Tami Simon:
Hello, friends, my name’s Tami Simon, and I’m the founder of Sounds True, and I want to welcome you to the Sounds True Podcast, Insights at the Edge. I also want to take a moment to introduce you to Sounds True’s new membership community and digital platform. It’s called Sounds True One. Sounds True One features original premium transformational docuseries, community events, classes to start your day and relax in the evening, special weekly live shows, including a video version of Insights at the Edge with an after show community question and answer session with featured guests. I hope you’ll come join us, explore, come have fun with us and connect with others. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
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In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Light Watkins. Light Watkins has been a spiritual teacher and a meditation teacher for more than two decades. He’s the author of the book, The Inner Gym, Bliss More Knowing Where to Look, and a new book, it’s called Travel Light, Spiritual Minimalism to Live A More Fulfilled Life. And we’re going to be talking about spiritual minimalism, an outer experiment that light’s been doing for the last five years, only owning the possessions that he can fit into a backpack. And also, we’re going to talk about the inward spiritual materialism. What is that? How do we declutter ourselves so we can hear and take action on the voice of our heart? Here’s my conversation with Light Watkins.
What is spiritual minimalism? Inside, outside? Light, come join us and share with our Sounds True audience what was happening for you back in 2018 when you made the decision to go on this adventure of spiritual minimalism?
Light Watkins:
Hey, Tami, it’s wonderful being here with you, as always. Back in 2018, let’s see, I was living in Venice, California, wonderful life, great apartment, ten minutes walking from the beach, and I had just gotten out of a relationship I think, at the end of 2016. And I don’t know, I just got this call to switch things up a bit, and I had done that a few other times in my life. In fact, when I originally moved to Los Angeles from New York, I just gotten out of a relationship. I guess switching things up is my version of cutting my hair off like some people do when they get out of a relationship. But yeah, I had seen the minimalist documentary, which came out in 2016, and had been following their work for a little bit. And I had another friend of mine, who I wrote about in the book, who had started traveling nomadically about two years prior to that.
So all these things were coming to a head and I just felt like the right thing to do to purge, to get rid of everything. And I was also on the road quite a bit for work. I was doing some meditation workshops and retreats, and I had just come out with my third book, which is Bliss More, which is a book on meditation, and I had a bunch of tour dates for that. So I thought this is the perfect time to, and perhaps, even, the last time I would have to travel like this just from a carry-on bag, that was my plan was to move into a carry-on bag.
So I turned in my 30 day notice to the Lord of my land, and then after that it became real and I didn’t really have a whole lot of time to think about it or go back and forth because I had to get rid of four decades of stuff within those 30 days. And sure enough, on the last day, May 31st, 2018, I rolled out of my old apartment in my new apartment, which was my little roller carry, carry-on bag, 22 inch carry-on bag, which was the largest carry-on that would fit in the overhead compartment of most airlines, I’d done my research, and I had what I thought I would need. And then about a year into it I realized I had way too much stuff and I ended up downsizing to a backpack. And so that’s where we are today.
Tami Simon:
What do you mean you had way too much stuff? Why did you think? I could imagine you thinking I really need this, that, or the other thing, but way too much stuff?
Light Watkins:
Yeah. It’s interesting because, and I wrote about this in the book, but I got a chance to really sit with how much stuff I had because every time I moved locations, which, at that time, was about once every week or every couple of weeks, I moved all of my stuff with me. So everything came with me everywhere I went. And it’s easy to forget how much stuff you have if you have a bunch of things in your closet and under the bed and in the garage, but if you’re actually traveling with it everywhere you go, it weighs you down a bit. So you start asking the question, do I really need this? Do I really need that? Am I really wearing this or that? And it turns out, I wasn’t using a lot of things that I brought.
And really, it was an extension of asking what I would consider to be not the best question when I first did it. And this is what you learned in the process. The question I was asking is, how much stuff can I fit into this 22 inch carryon bag instead of what do I really need? What am I actually using on a regular basis? So that became the question a year or two down the line, which allowed me to, then, operate from the backpack.
Tami Simon:
Now of course, what I’m most interested in is the type of inner attitude that spiritual minimalism cultivates. What is that? How did these outer letting goes, how did that change you? But before we get there, tell me, what did you discover you absolutely need as you go from one place to another such that you can fit it all in a backpack? What are the critical things you need?
Light Watkins:
I’m going to give you an esoteric answer to that question because that’s where it is now. But the most important thing that you need is the willingness to not hold on to the things that you have. And what I mean by that is everything that I brought with me, initially, has been replaced, for the most part. And it really depended on where I was, what time of year it was, how long I was going to be there, because if I was in an environment that where it was ten degrees or just freezing, I would have to go and get some long johns and I’d have to figure out situation to layer things up. Or if I was going to be in a place where it was really, really hot, then I would shed the things that I had and lighten the load a little bit. And I would just…
So it depended on where I was. I would get things and would, if I didn’t need them anymore, I would gift them away or I would donate them to a secondhand clothing store. So that was a part of it. I don’t want to pretend like I was exclusively just living from what I had in my carry-on back from day one, but I learned, I became more of a hunter-gatherer as opposed to a nomad, if that makes sense. I would gather things that I needed and I would leave behind what I didn’t need. And so it was this very fluid exchange that was happening all the time. But the biggest transition happened when I learned, or I decided to teach myself how to hand wash my own clothes. Once I did that, then that changed everything. That changed what the requirements of the places that I was staying in. It changed. I was able to downsize even more. And that, in and of itself, became a nice, beautiful meditative process. You take care of things a lot more because you’re hand washing them.
