The Empty Boat Philosophy

The Empty Boat Philosophy| Mindset Daily Podcast

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Transcript

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So in Zen teachings, there is something called the empty boat philosophy, and it goes like this. Let me read it to you. If a man is crossing a river and an empty boat collides with his own, he won't get angry. But if he sees someone in the boat, he'll shout at them to steer clear. The anger comes from thinking somebody is inside the boat, right? So think about that for a moment. Imagine you are, driving your boat out in the ocean somewhere and someone crashes into you, right? The anger that you experience comes from the person in the boat, Controlling the boat and driving it into you, but if there was no one in the boat, you couldn't get angry. And this philosophy applies, and this is just an example or an analogy to how it applies to every area of your life, which is essentially saying you don't have to be so reactionary to everything that goes on in your life. you don't have to feel the need. To respond to everything because ultimately, the only thing that you can control is the way you react. But if you're hyper reactionary, and we all know a person like this that reacts to everything, right? It's like in a traffic jam, they're instantly upset, right? Or, the friend that didn't text them back, they're instantly upset. They're instantly angry wondering what they did, right? Or say you. Are running a business and you get, angry comments from customers, unrealistically, angry comments, right? For no reason. The Karens that are angry at everything. No matter what you do, they're gonna be angry. Now, the trick is you can't control them, but you are 100% in control of the way you react and. The more and more inclined you feel to be reactionary to things, ultimately the more you're gonna lose. It's like what you want to do. And the way I think of it is if you've ever seen, a duck swimming in a pond, right? you know the phrase water off a duck's back. the duck can dunk its head under water and come back up and the water just slides right off the feathers. That's the same way you want to approach your life, and that's the same way you want to approach anything, which is you'll experience more peace and actually more clarity, just letting everything go, not instantly taking things personal, not instantly trying to assign blame, or instantly trying to, assign some kind of reaction to something because you feel it's necessary. Like you feel being defensive is necessary when it's a whole lot easier just to let it go. In fact, 15 years ago when I had originally started my business online, I wasn't ready for the amount of, just criticism and angry comments you get from people. And it doesn't matter what you do, right? You always have the haters, so to speak. As you grow bigger and bigger, you always have haters and you always have people who feel like they need to interject and try and tear you down in any area of life. And the superpower in that is literally becoming non reactionary. imagining it's the boat that hits you with nobody in it, right? The boat hits you, but nobody's there again, take away the driver, and all of a sudden the anger goes away and it becomes such a superpower to be able to approach things like that, right? Like people, other people aren't aware of what they say, but you are a hundred percent in control of the way you act, and the way you respond to these kinds of things. I went through phase, so it really caught me off guard, right? I think the scariest thing about being online for people is the judgment You get, the way people frame comments, negativity, anger, hate, all of those things, you're gonna get them, right? And that's just not online. That's in any public arena these days. You're gonna get it. You put yourself out there. It's impossible to please everyone. It's impossible. To make everyone like you. And invariably there's people who aren't gonna like you, and there's people who are going to direct hate and negativity purposely to try and drag you down into the mud with them. But the ultimate response is simply being able to just let it go, right? There's no need to take those things personally. There's no need to instantly. See it as a reflection upon yourself in any way, shape, or form. The superpower in it is just to say, you know what? Whatever they said I don't care, right? I'm just gonna keep going. I'm just gonna start doing my thing. And that's where the real learning comes into play. Like I realized, I went through a phase where I was like, these haters are really bothering me, And I went through a phase where you realize okay, firing back doesn't really get you anywhere. Number one, it gives them the satisfaction of you responding. And number two, all it does is leave you more angry and frustrated, right? And then it just opens up more of a back and forth that leads to a road to nowhere, right? that's. How I learned that lesson actually was realizing, having the opportunity to fire back and doing it enough, you realize it doesn't really serve you in any way, shape or form. It just drags you down into the mud with them. And again, it's going back to that approach, which is I can be completely non reactionary in things. I can be completely, I wouldn't necessarily use the word stoic. But just