027 - Striking Balance with Balance
For the longest time, I believed that the whole idea of living a balanced life where your entire day is compartmentalized was total nonsense. Speaking from personal experience, I knew that no matter how hard you tried to stay on course, life would always get in the way and alter your routine. I was convinced that balance was an illusion until I realized that my understanding of balance and freedom were incorrect.
To expand on that, today I am inviting back someone who you have seen here before on ‘On This Walk’. Matt Hogan has an endless fascination and devotion to the path of self-mastery in living an aligned life. His own personal journey of mastering his life through a growing connection with his own inner teacher and guidance has forged the foundation for what inspires and propels him. I am hoping that it will inspire you and many others as well.
In This Episode
(10:17) – Matt’s perspective on balance based on his journey and experience.
(13:57) – Matt’s misguided relationship with balance prior to mastering it.
(24:46) – Striking the right balance between being and doing.
(32:32) – Identifying forces within that create less balance.
(35:07) – Seeking answers from the body and the heart.
(41:21) – Matt’s take on stability as the inner path to balance and peace.
(44:17) – Recognizing inner structures and its connection with stability.
(47:45) – On making major shifts in orientation to life and its impact.
(58:16) – Restoring Balance, a program to make life more aligned and at peace.
(59:28) – How to tell when life is in balance or not.
Notable Quotes
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“This is then finding that balance between being and doing, which I also didn't have a great understanding of because I was always so active. And so there was never space to just simply be and then allow whatever needed to unfold, to unfold. Or as you started to talk about, when you can be in that spaciousness and content to just be in that spaciousness. You can begin to connect to things that are more deeply aligned because you're seeing and feeling them beneath all the mind chatter, beneath the need to be doing, beneath the need to answer other people about what you're doing. And you connect to these more authentic answers and insights or directions. And then you do, and then you take action, then you move something forward and you don't just go for the next 10 years. You move something forward a little bit and then you stop again. And you pause and you be, and you start to more fluidly move through the being and doing until there is a partnership, there is a dance between them that works very well.”
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“My first orientation to life when I was 18 was that life was scary. It was scary to be alive than to be dead. I literally oriented through life that everyone was out to get me. I was weak. I was powerless. And there was nothing I could do to change it. Over time, going through university and all the different material expressions of my life, university, being engaged, corporate life, all those things, my internal experience and my self-concept started to shift. The essence though that has pulled me these past two decades when I really started to look at it differently was that I was about rising up and overcoming pain but when I really stop to look at it, there is another lens that works too. All this time I have been remembering how to love myself. I’ve been remembering how to love life. I’ve been remembering how to enjoy life. To love other people. To have other people love me. To enjoy my time here. To find magic in the moment. To really being able to wake up and go, ‘Damn I’m happy to be alive.’”
Resources & Links
On This Walk
Matt Hogan
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Luke (00:01)
Welcome to On This Walk, a show about the winding journey of life in all its realness. I'm Luke Iorio. Please join me and my brilliant heart-centered guests each week, as we look to navigate this journey more consciously and authentically. Uncovering how to tap back into that sense of connection with self, with soul and with something bigger than ourselves. Now let's go on this walk.
Hello there everyone, and welcome once again to On This Walk, and today I'm gonna say let's walk, maybe even dance a little bit, with balance and with joy. So you have all heard me reference balance in multiple ways. Over the various episodes, I've chatted a bit about this and you might even be thinking why balance?
What the heck am I, you know, gonna talk about on this, this time? Well, even as my walking partner for today and colleague asked me, we've had many different conversations that led to today's conversation and walk. Uh, he's even asked me in the past, well, why balance? Meaning, why not focus first on love or just joy itself, or even peace?
Why is balance the focal point? And these are all really great questions. You see, for much of my life, I'm gonna be bluntly honest with you, I thought balance was bullshit. I'd work long hours and then I'd find time to squeeze in as much as I possibly could across the rest of my life. With little time to slow down or rest, I'd sleep less and do more.
I'd just keep going all the time. Anytime I heard about balance, I pretty much would laugh it off. This image of you gotta have your time properly portioned off so that you have time for work and time for exercise, and time for the relationships and time for this, and time for that, for whatever the other things were.
Every aspect of that was like being portrayed, that balance just is all these wonderful boxes that just get filled up nice and evenly, and it felt like complete bullshit because it felt like an illusion. And so along the way I would even rationalize and even boast that I would intentionally push myself out of balance at times to break through a certain barrier or to double down on trying to achieve a particular goal or effort.
I'd even joke that, ah, I don't have time for that. I'll sleep when I'm dead. That's how hard I would push myself and it worked. Many times it worked, but each time I would get more and more exhausted along the way. And then when the payoff would come, the goal achieved, I'd celebrate for maybe about three minutes, and I'd just move on to the next thing.
And then I finally burnt out because I realized I could not possibly keep all of the plates spinning. So what gives? Well, obviously this is not balance, and those images of balance are illusions. Again, frankly, I'll say it again, they're bullshit. Life will not cooperate with you perfectly in this beautifully designed, color coded schedule.
Life loves going sideways. And then I realized my understanding of balance had the same flaw as my old understanding of freedom. You see, I used to think of freedom as being able to do what I want, when I wanted, with whom I wanted. And just like balance, this too was completely circumstantial, meaning it relied on whether or not external circumstances would line up properly for me.
And then I would have whatever it was that I wanted, freedom, balance, whatever. I had shifted my focus for freedom away from just looking at the external. And instead to make it more about my inner freedom, the freedom to be what and who I truly am, to be able to express openly and vulnerably, to build my awareness around my real needs, to discover my unique design in the ways of being that would feel whole congruent and fluid to me.
And even though I adjusted my definition of freedom and my focus of freedom to be much more inwardly, uh, intended, I never updated my understanding of balance. And so I largely, frankly ignored it, and this underlying circumstantial quality that was rattling around still inside of my beliefs until I really truly learned and experienced for myself that balance is an inner game as well.
You see, we tend to lean heavily on certain tendencies and relative strengths, going back to certain ways of doing things over and over and over again because they're familiar, and so we feel some level of comfort as well as competence in repeating those things. Well, we do this not only with our so-called gifts and strengths.
We even do this with our personality traits. It's why we have traits that are dominant and others that are disowned or even suppressed. For me, one example of this was that I relied over and over and over again on my masculine energy. Initially it was to protect, to provide, to produce. I was great at making orders, order of things, and then creating plans that would help bring it all back together again for growth.