And yet, over the years, because it’s, I’ve been doing it for five plus years now, I started developing this framework of spiritual minimalism, which is minimalism practiced from the inside out. And so that was the foundation by which I was able to practice the most important thing, which I mentioned letting go, being able to let go. So the real transition of when I became a minimalist was not in 2018. It was actually in 2003 when I started taking my meditation practice seriously and became a daily meditator, because I think that is what caused me to get into that space, not just the head space, but also the heart space to not only listen to that inner calling, to take the leap of faith, but to actually follow through on it.
And I talked about this in my last book, Mark Twain says, “Our two most important days, the day we’re born, the day we figure out why.” And then I say there’s a third day in there that’s also as important, and that’s the day we act upon our why. And that’s something that I talk a lot about in Travel Light is not just tuning into your heart voice and listening to what it’s saying, but also taking action on it. And the action that you take is not going to be predictable. It’s not going to lead to some degree of certainty. And there’s no way I could have ever imagine, back in May 31st, 2018, that I’d be sitting here talking to you from Mexico City after a pandemic, and I’ve got this book coming out called Travel Light, and just all the things.
And it’s just so interesting when you think about life like that, that really, anything that we’re all experiencing is completely, it wasn’t a part of the original plan, none of it. None of it was, and when you really understand that, then it allows you to live a little bit more plan-free and just be in the moment a lot more. And that’s really one of the foundations of traveling light and practicing spiritual minimalism.
Tami Simon:
Can you share with me the connection between your daily meditation practice that you’ve established in your life since 2003, and this ongoing letting go?
Light Watkins:
Yeah.
Tami Simon:
That’s the inner aspect of spiritual minimalism.
Light Watkins:
Great question. So a lot of times when we think about minimalism in the conventional sense, for instance, let’s just do it as a thought experiment. Let’s say that somebody, and I’m talking to a listener, now. Let’s say someone gave you a task, become a minimalist in two weeks. You have two weeks to become a minimalist. Usually someone receiving that instruction, what they would start to do is go in their closets, go in their garage, get underneath the kitchen cabinets and start getting rid of things, start making space. So the conventional idea is that when you make space in your external environment, and let’s say you get to the point where it looks like a zen monastery, you’re going to feel a difference when you walk into that space, you’re going to feel a sense of peace. You’re going to feel zen.
And I love what Robert Persik says, the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He says, “The only zen you’re going to find at the top of the mountain is the zen you bring up there with you.” In other words, the zen that we look for externally, whether it’s through a sparse space or through an achievement or through an experience, the only zen we’re going to find externally is the zen that we have cultivated within. So the meditation gave me the tools to cultivate spaciousness. And in order to do that, you have to let go of things. You have to let go of stress, you have to let go of past trauma, you have to let go of the emotional baggage, the internal clutter, and there’s a connection there. Our ability to be present, our ability to be grateful, our ability to be all the things that we ultimately envision for ourselves; being kind, generous, compassionate, et cetera, is directly related to whatever emotional baggage we carry around with us.
Because if anything is robbing us from those abilities to be present, kind, compassion, generous, grateful, it’s our past, it’s our stress. And so that’s why meditation is such a key tool and a key part of this spiritual minimalism journey. Because it helps you to, it helps your body to get rid of the internal clutter, and then a natural side effect of that as you find yourself naturally just more kind, more gracious, more grateful, more compassionate, more everything like that. And when you’re truly embodying those states, you don’t hold on to things because you’re not thinking that this thing is what’s making me happy. You already have the fulfillment, you already have the gratitude inside, and so that allows you to be able to let go of things a little bit easier or a lot easier.
Tami Simon:
Now, it seems to me that somebody could own, I don’t know, two houses, three houses, four houses even, and still have an inner life that didn’t have a lot of clutter. But what I am curious about, that’s my hypothesis, but what I’m curious about is from doing this experiment that you’ve been on outer minimalism, what has it taught you? What has it shown you from the experiment about how that could impact your inner world?
Light Watkins:
So one thing that I make clear in the book is that I’m not advocating for people to get rid of anything. I don’t think that’s important for anyone to get rid of anything. That was my path. That’s how spirit or the universe called me forward to have this experience so that I could write about it and then ultimately, so I could have this conversation with you about it and so that people can listen to it and take that and then do whatever they feel called to do as a result of that. And my thesis is that everybody has their version of that.
And what that means is there’s something that you’re being called to do and it’s, perhaps, tied to something you’ve envisioned for yourself for a long time. So for some people, it may be starting a company, recording spiritual teachers giving lectures for someone else.
Tami Simon:
Just for example.
Light Watkins:
Just for example. For someone else, it could be starting a podcast, for someone else could be writing their first book, someone else could be getting in the best shape of their life. In other words, it’s something that the act of doing it is going to stretch you out of your comfort zone and to this new potential, this new possibility.
And when we get this inner calling, because we all have it to some extent, and it usually shows up in the form of curiosity. We keep thinking about something, we keep finding ourselves curious about something. We’re following people who are already doing similar things on social media. We’re watching people on Netflix who are doing similar types of things. We’re imagining, we’re fantasizing, we’re dreaming, but then we’ll get into our head and say, well no, I couldn’t do something like that because I don’t have everything that it takes. And so we end up finding ourselves getting stuck.
