Key Lessons in 2019 and How I'm Evolving for 2020

Before we jump into this episode of the No Eagle Podcast, I want to get you excited about January 2020. And this is pretty exciting news when it comes to the podcast. I'm starting a whole new season, and with new seasons come new themes. So Season 3, Podcast 2020, is gonna be all about you. I want to help you live the philosophy of Reality-Based Leadership on a much deeper level. I've done the answer your questions and given you kind of the philosophy soundbites, but I want to help you unravel the dilemmas you find yourself in, wanting to approach these dilemmas with the reality-based philosophy. But as they get more complex, as they get more challenging, how do you do that? And I want to help you know how to do that. So I'm going to go deep in this next season. I'm going to take your emails and your letters, the ones that provide not just a question but some real context to a dilemma that you're facing, and I'm going to invite some of my favorite people, the people I go to for counsel and coaching, onto the podcast, and we are going to move through your letters, your emails, in their entirety, and just find places where we can help loosen your ego's grip on your current view of the situation so that you can find some space and freedom to move through the world differently, more skillfully, more peacefully, more happily. I'm so excited about season 3 of the podcast. We're going to get into some deep stuff, some mind-blowing stuff, and I'm going to share a whole lot more of how I live this philosophy on a daily basis personally. I'm talking about the good and the bad. I will share with you freely what I'm working on, and I want you to share with me freely what you're working on. So get ready, tell all your friends, give me your situations. It's going to be a great season. This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, And transform your world place. I'm Sy Wakeman. Welcome, listeners, to the end of the year No Ego podcast. I've started a bit of a tradition over the last couple of years that I use this last podcast of the year to just share some reflections, some things I'm pondering and wondering about, some reflections and questions I'm walking with, really what's guiding my inquisitiveness or my own wondering at the end of this year. We've had such an amazing year at Reality-Based Leadership. Our business is growing and is incredibly successful, and we've been able to really start to make a big difference in industries like healthcare, which of course is a big love of mine. And definitely feeling the need to celebrate myself and the team. And quite honestly, by the time I get to December, I'm starting to wind down. And as an introvert, wanting to go south to my beautiful sunny paradise in Mexico where I can really recharge and reboot and get centered and take inventory of my life and really, really participate in some reflection aimed towards curating what I would like more or less of in my life going forward for next year. And many times there's some themes that have come up throughout the year that I keep just notes in journals of random thoughts or coaching sessions or things that I kind of accumulate, and at the end of the year really want to be thinking about. So I was going through my journals and thinking about what are some of the key focus areas that I am taking a look at at this time as we end the year. The first thing that really jumped up, it was a major insight for me this year, is to really begin to understand more deeply the difference between self- care and self-soothing. And I came to really understand kind of a difference in definition where self-care is really rooted in like sustainable experiences of restoration, where self-soothing is really rooted in like these fleeting experiences of pressure or relief or escape or numbing out. And I really tried to get more conscious of what I do that really is self-care and what I do that's self-soothing. And in the midst of that, I become really aware how often on Instagram and social media and even in my conversations with other folks where they confuse self-soothing with self-care. It's like, oh, I've had an incredibly hard day, I'm gonna take care of myself and relax with a glass of of wine, or I deserve a vacation away. I've worked really, really hard, and I'm really going there seeking like pleasure. And how many times self-soothing were events rather than rituals or disciplines, or they were something external that we would take in as human beings to just try and cope or prolong or procrastinate or get a break from what we were seeing as circumstances that were challenging or tough, rather than growing and developing and finding disciplines and rituals that increase our capacity to move through the world more skillfully. So, so many of you hear me talk about don't try and change your circumstances, grow yourself, like evolve yourself. Don't pray to have different circumstances, pray to be more capable of maintaining your contentment, joy, and happiness in circumstances. And so I've paid special attention this year to moving away from those behaviors and endeavors that are self-soothing and realize that they're really just temporary, um, postponements of having to deal with the issues or challenges at hand, and really focus more on self-care and the disciplines of the daily rituals that are necessary for me to just keep, as I go out into