Embrace The "Do No Harm" Mantra | Liberate Yourself From The Occupation Of Your Mind

Hello, masterful listener. Welcome back. Episode seven. What? Alright, I'm going for 13 this first season. I'm sharing that because accountability is important.

This one is really near and dear to me. It is called Do No Harm. And it is a mantra that came to me uh again through such exquisite synchronicity that I know now more than ever that what we seek is seeking us, right? Rumi said, what you seek is seeking you. And it's one of my favorite quotes and things I always come back to. And this particular mantra of do no harm was shared with me by a woman I did not know who I had met at my local coffee shop about, gosh, I guess it's about two years ago-ish. I was sitting there really sad and

depressed because one of the loves of my life and someone I really thought I was gonna marry, uh, our relationship um ended, or the romantic relationship ended. And I'm not gonna go into that right now, but I gotta say, uh, my amazing friend, Seth, uh, is gonna be a guest on my podcast. And this is about him, and we're gonna talk about what it meant to listen to ourselves and each other through not only a heart-wrenching breakup, but through a deep cosmic love and a love that is way deeper than just romantic love, like a human love, and how listening through that has led that moment

where I was so devastated, spinning out, it led to him being one of my best friends and me being one of his best friends and a mutual understanding that what happened was for the best. It just, you know, we can only connect the dots looking backward, as um Steve Jobs said. So, regardless, do no harm. I was sitting on that couch and I was very sad. I was very sad because my mind was spinning. Has anyone ever had a heartbreak, an end of a relationship, a breakup, and then you can't start thinking about or you can't stop thinking about that person? And then the more you're

even like, oh gosh, I don't want to think about them. Well, that is thinking about them. It's like, don't think of the pink elephant, right? Oh, that's all that there is. So actually, before I dive into the pink elephant, uh can't stop thinking and obsessing about someone that's you know not helping you. Shit spiral. Shit spirals for me always happen uh with heartbreaks. Uh, I'm gonna invite you to listen to this story in a certain way because we're in school. Also, check in. Are you ready to listen? Let's take a deep breath together. Can you pay attention? Do you want to pay attention? Are you curious

about a heartbreak story and about a three-word mantra and how it completely changed my life and everyone's life that I've shared it with? Okay, cool. Uh yeah, I invite you to listen with your heart. I feel like we often listen with our mind. Listening seems like more of a doing something we can work on as a skill. And yet I would say listening is the ultimate being with someone. When you're being genuinely present, curious, loving, connected, supportive in a conversation, even a conversation that's a podcast, because this is an interaction. We might not be doing it live, but you and I are connected in this moment.

I am sharing some very authentic, vulnerable stories and truth. And I'm doing it because I love to do it and I want to do it. And trust me, this is very helpful for me. But I am in relationship to everyone who listens to this podcast as you are to me, as we are all to each other. We're all connected, whether we know it or not. And we all harm each other, whether we know it or not, often unintentionally. Right? And really, how are you listening with your heart to others, but also to yourself? So when I invite you to listen to your heart or with your

heart or through your heart, I invite you to take a lot of deep breaths as you're listening to this, where it feels sense to, so that you let it come in and expand your awareness. I say we are a kaleidoscope of humanity. We are all these multidimensional, beautiful beings. Most of us have no idea of these little pieces and parts of us that are just all swirling and moving all the time. It could be confusing, it could be harmful, it could feel hard to be like, holy shit, I'm this and I'm this, and I'm this and I'm this, and this person's this and this person's this.

It can get overwhelming, right? It's gotten overwhelming. It's gotten overwhelming for me. And I was at the point with Seth and that breakup where I was so obsessed that all I did all day was think about him. What happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? Oh my God, what's gonna happen? It was horrible. I couldn't sleep well. I was so, I was just in angst and in grief. And I was also talking about it a lot because I felt like I needed to process it. Since then, I lived by this mantra of get the message, forget the messenger. And that's actually really helped me.

