Hello, beautiful humans and welcome to the mental Wellness.
Wake up, show a weekly podcast where growth minded creative
people, come to learn, best practices from both spirituality
and psychology that create lasting well-being.
I am your host mental Wellness, expert improvised acting teacher
therapist and Coach, Don McMillan.
Let's get to it. It.
Beloved humans. Thank you so much for being here
to my returning, listeners, mwah, big kiss, and hug.
Thank you for coming back, to spend time with me.
I honor you, and I cherish you, and to my new listeners.
Welcome, welcome. I'm so excited to see how our
community is growing across the planet.
It's a delight and an honor and a pleasure that you would even
stop by. So thank you for stopping by
stick around. I I aim to be of service and I
really appreciate you and your presence in my life.
So please do continue to like, share and subscribe.
It makes all the difference in the world.
We get to grow our little community, and that's just more
people, elevating Consciousness, and spreading Joy on the planet.
so, what I want to share with you today is it's okay to be
okay. It's okay to be okay.
What do I mean by this other than the adhan?
Whatever? That's all B's.
It's a tautology. It's okay to be.
Okay. So first of all in recent years,
we've had quite an uptick in people acknowledging.
Their suffering, their struggles, their mental health
concerns. And so, you see a lot of, it's
okay not to be, okay, and it is. All feelings are, welcome all
experiences are valid. So on those days, those moments,
sometimes those weeks, when I feels a little bit, like a slog,
when your brain is not your friend, when your body is
struggling, It's okay, not to be okay, you do not owe the world
positivity. American culture has created a
sort of toxic positivity culture and I struggle against this a
lot in when I was working in addiction because I would want
to guide my client to relapse prevention strategies and much
of the time, the strategy they wanted to use in the only one
they wanted to use was To just think positive.
So, not only do we think that we should think positive and we
have to think positive, we've come to believe that we owe to
other people, positivity excitement, and cheerfulness at
all times. So I honor and I embrace our
understanding that sometimes things are not as okay as they
might otherwise be. And so yes it is.
Okay to not be okay. Okay, and it's okay to be okay.
It's okay to be okay. We do not have to lean into our
mental illness. We do not have to wallow in our
stress. We do not have to Define
ourselves by our diagnosis. We can have our diagnosis, have
our stress, have our tough mental, health, challenges, or
physical challenges, and Be okay.
It is okay. To be okay. it is okay to be
okay, it is okay to notice All the suffering in the world.
And be okay. Wait, what?
Yeah Yeah. Yeah.
You can notice and understand that.
Sometimes there are terrible things going on in the world,
you do not have to create your own suffering, because of that,
it's okay to be okay. It's okay to be financially,
okay? When other people are homeless
without homes, it's okay to be financially, okay?
When a member of your family is, Not, it's okay to be physically,
okay? When other people are unhealthy,
it's okay to be mentally, okay, emotionally?
Okay. When other people are ill, it is
okay, to be okay, I'm giving you permission.
To not be suffering. Now, some of you are like why
are you hammering this home? Of course, it's okay to be okay,
I know it's okay to be okay. For you return to the.
It's also. Okay, not to be okay.
But it's okay to be okay. You can have your diagnosis and
be okay. You can have bipolar disorder
and be okay. You can be on the autism
spectrum and be okay. You can have ADHD ADHD and be
okay, you can have cancer and be okay.
You can have less than a dollar to your name and be okay.
You are not required to suffer in Buddhism.
The analogy is pain, is like an arrow.
You get shot with an arrow. You experience pain.
But we like to do is shoot ourselves with the second arrow
and have suffering about our pain.
We like to judge ourselves and other people, we like to resist
the present moment if you like oh, this is happening and Hate
it. There's another choice.
This is happening. That's it.
This is happening and I accept it.
This is happening and I acknowledge it.
And what's beautiful about this is happening, and the story or
this is happening. I accept and acknowledge it, is
that if we're talking about suffering of other people, you
are so much more effective in your wellness, and you are in
your own suffering. Have you ever been in a bad
spot? And someone comes along and they
call themselves comforting you but they get so upset that then
you feel like you have to start comforting them.
You ever had that? I've seen that in them in grief,
right? The family members will be
really struggling because they've lost someone and, you
know, the, the co-worker will come and they'll be so
devastated that the family members are comforting them,
you're so much more effective in our in our well-being.
And we are in our suffering and our whoa.
So if there's some part of you that feels wrong about being,
okay, when someone else is not it's like oxygen mask thing,
really, if you're on an airplane and the plane is going down and
you're busy running around, putting on everyone else's
oxygen mask. You're going to start to lose
Consciousness and be very bad at it.
