Choose Unconditional Well-Being (Part 1)

One of the most common ways we keep ourselves from the success we want is by conditional living. We walk around life observing conditions, we have a knee jerk emotional reaction to the conditions we don't like. And then we set ourselves on a crusade to change all those conditions so that we can feel better. Today I'm excited to share with you the first of a three part series on how to go from this kind of conditional living to living in unconditional well being or ready to go. You're listening to the Universe has yous Business. It's the podcast for rising entrepreneurs, coaches and change makers who are here to achieve more while letting the universe do the heavy lifting. I'm your host, Andrew Donovan. I have been excited to have this conversation about conditional living for a while. I remember back when I was a brand spanking new entrepreneur and, and I started in network marketing. This was what, almost a decade ago, and I was really excited at the possibility that was ahead of me. And I remember when I got my first little goal sheets that my mentors gave me in this company and I wrote down all the things that I wanted to achieve and it was maybe less than a year, but maybe like 10 months later that I found these goal sheets in an office store and I had written down some hefty, hefty stuff and there were some big goals on there that included making at least 10 figures a month in my network marketing company in under a year. And I hadn't achieved those goals. And I remember trying to think about why I hadn't met my goals. And I thought of all the conditions around me. I thought of maybe my network wasn't the right network or maybe I didn't have enough credibility because I wasn't certified in anything. Maybe people didn't take me seriously enough. Maybe I just wasn't developed enough. And the reason why I'm sharing the story with you is because there's a lot of areas in our life where we want improvement, right? Maybe you want to see more dollars come into your business. Maybe you want to see more affection in your relationship. Maybe you want less pain in your body or an improved state of physical well being. There's, I mean, you could look at your Life and within 60 seconds you could list 20 conditions that you want to improve. Am I correct? You can think of them right now, Right? So as you're thinking about what those conditions are, I want you to think about why you want them to improve. And this is really the whole point of this episode. I would propose that you want those conditions to Improve because you want to feel better. So if there's not enough money in your bank account and you're stressed about money and you're thinking, oh, no, how are we going to get more money? You want the money in the bank account ultimately, because why? And I know you're thinking, well, because I want to go on vacation, because I want to be financially free, because I want to pay off the debt, blah, blah, blah. Ultimately, at the bottom line, the most fundamental reason you want the money in the bank account because you think you will feel better by having the money in your bank account. Am I right? Or think about a relationship that you want to improve. Maybe you've got somebody who did you wrong, and so you've gone over and over in your head about what they said, what you said, what they didn't say, what they should have said, what you think they'll say in the future, that's not going to be okay if they say it that way. And why do you want that relationship to improve? Why do you want to feel justified? Why do you want them to apologize? Why do you want their behavior to change? And ultimately, because you think you'll feel better. Am I right? And yes, I know I'm right, because that's why we want anything you want, everything you want in your life, you want it because you think you'll feel better by having it. So here is. Let's go over, first of all, just for context sake, a bunch of ways that we do conditional living. And really the reason why I think this matters so much is, is because when I say conditional living, I mean that you and I identify external conditions, things that are not within us, like at a soul level. We identify external things. And I'm even talking about your physical body, because you and I both know that you are not actually your body. We know that you are much, much more than this little shell of cells and organs and things that we call our body, right? So conditional living is identifying any kind of external condition that you want to look differently in order for you to be happy or for you to feel better, or for you to feel xyz. Fill in the blank, okay? And really, I just gave a couple of examples. But you're going to identify a lot more areas in your life where you're living conditionally. And I hope that this really provides you with a new sense of empowerment. Because when I started realizing all the places in my life where I was at a total conditional liver, then all of a sudden I felt like I had the conscious awareness to take my power back. Because I had been giving my power to all these relationships, to situations, to environmental things, to physical conditions that didn't need to have my power, because really my power is within me. Okay, so here's what conditional living looks like in action, alright? And as I go through these, I really want you to take an inventory. Not so that you can blame yourself, or so that you can think, oh, I suck, but just. Or even so that you can give a lot of mental focus to it. This is valuable because when you start becoming aware of how you are living conditionally now, you have the awareness to start taking your power back. And once you have your power back, you feel powerful and you start creating incredible things and in your business and in your life. All right? So the first way that we do conditional living is blaming conditions. Now, 2020 is a really