And this process of creating spaciousness inside is also the process of becoming unstuck and developing enough trust in our inner guidance, the same amount of trust that we would have in our external guidance, which is oftentimes in the form of GPS. When you’re driving somewhere and you don’t know where you’re going, you put the thing in your GPS, in your phone, and then it’ll just tell you how to get there. So in the spiritual traditions, the heart is our personal GPS, and it’s always prompting and nudging us in the direction of our purpose, our path, if you will, our destiny. And the reason we second guess it is, again, because it takes us, has to take you out of your comfort zone and into your growth zone because it needs to stretch you. You need to become this person in order to fulfill this destiny.
Think of it like those of you who remember Star Wars; Luke Skywalker on his little farm in this planet and his destiny was to become this amazing great Jedi Knight. He wasn’t that initially, at the beginning of the story, at the beginning of his hero’s journey. So his home had to get destroyed in order for him to be OK with leaving his comfort zone and then going on that adventure that we now know as Star Wars, and we all have our version of that. The tighter we cling to the comfort zone, the more it will get destroyed around us. And so it could be a toxic relationship, that’s your version of that. It could be a soul sucking job with the boss that’s so passive aggressive and you just can’t take it one more day. That could be your version of that. Or it could be any number of things like that. You could be having run-ins with your landlord or with your neighbor, or there could be mudslides around your house and you’re just thinking, I can’t do this anymore.
And that’s your heart saying, OK, this situation was relevant for you for a period of time. It got you to the point where you could receive the next step along your path. Now you have to move in that direction. And here’s the thing, once you start moving in that direction, you find that you become even more present, in the same way that if you were to go to a foreign country. Let’s say you go to Vietnam, you’ve never been to Vietnam, you don’t speak Vietnamese. Anytime we’re in that foreign type of environment, we are so present, we’re looking around, we’re not behaving like we are in our neighborhood where we’re just on the phone and ignoring pretty much everything happening around us. It just makes you present because you need to know where you are, you need to get oriented, you’re trying to understand what people are trying to say to you. That’s how being on your path and your purpose feels, and it’s all being guided from the inside out.
So spiritual minimalism means get rid of the internal clutter so that you can be properly guided from the inside out along your path and your purpose.
Tami Simon:
Very clear. Thank you. Thanks for defining it like that. Now interestingly, you tell a story in Travel Light about, here you were, you were getting clear on your purpose to be a spiritual teacher, a meditation teacher, and it started to look like things were going well, but then not so well, in terms of your girlfriend leaving you, and you had a new place that had a high rent and you had to figure it out. And I think sometimes when things start not going well, we have the thought, am I really on purpose? Am I listening to, what you call, my heart voice? I’m listening to my heart voice and look at the situation I’m in. Seems like things have gotten a lot, lot tougher. So I wonder if you can tell that story, and also what you think that you could offer to people when they find themselves in a situation where things are getting harder, not easier, as they’re embarking on following their purpose.
Light Watkins:
So one of the misconceptions of following your heart is that things are going to get easier. That’s not really how it works. Following your heart, again, it’s going to take you out of your comfort zone, but still, we can do it. And a lot of times, you’ll find yourself getting into your own little groove, your own rhythm, and as you’re following your heart. So you take the leap, you figure out things, it all looks like it’s working, and then you start feeling stuck again, you start getting resistance, there’s tension, there’s friction in relationships. And so what that means is that you are starting to hit another growth spurt. In other words, you’re continuing to get stretched.
And I’ll tell you the story in a second, but let me give you a metaphor just to illustrate it, to show you what this actually is. Because we’ve all had the experience, I think, of working out or exercising in some way. Maybe some of us have even hired a trainer, and that’s because we had a really big goal for ourselves and we knew that, that left to our own devices, we were not going to push ourselves as much as we would need to push ourselves in order to reach that goal. So we hired a trainer.
Now, when you hire a trainer, the trainer’s job is to push you, is to lovingly push you, to hold you accountable, to take you further than you would take yourself. So you’re never going to go to the gym with the trainer and then have this really nice comfortable experience. They’re going to put a little bit more weight on. And you’re going to be thinking, wait, I don’t know if I can lift that. And the trainer’s going to go, “don’t worry, I’m going to help you. I’m going to give you an assist if you need one.” OK?
So that’s how the universe works, as well. When we talk about following the heart, the heart is like the trainer and it’s going to put you in situations that are going to stretch you a little bit past beyond what you think you’re capable of doing. So every now and again, it’s going to put a couple more weights on the barbell, and your job is to move through that experience. And you’re going to probably struggle at some points, but you’re going to get that assist from the universe, and then you start to acclimate to that level of strength, and then puts on another couple of barbells and you’re like, oh man, now I got to lift this. But in the process, you’re getting stronger and stronger and stronger.
So the story you’re referring to, I had found my calling, I had at this inner calling to become a meditation teacher back in 2003. It took me four years for that calling to become realized. I ended up going to India, learning how to teach meditation, came back, started teaching people meditation, giving people mantras from my one bedroom apartment in West Hollywood, California. Turns out I was very good at it. People were coming and drove standing in line to get their mantras. It was awesome. I was making a decent living, I met this beautiful woman at this health food store, actually, at the first Erewhon. For those of you who are familiar with Erewhon in Los Angeles, it wasn’t the same Erewhon that we see today.