You take a moment to put on your own oxygen mask in.
There you are super effective. It's okay to be okay.
Even if no one else you know is It's okay to be okay part
whatever 23 911. It's okay to be only okay you
don't have to be exceptional. You have to be the best.
You don't have to be thrilled, you don't have to be happy, you
don't have to be whoo-hoo enthusiastic and with to be
cheerful, you just be okay. You can be content, you can be
fine, we live in a culture, their positive positivity
culture, where a you're supposed to be positive all the time.
And the opposite of that is to liberate yourself from toxic
positivity by being miserable a lot.
What about that? Golden mean as Aristotle would
say, what about balance? What about the middle path?
You don't have to be running swinging through the branches.
I don't know what the analogy is going to be jumping up and down
on couches, excited and joyful all the time and in order to be
a good person or to have a good life, nor do you have to be
willing around in a pit to show that?
You understand other people's suffering, you can be okay, you
can be fine, you can be content and I ask this of you. if you
strung together a series of moments that were like, okay,
that be okay. Part of the reason we suffer so
much in this culture is because we're so addicted to exchange
the extreme of excitement. We want that dopamine hit, we
want to be thrilled, we want to be happy.
We want to be excited. We want to be over the moon that
we lose sight of. This is good.
This is cool. I'm content.
You know, when I was on my walk today, when I let go of problem
solving and just allowed myself to be in the present moment, I'm
like, this is good. Wasn't ecstatic.
I wasn't miserable was like it's good.
It's fine. I'm okay.
This is lovely. This is nice.
So, I invite you to be okay. You can be content, you can be a
piece, you can be in the middle, not overly thrilled, not overly
terrible, you can be fine. And the more we allow ourselves
to be in the golden mean mean being average, that's what
Aristotle is talking about is, you know, between courage and
cowardice? Is the golden mean the middle
spot, the Goldilocks spot if you will the middle path. the more
we can accept, okayness, The more we can stop being addicted
to the extremes, the better life will have.
Overall, one thing I learned from the book dopamine nation is
that there's a self-correction that often happens.
I do a lot of theater and there's a understanding and
theater about the post to show depression or the post-show let
down, right? You do a run of a show.
The adrenaline is pop in the audience is having a great time.
You spent all these months with these really cool creative
people and then bada-boom bada-bing, it's over.
It's the life. Does that in a lot of ways big
through big low? And so, when we allow ourselves
to stop chasing the thrill, we often free ourselves from the
big low. Many of us are addicted to the
dopamine hit. We cannot stand any feeling
other than whoo-hoo, and when we're not, woohoo, you think
there's something wrong. So, I'm inviting us all one to
stop, stop being addicted to our suffering.
There's a form of narcissism called covert narcissism, and
that's the version of narcissism, which decides, Which
experiences itself as I am so special, because no one has
suffered like I have suffered and no one understands my
suffering. Well, you know, we're all
accustomed to the grandiose narcissist.
It's like I'm the most special person, and the best, and
smartest of the cutest of the whatever, but some of us are
giving in, to this narcissistic tendency to be the most uniquely
diagnosed suffering person that ever lived.
So, on the one hand, I'm super special, I have the most likes
on the cutest on the best on the other hand on the worst and
because of the way, our culture set up, some of us are
vacillating between the two. If I'm not the Best.
I'm the worst. I'm not the most special, I'm
the most meaningless. What if it's okay to be okay.
What if you what, if it's okay
to be like the other girls? But if it's okay to be like the
other guys, what if, it's okay to have a pleasant time but if
it's okay to be content, what if it's okay, to be okay. so in
this moment, I just want to invite you to tune into your
okayness if you're feeling really good.
Awesome. Allow that to exist and also
tune into your okayness the contentment underneath it.
And if you're upset, are feeling some kind of low mood, where is
okayness available to you. For example, often, my dog makes
a ton of noise when I'm trying to record a podcast, they just
over there, you know, do a little dog thing.
That's okay. Contentment, peace.
And I think a lot of those spiritual teachers that We
admire the ones who give you that true sense of.
Wow. That's so that person is tuned
into something and I want a piece of that.
In my language. They have a certain quality of
okayness to certain peace in the okayness that I'm talking about.
It's not running around all over the place.
It's not wallowing. Is there's just a sense of Here.
Now. Okay.
You're okay.
Your whole you're perfect, you're complete.
Just as you are. Just as you are, you don't have
to be any more special than you already are.
You don't have to be any less special than you already are.
Right now, your complete and I invite you to have a life too,
feels pretty darn good. Most of the time and let that be
okay. And if you would do me the
courtesy of coming back again, sometime I would be thrilled
because I really enjoy spending this time with you, see you next
time.