easy example of this. There were a lot of heated conditions, world health pandemic, social conditions, things that got a lot of us really riled up. And I remember during the course of 2020, anytime I'd meet somebody that I hadn't seen in a while, the first question was always, so how are you dealing with XYZ condition? And you know, my spouse and I, we would hear these questions and we'd always find a polite answer. But ultimately we don't believe that any of those conditions have real power over us. So, I mean, I tell people that 2020 was the best year of my life. Were there some tricky sticky spots that I got to work through? Totally. Did I get COVID 19? Yes. And, and that I have people that I knew we're not gonna get into that. My point is that there were conditions that a lot of people were very fixated on. And some of those conditions are really easy to agree socially that those overcame us. We say, wow, look at how the world health pandemic overtook the world. That's why we call it a world health pandemic. Or look at how the racial injustices that we were working through, the social improvements the, that we were demanding, look at how those conditions overpowered us as individuals. And I'm going to argue right now and tell you that no external condition can overpower you. It's just not true. If it overpowers you, it's because you gave it your power. So anytime we blame conditions for how we feel, that's us giving away our power. Most of the time we don't do it consciously, but we do it willingly. Because if you don't will it, then you're not going to do it. You Hear what I'm saying? So blaming conditions, that's the first one. And I mean, that can look like blaming any kind of condition. Conditions can be people, they can be relationships with other people, relationships with any, anything really. It can be your environment, it can be a social thing, it can be your health. Ultimately though, I think a condition, an external condition, is really about your relationship with that condition. Because if you didn't perceive a relationship with it and perceive it as threatening you or taking you down or giving you a disadvantage somehow, then you wouldn't care, right? And so anytime we blame any of those kinds of conditions, that's one way of conditional living. We say, wow, look how hard this is, look how bad the economy's doing, look how stupid this election is, look how bad our candidates are. Look how my mother in law is treating me. Look how, look how, look how, look how, right? And so you see how that's conditional living, don't you? The next way of conditional living is worrying about conditions. This is something that's really easy to do with people we care about. If you're a parent, you probably worry about your children, which is totally conditional living, because what you're really doing is saying, if only my kids behaved this way, or only if the neighbors were, or the school teachers or the mentors perceived my children in this way, then I would feel okay, then I would feel confident, then I would feel like a good parent, then I would feel at ease, then I would feel less anxious. Okay, or we worry about our spouse. Geez, my spouse is having a really rough week or month or a year. And we think that by worrying about it we are serving the situation. But really all you're doing is giving your power away because you're saying you, this external situation isn't looking just right, it's not looking too great. And therefore I feel poorly. And in my state of feeling poorly, somehow that's supposed to help somebody. Maybe they'll feel better because I feel crummy with them, which doesn't actually help anybody. So worrying about conditions, this is one thing that I catch myself doing all the time. It could also be worrying about how people perceive you. So little vulnerability moment. This is probably the biggest condition that I personally find myself working through. I become hyper aware of what I think people think about me, which is an exhausting expenditure of energy when I do this. And as soon as I catch myself consciously worrying about the condition of other people's opinions about me, all of a sudden I realize, oh my gosh, does that actually matter? And sometimes I have to. You know, it takes a little bit of mental effort to get shifted out of that, but boy, is it worth it. Okay, next condition is repeating past conditions mentally. Now, how often do you find yourself doing the dishes, taking a shower, driving your car somewhere, and you keep replaying in your mind something that happened in the past. This is probably one of the most comical ways of conditional living, because it's done. It's done. And statistics show that most people's memories are very incomplete. You've heard those statistics, right? I'm not gonna give you numbers because I don't remember all the different studies, but statistics show that most of us remember the past in fragments. And so not only are we remembering the past incorrectly, but it's also the past. It's over and done with. But for some reason we sit there driving our car down the highway, rehashing repeatedly what that person said and how we said it, responded and how the situation felt wonky and what they probably thought about us. And boy, like, what a weird way to give away your happiness right to the past that doesn't even exist anymore. Huge, huge method for conditional living. Okay, the next way of conditional living, this is an interesting one, acting on conditions. So you look at your bank account and it's got $100 in it. And you feel that sinking in your chest. And you feel the scarcity, you feel the pinch, you feel the lack of well being, of prosperity. And as you are observing those unfavorable conditions that the conditions that you don't prefer, you say, we've got to fix this, we've got to do something about this. And you call your kids and you say, no more eating out. And you call your spouse and you