But we ended up creating this wonderful relationship. We got a place together. And then within about three months, for some reason, people stopped coming to learn how to meditate. Maybe it was because I was in a different area of town. I’d moved from West Hollywood to the beach. She broke up with me and under very dramatic circumstances, and I started having a lot of doubt in myself. And I was thinking, maybe I don’t, maybe I’m a hack. I didn’t know what to do. I started going on Craigslist looking at part-time jobs. Jobs that would pay me ten, $20 an hour, but all of them were far away. I’m living near the beach and these jobs were in Pasadena and Glendale, which are like 45 minutes, an hour away with traffic. And then I thought to myself, I could put this energy into trying to find a job, or I could put this energy into marketing myself as a meditation teacher.
And so that’s when I decided to turn my living room into, essentially, a video studio. And I had a little point and shoot camera with a video function. And I started making these videos just about different aspects of meditation. Why do I advocate for sitting comfortably? What does conscious mean? Things like that. Things that people would just have questions about. And I started posting these videos on YouTube. YouTube started in 2006, this was probably around 2009 or something like that. My videos were getting 100 views, 200 views, things like that. And I was slowly running out of money. And then I got this call to go teach in New York City.
I had lived in New York before and it seemed like nobody was showing up in my classes in Los Angeles, and I figured I’ll reach out to some people in New York, see if anybody wants to learn how to meditate. So I emailed some friends, everyone said, yeah, come, come, come. And I looked at my bank account and I only had enough money, at that point, to get a ticket to New York, one way ticket to New York and hope for the best. And of course in my head I was thinking, there’s no way you can spend your last money. You have these bills. What are you going to do? You have no savings, blah, blah, blah. But my heart said, go to New York.
So I go to New York and I have orientation for people who may want to receive training from me. None of my friends who said to come to New York showed up at the orientation, of course. But there were a few people who did show up, and the people who did show up were really enthusiastic about learning how to meditate. So they enrolled in the training and I was able to make the money back that I spent, plus some. And I trained them as though I was training bar Barack Obama, like the President of the United States. I gave them the VIP service because that was my standard for myself, as a teacher. It didn’t matter if there was 20 people in the room or two people in the room, I always treated them like they were dignitaries. And by the end, the guy was so enthusiastic, he said, “Hey, by the way, I’ve got this physical therapy studio on the Upper East Side and I’ve got hundreds of clientele. I would love for you to come and teach a lot of my clients this meditation because I think it’s the best thing going.”
So that relationship that developed from that, that course ended up revitalizing my career as a meditation teacher. And I asked this guy, I said, “How’d you find out about this training?” Because I didn’t know him. He said, “I saw one of your YouTube videos that you posted.” And so I started doing this bi-coastal teaching thing and turned out, the reason, one of the reasons why my LA classes were getting smaller and smaller is because I was too available. I was teaching every week on the week. When I only started teaching once a month because I was traveling to teach, now, then my LA classes started to become more crowded. And I started teaching in Chicago because I was flying over Chicago anyway, why not stop and teach a course? So that became the nationwide, and then ultimately, worldwide teaching experience, which has been still happening even until today.
And when I reflect back on that story, again, in the beginning of that story, I was living the dream. I was doing exactly what I felt my purpose was, but I got to a point where I got comfortable and the heart said, OK, we’re going to put a couple more barbells on, a couple more weights on the barbell, which is, you have to learn how to shoot videos, you have to put more, invest more into helping people, being of service. And that’s really what your purpose is all about, is some aspect of service where you have to do, go a little bit out of your comfort zone, or maybe a lot, to help people in some meaningful way.
And so that was really the intent behind making those videos and then taking that massive, what felt like, at the time, a massive leap of faith going to New York. And the universe used the carrot of my friends telling me to come, even though none of them ended up showing up, in order for me to meet this other person who, then, because I approached it in a world-class way, ended up inviting me to do the same thing with his clients. And it’s just, we could keep going, we could keep extrapolating that and we can just see how things tie together. And of course, this is all anecdotal. I don’t know if, 100% percent certain, that these are the reasons why things played out the way that they played out.
All I know is that the one commonality is that I kept following my heart. My head kept saying no. I kept overriding that with the heart voice. And that’s what the takeaway is, as far as I’m concerned, is that again, we all have our version of that. Our head and our heart are in a constant tug of war. And your head is going to come up with all kinds of important sounding reasons and excuses why you should not follow your heart, and doing the heart thing is not going to make sense. It’s not going to make sense. You’re not going to be able to pay the bills, people are depending on you. You can keep increasing the stakes as high as you want, but my argument is that if you follow your heart, you’re going to end up in a better place than you can possibly imagine for yourself than if you follow your head, and there’s only one way to find out.
Tami Simon:
Light, I love this metaphor of the trainer. I work with a trainer over Zoom, picked up during the pandemic, and we keep working together. And I want to ask this because it’s part of the metaphor. Sometimes when he’s pushing me and I’m feeling a little grumpy, I’ll just like shoot a bird or something or say something like, you’re the man I love to hate. Or something grumpy and terrible, like a big terrible bear will come out of my mouth. And I think that’s also sometimes how it feels when I’m being pushed out of my comfort zone because I’m taking a risk and things aren’t going very well. I also feel like, whoa, come on. Really? This is really hard, and no, I don’t want to.
Light Watkins:
I would say it feels like that almost all the time. When I got the call to change my name to Light, first thing I said was, fuck, I don’t want to do that. I like my name. But that wasn’t the call, and-
Tami Simon:
What was your previous name before you became Light?
Light Watkins:
I don’t say it publicly, yet.
Tami Simon:
OK.
Light Watkins:
I’m still enjoying the mystery behind it.
Tami Simon:
OK, that’s all right. We’ll keep it veiled.
