one that comes online right alongside the human personality. Lying, telling untruths, telling half truths, or omitting the truth. That leads into other kinds of buffers, such as, I would say suppression, such as repression. And we could define those, but I think at the root of that is this attempt to obscure or hide or avoid or deny in order to belong. And that right there is the root of these defense mechanisms, because human programming is such where everything in us goes together to try to stay on the island. We don't want to get kicked off the island. Everything in US for 350,000 years, probably even 2.5 million years of hominid evolution goes into this idea of keep me in belonging to others, and in order to belong, I need to appear a certain way. So if I have to deceive, I'll do it. I'll do it. And so that really is the first of all of the defense mechanisms that keeps us from being seen as a self, from seeing ourselves.

Yeah, I love that. I love that description. And I have found that to be very accurate for the first part of my life, you know, for the first sort of 28 years, I think, which is a little bit of what we touched on in the last conversation. But certainly, you know, I've found that the urge to belong and the willingness to fabricate, omit, withhold, alter the Truth, specifically around my own actions. You know, in my younger years, my teenage years, in my 20s, it was interesting because it became something that. I don't want to say this. It was maladaptive to the degree where I began to realize that I could use it to my advantage, you know, like, I could talk my way out of any sort of situation, you know, when I had done something wrong or, you know, I had lied to somebody. And that was very isolating, you know, because what started to happen was I had to cut off a part of myself and withhold it from other people, which built shame and guilt and resentment and a whole bunch of other emotions. And so it became very challenging to actually know who I was. And so on. This sort of notion of seeing who we are, I almost hear you making a case for starting to turn the lens around and see how we're deceiving ourselves, see how we're deceiving others, to start to admit some of those pieces. Is that accurate?

Yeah, that's really the first step in polishing the mirror of self, I would say. You know, I was recently in Crete for the last month. And while I was there, I had a wonderful opportunity to sit with a gentleman I call my Zorba. And anyone who's read Zorba the Greek really knows this. I went to Crete specifically to write and to meet this. This man. Spiros was his name. And he was, in so many ways, just a salt of the earth guy. Just a beautiful, vibrant, lively soul. And I was with him one day, and he was talking about how he interacts with people in these small villages in Crete. And he says to me, you know, the most interesting thing in any village is to talk to the priests, these old orthodox priests. And he says, they're the most interesting because they find out everyone's secrets. And he says, everyone tells them who they're sleeping with and they shouldn't be sleeping with. And he says, and so they hold all the secrets. And this is very interesting. So he likes to go and talk to these priests. This old man enjoys that. And then he asks me this question. He says, well, who do the priests confess to, though, I think. And I said, yeah, I get that. He says, but I don't think you have this problem in the United States so much. And I said, well. Well, I mean, some people do, but, yeah, I think a lot of secular people that we don't necessarily think of those things. And he says, yeah, but you have therapists. And I kind of gasped. I. I thought to myself, where are you Going with this, you know, and, and he, he laughs. And, and he says, yeah, who do the therapists confess to? You know, and, you know, I, I didn't want to go into this larger set of explanations about, you know, every therapist has their own supervisor and et cetera, et cetera. I just kind of let him go. And, and he said, you see, I think that this is a bullshit job.

He was very opinionated. And I said, okay. And he said, but that's okay, because we live in a bullshit world right now and people are always bullshitting one another, so we need bullshit functions in life. He said, like confessing to other people and talking in this way. He says, I'll tell you what I do. And now I'm on the hook. I'm like, okay, this is big stuff right here. And he looks at me and he says, he says, I look in the mirror and I confess in the mirror. And I tell myself everything about myself that might cause me shame, that might cause me guilt that I don't like that I wish wasn't so. And I confess it, just knowing it's real. And when I can hold my own gaze, when I can see myself and not turn away from my own image, then I look at myself and I say, spiros, you're forgiven. Now go. And I've got to tell you, I thought that was one of the most beautiful things I had ever heard. I don't think we do enough mirror work where we can actually look at ourselves. I'll tell you what I did. I came on the plane back from Greece and It's like this 12 hour ride and you get kind of cagey on those flights and so you just, you want a new location to rest and sometimes. That's the bathroom, right? So I, I go to the bathroom and I, I'm just sitting there, I'm actually just wasting time, you know, And I, I have a full length mirror beside me, actually, as I sit there and I look over and I see myself. I see myself and I, I, I look rather disheveled in that moment. I, I look like I've been to hell and back. About seven hours into the flight and I decide I'm gonna do what he says. And I start talking to myself right there in the stall. And I start telling myself all the things I can't really stand. And I start to hold my own gaze and I let all the words drain out of me. And I tell myself about what kind of father I think I am sometimes. And I tell myself about what kind of lover I am. And I tell myself about the thoughts I have about me and the feelings. And I tell myself until I'm blue in the face, until I can't say anything anymore. And then I notice something. And this is the strangest thing I think I've experienced. I notice how beautiful my eyes are. Now, this sounds perhaps a little self aggrandizing, but I actually mean it quite the opposite. Because see, a lot of my life I've actually struggled to find any beauty in my eyes. They've always looked rather drab. I've always looked kind of ordinary. I have the same eyes as my mother and my brother and now as some of my children, just kind of bland to me. But for some reason I started to see my eyes. And as I caught my own attention, I suddenly thought, oh my God, these are some really spectacular eyes here.