Over time though, when you have nothing to counterbalance, whatever this dominant energy happens to be, as well as not having a, a full awareness of what was really, truly unfolding, even that can become out of balance, meaning it can get over-emphasized and ultimately lead to imbalances. And so my masculine energy ultimately became focused entirely on doing, entirely on progress, progress, progress.
It's gotta be there on having full clarity about all the things before I would proceed on constantly driving forward on order. And yes, above all of this, my ego loved it. It loved being able to rely on all these. Well, we are all meant to balance all these different energies within us, and in this example, to balance our masculine and feminine.
No, I'm not talking about male and female. I'm not talking about men and women. I'm talking about masculine and feminine energy. We're meant to balance all of these. And that balance inside, uh, inside for each of us is a little bit different. Meaning it's not all equal parts. It's whatever balance might mean and look like to us based on who we are and what our design is.
And so I'm talking in this particular instance about the energies of masculine and feminine, the energies of truth, order, protection, and providing of the masculine, the energies of love, creation and destruction, cycles of creating, the nurturer, the muse, and so much more of the feminine. We’re meant to balance energies of order and chaos within us, of being and doing, of masculine and feminine, of love and truth and much more.
If you look around, nature is always restoring balance. It always is. It may take time, especially when we as humans tend to get in the way of that balance, but balance will ultimately always be restored. It's always moving in that direction. And contrary to popular awareness, we human beings, we're nature.
Our body, our bodies want to be in balance. Our nervous systems really want to be in balance. Our emotions want to be in balance. Even our opinionated, chattering too much minds actually want to be in balance. Balance is an inner game. And once I started the focus here to focus within, as opposed to looking always outside of myself.
When I started to look at the, you know, the externally, it used to be looking at the relationships, the work, the big decisions, the small decisions. I'd look at those and depending on how they went, that would determine whether I had balance within me. Well now, once I focused within all those things started to flow so much more easily and joyfully and peacefully.
I was actually at ease with the way things would unfold in my life. And so I wanted to share this conversation with someone else who's been traveling a very similar journey, different details, but a similar journey so that we could talk about what this path has been like, how balance has opened us up to more love and truth and joy and peace and ease within our lives.
We wanna challenge some of those misperceptions about what a balanced life has been sold to us as. That continues to get perpetuated out there, and so I'm inviting back someone that you have seen here before, Matt Hogan. Let me introduce him and then bring Matt on in so we can get this conversation and journey underway.
Matt has an endless fascination and devotion to the path of self-mastery and living an aligned life from the lows of depression and attempted suicide to riding the highs of corporate climbing, to exiting corporate life and traveling the world. Matt's own personal journey of mastering his life through a growing connection with his own inner teacher and guidance has forged the foundation for what inspires and propels him.
It's this journey that he in turn supports his clients with. Matt's clients include prominent as well as rising entrepreneurs, top level executives and change makers, supporting them to bring more of themselves into their work, their leadership style and relationships. This is accomplished through helping them recognize and trust their own inner guidance, finding both clarity and confidence in the decisions and plans they make.
Matt still continues each day to tap further into what is, what it is to live his most aligned life, and that remains his true North Star. And now, before we begin this conversation, the other thing I might wanna just kind of drip out there, maybe tease, is that there might, just might be an announcement towards the end of this call about a program that's forthcoming on restoring balance between myself and my walking partner today, stay tuned.
Let's get into the conversation first and foremost, above all, and we'll share with you what's coming towards the end of this time. And so, uh, as always, if you are not already a subscriber of this show, do me a favor, please hit that subscribe button so you can follow along, hear all these conversations, and go on this walk with us.
And today, let's go on this walk with Matt Hogan and dancing with balance and joy. So Matt, with all that, I wanted to welcome you on this walk. Thank you for being here today. How are you?
Matt (09:43)
I'm doing well, Luke. Enjoying the, the snowy weather here outside of Sedona, which is really unusual to see, but quite enjoyable to experience.
Luke (09:51)
Most definitely. It's a beautiful landscape this, uh, this time of year with the snow. It's amazing. So let, let's start here. Uh, you know, I shared a bit of my background with balance and my ongoing, uh, often off kilter dance with balance, as it were. And maybe if you could begin from, you know, from your journey, your perspective, your experiences.What is balance really to you at this point?
Matt (10:17)
Balance is an ever evolving connection with the present moment. And at any given moment, I can either, I can be experiencing different layers and levels of balance given what's here and what's now. So it's not about, what does balance look like in the future? Because I won't know what balance feels like until that moment's here.
I can guess based on past experiences and how things are unfolding, the balance is experienced right now. And so at any given moment I have to look, where am I? Am I experiencing balance? Where am I not? And it could be like, for example, this morning I was at the cafe writing and I was mentally experiencing balance.
My mind felt calm, but in my body there was a lot of tension and a lot of emotion, uh, from some just recent experiences. And so I had to become aware and notice in the moment where I was actually doing okay, feeling balanced and where I was not. So that I can bring presence and mindfulness and attention to what's there.
And I experience balance as an ongoing evolution of being with what's here, getting, being able to work with what is in the way of actually coming into deeper layers of balance. And so like the analogy I tried to use or the example I tried to use before we were having some fun imbalances with internet, uh, was of the, the retreat that is ever growing deeper in the ground with roots while growing taller in the sky.
Over time, as we grow and we connect into deeper layers of what feels balanced in our lives, we also begin to see like, oh, I can go even deeper into this. And the more I go deeper into balance, actually the more we can grow into the sky like the tree. Because they’re our foundations.
Luke (12:06)
I wanna use that analogy for a moment and then come back to many of the other things as well that you brought up.
Because part of what the image of that tree, the deeper it sinks its roots, the higher and broader we can stretch our branches. It's a beautiful image and, and, and gives a certain understanding to balance. But I quite literally wanna talk about the unseen here for a moment.
Meaning that it's when we root down to, for each of us to think about rooting down is rooting within and the deeper we root within, rooting into the things that are unseen inside of our lives, the more that we actually gain a certain level of stability for us to spread our branches, meaning to undertake a lot of the different, maybe other activities or expansions or growth that we wish to have in our lives.
And that, I think is one of the things that, you know, I misconceived about balance for so long. Uh, we'll get to some of those turning points later on. But what I misperceived was that I was always looking at it, okay, if, if, you know, I'm, I'm branching out in this direction, then I have to have some type of like equal offsetting branch over here.
And I, I measured everything or I looked at everything from a very circumstantial standpoint. And so I, I guess maybe that's part of the journey I'm also curious about for you is you can talk about where you are today and being able to be with what is and to sense where am I in balance or out of balance and what, what needs attention, what needs, uh, attending to, but I'm curious.