the world, to keep going out at full capacity, recharged and rebooted. And so for me, those self-disciplines are more about the self-care, are more about managing my schedule so it isn't a schedule that is doable because I have a super high tolerance for kind of craziness and I'm over-functioning, but is a schedule that is not violent and allows for space and time in between and closure and completion and reflection and, and the ability to make sense of one thing before I jump into another thing and really limits my needs to a lot of multitasking. So The word discipline is, for me, remembering what I really want. So when I think about the desired core feelings I want to have on a daily basis, and that's Danielle LaPorte's work of thinking about how do I want to feel on the daily, and then what are the choices I need to make, the disciplines I need to have to ensure that feeling more often or on the regular. And so for me, discipline's just really continually remembering what I'm committed to, what I really want, what's most important to me. And discipline also ensures that I'm available for that muse, that creativity muse that comes to find you. But if your butt isn't in the chair ready to write, whether you're writing or not, if you haven't just had the discipline of showing up and sitting for a while, when it does come, it can't find you. It's like that willingness to do my part in partnering with the universe to create. It's like keeping my mind clean, my space kind of hygienic, using good hygiene to just make sure I'm clearing myself neurologically. And so I've really focused on how can I be judicious with my yeses and my nos so that they're honest. Say yes to the things that scare me and saying no to the things that I find irritate me? How can I make sure that I'm meditating twice a day? How can I pay a lot more attention to the internal world? How can I take time and space to do things that are self-care and do less of things that are self-soothing? So that's one of the things that is really on my mind. I'm— probably one of the biggest themes that has come up this year is the ways in which people use my philosophy, I guess, for evil. Not good. There's some misuse of my philosophies where people can take a harsher version of what I say and teach, and forget that every single thing I teach needs to be based on the foundation of really loving other people, really caring about others, and having empathy to their well-being, and having concern for them as human beings. That anything I ask you to do in calling people up to greatness, you've already convinced them that you love and care about them and are willing, out of that love and care, to challenge them and to call them up to really be all that they can be and reach their potential. And even for me, I've discovered this year that the beginning part of my teaching, which is what I give most often in keynotes is this ability to really say, you know, life's messy, but you can still live happy. You don't need to let your circumstances determine your contentment in the world. Like, pain happens, but suffering is really optional. And that no matter what your reality is, you can learn to love that reality and just love what is and be content and happy in the midst of that. And I teach that so much, and I really have developed a high tolerance for reality that's tricky and challenging. I think growing up in a big family with a lot going on in their lives, I got really good at running the obstacle course of life and not being too fatigued that just getting from point A to point B was filled with a lot of barriers and challenges and obstacles. I got really good good at kind of succeeding in spite of the facts. And when I was a little kid, I got really good at just dealing with the reality that was dealt to me and finding peace and happiness in that. Because I was a kid, I didn't really have a lot of power to change that reality. And this last year, there's been a couple of points in my life where I'm talking with others and they've pointed out to me that perhaps My really great skill set in dealing with my current reality has blinded me to the fact that just because you can function in this challenging circumstances as an adult doesn't mean you have to. Like I was talking to somebody, and I was talking about all the the internal work I was working on, the things I was trying to do in my own spiritual evolution and development to be able to remain content and happy. With something the way it is. And while that's worthy work, and I think if you're going to ask the question, should I stay, should I go, whether it's a job or a relationship, that first you should stay and get what you came for and get skilled up in being okay in that situation and being able to be kind and loving. But as I'm explaining all of this, This person who was helping me reflect and just holding space for that conversation said something so simple to me. She goes, you know, I get when you're a little kid it was all about like learning to love the reality you're in. And she said, but you're an adult now. You could actually just change your reality. You could choose something different. And I was surprised at how disarming that comment was because it hadn't really dawned on me. And so one thing I learned about myself this year is how when I'm teaching so many beginners, I may overemphasize the part of the philosophy that is all about getting neutral and