I was drawn in and I just watched my own eyes and I noticed a tear trickle down my face. And suddenly I realized I had hit that spot that he was talking about. I loved myself in that moment. And so I knew the medicine had done the work and I left the bathroom. But I think that that is really it, that in our world we create so many different spaces and ways where we don't even look at ourselves. But when you can look at yourself and say the things that you would never tell a soul, maybe even your therapist, you wouldn't even tell your therapist when you can say it your own attention and look and go, oh, but this is the man, or this is the woman I love. Still me, boy. That's a powerful ground zero moment.

Yeah, I appreciate that. And I think in maybe I'm just going to segue straight into it. I was going to give some thoughts on it, but I'm curious about. Our initial sort of foray into this conversation was about how we as men show up in troubled times. And I would love for you to just sort of tie in the understanding ourselves, knowing ourselves, being able to have a more robust and complete understanding of who we are as individuals and how that serves us, how that serves family, how that serves collective during times of chaos and turmoil.

Yeah, such a great thought. The reality is that oftentimes we seek out things like purpose, things like calling, things like vocation or mission as something separate than who we are. Inevitably I see those things running out of steam, you know, oh, you know, what I really want to be is X. It's all aspirational. And I got to tell you, you talk about the collective conscious, which is the Internet, maybe it's even Instagram or TikTok. God. It's become the troubling reality that almost anytime I see a coach posting something online, I think, oh, that's what you're struggling with right now. Interesting, right? I think that the reality is that we're not seeing ourselves. We're aspiring to be things other than who we are. We call those our purposes. And they run out of steam. They run out of steam every time they're engines that the fuel doesn't last within. Purpose is not separate from who you are. Purpose is you living out your life, being and operating out of self, a solid sense of self, and doing so intentionally. Listen, I often have people come to me and they're like, oh, Rainier, I love your work, your work, your work, your work. And sometimes they'll even say, oh, your words mean so much. And I almost get a little defensive when I hear people say, I love your words. What I want to say to them is, then you love me. It's not my work. It's not my words. My words are not separate from who I am. My work is not separate from who I am. If I didn't get paid tomorrow for what I do, if nobody else noticed it, I'd still be doing it. I've proven that in my life. If you can't show up in a room for nobody but the air, the birds in the sky, then you probably have no business doing it in the first place. We show up in life out of a sense of who we are. That's purpose. So when I talk to men about their calling in the world, what I want to do is I want to root it, I want to orient it in their sense of identity, that it emerges from their place, that it's not separate from that. That means they have to see their whole self. And quite honestly, I think a lot of those purposes, those beautiful purposes that come out of men, particularly if we're talking about men, tend to be in the broken places, the places they wanted to deny and hide. And we're so scared of looking at. Oftentimes it's in the looking, in the seeing, in the integrating and holding that their purpose emerges. Anyway.

Yeah, I think it was Robert Bly in Iron John that said that where a man's grief is, is where his gifts are. Some. Some iteration of that. I don't think I'm getting the quote bang on, but it's some iteration of that. And, you know, I've been drawn more to this notion over the last few years of it's not. It's not what is the meaning of life? It's where is the meaning of life? Because it kind of points us in a different direction. You know, it points us more towards like, okay, we're clearly looking for something. And so it's not a what that we're looking for, it's a where. And oftentimes, I mean, if you listen to mystics, if you listen to philosophers, if you listen. I mean, hell, even if you listen to astrophysicists, you know, like Friedman or what's the British guy's name? I can't remember his name right now, but they're all sort of saying the same thing, which is you have to kind of get a sense of what's going on within. You know, even Einstein used imagination as a tool for not only making sense of himself, but making sense of the universe. And in many ways, that's a where is meaning question. Not what is it? But where is it? And so I love this notion that you're saying that in order to find purpose, in order to find a sense of meaning, that we have to start looking at the places within ourselves that maybe we have been avoiding for a very long time. Is that accurate or how would you adjust that?