That's gonna be another episode. Uh, but the idea is me thinking about him more was not helping. Me talking about it all the time was literally just recreating that pain, but I felt like I couldn't stop. And in that moment, with a complete stranger who asked me, How are you? I was honest. I said, Well, I'm all right, but I'm going through a breakup and I'm really sad and I'm kind of spinning and I can't stop thinking about it in like an unhealthy way. And she looked at me with presence because she was listening to me, as I hope you are right now. And she said,

Can I share something with you that really helped me? It's a really simple phrase. I think she said it was a Buddhist phrase, but recently I heard the do no harm in a completely different context. So again, this is not something I'm inventing. This is just something I'm messaging to you. I'm the messenger of do no harm at this moment. Uh, she said, Yeah, every time you notice in your head that you are thinking about Seth et al. or this situation, say to yourself in your head, do no harm. Do no harm. Take a breath. Put your hand on your chest, maybe. Say do no harm

because what you're doing with those thoughts spinning around, even if you're trying to process, no timing. When people call me as a coach and they're crying and they're sad, I never try to help them figure it out because you can't then. You need to just feel it and you need to bring yourself back to the moment where you're at. I wasn't two weeks before where I was then, right? I wasn't in what happened and I wasn't in the future. I was just devastated about the past. You know, they say we're depressed about the past and anxious about the future because I was inventing horrible futures. So

I said, but wait a minute, you want me to say that, do no harm to myself? But I'm thinking about them all day. And she said, Yeah, you're gonna have to say it all day. Every time you feel it, just say it. You think it, you just say it. Every time you feel like you're spinning out, say it. And I said, Fuck it, I might as well try. Nothing else was working, and so I did. And probably for the next week, I said, do no harm to myself thousands of times, literally, hundreds of times a day. And then it was less, and then it was less,

and then it was less, and probably, I don't know, three weeks in, there was a day where at like three o'clock, I noticed I did it for the first time. Oh my God, I couldn't even, I didn't even have as much awareness of how much that decreased because I was so much more present in my life and I wasn't harming myself as much, right? Because here's the thing when we're ruminating, that is not reflecting. Rumination and reflection are a very different thing. Do no harm is a short little mantra that if you say to yourself, you go from rumination and that shit storm in a moment

where you need that to more of a reflection, but also a release. Just get out of your head in that moment. You do not need to think anymore about something that's feeling like it's driving you wild, literally ever. That does not help. This is coaching. This is years of studying neuroscience and psychology. In that moment, when our system is overwhelmed, our nervous system needs to just calm down. That never happens when we keep spinning. What does help is

breathing as much as you need for as long as you need deeply? Do no harm, do no harm, do no harm, do no harm, do no harm, do no harm. I shared it with a friend recently that was going through a breakup, and he actually did it. And in a few days, he said that it really helped. So that's why I'm sharing that with you right now, because this is a very, very, very simple tool that was gifted to me by a kind stranger who listened to me and saw that I needed some help unharming myself. I thought I was helping myself by processing and processing

and thinking and talking about and sharing. And there's wonderful aspects to that. Processing, wonderful, sharing, wonderful. Trying to understand, reflect, yeah. But sometimes and oftentimes when we are overthinking, right? Not thinking, overthinking different things, when we're obsessing, especially in pain, we gotta stop that shit spiral, right? I think I mentioned in the last episode, how do we turn our shit spirals into love loops? How do we start going in the other direction so that we can calm our nervous system? Get those adrenals to chill out. God, I was peeing 17 times a day, I wasn't sleeping. Once I calmed down and I said, do no harm,

and I was being more loving to myself, less harmful. I was retraining my mind. What you say becomes real. If you keep saying, I don't want to be in pain, I don't want to get over, or I want to get over. All the universe doesn't hear negatives, the mind doesn't even understand negatives. It's like all you're saying is, ah, I'm struggling. I'm struggling. How about do no harm? It's okay. My favorite way to respond to people in the last few years when they asked me, How are you? I said, I'm pretty okay. That felt like the most authentic uh answer. I wasn't good, I wasn't horrible.

I was pretty okay, right? That's what the do no harm led me to. To being more than okay with being pretty okay, and to realizing mostly that

when we become okay when things are not okay, isn't everything kind of great and okay? Not great, but you know what I mean? Being okay when you're not okay, I think, is the ultimate shit. Wisdom, one other crawl or step towards enlightenment. I'm not someone who believes that I might ever get enlightened. I want to enlighten myself. I think the human experience is actually we're constantly learning. I actually don't want to stop learning because I feel like if I stopped learning, I would probably stop having this desire and drive to create and share and connect. And like I then would have no idea what to do

on this planet, where my creativity, curiosity, desire to grow is what helps me reframe all these moments of such pain and heartbreak and tragedy into a chance to practice compassion, a chance to teach my own mind how to be loving and less harmful. And frankly, it's completely saved for me, Seth and my relationship, because I loved him so much and I still love him so much. Sethi, if you're listening to this, I love you. Uh sometimes things just don't work out. Often things don't work out the way we thought. And while Seth and I were actually incredible partners, the circumstances of life did not allow that