loving what is and moving through reality skillfully without getting ego hooked and without having suffering. That's really optional, how to move beyond that. And I didn't question often enough, should I be curating my life differently so that I can use my choice to change those realities. And one of my favorite teachers is Byron Katie, and she really teaches you to question any painful story or thought, finds, as you will, that it probably is not true that your suffering comes from your story, and just see reality as it really is, and there's really nothing to suffer about. But she also says that if you can Make some different choices. Make those. So she uses the example, if you're walking down an alley where perhaps people are, you know, engaged in drug use and there's needles scattered in the alley and it's dark and it's not very clean and you don't feel very safe, like, don't judge the people in the alley. Have compassion for them. Know that's just what is. But at some point in your life, you may choose to walk a different way home. And I'm sure to some of you listeners that seems so simplistic, but it's one of the ways I find that people like myself that over-function can use the philosophy to stay too long. And so the Dalai Lama, I love what he says about suffering being optional. He's like, if you can fix it, fix it, and if you can't, then let it go and be happy anyways, there's really no reason to ever suffer. And so I'm thinking about that more in my life. And another thing I was reminded of from my listeners and my audience members is that for many of us, the ego is really busy judging others and creating stories and narratives that are really sources of suffering about the external worlds, the judging going outwards. But the ego doesn't differentiate when it needs to find injustice to stay fed and alive between external and internal. And for so many of us, I forget to mention that a lot of times that ego turns on ourselves internally with a lot of negative self-talk, a lot of doubts, a lot of chatter about not being enough or not deserving happiness or Um, you know, whatever your ego story is, whatever your self-sabotaging beliefs are. A couple of really great podcasts I did, um, some bonus podcasts, I think 4 of them with Sasha Shillcutt about those limiting beliefs, and also Dr. Judy Ho. I did a whole thing on self-sabotaging, that if you have your ego turning inwards, I would go and, um, make sure you listen to those. They were really amazing. One of the ways I continue to evolve myself is I listen to poetry read out loud. And so one of my favorite poets to listen to, whether he's reading his own poetry or somebody else's poetry, is David Whyte. And he just does a remarkable job of giving some names to human experience and human condition, and it really fosters my own self-reflection. In the way that he's able to give language to our daily experiences, it's like I can— if there's language around it, it's kind of easier to then reflect on it for me. So if you haven't discovered David Whyte, definitely get out there and discover some of his work. But I was listening to him recently and he brought up a tendency that we as humans engage in that really kind of kills our curiosity and really moves us quickly into a narrow perspective and some judgmentalism. And he called it the naming of things too soon. So it's so interesting to me how in relationships we tend to name, you know, love too soon, or we tend to really define whether an experience was good or bad too soon. We tend to just name things prematurely, which takes out the wonder, gets us out of the beginner's mind, kills the curiosity. And I really have been walking with the concept of staying curious just one moment longer. And I find myself often going, oh my gosh, well, that didn't work out, or that was a colossal waste of time, or that relationship wasn't what I thought it was. And I've noticed this tendency of mine to name things too soon, and when I do that, my perspective gets really narrow, and it leaves little room for many things to be true at once about every interaction, every relationship, everything that maybe didn't work out as I had hoped, or even the things that worked out tremendously well. Like if we name them too soon. We cement them in concrete, and that's the first step in getting attached and then setting expectations and moving out of the mindset of great expectancy. It's really a first move for me. And, um, what I like to, um, think about when I get really certain about what that was or what it meant or I get into a knowing place is just to really back up, move out of that judging something good or bad, and get back into the mystery of having this kind of greater perspective. So instead of just seeing things in the snapshot in time, thinking about over time, how would I know more will be revealed? I might think I missed out on the business opportunity and I didn't respond quick enough, and you know, get very limited in my perspective. And as I go through life and business, I see years later where that either happened in my favor or I didn't really miss out. It was the something that was a prelude to something amazing happening at a later date. I just— the longer I live, the more I get in touch with how little I know about what this is in the moment and how ill-equipped I am to name something. So I'm really trying to leave a lot of room for more to be revealed, stay in that beginner's