Light Watkins:
But yeah, it was an interesting experience because it was born out of a conversation where I was I just talking about people in LA who had changed their names, with a buddy of mine. And because LA’s one of those places where people go and they rebrand themselves and they call themselves things like Truth and Peace and Sky and Tree and Conscious and Mother, these are all real names, by the way.
Tami Simon:
Right.
Light Watkins:
And I met this guy named-
Tami Simon:
This guy named Light.
Light Watkins:
I met this guy named, yeah, I met this guy named Pineapple Head.
Tami Simon:
Come on.
Light Watkins:
Yeah, no, seriously. So I was telling my friend about Pineapple Head because that was, to me, that was OK, really? Pineapple Head? But he was very confident about this whole pineapple head thing. And I asked my friend, “What would you change your name to?” And he said, “Ocean.” And he said, “What would you change your name to?” And I said, “I don’t know. I can’t think of anything.” And he said, “What’s the first thing that comes to mind?” And I was like, “Nothing’s coming to mind.” And he starts getting frustrated with me and he starts counting down five, four, three, two, and I just blurted out, “Light.”
And I don’t know where light came from, but what ended up happening was the idea to change my name to Light, it just kept percolating. And then I was like, oh crap, it’s coming from that same place that initially told me to relocate from New York to LA, and that same place that told me to become a meditation teacher, and that same place that prompted me to take that spontaneous trip to Paris that I wrote about in Knowing Where to Look, my last book. And so I recognized the feeling tone, and I had made a vow to myself many years before that I was going to follow my heart relentlessly because that was, I just, every time I did that, again, it was scary. I was nervous, but I was also excited by the possibilities, and it always worked out better than I imagined. So I knew I had to take it seriously, but it wasn’t something that I wanted to do. It would be the equivalent of the trainer telling me-
Tami Simon:
Sure.
Light Watkins:
Today is we’re going to get you your personal record, your PR on the squat machine or something like that. And it’s just like, oh God, this is going to be hard. But again, we all have our version of that, so.
Tami Simon:
You said you recognized the feeling tone. Tell me about that.
Light Watkins:
It was this, it was a nervous excitement. It was a nervous excitement. And I call it in the book, I refer to it as a scary yes. We’ve heard the motivational speakers talk about hell yes. If it’s not a hell yes, then it’s an obvious no. And it’s like, well yeah, hell, yeses are easy. If something feels like a hell yes, like if someone wanted to give you, I don’t know, a Rolex.
Tami Simon:
Sure, sure.
Light Watkins:
Of course you go, “Hell yes, why not?” And that happens, that’s the thing. We meet people and their energy feels so aligned. It’s like, of course I’ll go out with you. Of course I’ll help you out. But it’s the scary yeses that really move the needle. And when I say, “scary yes”, I’m referring to things like change your name to Light, or do you want to do a cold plunge, or do you want to go to recovery? You’ve been indulging a little bit too much in whatever the thing is, maybe you need to take a recovery program for that, or you need to have that honest conversation with the person you keep bickering with. There’s some passive aggressiveness that’s happening, elephants are in the room, everyone’s ignoring it. Somebody has to go first and bring this up.
These are things that, on the surface, we would not, necessarily, want to do. But deep, deep, deep, deep down, when we are feeling like our most authentic self, I think we look at these kinds of situations and go, yeah, I need to do that. I need to have a conversation. I need to push myself a little more. I need to start working out. I need to start eating healthier. I need to. Maybe it goes so far as to say I want to eat healthier, I want to work out. I want to be in better shape. I want to work a job that it feels aligned with my integrity.
And then life gets busy. And then we just, again, continue excusing ourselves from that because it just feels like it’s so hard, and we need more time, and we don’t have enough resources, and I’m tired. And so those kinds of opportunities are hell yes, are scary yeses. And when we do them, when we get to the other side of that hard conversation, when we finally do get in shape, when we finally do take a leap of faith from the soul sucking job into a more aligned opportunity, we always feel better as a result.
And going back to the trainer analogy, yes, it’s hard working out with this trainer, but how do you feel after you leave there? You feel like you just did an Ironman, you feel amazing, you feel so good that you pushed yourself or you put yourself in a position to get stretched in that positive way. And so if you have a sense of the expanded feeling after achieving the possibility, then that’s the feeling tone of your heart is prompting you or nudging you in that direction. But you know the experience itself is going to be challenging for you, for your comfort zone, especially.
Tami Simon:
Now you talk about listening to our heart, listening to our heart voice. What about when our mental voice, our rational voice and our heart voice, they’re not on the same page. Not on the same page here.
Light Watkins:
They rarely are on the same page, yeah. And so what I advocate in the book is split testing to find out. Because a lot of times people will follow their heart. If you knew for a fact that this is my heart telling me to do this, I think a lot of times people would at least consider it more. But the ego is really good at playing the imposter and disguising itself as the heart voice. But here’s how you can tell the difference. The ego is usually interested in short-term satisfaction or staying in the comfort zone.
So let’s just take a very common example. Let’s say you’re in line at a store and it’s a long line, so you have nowhere to go. You have to buy this thing that whatever it is that you’re buying, you’re standing in the line. And let’s say you notice the person in front of you, they have some really interesting shoes, and something inside of you says, “Say something, just compliment them on the shoes. Start a conversation.” But then you have this other voice that says, “No, that’s stupid. You’ll look creepy. You’ll look weird. They’re probably busy. They probably don’t want to hear anything you have to say.” And so that’s a classic example of the heart voice telling you to say something which gets you out of your comfort zone a little bit, and then the ego voice, which is a rational thought, they’re busy, they look like they’re preoccupied, they’re probably not interested, you’re going to look weird, you’re going to look creepy, et cetera, et cetera. And so you have an opportunity there to split test and figure out which one is the real voice of your heart.