story to go the way I'd really wanted. And because we really genuinely loved and love each other, we listened to life enough to stop fighting it, to start loving our situations more enough to where we can accept them and figure out what is the best path forward. Ooh, Beth is like best in path. That's cool. Um what's the best path forward? And I think in both of our worlds, the best path forward was a path where we could walk hand in hand, but maybe not as husband and wife or girlfriend and boyfriend or life partners, but as lifelong friends. And I gotta tell you, actually, some

of my favorite relationships are my platonic relationships with men and women. And they're not the lovers. Uh some of them are those for sure, but there's something so beautiful when you transcend a sort of um experience of a relationship with someone. Because who's to say we cannot be best friends with the person who we thought would be our, you know, romantic life partner and then who really fucking hurt us? Not because they wanted to. Seth is like the kindest, most amazing man I know. He never wanted to hurt me. I never wanted to hurt him. It didn't mean that we both didn't get hurt through that

story experience in life. It's unintentional. It happens, it's okay because what we did do and what we still do is listen to each other. That's why he's coming on as a guest. I really want to share that story and I want him to share it too, because there were two people involved in that. And as hard as my time was, I think his might have been even harder, just as hard. Not to compare, but the point is when we're in our own shit spirals and when we need to harm ourselves the least, I think we also do this. Tell me if you do this, or you

know, yeah, write me a comment. Tell me if you do this. When you have an issue with someone and they hurt you, or you get hurt, something ends, you gotta fight. Do you often start to think, or have you thought, man, they're probably totally fine and I'm suffering so much more? They seem fine. Yeah, that's a first of all, a complete bullshit story that you don't know is true. And even if it is true, let's say they are fine. What the fuck does that actually have to do with your healing? That is all ego. Take care of yourself, do no harm to you instead of wishing

harm upon someone else, energetically focusing on decreasing harm to ourselves or decreasing harm for others, which is also super nice, or on the flip side, increasing harm for others. Both of those, whether you're thinking about others in a positive or negative, or yourself, that love for yourself, the lack of harm to you is a higher vibration because the more that you thrive, have health, have love, have presence, calm your nervous system, sleep better, eat better, imagine better, heal, do less harm. The more you do no harm to you, the better you are to everyone, the better you can help others do no harm. If I hadn't

used that mantra and gotten so much better in my mental health space, I wouldn't be here sharing this with you now. And I really believe if you can't hear it in my soul, that three words were one of the most powerful, life-changing forces for good for me and for a lot of other people, like that woman who probably had her own deep story, which she didn't even tell me at the time, because you know what? She was a good listener and she knew that it was better to listen to me and offer something of support than make it about her. So as we wrap up, here's

what I'd love for you to do moving forward. A notice when you are having a moment where you're ruminating, where you're in pain, and see if you can just capture it and say, do no harm, do no harm, do no harm. If you feel like you have to say it a thousand times a day, despite how frustrating that might be, you're still training your brain into something so good. Do no harm, do no harm, instead of ah, fuck it, you know. So a practice that because that, my loves, is listening deep. That's compassionate listening, that's present listening, that's loving listening. So a practice that and b

pay attention to when you notice others might be harming themselves in your life, meaning really freaking out, spinning out, and see if you can offer that to them. My suggestion, because I really try to never give advice unless I ask for permission, is if you see someone in your life struggling, like what that woman did with me, simply ask kind of like, hey, I see that you're having a rough moment. May I share something with you because I care about you that might help you, versus, let me tell you what to do, right? Those two prompts are so different. And I think the first one, when

you share what you'd like to share, why, and because you care, that is you listening to a moment, to a human in need, and that makes them feel that way. And you don't want to be giving people advice and a bunch of shit when they can't hear it. This is profound. These words can and will heal. So offer them as a listening exercise to those who want and are ready to hear them because we're not always ready to hear the thing, you know? But when we are, it usually shows up. What do they say? The teacher shows up when the student is ready. I think we're

all students, so I think the student shows up when the teacher is ready. So be a student, be a teacher, keep listening to moments where you are harming yourself unintentionally. Say do no harm and gift this to uh to anyone who you think uh might benefit. And as always, subscribe, share this podcast with anyone you feel could really benefit from a little less inner harm, a little more inner peace. And uh go ahead and uh if you write a review or comment, uh share how this do no harm is working for you. All right. May we be healthy, may we be pretty okay, may we keep

learning, may we keep masterfully listening. I'll see you next time.