mind, and just experience what is without naming it or concluding something about it. You know, I think of my mom a lot at this time of year, and she often said, you know, it's all Good in the end, or it's not the end. Everything is good in the end, or it's not the end. And that just really brings me a lot of hope and joy and a lot less suffering in the moment, because when I name things too soon is usually when I prematurely call in the suffering. She also had this other great phrase that she would say, which to stay out of criticism, she would go, "Oh, okay. Well, let's keep thinking." And I'll never forget when I was naming my third son. I'd already had George Millard Wakeman and Charles O'Leary Wakeman, and these very kind of old-fashioned English regal names. And I think she was hoping for something you know a little different, maybe honoring of our family origin. And she asked me when I was about seven months pregnant with my third child, she's like, "So what are you gonna name this?" baby. And I said, you know, Mom, I think I'm gonna name him Henry Albert. And I could see just this flicker of disappointment, right? And she very quickly recovered. And her response was, oh, you know, well, you're only 7 months along. We— let's keep thinking. And I found that so kind from her. Now people ask me like, so would you really name him? And I'm like, Henry Albert Wakeman. And my mom didn't really have a lot of criticism about that. She adores all of my kids. But she was like, Role modeling the willingness to give another person space without trying to name something too soon or impose our will on another or make a judgment about what's happening, and just leaving some space open for options, which I think is such a loving thing to do. You know, a big question I hear now that I'm soliciting questions for our next podcast series, which by the way starts in January, season 3, is all about you not just asking questions, but you writing to me an email that really shares some details of a situation you're involved in so that I and some other guests can unpack it for you and maybe give you some edges to question and to poke at your current way of seeing things and to see if we can't loosen maybe your ego's grip on you're thinking about that situation. So definitely look for that and be sending me your emails. But one of the questions I come up with a lot, I get asked a lot recently, is this: should I stay or should I go? So people know that I often say stay in joy or leave in peace. So if you're gonna leave, don't leave because other people are horrible. Leave because you prefer to leave. You're accountable. It's your own deal. Or if you're gonna stay, then commit full-on. Learn what you're gonna learn. Let go of the judgment and critique and stay in joy. And that the third option of staying, um, not in joy and not leaving, but staying and critiquing, or staying and sabotaging, or staying and pining for the past, or, you know, staying yet being unwilling to commit— like, that place of non-committal is really the painful place. And our ego likes to seek out these third options The Dalai Lama, as I said, says, "If you can fix it, fix it, and if you can't, let it go and accept it." We like that third option of I'm not going to take action, and I'm not going to let it go. I just want to vent about it, right? These third options are the work of the ego. And so when I get that question, a lot of people are saying, "You know, should I say? Should I go like in a job?" And they're really in this predicament where they're. In a situation that's too good to leave but too bad to stay situation, and they tend to want to ask, should they go? And those questions that are the type of question that you can ask an 8-ball are not questions that will help you get closer to knowing What it is you want or need to do. If it's a question that you're asking and you want to keep suffering and keep floundering and be ambivalent, ask a question an 8-ball could answer, because all you'll do is collect evidence about your daily experience. Well, today I liked that part and I didn't like this part. If you're struggling with getting an answer to a question, my best advice to you is really refine your question. In research, we know, and it's often frustrating to get the question just right, perfect the question. But what we also know is when you get the question really right, the research just does itself. And so if you're stuck in life, one of my best advice pieces of advice to you is ask a different question. And so a different question, what would be an example of that is You know, what do I love more, this job or the life I could have if I weren't at this job? Like in a relationship, like what do I— it's not that I don't love the person I'm with, like what do I love more, this person or the life I could have if I, um, admitted to myself that this was holding me back? And so I'm really obsessed with staying curious longer, with not naming things too soon, and with going beyond the questions I teach often for self-reflection. And what are the big juicy questions? And what I have found out throughout the last year is that just the power of holding a question— like, if you get a good question, and even if you can't intellectually answer it, but you just aren't willing to walk with a question and hold it. It's so powerful because if you're holding a question intensely, it attracts the answer in the bizarrest