say, stop ordering shit on Amazon. And you go to your accountant and you say, we've got to reel this in. This is not okay. So some people would say, good for you way to see a situation that you don't like and figure out what you can do about it. But what I will tell you is flawed about the situation that I just described and is that you have reacted emotionally to a condition and your negative emotional reaction doesn't show you that the condition's bad. It shows you that your relationship to it is incongruent with how the whole of you at a soul level relates to that condition. Because hear me out. At a soul level, you are the universe. You are unlimited prosperity. You are unlimited wealth, money, abundance. You are comfort. You are stability, correct at the whole of who you really are at a soul level. So when Your little ego mind looks at the bank statement and sees a condition that it thinks is the wrong condition. And then you react emotionally and feel those negative emotions. That's not because the condition's bad. That's because your surface level perception of the condition is incongruent with how the whole of you at a soul level relates to that condition. Because at a soul level, you're not threatened by $100 in your bank, right? And if you were really connected to your soul self, your whole self, you would feel the well being flowing to you and you'd quickly shift your vibration and you would all of a sudden start receiving money or ideas to go create money and do it from an inspired, healthy feeling space, not from a negative scarcity feeling space. Do you see what I'm talking about? So that's actually one of the little flaws that I see in a lot of financial coaches where they say, look at your bank statement. Are you okay with this? You're not. Let's take action. And you take action from scarcity, from that pinching off space. And can you get results from scarcity? Totally. It just takes a lot more work. Because your positive results don't come from taking action in scarcity. It actually comes from the lapse in resistance that happens in, in spite of your action based off of scarcity. Okay? So taking action on conditions, especially with force, I mean, that's a big way to live. Conditionally, you see your child or your mate or your co worker doing something that you've asked them not to do, or something you think they should know better than to do, and then you blow up at them, or you reprimand them, or you put systems in place to try and control their behavior. That's all conditional living. Because why are you ultimately doing that? You're doing it because you think you'll feel better, you think you'll get more of what you want if you can control and act on those outward conditions. This is, I literally have described most people's parenting skills, haven't I? You look at your kids, you're dissatisfied with the condition of their behavior, of their attitude, of their whatever, of how their teacher talks about them or perceives them or what they're going to think when they the report cards come due, okay? And then you take action based off of your dissatisfaction as you observe that condition. Have I got some light bulbs going off here? Can I get a ding, ding, ding. Okay, so, and this is one that for me as an activator and an achiever, this is one that took me a few years to really grasp, to be honest, because I thought, okay, this makes no sense to me. So you're saying that I'm supposed to look at something that my spouse is doing that that is leaving me feeling awful, and I'm just supposed to say, that's okay, he can keep doing it? That's stupid, right? Because as an activator and an achiever, I'm very action oriented. I always want to have some kind of strategy to move me toward what I want. And when, when I say that acting on conditions that you don't like so you want to change by acting on them. When I say that's conditional living, that almost sounds like a total contradiction to everything that you've been taught as an entrepreneur, as a conscious creator, right? Because you think, well, if I'm the creator of my life and I see something I don't like, shouldn't I change it? Shouldn't I act or make a move on those conditions to make it different? So what I would say to that is there's a couple ways to go about things. So what manifests in your reality is always a response to the vibration that you've been offering to the overall sum of energy that you've been being. Correct. And so if I've got five conditions that are favorable and five conditions that are really unfavorable in my life, well, those are a sum match to whatever vibration I've been being in the recent past. Okay? And I could take, take the five situations that I don't like and I could act on them and I could say I'm going to fix those things that I don't like. It's the efforting route. Is it wrong? No, it's not wrong. There's just easier ways of going about it. Because the other way to go about it is I could take the things that are going really well and just immerse myself in the vibrational, good feeling space of those things. And, and all of a sudden my vibration starts to get clearer and clearer. My energy begins to shift. And those other things that were in my life that were less favorable, they'll start to shift because they have to match my energy now. It's just a much simpler, more enjoyable way of living. Okay? So those are the ways of conditional living. Blaming conditions, worrying about conditions, repeating past conditions mentally. And you can do that with the future too. I found myself doing that with relationships that aren't the way that I want them to be. And I'll find myself in the shower thinking about potential future conversations and well, if she said this, then here's how I'll defend myself. Like defending myself against conditions that haven't even happened yet. What a dumb way to spend my time in the shower, right? So repeating past conditions mentally