What were some of, maybe even the, your own misconceptions, uh, or, or misguided relationship with balance at times prior to where you are now?
Matt (13:56)
Hmm. I love that you brought in the energies of masculine and feminine earlier, and feels very relevant to connect to just a couple turning points in my life. When I was 18, I was imbalanced in both energies.
Uh, I had, I constantly experienced my, pretty consistently experienced my life in a place of powerlessness and being constantly feeling unsafe, at risk, at danger, and really feeling like I had no power or control to do anything with my life. I could not literally see a positive vision for my future. And that's why I tried to take my life.
It's like I literally did nothing. Can't feel good. I can't change anything. So both were imbalanced. After attempting my life, I started to feel more of an emerging of my masculine energy. And that was that I told you when I was in the wheelchair and I experienced the message coming to me from my soul, from my heart that says, you are not meant to live this way.
And it ignited this fire in me to go out and do while also igniting more of the feminine energy, the trust that I'm gonna figure this out. I'm gonna be okay. And I spent the next nearly 15 years, no 13 years, really just being hard driven by this energy that says, I'm gonna figure out how to create a beautiful future for myself.
I am going to figure out how to rise up and overcome all this powerlessness and victimization that I felt about myself and my life. And it was driven by trust that I would figure it out. Over time as I got to, like for example, 2018 when I was leaving corporate, it was actually around the time that my masculine energy had become too imbalanced.
And so I had been so caught up in the doing, like I had at that point had built a hundred person team sporting a top five global brand around, and the team was around the U.S. I was the director of managing a $15 million P&L, and I loved my work, but I got to a place where the 60 hour work weeks and the constant doing, going to the gym every day, constantly trying to be this for this person, be this for that person who came to, came to a grinding halt where I'm like, I just want to throw it all away because I can't take it anymore.
And that was when I ended up leaving corporate and then traveling the world for a year. Part of it was because I really wanted to grow my own business and step into a container that challenged me more. But when I honestly left corporate and the meetings and everything came into a grinding halt, all I could feel was, oh my God, I needed this space.
And actually for, for a few months, actually more than a few months, about eight to 10 months, I had a visceral physical experience of resistance to schedule a call, to schedule any kind of structure. Like I literally bucked against it all. Cause I'm like, I'm not doing it. I'm not committing to this, I'm not committing to that.
And I wouldn't. And then over time, if you can imagine you have no income coming in and you're running a business and you're refusing to schedule calls, you start to look at your bank account and you're like, okay, well something's gotta shift. So I have literally been in this rebalancing of the masculine and feminine for since that time.
But it became more present and conscious for me. And you know, fast forwarding to today, it has been those different turning points for the different energies that have helped me. But right now the biggest rebalancing for me is going deeper into my feminine of trust and trusting that energy to then let my mask and energy go, oh, this is the thing to do.
That's the, the structure to create, not let me do every shiny fucking thing in the world. Um, because I need that to feel okay inside myself.
Luke (17:45)
You know, he started to chat and there's so many different things I wanted to come back into, uh, but I have to address this one first. I had an almost visceral reaction to when you said, I just needed space.
As soon as you mentioned that word space, I'm like, oh, wow. I remember that. Like, I remember that longing and that yearning inside of me because it was like everything had so much structure and so much order to it to try to keep up with all the things and move everything forward and, uh, all, you know, all all that stuff that I literally had no space in my life.
And I don't just mean space to relax or to rest. It was that everything was stacked. And I think people have heard me say stuff like this before. Everything was stacked one thing after the next, after the next, after the next. So I didn't have any time to even breathe. I didn't have time to make sense of what was unfolding inside of my life at all, let alone actual rest and, and spaciousness and unstructured time and things like that.
Uh, very difficult to be, you know, highly creative if you don't allow just unstructured, impromptu improv kind of time. Um, and, and so I, I, that, that, even that idea of space, I guess also viscerally reacted to it because when we're out of balance, you know, I think of, there's two ways of thinking of this. On the one side, I felt it as being very constricted.
Like I could feel the constrictions of, and the, the rigidity of trying to maintain everything in all these different places. And at the other times, I have also felt the other side of that where you just referenced, of having absolutely no structure and then actually space doesn't feel good either. Because now it's just like, it's this amorphous, like, I don't even know where I am right now. So it was ungrounded in those moments, right?
Matt (19:44)
Yeah. The pendulum swing is something that I, I has become a friend and, I'm not gonna call it a foe at this point, but I have swung the pendulum many, many times. Uh, from, you know, in my twenties when I swing a pendulum from when I was like super driven to date, I had countless partners and countless dating partners too.
I got to a point where I'm like, wow, this is a bit extreme. I'm doing a bit too much. And then I went to another one and didn't date for years. Um, and extreme is a, is a pattern in my life, but it's how I've learned. Um, it's not so much the same anymore, but it has been a guiding thread for me. And so, like, for example, going back to the departure of corporate, I was yearning for that space that said, this is my time, this is, I'm not, I don't need to report to your structure. This is my time now. And then when I stopped and I exited the corporate structure, had completed the iPEC training and completed another training all at the same time, and then I just had time.
It was one of the most uncomfortable things I ever experienced. I craved the spaciousness, but could not find the space in myself to actually enjoy the spaciousness. Which gives me further back away from the myth that we're trying to create balance in our calendars, and it's, even if you have that empty calendar, can you actually create the space in yourself and the balance in yourself of mind, body, emotion, and spirit? Because that's where the magic's at, that's where the balance is, that's where creativity and everything else is at.
Luke (21:17
And what, what you just brought up for me again, is in that, finding time where I actually had space, recognizing how dominated I was by needing to do, it was just this constant activity. And I needed to feel like I was doing and doing meaning that I was working towards something. That I had a goal. That there was, you know, even a project that I could talk to people about. You know, I, I laugh because when, when I did step out of, when I stepped out of my last role out of iPEC, uh, I took off, you know, the majority of probably close to 14 months, uh, maintaining just a very small handful of clients.
Um, very little outside of that. And it felt great for the first couple of months in a sense of, no, this is good. I've earned this. I'm doing the rest of the relaxation thing. I'm getting out in the gigs, all the things, right. And then, you know, some time would creep by and I'm like, I should, I should probably be doing something like I, I should be active.
I should be, what am I gonna tell people I do? I can't, I don't even have an answer for that right now. And like all this mental stuff, which is like, well, why don't you do this? Why don't you help out with this company? Why don't you advise here? Why don't you pick up a couple clients? Why don't you do this?
