Week 4 - Conscious Living - Wearing Slippers

Okay, well, I guess another week has gone by. Greetings, cadres. Fear. Dan Griffin here. Week four of July. That means we're moving into conscious living. Week one is masculinity. Week two, fatherhood. Week three, couples partnerships. And week four is just this idea of conscious living. And, you know, the title is wearing slippers. And so I just was kind of reflecting on, you know, what does it mean to try to live more consciously? I mean, one, it's tough. Okay? It's tough. A lot of people aren't doing it.

And sometimes it almost seems like a lot of people are, like, doing really well. And it's like, are they living a conscious life? I've had that question a lot over the years, and it's like, who knows? Who knows, right? But there comes a point like, what is the wearing slippers all about? Well, the wearing slippers is this idea that. It's from the saying, right? It's a lot easier to wear slippers than it is to carpet the whole world. And that's the idea that says, basically, look, I take care of myself.

I keep my boundaries. I do what I need to do to stay healthy without expecting the rest of the world to adhere to those, you know, like when people are driving and they're a*******. That's not necessarily following my script. When my partner is not showing up the way I want her to, that's not following my script when any number of things are happening. You know, the big question is, how do I take care of myself and how do I stay true to my beliefs? How do I stay true to my values? How do I stay in the behavior that I know is who I want to be?

So in the twelve step culture, which I talk about all the time, because that's a big, big part of my experience. You know, there's this idea of, like, when we're wrong, we make amends, period. It doesn't matter if we like the person. It doesn't matter if it's good timing. Well, no, the timing. Forget about that. The timing actually matters, but it doesn't matter, you know, if they did something, and now I did something as well, and I'm kind of waiting for them to apologize as opposed to knowing that, no, I apologize.

I clean up whatever I need to clean up. I acknowledge I was wrong, and I see what I can do to help to heal that wound or to heal that infraction or whatever you want to call it. Right? So that's my value. Well, that doesn't mean that the rest of the world adheres to that or is going to do that. So this idea, for me at least, of wearing slippers is like, you know what? I'm gonna protect my feet the way that I need to in order to take care of myself. I'm going to know that I'm taking care of myself.

I'm going to focus on what I know is the important way to live. I'm going to focus on what's really core to my idea of who I want to be in this world. And that's wearing slippers, right. Because the rest of the world, frankly, doesn't care about my values or my principles. Now, I make mistakes all the time, and I go against my principles. I act in ways that I'm not proud. I do stupid things, you know, and that's okay, right? Because I say all the time, it's not about doing it perfectly, it's about doing it consciously.

Can I learn from that? Can I laugh at myself for being human, you know, and is the behavior for. Well, I think it's almost always forgivable. But is it? Can it be put in the context of, like, you know, what? Like, the other day, for instance, I was running on empty, man. I was running on empty. And I had had a very, very long day before. I was in Milwaukee all day doing a training. I got caught in the delta, you know, travel fiasco, ended up having to stay in Minneapolis unexpectedly, and then woke up early to catch my flight back to Los Angeles.

Like, all of that, and I was tired. I was exhausted, frankly, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, I didn't have a lot in the tank. And so I made some mistakes in how I came home as far as being a truly, like, being loving and kind as I want to be versus being crabby, versus being a little reactive. So that's. So that's a component. But I mean, the real piece of this, for me, the idea of wearing slippers versus carpeting, the whole world is, you know, the world is unsafe in many ways. And, like, a lot of this talk today, and I could be wrong about this, but it's just my observation that, like, some of the woke mentality and some of the cancer culture mentality is this idea of people who are expecting the.

The world to be carpeted and not take responsibility for, like, no, I mean, like, I gotta wear. I gotta wear slippers. So it's like I was talking to a friend, and he was like, I was with my mom, and she really triggered me. I said, no, she didn't. That's not what that means. That's not how triggers work. Your mom didn't trigger you. What happened was your mom did something that triggered a wound that you still have from the past, but it's your responsibility. It's not hers. And I said, because guess what?

I could have been with you and your mom in the same space. And she could have done exactly what she did to you, to me. And I can pretty much guarantee it would not have affected me the way it did you. So was it your mom? Or was it you? Something inside of you? And so this idea of like, oh, right, I'm responsible when I'm triggered, I'm responsible for taking care of myself. I'm responsible for wearing slippers. That's, to me, what it really comes down to is like, it's a losing freaking battle. Waiting for the rest of the world to meet my needs, to meet my expectations and to take care of me.

It will absolutely never happen. Not without my involvement, and certainly not without me being fully responsible for my life and for how I show up. And so for me, that's a huge component of conscious living. Conscious living is not easy. And conscious living is not a free ticket to, you know, awareness and kind of like some, you know, that the examined life is much harder than the unexamined life, at least in my experience. So that concludes another great day in the quadrosphere. Thanks so much.