or, or trying to predict future conditions mentally that aren't favorable and then acting on conditions to try and coerce them to show up differently. Okay. Oh, and then that's the same thing as wanting to control conditions. And just a warning, my friends. Wanting to help people can easily become a form of conditional living. If you see someone that you really care about, say you have a sibling who's struggling with an addiction and you feel awful watching the condition of their addiction and you think, I really want to help them. The moment that you feel like your well being is contingent on your ability to help them is the moment that you shifted from being anything useful to conditional living where you've now lost your power and you're not that helpful. Does that make sense to you? Because the difference, and you might be listening to this and thinking, what the fuck, Andrew? You're telling me that I shouldn't want to help my siblings struggling with addiction? That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying, I mean, at a soul level, of course you want the well being of your sibling, right? At a conscious level, you want the well being of your sibling. The difference is that the conditional living version says, if I don't help him, then I'm going to feel badly. If I don't help him or if he doesn't accept my help or if he doesn't get better somehow, then I'm going to feel worried or I'm going to feel sad, or I'm going to feel disempowered. I'm going to feel helpless. Versus the unconditional version says, I know that everything is working out. If there is a space where I feel inspired to help and he's a match to receiving my help, that will be so beautiful. And I really would love if I could rendezvous with a situation like that because I'd really love to be of assistance. Ultimately, I know that he can't get it wrong, he can't fuck it up. I mean, there might be some rocky, bumpy points along the way and I know that everything's working out and that the universe has his back and the universe has my back. And I'm just going to hold myself in a space of alignment as much as I can. And when I think about that sibling, I'm going to think about him, the way that my soul self, my inner being, the way that I know God, that the universe thinks about him. Because that's a whole and complete focus. And all that focus does not see him as broken. It doesn't see the problems. It doesn't see the injustices that he's causing the family. Okay. Or she. Okay. That's the difference. Okay, so those are the kinds of conditional living. Now let's talk about how to live unconditionally. Because really, once you understand everything that we've talked about so far, like, you're already 90% of the way there, and the rest is just easy, easy. The only thing you need to be aware of is that this takes just. It takes a little bit of practice, and it might take some time to shift some mental patterns. That's all. If you're used to doing a lot of the things that I've discussed already in this episode, well, then you have some mental habits to reform. Totally fine. Don't worry about it. All right, Here is my little process for living unconditionally. And at the end of this process, I'm going to tell you what's in store for you once you learn and start getting really good at being an unconditional liver. So how to live unconditionally? First, you want to understand what conditions you've given your power to. We've talked about that. Secondly, you want to be aware when you are living conditionally. If you can start catching yourself, you. In those moments of conditional living, that awareness is invaluable. That doesn't mean that you suck or that you fucked it up. It doesn't mean that you did something wrong or that you're not getting this or that you're emitting bad juju or bad energy. So you're gonna have shitty things come to you. That's not what that means. If you catch yourself in a moment of conditional living, that is incredible, because now you know, and you can shift your focus and as quickly as possible. All right? Sometimes when you start this journey with me, you start catching yourself living conditionally. And it might be an area of your life where you've got a lot of momentum. Maybe it's something in your significant relationship, and it's a topic where there's a lot of emotion. There's a lot of heat behind it, okay? And it's not that easy to just shift your focus off the condition and to somewhere else. That's okay. Give it some time. Be easy about it with yourself. Don't blame yourself. Don't punish Yourself, just chill the F out, alright? I've said fuck so many times in this episode already. Chill out, okay? And if anything, make it a light hearted game. Okay? You caught yourself being a conditional liver. Oh, wow. You caught yourself cool. Now you're aware. All right? The next thing, as often as you're able to redirect your focus to the internal state that you really desire. All right, so I'm going to give you another vulnerability moment here. When I get in an argument with my spouse, I want an apology because I usually think it's his fault that we got in an argument, right? And not only do I want an apology, but I want to be able to sit there and verbally work it out right there on the spot. Now, he is a totally different kind of processor. I process verbally, he processes internally. And so when we're in a disagreement, he wants space. And for years in our marriage, I perceived that as me not being loved, which just made the condition even worse, right? And the recently, I'm not going to tell you how recently, but recently, within the last year, we had a moment. It was a night where we were in a disagreement, we had an argument and. And he went to bed and I was so upset, and I was even more upset that we couldn't talk about it. And so I went and slept in the guest room because I don't like to sleep in the same bed if we're at odds with each other. And