Why don't I, because I got so uncomfortable with that spaciousness at that time. And so I want to, I want to come back because that, this is then finding that balance between being in doing, which I also didn't have a great understanding of because I’ve been always so active. And so there was never space to just simply be and, and then allow whatever needed to unfold, to unfold. Or as you started to, to talk about, when you can be in that spaciousness and content to just be in that spaciousness. You can begin to connect to things that are more deeply aligned because you're seeing and feeling them beneath all the mind chatter, beneath the need to be doing, beneath the need to answer other people about what you're doing.
And you connect to these more authentic answers and insights or directions. And then you do, right? And then you take action, then you move something forward and you don't just go for the next 10 years. You move something forward a little bit and then you stop again. And you pause and you be, and you start to more fluidly move through the being and doing until there is a partnership, there is a dance between them that works very well.
Uh, and I guess, you know, it's same thing I'm, I'm curious how that has evolved for you because I know from our conversations, that the need to be active is something that is very alive inside of you. And maybe if you actually let me, other than just asking what's coming up for you around this, to me, we're also highlighting some signs that help you recognize when you are out of balance.
So that feeling of constriction, that feeling of like, I've gotta be doing, I've gotta be doing, I've gotta be doing it, I gotta get to the next thing. There is an underlying, almost like anxiety or, or, uh, urge that keeps you, like, I've gotta, I've gotta keep moving or I've gotta keep trying these things.
So I want to see what else you wanted to share to the being and doing conversation. But what I also am just kind of calling out to everybody is we're also starting to label a few things that are a few of those signs that things may be getting outta balance for you. And I've got more that I'll add to that in a bit.
Matt (24:46)
We're going into symptoms and signs, kind of like, you know, your check engine light came on in your car. I wanna draw a distinction that would've been really helpful for me a few years ago, and it's that, especially as society continues to tap into this more and more, it's like, oh, I gotta stop doing and just be. Well, yes.
And recognize that the being exists in the doing. So, I'm just gonna pause on that for a second. The being exists in the doing, so whether you're sitting still staring at a river, you're still being, you're being something. You're being there. Whether you are making a phone call, you're still being, you're being on that call, you're being something.
And so I say that because we can get so caught up in this self explanation of, oh my God, I just need to be more, I need to stop doing. Because doing in and of itself is not a bad thing. It's not imbalanced. It's imbalanced like what I was doing or I didn't do anything because I was like, I refused to do it because I had swung so far into the side of doing and away from actually this time and space that they, the imbalanced polarity created, it's like an implosion
And so I wanna acknowledge that balance is woven within the being and the doing. And so it's finding the balance in both, while also recognizing that being still exists in the doing. And I don't say that to make it complicated, but goes back to my definition of balance.
Balance is something we experience in the present moment or we don't. And so when you're making a phone call, do you feel balanced? Great. Keep doing that until it doesn't feel balanced and then do something else, as in maybe go by on the couch. And so I just really wanna distinguish that because I used this whole distinction of being and doing as a way to beat myself up for not rising above and doing good enough and all these things. And it would've really helped me to know that the balance is threaded through the actions and the inaction.
Luke (26:47)
One of the keywords that I'll point out in the way you described that is presence. And so when we find that balance within the present moment, we also, when we are present in the doing, then we're more aware of the being in the doing, right?
So we can actually feel the awareness, the energy, the consciousness of who we are is present in the action. Uh, that's, that's now in motion in whatever capacity very often we’ll take the action. Uh, but it's pretty mindless. It's pretty much, we're not very present in what we're actually doing or we think we do, but it's really just kind of one part of us from a mental construct that's pushing, pushing, striving, striving, in, in those, in those regards.
So one of those keys then, that we're also highlighting is, is that ability to develop the, uh, your presence and your ability to be present in the moment, allows you to start to feel the way in which we are balanced. What's coming up for you?
Matt (27:47)
I'm laughing at two, the one thing and two things. I'm laughing at how fiery I am about this conversation, and then I'm laughing just how calm and anchored you are. And I was like, this is, this is pretty quintessential for how we engage. Um, I was just appreciating it in the moment.
Luke (28:04)
Balance. Balance, my man.
Matt (28:06)
Yeah. You, you're very earthly and grounded. And I can get a bit fiery and I'm like, yeah, we play off each other pretty well.
Luke (28:12)
It works. It works. I wanted to actually come back as we were describing, you know, some of those things you might notice when you're, when you're outta balance, uh, symptoms as it were, is one way of saying this. Let me kind of go back to something.
Um, so you had mentioned obviously the background that you've, you've got, uh, of many the different ways in which imbalance appeared in your background. Uh, for me, one of those things, because I, I want to draw the, the line of where this ultimately went was that for me, uh, being a very, very early age and losing our house on a house fire, one of those five and a half years old, uh, quite literally the thing that looked like stability and represented stability to me, both from a structure standpoint as well as it was a multi-generational family home.
So, I mean, that's what we knew, that was safety. And so for me, part of the way that I wanted to restore balance inside of my life, was that I did look at the material, meaning I looked at the structure of things and I became very reliant on myself to say, I need to create certain structure that allows me to feel this, to feel safety, to feel at home again.
Uh, and that's part of what created a very external orientation for me, uh, among many other things. But that certainly was a major, major influence. So what I had to recognize later on in life, was that in the search for that safety and that feeling of being at home again, I needed to recognize that one of the things that had become imbalanced within me was my need for control.
Uh, I needed to try to control circumstances. I needed to control my way towards achieving. I needed to try to control certain situations, how they were unfolding, because I wanted to restore balance in those environments. But I wasn't doing it from a conscious standpoint. I wasn't doing it from a standpoint of how do I get everybody involved and, and, and we all work towards it.
I wasn't approaching it from the standpoint of how do I restore calm and centeredness within me and then bring that energy into this environment? No, I wasn't doing any of those things. I didn't know I could do any of those things. Instead, it was how do I try to control and, you know, essentially manipulate anything that was going on, because then I could get it to be at peace in some way, and I would call that balance.
And so I had to ultimately recognize what were the things that I was trying to cling to. Meaning the things that were slipping away that I didn't want to slip away. What were the things that I was grasping for? The things that I'm like, oh, if I just get bad, if I could just get there, then this'll be better.
This'll be more fulfilling or peaceful or at ease, or whatever label I wanted to give something. What were the things that I was very resistant to that I was constantly pushing away that I had an aversion to and I didn't want them to come into my life because I didn't wanna deal with that discomfort or pain.
I had to recognize all the ways I was pushing that type of stuff away. I also had to look at all the things I was avoiding because there were things that were like, nope, nope. I'm gonna keep a blind eye. I'm not gonna look at those things. If I don't look at those things, they don't exist. And so all these different energies were actually going on in me, and they were keeping me off balance.