Yeah, that is exactly accurate. And really, it comes down to a painful place. You know, I oftentimes work with people in such a way where I take them through a number of processes in order to see themselves, in order to see how they've developed, to see the compound fractures of their own psyche and to take them into these places of deep soul. You know, almost a mystical sense of who you are in the world, as you kind of say, all to make a single declaration, which is, life up to this point has used me. Life has taught me, life has hammered me. Life has pushed me in such a way where I could not have chosen it. It did it to me. I am a victim of life. Life has used me. And I choose to give myself to.

Is from that place where you recognize how life has used you, how you are and how you occur in the world, that you are able to give your gift to the world. I'll give you a really simple example, really silly example from my own life. Maybe it's not so silly, but I was always noticing in relationship to friends that I had that they would do stupid stuff after having been my friend for a while, and I'd start to feel guilty about the stupid stuff they would do. They would, you know, like, leave their job and go and enter a whole new vocation. Or they would sometimes begin to Question their own relationships, their marriages, and go, I'm not happy. And they'd get a divorce, or they would move across the country and become a hermit, or they would do like, I'm not. It's so weird. And I watched this, you know, aftermath of being around me, and I thought with a lot of shame, well, shit, this is awful. My God, what kind of human being am I that I'm creating such chaos? And then what I realized was I was a catalyst in these people's lives. To begin to ask, is there more? Is there more? Can I have more? Can I be more? Can I hold who I am in exquisite tension with what I want and can I unleash that into the world? Can I exist with new possibility? And so this thing that I really didn't like, when I began to accept that it was a reality, an unpaid aftermath of being around me, nobody had to pay for that, I suddenly realized, oh, my God. That is the consequence of being in relationship to me. And if I can begin to hone that and begin to know how to utilize that, I can become a catalyst in other people's lives to do the same thing with intentionality. So often I actually ask people the same set of questions. What is the aftermath of being with you? What is the consequence of being in relationship to you? What don't you try to do but simply happens in your wake? That's a good way to start learning what your purpose is. What aren't you trying to do that simply happens?

Yeah, I love that question. I think that's a. I think that's a good one. I can't help but, you know, sort of acknowledge that there's also, you know, maybe some perceivably negative things that happen in our wake of being. Of being around us. And so that's. That's a. That's a fruitful basket as well, just based off of what we were talking about before that you can sort of traverse that territory. I'm curious. Just as we, you know, we sort of wrap up our conversation, maybe this is a longer question that we dive into and sort of extend this conversation another time. But, you know, we've sort of talked opaquely about the troubled times that we're in and crisis and the chaos. And I'm wondering if you can maybe sort of. I know it's obvious for most people, but I would love to hear through your lens what the crisis actually is that you think that we're facing. And maybe it's not one sort of point. Maybe there's a few Sort of sticks in the fire. But I would love to hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah, I really don't actually share on this very publicly. You're the first person, I think who's actually ever asked me that in a large platform like this. But I do privately talk about it and might as well share since I'm only talking to one person here.

So.

I think that humanity finds itself engaged with what amounts to a moment in its own history where it is unconsciously attempting to end its existence. We are dealing with an existential crisis that borders on suicidality at every level. As a species, we are staring at down a precipice. I don't think you have to look very hard to see, that's the truth. It's almost as though time itself is sped up and is folding in and you look in every direction and we're being pressed upon. I don't think I'm being gloom and doom here to say that many of us feel that, that, that hemming in, that being pushed upon. You know, years ago when I did work among chronically suicidal and self harming clients, we would establish a prioritization of interventions. In other words, if someone came in and maybe they had some trauma they wanted to work on, maybe a history of trauma, or maybe they were homeless and they needed to find housing, or maybe they had alcoholism, or maybe they had all three, but they were also suicidal, you had to establish and clarify and address the suicidality before you could get to the housing, before you could get to the alcoholism, or before you could even get to the trauma, even if that might be the root. You had to actually establish a baseline of safety and address the fact that they wanted to die. Otherwise, what was the point in finding them a home, what was the point in finding a cure for their alcoholism if they were simply going to take their own life? Right now humanity is staring down the barrel of a gun. It is taking its own life in a variety of ways. And we sit here fractured, arguing about our problems, arguing about things that really do need solving. I think of things between the genders, I think of inequalities in earnings, I think of different elements around the world. We could go on about these and they're terribly important, they really are. They're very, very pressing. They have to be addressed. Our ability to get along as a species. But I think at the heart of it, what we're actually looking at is a species that is on the verge of a suicide. We have to address the crisis of the moment, which is at every level we are destroying our ability to live on this planet. There is no more pressing issue than our ability to be alive on planet Earth as a species. So I think we have to get really serious about that. Really serious about the cars we drive, really serious about the houses we live in, really serious about the trips we take, really serious about the ways we're contributing to these issues. I think it boils down to how we live our lives, our everyday lives. I think we have to get very, very serious about that. I think that at the heart of it has to do with people coming together to ask difficult questions about our ordinary, everyday concerns and beginning to find new solutions to do so.