of ways. So you don't have to be in the search of the answer. You have to be willing to entertain the question. And I find a lot of us, when it comes to our reluctance to self-reflect, it's a fear of just even even asking the question. And maybe we're fearful of the answer, but you don't have to be brave. You don't have to take any action to leave your job. You just have to be willing to walk intensely with the question. And I've had some things come into my life as I've been holding some questions that were so powerful. And one of the things that came into my life was It was just called the invitation poem, and I couldn't find a reference for it, but it was a question of me. And the invitation poem is, I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. And one of the things I've learned this year is I have a really steady desire to help others, and I have an authentic spirit of generosity. And I have a shadow side of using generosity to attempt to control people. It's kind of like, as Anne Lamott said, the sunny side of help is control. So some of you out there who don't think you're controlling, I've realized that at times I have some motive around that generosity, um, and that sometimes generosity is generosity. Sometimes accepting reality is good surrender. But sometimes it's acquiescing and keeping the peace. And I've learned that keeping the peace externally often starts a war for me internally. So at many parts of my life, saying yes to what's next was, um, scary but easy because it was kind of the, the next obvious opportunity or experience. And getting to this point in my life where I have so many abundant options, I really had to get more definite about curating and being intentional about where I put my time and energy. I've realized that my most cherished commodity is time and energy, and that that's what I really need to pay attention to. And what you pay attention to really affects the quality of your life as my beautiful yoga teachers Jenny and Paul would tell you. So I started to really walk with this question that brought me to a lot of reluctant places. Like, I want to know if you can discipline another to be true to yourself, because I've been really creative in my life, seemingly finding ways to please others and be very helpful and also be true to myself. And for the first time that I've been conscious of it I've been in many situations the last year where being pleasing to another and true to myself aren't so easily meshed. And as I've made some early decisions about where I want to go in business and as an empty nester and kind of in the next chapter of my life, I had another question that came from a podcast, Ali and Mark, when we talked about relationships. Um, brought up the question, are you willing for another to be wrong about you to answer your calling? And that's a sensitive spot for me, to move forward in what I think is just good intention and motive and not be able to control the narrative of what others call that or what others are seeing that. And I thought by this age of my life, by the time I was this age, I would care less about what others think. But what I'm finding is when the decisions get bigger and it feels like my time on earth is more limited, and I really have to step up and make some choices because I'm in the process of curating a life— before I was just glad for a choice or an opportunity, and now I have many. Thank you to all of you. I've had to adult differently and just be really wrong. It's— you're really willing to have others be wrong about me willing to try some things that aren't sure bets or slam dunks. So I'm just letting you know some of the ponderings I'm doing at the end of the year. I'm also focused on deep listening and definitely active listening, empathetic listening to others, but noticing my tendency to get externally focused and listening for how I could help another. It seems to be in my DNA just to want to help others I've noticed that part of deep listening for me is listening internally to my physical and emotional reactions to the energy of a room or what's going on. I'm pretty good at tapping into intuition, and it makes me really insightful for my clients and the people I'm helping. But I've learned to ignore my anxiety because to step on the stage and say the things I say and take the risk I take in my writing and my research. Anxiety is just energy to me, and courage is being scared and doing it anyway and being willing to take the risk. And so for a lot of my career, I've gotten really good at overriding my anxiety. And now I'm realizing at this point in my life that there's some things embedded in that anxiety that are really good information. And so part of my deep listening is listening deeper into And unpacking what some of that anxiety and other physical responses are to situations. Because I've always been kind of suck it up, buttercup, kind of ignore that and move on and be brave and do it anyway. And I'm so grateful to people like Brené Brown and others who talk about courage and being brave and And in the face of risky things, having the hard conversations. And I've kind of fine-tuned or strengthened that muscle. And what I find in my own growth and development is I strengthen one muscle, it opens up a new kind of sophisticated level of my ego that sneaks in in other ways that I'm susceptible. And so this unpacking, this evolve yourself, at least so far in my life