Because I'm pulling this way, I'm holding onto this, I'm pushing this away, and all my energy is moving in all of these different directions as opposed to being able to be within myself and come back to a place that was centered and say, well, why am I trying to push all this stuff away? Or why am I trying to cling and hold onto things?
Obviously, their time probably has passed. What is it that I'm trying to grasp for? Because for some reason I don't have it right now. And so what do I think it completes in me if I get it. So I had to really come back and sit and look underneath all the different ways that I was trying to control my life, to create balance in a perceived sense and really take a look at, wait a minute, what's going on in me?
What are the beliefs? What are the entanglements and the attachments? What are all of those things that exist within me that actually have me feeling out of balance? And therefore everything else around me was out of balance. Uh, Matt, for you, what, you know, what did you notice in, in how any of this, whether it was the clinging or grasping, avoiding, uh, you know, uh, pushing away some of the resistance you mentioned before, what was it like to feel or, or start to identify those forces that were within you, that had you actually creating less balance in your life, even though it might have been in an attempt to, to create balance.
Matt (32:32)
I'm gonna ping pong something back to you. So you just shared about all these questions you asked. Where am I controlling? Where am I pushing? Where am I resisting? Where am I clean? And yet being able to answer those questions in any way that is useful and informative and informing, requires us to be able to listen to ourselves in a way that allows us to know truth from bullshit. So I'm, I'm curious. You know, I'm sitting here imagining, here's all these beautiful questions.
They're so pretty. And then I sit and listen to people, or I imagine someone sitting there answering them, and then there's just this wall right here. And on the other side of this wall is truth, your truth, your personal truth. And then there's also on this side of the wall, the things that are just continued delusions and delusions. So, great questions. How do you get over here, Luke? Yeah, because I know you've been walking that for a long time.
Luke (33:21)
Ultimately what shifted for me, let me start there, was through a, uh, a beautiful teacher who was put into my life and the work that she has brought out into the world, uh, Carissa Schumacher in this beautiful book called The Freedom Transmissions, uh, introduced me to different pathways that would restore me to that peace and balance.
And these are ultimately inner pathways. And the first that came to mind when you asked that question was a pathway of stillness. Because what I needed to ultimately be able to do was to not only be able to sit with these questions, but to not answer them from simply the way that my mind was going to want to answer these questions.
Because for me, my mind was this incredible, wonderful tool. It had supported so much of my life and helped me achieve and, and create so, so many wonderful things and so many blessings. And it was also part of what was imbalanced because it had the tendencies and the conditioning and the attachments, the entanglements, all those things I was referencing before.
So I had to create a practice, which originally I learned through mindfulness, and only later did I know this is a more deeper pathway of stillness that would allow me to drop into a state of presence and be much more mindful of my total experience. Meaning the way that I was feeling things, the way I was sensing things, the way I was intuiting things, not just what my mind wanted to chatter.
I had to begin to know what it was like to communicate with that deeper part of me, which we've referenced to even had a different episode on listening within, uh, talking about the inner teacher. And that inner guide that we all have. And I had to create enough stillness so that inside of the presence that could be developed, um, and experienced, I could actually learn to listen to where these answers were meant to rise from.
And when I say where they were meant to rise from, these are answers that come from your body and from your heart. Your mind then can visualize the way to bring them into your life and, and can check them as well for, from a discernment standpoint, to make sure they are, uh, they still hold true for you in, in certain ways, but they don't originate there.
These answers originate from, from a deeper part of you physically and, and from your heart. And so I had to create this, this practice of stillness, this practice of presence to really be able to connect to the answers that were coming. And then it's an evolving practice because you don't just get like, the answer doesn't just come up.
It's like, oh, I got the answer. I'm good for the next 40 years. Uh, it doesn't quite work that way. Uh, you get an answer that is relevant for where you are at that point in your life, and it may show you the next day, the next week, the next month, the next year, I don't know, probably not showing you the next decade.
And so it's a practice that allows you to re-enter these questions over and over and over again. And the dialogue, the conversation with this deeper part of you becomes ever more fluid and organic and familiar. So it becomes a much easier path to be able to navigate.
Matt (37:05)
I love the essence where you talk about, one, it's a practice because what feels like truth to us today, it's gonna likely evolve, especially if you stick with it for the next, even in the next week. How you come to know what is true for you and what is guiding you and what is ready to be laid down and what is ready to be embraced and stepped into, evolves over time with consistency, with presence and patience, which reach into the, I mean, patience has been one of the hardest things for me.
It's like, why am I not there yet? Uh, but you know, in terms of how I experienced it, I'm reminded of, when I was in corporate, it was 2018 and I had, I knew something needed to change. I knew, like in my body, my life just felt full of pressure. Life felt challenging. I had a lot of questions around life purpose, and I was like, what am I doing here?
Like, what's this all about? And right before I left corporate and I put five, five countries in a hat and drew the Philippines and then flew to the Philippines for a month. And I'll never forget sitting at that picnic table where I just had all this energy, all these threads of tension and angst and fear and anger and worry and doubt.
I'm just pouring it out on paper. I'm just filling up a notebook, page after page, after page after page. Anger, fear, guilt, uh, sadness. Because of my relationship, my engagement that had ended a year before, I still hadn't fully processed, like so much has come out. And then ultimately what this was, I was spending all this time just getting present with what was already going inside of me and I had been ignoring, and that I had never really given myself the time and space, nor the entry point to dive into it.
And following all this verbalization, it was like I took everything inside of me and got it out of me. And as I did that, then I had an emotional release. All that pressure, all that tension was released through tears. One, that's one way that I tend to release a lot of pressure and also tends to be the thing that segues me into a deep realization.
And that was when I found two core truths for me. Behind all that noise, behind all the chatter, behind all the imbalanced emotions and the imbalanced chatter was my work has served my life beautifully and it's time to go. But it took me working through all of that to find those two nuggets of truth.
Now, it doesn't take me quite as much to find that in myself now, but that is a good example of where I was starting at and I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew that I needed to follow this nudge and said, get this out of you. Don't go spread it in the world. Put it on this paper, let's see what happens.
Luke (40:03)
I was wondering if you could actually then speak to one of these other pathways. Of, of kind of finding our way inwardly to balance as well as to peace. Because what you just brought up was this acknowledgement and working through all that was going on within you. And what we often don't realize is how much our kind of inner climate can be storming and shifting and changing and moving all these different directions and not realize just how unstable that actually will make us or unstable that makes us. And so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that pathway of stability that is also part of this inner path to, to balance and peace and how your relationship with stability is changing.