Good, good answer. I feel like we. I feel like that's a bit of a Pandora's box that I just opened there, that we probably need a separate conversation to dig into and interweave because there's so many different components to that that I feel are worth discussing. So if you're open to it, I would love to have a sort of follow up dialogue around that specific topic because I think it's. I think it's top of mind. I think a lot of men. I was having this conversation. I was at a gathering on Saturday and I bumped into Esther Perel, who I've talked to a number of times and sort of made acquaintances with over the years. And she and I were talking about kids, and I was talking about having my child.

And she said, you know, how are you enjoying it? I said, I love it. And I said, I find that a lot of people are asking the question of do I want to bring a child into this world? There's somebody that I know very personally and he's asking that question. I know other people have been asking that question, clients have been asking that question. And in her own way, she sort of said, I don't understand this. I don't understand this. Having children is what sort of brings hope into the world and reminds us that there's a sort of cause that we can fight for. And she said, what's been your experience of becoming a father? And I said, it's like the greatest gift that I've, you know, ever received. Like, it's just, it's, it's absolutely impeccable. It's amazing. And so, you know, I think it's, it's something that warrants having this conversation because I do think that a lot of people have a very grim, bleak outlook on it. And it does seem like the collective psyche is grappling with something on a very monumental level that whether it's simply the fall of the American empire that seems to be right around the corner or it's truly a kind of more cataclysmic and catastrophic disaster that is sort of climate based or whatever that might be. So, yeah, would you be open to that conversation to dig into that and just sort of have some dialogue around it and any other pieces that you want to share before we wrap today?

Yeah, I'd love to have a dialogue about that. I think it's, it's really one of the most exciting topics to me and maybe this is what I would add to it. It's a tremendously exciting topic. You know, all the stories and all the myths and all the, the, the tales of heroes, they all exist with an absolute assured outcome. The hero is under the hand of Doom. Beowulf goes into the battle knowing he's going to die.

I'll never Forget when my 7 year old son is sent into the last part of the soccer game and he's good. Oh my God. My 7 year old's a really like, he's a hunderkind. I mean he's really, really good at soccer. And his team is down and he gets put into that last, that last segment of time and he's got an absolute task ahead of him. He's got to score two goals to tie, three to win. And he only has a few minutes to do it. And I see him drive and pivot and I see him juke and man, I feel like he even slide tackles someone. And I can't say I approved of it, but I kind of cheered a little inside. And he is being heroic and he has this beautiful golden hair and these fierce gorgeous eyes and he's alive and he's on fire and he scores one. And I know, I just know he's gonna make the shot to tie it up. But the buzzer rings and they lose. And I see my 7 year old son sob right there. He's sobbing on the ground. And as we walk back to the car, I say to him, kid, it's not if you win or lose, it's that you played your heart out.

It's that you played your heart out. And I think that's the message for every hero who's under the hand of doom. None of us are going to make it out alive. I mean, the most pressing issue may be as a species, whether we're going to move forward or not, but the reality that we're dealing with is actually it's how did we show up, how did we play joyfully, clearly, with our whole hearts. Did we give ourselves not just for our own lifetime, but for the lifetime of those yet to come? Did we play all out? And so really, to me, this question is not one of despair or sadness, not moping around. It's of the delighted, joyful soul accepting its fate in the world and giving themselves to the story.

Well said. Well said, my friend. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. And where can people learn more about you, where they can go to follow along on your journey and read more of your writing and listen to more your content?

Yeah, you can pick up my book as you are at Amazon, Amazon sellers everywhere. You can go over to Instagram and find me at rainierwild. And that's really where I do the bulk of my thinking and dreaming and being these days. And that will give you a link to everything else that might be worthwhile with me.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again. And for everyone that's out there, don't forget to leave us a rating and review. Don't forget to man it forward and share this episode with somebody that you know will appreciate the conversation. And that's it for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.

Sam.