160. Stop Trying {with Tom}

Welcome to 100 Ways. This is your daily exploration of Self and Soul. I'm your host and fellow explorer, Laura Christine, let's dive in and find our way home.

Tell me something that of like, because my podcast is like about coming home to oneself and all paths lead to home or always all roads lead to home. So like anything that you say that would just be like a little spark of wisdom or something for somebody what you got.

I would say two things. One to premise. The second thing, the first thing, um, this is my fu as in Chinese is like master. It's like a MAs like master and it's more than a teacher. It's like more than somebody you respect. You can have a bunch of teachers. They call that la You can have teachers all over the place, but you only have one vu. And this is mine. She has a son about my age in Beijing, and she is the fu of a friend of mine that I taught Chinese with back in the day. it's another story I can tell you about. I taught Chinese for the government. It's a whole other thing. But when we were doing that, Became friends later on, met her up again, started working on her'cause she was pregnant and I would work on her every every week. And she told me her master was coming to the island and that her master had a dream about a student at, uh, that wore flannel shirts that would become her student. And my dumb ass was like, wow, what a lucky person. That sounds great. And I was like, cool. And then months later she shows up. Long story short. Turns out it's me. There's very long story, very short. Turns out it's me. But, she found me and right at a time where I really like you, where I really needed it and where it was just appropriate. one of those things where it makes me, the whole process made me trust, not just the universe again.'cause I just hadn't for a while'cause it felt like everything was just not going well and I was giving up on stuff I didn't want. And, it made me trust the process again, of shutting up, sitting down, believing in things are going to happen the way they're supposed to happen because they ended up happening the way it was supposed to happen. And it was at a time where I stopped looking for it and I stopped trying to like force my way into certain things. And the best gift she ever gave me, she gave me a lot. and I have so much to say about other stuff after that, but, she gave me a whole lot. But the best thing she gave me was confidence in my own, my gut, my gut feeling, my own instincts, which I had stopped believing in, in lieu of like everything else I was doing. And I was right out of like Japan from my study abroad and. I was in a relationship that I wasn't super stoked to be in, and I was not knowing what I was doing in my life, and I was just depressed and like lacking. And then all at once, I was like, no, I'm really at peace with who I am. but she didn't show me anything new. Like she didn't, she didn't give me new knowledge. It was more like, this is just something that you should have known. That I'm going to show you how to understand about yourself. And it was all without words for the most part. I mean, she talked a lot, but it was mostly, it was Mandarin. So if I couldn't understand what she was saying, somebody would translate. Or a lot of the time it would just be drinking tea and talking and hanging out, and meditating and yoga and. A two or three week period where I was the most at peace with myself I've ever been in my life. it's a feeling that I really miss a lot of the time because, you know, you'll have like things happen. But, it gave me moving forward the ability to look at things. Through my own self. And instead of saying to people, what should I do about this? What's your experience with this? What's your experience with this? And like trying to bounce off of that. It was like, I know what's best for me.

Yes.

Yeah. And that's a feeling. I never in at that time, my years, 26 years of life I had never had before. and that's something that I feel like is totally priceless. I can never thank her for that properly.

Yeah, I would say that is how do you get back to that when you. You said, okay, sometimes I don't feel like that and I miss feeling like that. But how do you get back to it when you want to or when you're recognizing that you're not there, how do you pull it back and come home to yourself again so that you can get in that place where you're at peace with yourself and trust your instinct?'cause your instinct is correct. Always.

I think that instead, Of thinking, oh, I need to get back to this and trying to repeat the process. really is like finding the answer that I already had, which is like when I, like when you found me or when she found me, or like when my, when my girlfriend found me or when, when young she found me, my friend, when she found me to start all this in the first place, like I have to give up the chase. I have to give up this thing of going for like, oh, I need to get back to this, and so I need to try for this and try for this. It's just stopping and admitting like At this point, I am not going to get where I need to go by trying to go somewhere. So I need to let everything kind of push me that way and I'll always end up where I'm supposed to be, I think that that's a lot to quote is, uh, when I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. And that's actually a quote that I, I use as kinda like a mantra when I first showed up here, because I showed up here not in a good place and ended up letting go of all that and becoming whatever this is now. So, I think that the answer to finding your way back is to stop looking for your way back.

Yep. I love it. Oh my God, yes. Thank you, Tom.

Thank you.

And think you. Got to buy me a coffee.com/ 1 0 0 waves. To show your love and support the show. In order to find your way back, stop looking for your way back. Stillness. You'll be back, we'll come to you and stillness. That was Tom. He's a good friend of mine from Oahu. He's not from Oahu. I'm not from Oahu either. In fact, I think he might be from. Massachusetts, maybe. Which is my neighbor now. I could be wrong, but if he wears flannel, It could be for Massachusetts. We're Vermont or upstate anyway. I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on how to get home and yourself. When you recognize that you're not home in yourself. What is your process? Or lack of process potentially. You'll know how to contact me after the music starts until next time. We're sending all the love and then some more. We'll talk tomorrow. Thank you for exploring with me today. I would love to continue this conversation with you. We can do that at Laura Christine, us. You'll find contact in the menu, or you can go to Laura Christine us slash contact, and you'll be taken right to it. Let's dive in a little deeper and see how fully we can flow with the duh.