experience, Um, just doesn't end. It just gets you, um, some additional insight into what could be fun to unpack next. And what's interesting for me about that is with that anxiety, I've started to pay attention to things I'm reluctant to do and just question about my reluctance, um, in doing some things. What am I skipping or skimming over? Like, what's my reluctance to Um, interact with that person, or my reluctance to at least, um, allow that experience to go unnamed right now, or my reluctance to, um, listen intently to people's, um, perspective or perspective of me, even though they may be wrong about that. And so another place for self-reflection I would encourage you to get into is just noticing where you're reluctant. And for me, I'm on kind of a mission to lean into some things I'm reluctant to do because I think my reluctance narrows down what I could be experiencing in the world. And so I'm taking on some challenges and, and trying to take up a little bit more space outside of my comfort zone into those places I'm reluctant Some of the other things I'm pondering— I read this great article and then book by Gloria Steinem where she said that in your 50s, one of the things you come to realize is that all these things you've been craving and wanting other people to give you, those things you missed out in your childhood that you, you've been wanting, that through our 20s, 30s, and 40s, we have some chronic disappointment going on because jobs or people or lovers or partners don't provide this for us. That's always the hope, the expectation. And she said, being in your 50s, and I'm paraphrasing, you finally realize that you need as an adult to give yourself what you didn't get in your childhood. And for her, she realized that she didn't really have a home growing up. And in her adulthood, she realized that while she had this beautiful New York apartment, it was still full of boxes unpacked years after she moved in. She had a stove that she found out years after she moved in didn't work. And she also had this unsettled feeling and really was a road warrior. And she noticed her reluctance to really unpack, and she moved into that space and just decided that instead of hoping others will do that for her, provide a home for her, that she will provide a home for herself. And so I've been coming up with a list of things that Cause me disappointment in others and where my expectations are and how I as an adult can bring some closure to those and give those things to myself and those things that I crave. I also am loving the advice I got on one podcast about using the word fortunately. So when I do jump into naming something too soon, to get mentally flexible about using the word fortunately this is happening because not that I can just put a positive spin on it or be a positive thinker, but that I can just widen my perspective enough with kind of entertaining the opposite of what I'm believing to create some space for it neither to be good or bad, for there to be many truths about it and really fall in love with that word and Again, I also loved the podcast about the power of quitting. A lot of us think that if we're gonna set resolutions for January and we're gonna remake our whole life, that we have to like do big things. And I'm really realizing the power of little quits, quitting your way better, like just being willing to stop doing some things that will accumulate into some really big results and knowing that you're gonna fail at that and just regroup and recommit. But I loved the idea of making a list of things I never wanted to do again, I'm just not willing to do, things I liked and I'm good at, and just finding little glimpses in there of how I can do less of that which doesn't bring me joy and more of that that brings me joy. And so really paying attention to things that are energy depleting and energy building, since time and energy are my most precious resources in my life. And, you know, what's spirit building, what's spirit depleting? Again, it's going inside, seeing where I'm reluctant, seeing where I'm anxious, and just playing with that, um, as I just go on to just be conscious about curating this life. Another great question that— 2 questions actually that I found in my journal that I really loved is, as you're thinking about the new year and you're dreaming and scheming about what's next, to ask yourself what's next and what is always. And I love that addition of what it's always. So you can see like a red thread that goes through your life, whether it's lessons you get to learn over and over and over again until you kind of move through your reluctance and go fully into those lessons. But also, like, who you are in any situation. Like, what is that sustainable, lasting essence of you? And just seeing whether things are aligned. Like, what's been always and what's next? And are you creating what you want to create? And doing the little quits on the things you want to leave behind? And how are you doing your job of curating a life? I'm gonna end with just saying what I have come to understand recently that is a really powerful force in my life that's really, really scrumptious. I'm writing the next book, and the next book is a lot more about my personal story It's called Life's Messy, Live Happy. It's really about these mantras and bottom lines, these universal truths that I've come to know, and the story of how I've come to know them many times deeper