Now split testing is a process that internet marketers do. People who specialize in running Facebook ads and Google ads, they’ll basically post the same ad, but with two different headlines, or with two different background colors, or two different photos, or two different captions, and they’ll see which one gets the most clicks.
Tami Simon:
Sure. We do quite a lot of this, it sounds true.
Light Watkins:
Right, right. Exactly. So they’ll test every element, and then the one that gets the most clicks is the one that is the most optimized, and that’s the one that ends up running. Well, you can do the same thing with the inner voices. You can follow one, whichever one you think is your heart voice, and then see how you feel afterward.
And if you feel that sense of expansion, the same one that you feel when you walk out of the gym, then you know that, OK, that was probably my heart voice. If you feel a bit of contraction, which is what the ego voice makes you do, because it’s like everybody, every guy, especially, has had the experience of seeing a woman that they thought was attractive and they wanted to go up to talk to her, they wanted to go up and say hi or to get their number or invite them for coffee, but then you talk yourself out of it. No, she’s probably into these other kind of guys, I’m not tall enough, I’m not fit enough, I’m not this enough, I’m not that enough. And then you end up thinking about it later on and you can’t get it out of your mind and you just feel like, oh, I just weaseled out of that one. That didn’t make me feel good at all. And it ends up working on your self-esteem.
And with women, I think women have more negative self-talk than men tend to have. Men are strangely confident for no reason. You didn’t deserve any of this. And then women are strangely in their head and tying everything to everything else, and they’ll use that as a reason not to get up in front of the room and give a talk or just display their talent in some way. And those are all functions of the ego.
So when we can override that with the heart voice, then it always makes us feel like, you know what? I had a little imposter syndrome, but who cares? I was able to move through that and I was able to actually express myself, and I was able to learn something of value from that experience. And then that informs the next time it happens, and then the next time and the next time, the next thing you know, you’re rewiring your personality to be more in alignment with what you’re feeling in your heart, and that’s when you’ve optimized it.
Tami Simon:
Right. But I’m a little confused about this split testing thing because, of course, when we do it in real life, you get results and then you go with those results. But here, you’re doing it a thought experiment of some kind, and you don’t know what the results are going to be. So if I said I’m going to go talk to that person and I feel more expansive and more present and more connected because I did it and I’m glad I took the risk, but I don’t know if that person, I don’t know, takes something terrible, ended up being a super jerk and punched me or something, I’m just making something up, I’d be like, oh god, I wish I hadn’t done that. So we don’t know what the results are when we do these thought experiments. Not quite sure how to do it.
Light Watkins:
Just like with the ads, you can’t base it on just running the ad for a day. You have to do this thousand, maybe a thousand times.
Tami Simon:
Oh, I got you.
Light Watkins:
And so then you get data.
Tami Simon:
So I’m taking a lot of risks here to get the data.
Light Watkins:
You’re taking a lot of perceived risks, yeah. But here’s the other thing, the more you’ve, even intentionally or unintentionally follow your heart voice, it turns up the volume so it becomes more clear, more obvious, which is the voice of your heart and which is not the voice of your heart. And that’s the ultimate goal is to turn up the volume on the heart voice. So then you don’t have to guess at it anymore. You’ve had enough data showing you, OK, when the voice speaks to me in this way and I follow it in that way, then I’m going to feel expansive, as a result. And that’s how you become conversational in the voice of your heart.
So I’m here in Mexico City right now, I’m learning Spanish. And when I’m out here in the field and I come across someone who doesn’t speak any English, I’m hoping they don’t talk too quickly and don’t use too many slang words and things like that because it’ll be harder for me to understand what they’re saying because I’m having to translate three times. I’m having to translate what they say into English, then I’m having to translate what my response would be back in Spanish, and then I’m having to actually say that in a way that they would understand it and in a cadence that they would understand it. And the whole thing, to them, may seem like I’m a bit slow. I’m a bit slow. Whenever they speak to me, it’s like, why is this guy talking? But that’s the process of becoming conversational in this language. And eventually, it gets to the point where I start thinking in Spanish and then I can respond right away in the same way that you and I are having this conversation. You’re not having to do any translation at all.
And you can get that way with your heart voice, as well. You can become conversational in it, and it allows you to make faster decisions without having to overthink it. But in the beginning, as you’re cultivating that connection, you have to overthink it and you’re going to be clunky, and you may say the wrong thing or you may be weird, even though you try not to be weird, but that’s all a part of the process of becoming conversational.
Tami Simon:
That will definitely happen. The weird part. But I think what I’m trying to understand, Light, is in your experience, you follow this loud heart voice and it doesn’t turn out well. Let’s just say it doesn’t turn out well. And what do you do at that point? Do you question, what was I doing? I felt that feeling of a scary yes, it was electrical, it was exciting. I knew it was what I was supposed to do. And look, this has turned out to be slid sideways. What’s going on? What do you say to yourself in that moment?
Light Watkins:
So going back to the example of the meditation teaching, slowing down, all of that, girlfriend breaking up like life. Just because you follow your heart voice doesn’t mean life is going to work out for you. But you don’t want to judge the movie by what’s happening in the first scene of the movie. And you just have to understand that this is a process. But here’s the thing, just like in a movie, when you watch a movie, if it’s a really good movie written by really great screenwriters, everything they show you in the first ten minutes of that film is going to, somehow, come into play in the final act of the film. So if you see a gun lying on the table, if somebody’s learning how to drive some weird vehicle in the first ten minutes, that’s because they’re going to have to do something similar to that in the final act of the movie.