I had this like miraculous experience sleeping by myself in the guest room that night because I turned on just some soothing sound clips on my phone and I focused on my inner state of peace. And rather than hashing all of the details of our argument out in my head, which is what I normally do and what I'm very tempted to do, I sat there in bed and just focused on my heart space and on what I knew. Beneath all the frenzy of my crazy thoughts, I knew that at a heart level my natural state is peace. And I just focused on that. And after a few minutes of this, I began to experience this soothing sensation, this feeling of well being. And I remember thinking, wait a second, how could I feel well being if we haven't resolved our argument yet and he hasn't apologized yet? He probably already did apologize. I just was being too much of an ass to listen to it. So in this moment in the guest room, I'm sitting there experiencing this almost paradox of inner peace without the condition being resolved the way that I would like it to see resolved. And ever since then I've had Just this, like, delightful game that I've been playing. And I've been meaning to play this for years, but it took me this long to figure out how the hell to live more conditionally, which is why we're doing this episode right now. And I'm excited to talk about this with you. So when you catch yourself living conditionally, you can. I mean, you're aware now, and you can choose where you put your focus. You can continue to put your focus on the condition and how you think it should be different and who you think should make it different, et cetera, or you can shift your focus to somewhere else. And I think that it's of high benefit to shift your focus to anywhere else. You can shift your focus to how excited you are about getting your next manicure or how much you like your cat. Okay. Or. Or you can shift your focus to that internal state of peace that's always there beneath your conditional thoughts and conditional living. Does that make sense to you? And really redirecting your focus to anywhere that's not the condition that's inflamed for you is going to be very beneficial. And then the last thing to do is just to repeat this process over and over and over again. I'm not kidding you. It's taken me a. A number of years to really get a grasp on this, and I still catch myself going over conditions in my mind repeatedly. And then I. And I'll even say, andrew, why are you thinking about that still? And maybe it's a subject that's got a lot of momentum, and so I still have a tricky time letting go of the conditions that I'm thinking about. But the cool thing, though, is now I'm aware. And now the more I'm aware and don't punish myself for it, the more I'm aware, the more I can say, okay, practice shifting your focus to somewhere else. Would I rather shift my focus to something joyful and elating? Of course. But maybe I'm not there. Maybe the momentum from the negative condition is too intense for me. So maybe I just shift my focus to something that's, like, neutral or boring or, you know, something like that. All right? And you get better and better at this. Here is what's in it for you, my friend. What's in it for you is feeling whole and complete when you look at the positive conditions that you're here to create in your life. And we're entrepreneurs here. Most of us are entrepreneurs. And so we have all these conditions that we want to create. We want to make jobs for people. We want to help people create income in their businesses. We want to improve the lives of our customers. We want to create new levels of financial freedom, of time freedom. We want to create impact ethically with humanitarian projects. There's all these things that we want to create that are what we would call worthy or positive conditions. Right? So the magic of this is that the feeling that you're going for already exists within you. You don't need any of those conditions to feel awesome or feel powerful. In fact, if you've listened to anything that I've talked about in any other episode, you know that the quickest way to creating those amazing conditions you seek is to first find within you the feeling that you're going for. And so that's really what's to gain for you. You don't need any outside condition to change. For you to feel empowered, for you to feel bold, courageous, worthy, loving, loved. For you to feel compassionate, for you to feel peaceful, for you to feel satisfied. All those feelings that you really want to experience more of, those all exist within you at a soul level, at a heart level. And if you can practice taking your focus off the conditions and putting it in within you and saying that energy already exists at any moment, I can start to tune into that energy. What is now possible for you? What new realms of possibility have you opened up? And that is an incredible segue into different manifesting conversations. Because once you learn how to do this, now really Law of Attraction is working very much in your favor versus working against you because you had your focus on things that you didn't like. So you know, then you attracted more of that stuff. All right, friends, I hope that this has been an empowering conversation for you. I want to see you living more of the whole of who you really are. I want to see you being more of the whole of who you really are. And that means being an unconditional liver of life. It means being unconditionally connected to the well being that abounds for you. That is you. All right, so have fun with this little process and send us some feedback. If you have an amazing experience where, where you find yourself shifting somewhere that you didn't think you could shift that easily, please send us a dm, send us a message. We'd love to hear your success story. Alright? And do me a favor, hit that subscribe button so that you don't miss another episode and I will see you next time.