Because that's part of, to me what I've seen and witnessed is why that period of time from that which is shifting and maybe storming, to getting the insight that allows you to redirect is a much, much, much more shorter window than it used to be is because that the, the stability of that inner environment has changed as well.
Matt (41:19)
The most important distinction and evolution to note is I used to be so obsessed on stability being what I was seeing in my environment around me.
I grew up really becoming a master shapeshifter and reader of the room because I needed to. And as I've gotten older and continued this process, I started to realize like, oh, I'm always looking for safety and someone else's mood. I'm looking for safety and that my boss is validating me. I'm looking for safety, that the client's happy.
I'm looking for stability and what my bank account says. And it was a very backwards focus. Yeah, those things are matter and they're relevant, but I was trying to create stability through everyone else outside in the world. But guess what? I can't control. And it's become more, for me, just an absolute deep realization that I cannot let go of now is that no, stability is how I feel in my body.
Stability is how I feel being present with my emotions. Stability is in my capacity to know that no matter what feelings or moments rise, I got me and I'm okay. That's stability.
Luke (42:29)
I love the reference there to capacity, right? Because we often don't realize just how much we can hold within ourselves with awareness until we start practicing it.
Because very often, right, we've got all these different, let's say emotions and energy that's flowing through us and it wants to pull us in these different directions and it wants us to act out of frustration or aggravation or sadness or sorrow. And it, it's trying to prompt us to act because act is the only way that it knows how to change something.
Uh, so, you know, our ability to actually be able to have the capacity, the stability, to be a container, and hold this space for that which we are feeling and going through without needing to act on it until it comes back to a place of settling of peace where we know the action we're gonna take feels that it's aligned from a deeper place.
That's a great level of stability. I also recognize, and I think, you know, I, I'm hoping everybody else picked up the way that you were describing, the way you used to look at stability, you'd look at the environment around you. I did the same thing for balance. I did the same thing for freedom, and we're oriented in our own way.
You know, and again, as human beings part of our natural, you know, systems, we have five senses that specifically focus on the external world because that's what helps us not only make sense of things, but it's also what keeps us alive. And so there's a part of us that is always orienting towards the external to make sure that we're safe.
But when that becomes imbalanced and that becomes an overriding way of looking at everything, we can't actually have the type of balance that we seek. And you just highlighted how once you can turn within and recognize, wait, I can be that container. I can be that foundation, I can have that stability within me, and I can hold that.
Now all of a sudden we're built on different bedrock, our roots, yet again, go deeper. I think the other piece which I'm curious about this stability also speaks to, for me at least, is structure. And so when I reference structure though, I start to think about our inner structures, beliefs, values, attitudes, uh, those are the types of things that depend on the way that I, those all create the way that I perceive the world and the way that I am perceiving things will have me feel stable or unstable based on the way that I'm relating to it.
And I'm curious how that has begun to change for you as well. Meaning how, because of recognizing the inner structures. And how those create the perceptions in ways you relate to what's going on outside of you. How has that changed so that even at times where things get shaken up quite a bit or take a complete sideways direction on you, you still feel that stability?
Matt (45:14)
The reality is all of us are conditioned to some degree. It's how we grow up, how we become a part of society. It's a necessary part of being alive, uh, and being in this life. And for me, the biggest evolutionary point has been noticing the structures that I'm seeing and experiencing through first.
So if I am feeling fearful in the moment about a new partnership that I'm in, where did I learn that? Who taught me that? Because it's not an absolute thing, that's for sure. And so for me it's that what am I orienting around and where did that structure come from? That's really helpful. And when I say orienting, I mean orienting around, what's the emotion that I'm allowing to potentially be the guiding lens of what is real and what is not?
What thought process am I potentially allowing to be? What is real and what is not? Um, you know, and that's more just moment by moment presence with those inner structures and the moment that's happening that we can also then look at, wow, where else do I do this?
Where else do I look through the world, through the lens of, oh my God, I need this person to be happy over here so I can feel okay. Or I need to, uh, view the world through the end lens of frustration so that I can feel like I'm getting something done. What are those orientations that guide us? And if we just spend some time, like I would just actually offer an invitation for the next week.
Anyone listening to this, give yourself 10 minutes a day just for one week to notice, how are you orienting yourself to the moment that you're in? How, what emotions are present that may be painting your picture of reality, what thought processes are present that may paint your picture of reality?
Because for me, what I experience in doing that is it allows me as an entry point to back further into those deeper structures from a felt sense rather than like, you know, in a lot of us have done values exercises where you just go and you get this list of values. Oh, those five sound pretty good. Uh, I'm just gonna take those and put them in my life.
But when you can back your way into the structures based on literally how you orient yourself each day, each moment, you can find what your values are and then you can decide, are those right for me? Are they balanced, are they not? What else is there?
Luke (47:44)
So I want to ask it this way, and I hope you're okay with me going here cause you've made, uh, some major shifts in orientation and part of that shift in orientation, as you relate it to me, has been originally looking at things as what's wrong, what's broken, what needs fixing? To be perfectly honest with you, I had that orientation at, at points in my life as well.
And then you started to come to this realization of, wait a minute, why do I need to begin there? Why don't I start with what's, you know, where am I connected to love? Where am I connected to joy? And then what could be better? What could what, what could fit even further into this? So it's a different orientation of looking at life.
For me, I've, I've looked at it as how do I allow these things through? Meaning, how that love that, that, that joy, that peace, the things that already present in me, how do I let them through as opposed to beginning with what's wrong, and fixing what's broken.
I bring this up because one, I'd love for you to just comment on the way that you've made some of that shift in orientation, but the reason why I bring it up is to sort of answer the question of, why does any of this matter?
And I wanna kind of throw that because we're talking about taking this inner path and getting rebalanced in our life and we're talking about some things that are kind of this deeper path of, you know, better understanding ourselves and what we get to do. Why does it matter? What difference has this made to your life?
Matt (49:11)
My orientation to life when I was 18, when I mentioned, uh, attempting suicide was that life was scary. And it was scarier to be alive than to be dead. And I literally oriented the life that everyone was out to get me. I was weak, I was powerless, and there was nothing I could do to change it. Over time, going through university and all the different material expressions of my life, university, being engaged, corporate life, all those things, my internal experience started and my self-concept started to shift.
The essence though that has pulled me these past two decades when I really started to look at it differently. Yeah, I said at the beginning of our call, it was about rising up and overcoming pain. Uh, but when I really stop and look at it, there's another lens that works too. All this time I've been remembering how to love myself.