And it’s going to be an exciting scene because you’re going to forget about the fact that they practiced it in the first ten minutes, and then when you see them jump in that thing and they know how to work it. Like in that movie, Aliens, with Sigourney Weaver, where in the first ten minutes, she’s moving cargo in that robot. The final act of the movie, she’s fighting the alien from that robot that she used to use move cargo with. And that’s how life is. So if you find yourself going sideways in some situation, it’s because that skillset that you have to develop in order to navigate that situation is going to come into play down the line when you start to get into your path and your purpose.
So for me, I’m posting videos every day. I didn’t just start learning how to do videos a week ago or a month ago or a year ago, I started learning back in 2009 when I was having my point and shoot camera up on a shoebox making those original videos that I made, and I did a challenge for myself. I said, I’m going to do one video a day for a year. So I have hundreds of those poor quality videos about every subject under the sun related to meditation. And now I’m at a point where I can just spontaneously drop into a story or tell an anecdote or a vignette or write something that I haven’t previously really thought about because I’ve had all of those experiences leading up to now.
And everybody listening to this has their version of that. So if you were working in a toll booth in your early twenties because, for whatever the circumstances were, you had to be in that situation, but you really wanted to be a choreographer on at Alvin Ailey or something like this, who’s to say that that experience working in a toll booth is not going to inform some dance you’re going to choreograph 20 years from now where the dancer is in a confined space, but they have to express themselves in that way. And who better to choreograph that particular story than someone who worked in a toll booth who, all they wanted to do was dance. So you just have to have trust that everything you’re experiencing, everywhere you’re experiencing is happening for you and not to you, and it’s going to come into play at some point down the line.
Tami Simon:
Now, it’s pretty remarkable that you posted a video every day for 365 days. I think that’s a tremendous discipline, if you will, that you did that, in terms of building a muscle, what a terrific muscle. So I just want to say congratulations, because I think sometimes when people look at someone’s success, they don’t know what they did, the work they did, the daily discipline that they did.
Light Watkins:
Thank you. And I have to give that credit for the thing that I got called to do in 2016, June 6th, 2016, I sent out my first daily dose of inspiration email, which was something that I didn’t think would go on as long as it’s going on. I just sent out my 2,600 something email this morning. It’s still happening seven plus years later, and a lot of the stories that I wrote about in Knowing Where to Look, my previous book with Sounds True, as well as Travel Light, are extensions of some of those stories that I wrote in those emails.
But again, that’s what my heart told me to do. I didn’t want to do it. Who wants to wake up every morning and write for an hour? You can never sleep in, you can’t have late nights, if you’re traveling you have to make sure you account account for layovers and are you going to have wifi and blah, blah, blah. So that it’s been a lot of energy and a lot of effort. But I’ll tell you one thing, in all of these years, I have not gotten sick, too sick to be able to write on a daily basis. And so, I also, and this is, again, anecdotal, I get that. But I also feel like being on your purpose, in a way, is a health insurance because the universe supports those of us who are answering the call from your heart and taking action. You’re people of action.
And that’s what, if we want to strive for anything, don’t strive for a million dollars, don’t strive for a bigger house, bigger car, whatever. Those things may come to you as a byproduct of you living your purpose. What you want to strive for, though, is to be a person of action, not just someone who listens to their heart and thinks about it and contemplates it and dreams about the possibilities, but someone who actually takes the next step, even if it’s just a little, what I call, a hop of faith. Forget about the leap of faith. I get it. It’s too scary. Just take a hop of faith, just do one little thing that you can do today, such as complimenting that person’s shoes.
Tami Simon:
I want to read to you one of my favorite set of sentences from Travel Light. If you feel like you’re living your calling now, yet you’re not getting the resources or the support you need to make ends meet, you must begin to ask different questions. Instead of asking, how am I going to pay my bills? You have to ask, how can I be even more authentic in my approach? How can I help even more people in a genuine way? I loved that because I think sometimes when people aren’t getting the response, they are just looking at how am I going to make more money? How am I going to make more money? And yet, here you’re saying, how can I be even more authentic? How can I help even more people? And I wonder, for example, even in your daily dose of inspiration, how were you able to challenge yourself to be more authentic and help more people? How did that work for you?
Light Watkins:
I think after a certain point, you really don’t have much of a choice, because it’s not like I’m spending hours and hours and hours thinking about this thing. A lot of times I have a full day, like a lot of other people, a ton of meetings, want to get up and exercise, meditate, and do all the things. And so you’re just in a position where I learned that what I’m responsible for is not trying to be authentic, not trying to be clever, not trying to be insightful. My responsibility is showing up. Showing up making the space. And it’s kind of like what Maya Angelo said. She said, “You never have to worry about running out of creativity because creativity generates creativity.”
So the act of showing up and surrendering the whole thing over to the muse, as Elizabeth Gilbert calls it, I found that after about three weeks, three weeks into that commitment, that, that was feeding me, the muse started feeding me the content. And so about 60% of the things that I’ve written over these years have been stories and anecdotes that I didn’t, they were not premeditated or preconceived. They were things that came through me. A lot of times I’ll wake up and I’ll just meditate for 20 minutes, and then that’s where the incubation happens. The idea will occur, and I’ll come out of meditation and I’ll start typing what I just felt come through me, and that becomes that day’s dose of inspiration.