detached, which is again, you're doing your own thing and it doesn't matter what you do, where you are, what you say. There's always gonna be people with an opinion. There's always gonna be people with some type of judgment. There's always gonna be people who will purposefully try to bring you down, because by the way, it's always easier to tear something down than it is to build something up. So there's always people that are gonna try. To tear you down, but where the superpower really lies is just realizing to yourself, it doesn't matter. It's just water off the duck's back. I just let it go. you don't need to react. You don't need to get frustrated. You don't need to feel the urge to be defensive. You don't need to have some kind of response. You don't need to escalate. Not every negative comment or criticism needs to turn into like full blown World War iii. The power comes from just letting it go, and that really is a superpower, right? if you let negative comments or comments specifically designed to tear you down, constantly get to you. You effectively have no control over your life. you're allowing the other people to have control over your emotions and your reactions, and so effectively you become a puppet on their strings because you can't control yourself. That happens in areas of life, whether that's, relationships with people, coworkers in business, family members, all sorts of things But the better that you can get at it, the better you can get at catching yourself. the real power is understanding when you have the urge to react and when you have. this deeper calling where it's like I have to fire back. Maybe you're somebody who always needs the final word. You always take everything defensively and you have this urge to, it's like impossible to keep quiet. That's where you really have to catch yourself in those moments and say, you know what? I'm not going to respond. I'm just not gonna say anything because by me reacting, all it does is bring more frustration, more anger, and it pulls more negative emotions and thoughts into your head, which you don't need, right? If somebody gets angry at you, right? There's always some way, shape, or form is just simply asking yourself. Is this even about me? And once you take a step back and ask yourself is this even really about me? You realize like 99.9% of the time, it's not even about you. It's the holiday season we just finished the holiday season in December is like a high stress month for everybody. It's like you go to the shopping malls. And you see they're packed with cars, right? The parking lots, the grocery stores, everyone has filled the brim. These are last minute shopping, throwing parties, everybody's on edge. I remember pulling into the parking lot, a shopping mall down the street from my house where, I was clearly the first one to the parking lot, and some other guy thinks that he was the first one to the parking lot and he's. Honking the horn, going crazy, waving his fists. And, all I could think of were, I looked at it and it was like the perfect moment for exactly what I'm describing here with the boats is with this empty boat philosophy is, yeah, I could look at him and I can escalate and I can start screaming back at him and shaking my fist at him. And, the whole thing would escalate if I kept doing that. But in that moment I realized, you know what? I'm gonna park the car and move on. This isn't even about me. This guy's angry. He's throwing a temper tantrum and he can just drive down another 50 feet and there's more parking spaces, right? So I can take in that moment and say, you know what, it's not even about me. It's just he's angry and here's a vehicle for him to take it out on. And I'm not gonna be baited into engaging. I'm just gonna let it go. and part of it too is learning to develop, thicker skin and not just succumbing to being reactionary. And the more you learn this and other areas of your life, the simpler your life becomes, the less you feel attacked, the less you take things Personally. It's very freeing when you do this, which is you know what? I'm just gonna march to the beat of my own drum and all the stuff that's happening around me. If it starts to infringe on my little circle or bubble, I just simply ask myself, is this really about me or is it not? And because it's a choice, when the boat crashes into you, you can choose for yourself to believe there's either someone driving the boat that's crashing it into you, or the boat is empty and it crashes into you. And the thing to remember is that it's not the boat that crashes into you that causes anger. It's the belief that there's a person in the boat that crashed into you, which is causing the anger. And if you allow yourself to react to that, it just drags you down right along with them. So I think that's another important lesson to keep in mind if you find yourself, especially after holiday stress and all this stuff going on, is, just controlling your reactions is being aware of how you respond and understanding that you can't control things that other people will say or do. But you are 100% in control of how you react. So that's what I've got on today's show. if this was beneficial, share it with someone that could benefit from it or text it to a family member who could benefit from hearing. This helps to grow the show and spread the word. Thanks a lot. I'll talk to you soon.