I've been remembering how to love life. I've been remembering how to enjoy life, to love other people, to let other people love me, to enjoy my time here, to find magic in the moment, to really be able to wake up and go, damn, I'm glad to be alive. And so from a point of putting a bullet in my head to this point, I would say it matters because we don't have to live a meager existence, mire down with this old shit.
This, that just dries, dries us out. That's really what it feels like. It feels like we just dry out. And, and it really just becomes a question of, is that what you want for your life? And so I'm not gonna sit here and try to tell someone why it matters to them, but I will offer that just my life as a, in a mirror, an example.
You can go from the bottom pit of hell to being able to wake up and go, you know what? I'm really happy to be here. I'm really grateful that I have this loving partner in my life. I'm grateful, grateful for my friend Luke. I'm grateful for all these things that we're creating and experiencing. I've loved it, and to me it's been everything.
And the orientation continues to change, and now my guiding orientation as of today is what magic exists right now? What beauty is here right now? What can I be grateful about right now? But it took me a long time to get to this. And there's still those old energies. They're like, come on, come back here, man.
Come back and do this. But here's what I know. When I'm allowing myself to reorient this new way, I'm also very clear and I pay attention. How does that start to shape my relationships? How is that helping my business? I start to look at how actually leaning into and stepping into this actually opens my life up more rather than close it down or limit it.
Luke (51:51)
Thank you for sharing that. And I think that's a big piece of what I also have found is that it feels like life is opening up in ways that are very aligned with who I am so that I end up feeling more ease. I end up feeling more resonance with whatever it is that happens to be unfolding. Even the things that, you know, circumstantially used to look pretty crappy.
You know, things that we don't necessarily want to deal with that, that are not the things that we would expect, not the things we planned for that are unfolding in life and yet still being to able to be at peace with them, to be able to be myself and meet them, you know, where they are and, and, and however they're unfolding, but from this deeper place that exists within me.
And so my life keeps opening up in all these beautiful ways and that ease, that joy, that peace is just more present. I've had a lot of different experiences of, of trying to control life and, and to achieve and to, to create, uh, from, from this different place that just didn't feel today, I would tell you, it just doesn't feel balanced.
And it felt like I was constantly striving, I was constantly needing to be on. Uh, and it just, it was draining. It was exhausting to live that way. And now it just, it feels so much more aligned and congruent with who I am. Uh, to the point you also made, this was not an overnight thing. This was not something that was, you know, uh, read a couple chapters or, or spend a weekend and all of a sudden, you know, uh, life was realigned for me.
It took, you know, a series of, of, uh, of work, of evolutions, of work to really be able to instill this in my life. It's, it's, you know, I, I think of it as, uh, you know, these are cycles, but it's also, think of it as kind of like a spiral. And as we go around that spiral, we're in a new place, meaning we're evolving.
Hopefully we're evolving upwards on that spiral of awareness, but we are still gonna go around it multiple, multiple times before it really, truly, deeply sinks in for us. And so I've had to go, I keep going around that spiral. I think I'll be on that spiral staircase the rest of my life. Um, but it, we go through that and then it begins to integrate and become instilled in our life in a much deeper way.
I've done that through working with coaches and with guides and with teachers. I've done it through circling, I've done it through meditation. I've done it through journaling. I've done it through time and nature. Uh, it's incorporating all of these different practices or whichever practices work for you.
I know Matt, for you share some of those, but there's other ones that, that, that you have been, uh, that you use that are more, more important for your journey in alignment with your design that allow you to be with this inner movement and these inner pathways. and ultimately allow them to drop in and integrate at much deeper levels. Um, so based on where we are, uh, what I want to say is, let me share with a little bit, I think, Matt, I'm gonna share a little bit about what we're kind of putting out in the world.
Matt (55:00)
What I'm sitting here connecting to is like how I'm imagining listening to this and going, uh, great. I have all this stuff that just reminds me of what more work I have to do. And I, I, I imagine I'm projecting that a little bit, but I can imagine myself listening to it and go, great. And I just, I'm aware of more that I have to do more that I have to work on. And I get it. And if, you know, I said it in a recent article I put out like, this is, it's serious work because it is the course of our lives that we're talking about.
But getting bogged down in the seriousness actually prolongs it makes it harder. So a friend of mine, I love what she said to me one day, I was telling her about some challenges I was experiencing and, her and I both share a devotion to going into the hard places and finding a way to let it go and let it not be what myers us down.
And she goes, what else you gonna do? Are you just gonna wait till you get to the end of your life and look back and go, damn, why didn't I try something different? Or you just gonna lean in and let it go? And I was like, I like that. I guess I'm gonna do that because I don't wanna look back at my life and look at that. So yeah, most if we can play, add a little bit of play to it, we can find that place in ourselves that can have a little bit of fun with it. Yeah. It makes the journey not near as challenging.
Luke (56:16)
But it's, it's, it's incorporating a lot of that play and playfulness, that curiosity of that childlike wonder, the way that we do these things.
You know, I have found so much more beauty in life with this path as well because I'm, I'm much more prone. Uh, to sitting in moments of wonder and awe, and that just elicits so much great joy. And it's one of the reasons, it's one of the many reasons I, uh, I've never really truly divulged all of them, uh, as to why this is called On This Walk.
Uh, maybe that's a whole other episode or conversation one of these days, is that part of the reason behind it is we're on the walk together. And so we can do this, we can do this work while we're walking side by side and we can have fun. We can joke. We don't need to take it so seriously. Even in the moments that are actually very, very serious and important for us.
Uh, we can find ways to do that and we can journey together, uh, and it makes more fun. Um, hell, I was just reading this morning yet another article, I've actually seen this study before, but yet another article, uh, that came out of, uh, it was one of the Harvard's major studies, uh, for adult development.
It's the longest longitudinal study, meaning a, you know, study over a period of time ever conducted to try to isolate what is it that connects us to a greater sense of happiness and wellbeing in our lives. Number one thing over the course of the last 90 years, almost 90 years that this has been studied, is relationships.
To be in a relationship and to be in quality relationship, to nurture your relationships. And when you are in that relationship, a whole host of happiness as well as physical wellbeing factors improve for you. So if we can do this work, we can be happier, we can feel more, you know, more of that vitality and that wellbeing.
We can have more enjoyment and fun along the way, in addition to the fact that this can create real conscious change inside of your life. It feels good. It feels more aligned, it feels more balanced. It feels more like it's the life that you were meant to be living. Uh, and that's, that's why I just wanted to mention just before we wrap up our, our episode for today, our conversation for today.
