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Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich,

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and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life.

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Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.

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The Buddhist Boot Camp Discussion Group meets in person and over Zoom 

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once a month to dive deeper into each month's food-for-thought.

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With the intention to better understand how and why people say one thing and do another,

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we looked a little closer at this inconsistency.

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What I gathered from the discussions was that even if you manage to get a bunch of

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people together in a room who all share the exact same values, they would still disagree

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on how to prioritize those values, whether we're talking about women's rights or

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immigration, health care, gun control,

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animal cruelty, marriage equality, the environment, abortion, and so on.

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The following is the first example it took for me to understand this level of flexibility

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without seeing it as contradictory.

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I'm going to use a less triggering example 

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than alcohol consumption from the last episode, since that was apparently too divisive

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So, let's just imagine two people who truly love good quality dark chocolate.

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Both Sebastian and Sabrina care about

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supporting organic, fair-trade, women-owned businesses that make

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single-origin, dairy-free, dark chocolate in solar-powered facilities whenever they can.

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But, since it's difficult, if not impossible, to find a chocolate bar that meets all of their

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criteria, they each end up buying a different brand of chocolate based on how they

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individually prioritize their shared values.

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While neither one of them would ever budge on the dairy free-aspect, Sebastian picked a

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chocolate bar that is organic but not necessarily made from single-origin cacao,

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while Sabrina prioritized single-origin and fair-trade over everything else.

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Keep in mind that their values are exactly the same, but because they prioritize those

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values differently, they can't agree on which chocolate bar to get.

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Imagine this inability to agree on a global scale with much bigger issues,

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and the world starts to make more sense.

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Sabrina and Sebastian ended up getting both chocolate bars, and neither one of them is

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"right" or "wrong." It's not only okay, it's what we all do each and every day.

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Whenever we make a decision, we prioritize our values based on some

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lines that we refuse to cross, and other lines that we still consider as guiding principles,

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but they are a little more blurry depending on time, place, and circumstance.

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In the last episode, I explained my inability to process conflicting information, such as why

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someone like Sabrina, who values organic chocolate, would buy a bar that is not organic.

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Now, I get it. But it made no sense to me until this concept of flexibility, 

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which was previously foreign to me, was thoroughly explained.

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I couldn't understand how someone who is

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diabetic and claims to care about their health would turn around and eat sugar, for example

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It didn't occur to me that while they might truly care about their health, they also care

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about Ice Cream Night with their grandchildren once a week.

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So, every Thursday, they prioritize time with their grandchildren over completely

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eliminating sugar from their diets because life without those nights is not worth living.

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This may sound simple and obvious to you, but it blew my mind because I've spent my

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entire life with a strong conviction to prioritize congruency over everything else,

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and here I was introduced to people with a strong conviction to be flexible.

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I was never judging people's choices, mind you, I was genuinely curious how people

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reconcile their decisions at the end of each day, which in and of itself was an assumption

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that everyone does this reconciliation on a daily basis.

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Part of me still struggled to understand how these grandparents, for example,

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can truly enjoy their ice cream when they know it contributes to their own ailment, and

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it took me thinking back to a scenario in which I have done a similar thing to truly get it.

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I say I care about my health, right? And I thought that meant I could never

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eat fast food ever again, because if I do and still claim to care about my health, I'd be

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creating an internal conflict that would be more difficult to digest than the meal itself.

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But, when my friends and I were driving through the Mojave Desert, the only food

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choices for lunch were fast food restaurants.

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I still refused to eat animals, of course, but I found something on the menu to sustain me

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until better options become available.

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Under normal circumstances, I would consider what I ate unhealthy.

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Does that make me a hypocrite, or does it make me reasonable?

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It's a rhetorical question, because the other thing I learned during

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our discussion was that nobody else gets to decide what that makes me.

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We can be healthy, dark-chocolate-loving, ice-cream-licking, emergency-fast-food-eating,

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well-intentioned beings all at the same time.

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What we prioritize in life has to do with our inherent need for a sense of purpose.

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Someone mentioned prioritizing their College education in their 20s, but graduation sent

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them searching for a new sense of purpose. So, they had kids, which gave them a renewed 

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sense of purpose until the children moved out of the house, leaving them looking for a

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sense of purpose once again. That's the risk of attaching a purpose to 

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something temporary. They ended up rescuing a couple of dogs, which gave them 

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a reason to get out of bed each morning, but that will only work for so long.

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So, what if we find purpose driven by something that we decide is not only the most

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important thing in the world to us, but doesn't 

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have a resolution, expiration, or destination within our lifetime?

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That could be God, it could be a commitment to congruence, or as we

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chant in Zen monasteries every morning, I vow to abandon greed, hatred, and ignorance,

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which arise endlessly. We simultaneously acknowledge there is no end in sight,

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yet we vow to tackle it just the same.

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This sense of purpose requires constant cultivation, making every moment

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fueled by intention and conviction.

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And the more consistently we do it, the more 

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automated it becomes, enriching every moment of our lives with purpose.

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When we are sick and feel terrible, we are highly motivated to

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take good care of ourselves, right? We get lots of rest and drink plenty of fluids.

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But, when we feel fine, we are less motivated to do those things.

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Do we have to wait until we are sick to take good care of ourselves, or can we regularly

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care for ourselves in order to reduce how frequently we feel sick?

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Doing anything with consistency makes it easier to stick to our convictions.

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It's much easier to eat healthy and meditate every day if you do it consistently.

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But, if we see meditation as something that disrupts our day rather than enriching it, then

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we are less likely to make a habit out of it.

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Another suggestion someone had to help us with conviction was having an Accountability

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Buddy; someone who holds you accountable to get your daily exercise, for example.

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What I love about the organic nature of our monthly meetings is that they

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go wherever they need to go, and I always walk away with something.

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The more neurodivergents understand how neurotypicals see the world, and vice versa,

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the larger our heart grows and the deeper our compassion and empathy can penetrate.

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Since my number one priority in life has been a constant commitment to congruence with

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fierce conviction, I've been hypersensitive to any decision that isn't in line with my values.

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This stems from believing that happiness is when what we believe, say, and do

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are all in harmony, because anything else creates disharmony.

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The mistake I've been making all these years is thinking everyone prioritizes congruence

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the way I do, when they might actually prioritize something else, such as flexibility.

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I typically call these episodes Food-for-Thought, but this one is more like

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yoga for the brain, stretching me and opening me up to new possibilities.

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Almost everyone in the meeting was initially inclined to shy away from what they

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considered rigidity, but through conversation, everyone found their own

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hard-line in the sand with certain decisions.

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If they made a commitment of monogamy to their spouse, for example, it's a line that most

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agreed they wouldn't cross. Question is: where is your conviction the strongest?

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On what issues?

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And where do you draw the line?

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I love you regardless of what you drink, eat, or do, because even if we share

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the exact same values and convictions,

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you have your priorities, I have mine, and the wheels of the bus go round and round.

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Namaste.

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Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless

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and Buddhist Boot Camp.

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For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com,

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where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project,

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watch Timber's inspiring TED Talk, and join our monthly mailing list.

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We hope you have enjoyed this episode

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and invite you to subscribe for more thought-provoking discussions.

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Thank you for being a Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love. 🙏🏼