and deeper. So I'm excited to talk to you about not just business stuff, but how to live this in your life, these principles of reality-based leadership. So I'm really excited as I'm writing that. And the writing of this book and the ability to tell these stories and really boil them down to the essence has required a lot of self-reflection. And a valuable resource to me, I've come to realize, that is just to be cherished are the people in my life that can hold space for my questioning, hold space for things to be unknown, just for the reflecting, the wondering, the searching. These people who are okay with not having the answers, or without me having the answers, the people that are good with not naming things too quickly, um, I just have come to realize how valuable they are on my path. And how often we as friends work hard to get people out of their suffering by advice giving, and how often as partners we move in to influence someone's insight and realization so that we can still be included in their, you know, future decisions, or that we can get what we need out of that, that, that there's these agendas. And just the people in my life that are just amazing, and I'm so grateful for today Are the ones that just can witness me walking this walk, and they're willing to be present without any agenda to what I'm experiencing or how I'm learning or how quickly I'm learning or the things that I'm incubating. They just are great at holding space, not just for my self-reflection, but wondering and questioning what we all thought we knew to be true and really. Looking for portals we might not have seen before, options of, um, moving into to create lives we didn't even dream possible. Um, for me, I call them the miracle watchers. They are seeing me move from places of fear and pain and come face to face with the unknown and kind of hearing the whisper of what I'm being called to do and incubating that call and just being willing to see what happens without any influence. They're just the miracle watchers, the space holders, and I really just appreciate them in my life. And I'm working to intentionally feed those relationships. And recently somebody asked me on my staff, do we have company values? Like, Sai, if you had to say what our values are or what our guiding direction is in our company, what would it be? And I realized that we aren't big on ascribing values. I believe everybody comes with their own values, um, to work. But I do have 2 things I want people to keep top of mind. One is the belief that love wins. Love always wins. That once we move out of judgment and we go beyond the The knowing of right and wrong, to that field beyond that Rumi talks about. There's this field out beyond the idea of right doing and wrong doing. I'll meet you there. That, that in the end of the day, if you're ever wondering what you should do, tend to the person in front of you and just love them, accept them. Don't try and change them. Like, give them space, but love always wins, whether it's self-love or other love. So the first thing that came to mind was love wins. And the second is kind of a command or a wish, a hope, a prayer for people, and that is evolve yourself. Find the places you're reluctant to look at, the questions that you're scared to ask, the situations that you are accepting because they're just too good to leave and too bad to stay, where you're settling out of fear or anxiety or reluctance or trying to please others and trying to control through unsolicited help. Help that's not solicited isn't help at all. Like, make a commitment this year to evolve yourself, to be willing to, with a lot of self-love and compassion, look at the red threads in your life. What's always— think about what's next. Don't have to make choices, don't have to make big actions. It can be little quits, but just play with those edges and see what portals you might not have seen up until now and And if you walk with the good questions long enough and intensely enough, the answers will shock you. And then my hope is that as you see some clarity, you surround yourself with miracle watchers, people that are willing to hold space as you get pretty messy. And I think what you'll find in the mess is life is pretty messy, but you can live happy. And with self-acceptance and with good people in your life and a lot of kindness, because in the end, love really does win. So I will see you next year, 2020—a new season, a new chapter, a new book—and I just wish all of you blessed holidays, regardless of your beliefs or origin. I think. I think someone told me there's over 50 holidays being celebrated in the course of like 3 months around the world. So whatever it is that you are gathering together to acknowledge or celebrate, I just wish you times that are drama-free and full of lots of love. Have a great end of this year, and I'll see you back bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with lots of creativity, recharged, ready to reboot, and, uh, for the next leg of this journey. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for reviewing this podcast. Thank you for sharing this podcast with others. Um, I hope you enjoyed my wonderings, the things that are on my mind, just trying to give you a little bit more personal view into my world and things that I'm entertaining In my own evolution, so be well. This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your world place. I'm Sai Wakeman.