That's why Matt, you and I are doing the program, uh, that we're just about to put out in the world called Restoring Balance. Uh, it's a four month program. Uh, there's a lot of circling involved, there's a lot of reflection involved, and it actually goes into some of these inner pathways, uh, two of which we shared with you today of, of, uh, stability as well as stillness.
Uh, there's two other pathways that are also part of this, this program that we're gonna be going into. Uh, but I want you to invite you guys to check it out. Um, go and take a, take a look at the show notes. There's a link in there that you can click. It'll take you right to the program or go over to onthiswalk.com.
If you look around at the different ways that we can walk together, you'll find the program for Restoring Balance. And you'll see what Matt and I are up to. Uh, I hope it's a walk that you'll, you'll take with us before we wrap up today, Matt, there was something before that you said way back at the beginning of this call that I think it was you were referencing some journaling that you were doing this morning and you're feeling into the ways that you can feel where you're balanced, the ways that you can feel where you're not balanced.
And so just before we wrap up, I was wondering if you could share a little bit of how you make those distinctions today. How do you know when you are in balance? How do you know when and where you're starting to slip out of balance?
Matt (59:36)
I notice that my, I'm gonna look at them through a few angles. If I notice that my mind is starting to become preoccupied with things that are not truly that relevant in the moment, meaning a client conversation, for example, that I'm not gonna have for another week and a half, but I'm already like ideating. Like what is that gonna say and how's that gonna go? And I'm like, wait a second.
That's not relevant. Um, or if I notice that my mind is clinging to any kind of narrative that when I really am honest with myself just doesn't make sense for the moment. If I'm, like, for example, sitting at a cafe writing, is what I'm thinking about truly relevant to something that's going on right now that I'm gonna do something about?
Or is it just chatter? And so if I notice that my mind is actually spinning around on some things, I first check there. And then just what helps me a lot is actually just writing it out. What's going on there. Again, putting it out on paper and then asking, is there anything to do with this right now? Is there something I need or is this just something else?
So that's what my mind's activities are based on the relevancy of the moment is a big cue for me. Um, it can be a big opener for me to just let it go if I'm able or if it's something that's persistent. Getting deeper into what needs of my own are there that maybe I'm not aware of.
The other is if I'm starting to feel tense or tight in my body or a bit uncentered like as if I was like pulled out of my center. Then I go under my body and start to notice like, where am I potentially holding, for example, how am I breathing or how am I not breathing? And I also start to notice how, let me put it this way, if there are different points of tension that I'm experiencing in my body, they are often cues for me to get curious about them.
Because what I can often find is that tension is me holding onto an emotion or something that actually needs to release and shift. So I pay attention to what physical sensations exist for me that maybe I have not been giving attention to. And then another one is if my mood is feeling flat, if I'm just feeling flat, a little disconnected and disjointed, I'll do those two things.
But then I'll, I'll connect to, well, how's my heart doing? How's my spirit? Like what is something that could actually lift my spirits right now, whether it's a song, a dance, or something else. I really look at what are the different points of balance that offer each of these to be at their best because we need balance of mind. We need balance of body, and we need balance of spirit.
I was like a client of mine that I recently worked with, each day she was seeking deeper experience of balance and the, one of the ways that she did this was for her mind. She, her mind loved podcasts. It stimulated her intelligence and her intelligence was beautiful for her heart.
She sang gospel and she, on her drive to work and for her body, she just got up and went for a run in the morning. But the guiding energy, the guiding essence behind it all, was what allowed her to feel and experience balance inside of herself so she could grow and create from there. And so it's a fun place to get curious about too.
Luke (1:02:56)
One thing I'll comment on is part of the way that you also described it, it seemed like, if there was a way of you checking in with what is the internal flow or the internal movement that's going on to feel whether or not, is that movement moving around in harmony? Is it moving very fluidly or does it feel like it's getting, you know, stuck or, or bound up in any given area, whether that be physically, emotionally, spiritually, or otherwise.
Uh, and I just kind of noticed that because I know, I know how important, uh, movement and dance is to, to you. Uh, for myself. I think just to, to add a little, a little further, I think for me it is this recognition of an in, when I can get present in the moment, how much ease am I feeling with my present experience?
And if that ease is there, if that resonance feels like it's there, there's something there that's in harmony, then I know that I'm in balance. And there's also even a little bit of, like an aliveness or vitality that's present in that ease as well. Meaning it's not just an ease of like, eh, you know, like I'm, I'm completely, you know, just at, at, at ease and lazy in any given moment.
It's no, there's something there that still has a vitality to it. Uh, even if, even if what I'm presently, uh, experiencing might even be grief or, or sorrow, there can still be an ease and an aliveness even in that experience. Just as it is with joy or wonder or awe or things like that too. And so there's something in that aliveness, that ease, that resonance that sits within me that lets me know that I'm in balance.
And if that ease is not there, I feel that is some form of tension, uh, whether, again, whether it's a physical tension that I can see if it's tension, I can sense with my breath. I, I love that, Matt, you brought up, you know, connecting into your breath because that lets you know kind of how well things are moving and fluid throughout the course of your system.
Uh, if I feel any of that tension emotionally or in my mind, lets me know, there's something here to, to, to hold within that container we were talking about that spacious container we were talking about before, so that you can be with it, you can, you can see it, you can feel it, you can acknowledge it and say, okay, what is, what is it that's needed here today?
And maybe nothing's needed. Maybe it was just the acknowledgement that was needed, or maybe there's a little work there to do. Whatever it is, you'll start to get to know it. Matt, I wanna thank you for the walk. I wanna thank you for walking and dancing here with balance, with joy for sharing, uh, all your experiences and wisdom. And, uh, as always, I appreciate sharing, sharing the space with you.
Matt (1:05:06)
I'm always grateful for our conversations again, because we do both offer anchoring energy. I like the different ways we express it and the different ways we ping pong off each other to create a conversation. So, uh, probably why I've been on here three times. At least that's what I'm gonna go with . Thanks for having me on here, Luke. Seriously appreciate it.
Luke (1:05:50)
Absolutely. Thank you so much Matt and everyone, once again, thank you for being here on this walk. We'll be together again real soon. Be well.
Thank you for joining me for this episode of On This Walk. Before signing off, please subscribe to the show and don't miss a single episode. Also, please rate and review us. This helps me greatly in getting the word out about this show. And remember, this is just the start of our conversation. To keep it going, ask questions, add your own thoughts, join the ongoing conversation by just heading over to onthiswalk.com and click on Community in the upper right hand corner. It's free to join. Until we go on this walk again, I'm Luke Iorio. Be well.