Tami Simon:
Here’s something I’d like to know. Do less to accomplish more. This is one of the insights of the spiritual minimalist. I would like to know how to do less to accomplish more. Help me out, Light.
Light Watkins:
Well, that example I just gave was actually a really good framework for that. So the idea of meditation, allowing yourself to sit and just be for 15 or 20 minutes, gives me the material to then write and to continue writing for seven plus years. So being able to tackle that feat by relying on this process of not doing much is the quintessential expression of do less to accomplish more. And I use, again, meditation is a big theme in the book because a lot of people will think, I don’t have time to meditate. I don’t have time to meditate. And when you say that, what that indicates to me is that you are engaged in the do more and accomplish less approach to life. Which means you’re running around, you’re doing all these things, but you’re really getting anything done.
And so the analogy that my teacher, my meditation teacher used many, many years ago, he said, “It’s kind of like being an archer. You have a bow and you have an arrow, but instead of using your bow and arrow in order to hit the target, you, physically, are running across the field and stabbing the arrow into that target. And then you’re running across to the other target and stabbing the arrow into that target, and you’re running over to the other one, and you’re wearing yourself out in the process. And so meditation is the equivalent of just standing in one place, taking your arrow and knocking it into the string of the bow, and you hit the target from that place, and then you get another arrow and you hit that next target, and then another arrow. So you’re still hitting your targets, but you’re able to do less and accomplish more. And so that’s how we want to reframe this inner stillness practice.
This is our secret weapon, if you will, for doing less and accomplishing more simply because we have more awareness, we have more presence, we have more of an ability to spot connections, we have more ability, a greater ability to prioritize, OK, what’s the most important thing right now? Is it sending the email or is it playing with my kids? Now, in some instances, it may be sending the email or you won’t have a house to play with your kids in. In other instances, it may be play with the kids because the email is not really that important. The difference is, can you discern between those two? Or are you in a default mode and you’re always on the email or you’re always ignoring your responsibilities with good intention, trying to be the best parent possible. So it’s a little bit of both and there, and we need to be able to tell from the inside out, OK, what’s the most important thing? And that’s what your heart can tell you if the volume is turned up enough, and that’s another way to turn up that volume is through your daily inner practice.
Tami Simon:
Five years ago, your heart voice said, get a 22 inch carry on, the only stuff you have, no storage locker, you’ll put into this suitcase. What’s your heart voice telling you today that’s the new discomfort zone for Light?
Light Watkins:
That is a really, really good question. What is my heart voice telling? OK, so my heart voice is telling me, now, to speak more, to get more on stages and to spread these messages to bigger audience, and even in corporate audiences, which is something I’ve actually stayed away from. I had all kinds of judgments around that, but I’m becoming more and more open to that. I’ve got, I’ve been introduced to this wonderful community, and look, I’m still, if I’m being completely transparent, I’m still, my head, my heart are still in tug of war. I’ve been spending a lot of money and a lot of time and effort on coaching and making sure that I’m bringing a world-class effort to this endeavor, and I don’t know how things are going to turn out. So I’m right there with you guys.
I’m right in the process with you, and that’s the thing about it. You don’t graduate from it, you just experience it at different levels. I would say higher and higher levels, which means little things like, oh, am I going to be able to pay my rent? That’s not really on your radar anymore. Even if you’re having a low month, something’s going to happen because you’ve been following your heart so you can just trust, OK, it’ll come in at the 11th hour, I don’t know how, but it’ll come in. And I’m not saying sit on your hands, avoid your responsibilities. I’m not saying that. Keep doing what you’re doing. Keep working intelligently and from the inside out, and then the things that need to fall into place will, eventually, fall into place. But you’re still going to get stretched, you’re still in the gym, you’re still with the trainer. That does not end, fortunately, and unfortunately. Because it keeps things exciting and adventurous.
So you don’t have… I’ve said, if you follow your head over your heart, you’re going to create more drama in your life. If you follow your heart over your head, you’re going to create more adventure in your life. There is no neutral path. You’re either creating drama or you’re creating adventure. So I say follow your heart and take the adventurous route as opposed to the dramatic route.
Tami Simon:
You say the biggest obstacle for people doing this is they want to know it’s going to work out OK. And I thought, heck yeah that’s what people want to know. They want to know If I do this thing, if I go into the corporate space, if I try that, I want to know it’s going to work.
Light Watkins:
Yep.
Tami Simon:
What do you say to that, if that’s what comes up for someone? That’s what’s going-
Light Watkins:
All you have to do is look at your track record. When you reflect back on your life, think about the moments that were the most expansive for you. I guarantee you, 99 times out of a hundred, those were the moments you followed your heart. Those expansive moments versus the moments that, maybe on the surface they looked like you were winning, but deep down inside you felt insecure, you felt small, you felt like you were an imposter, you felt like you weren’t in the integrity. Those were the moments where you followed your head. You’ve already had enough experiences with both. When you go back and take the assessment, you’ll see pretty clearly, oh, when I follow my heart, it’s always a little bit scary. I’m always a little bit nervous, but things always work out for the best, versus the opposite.
Tami Simon:
I’ve been speaking with Light Watkins. He’s the author of the book, Spiritual Minimalism, to Live a More Fulfilled Life, it’s called Travel Light. Travel Light with Light. There we go. And if you’d like to watch Insights at the Edge on video and participate in the after show Q & A session with our guests, come join us on Sounds True One, a new membership community featuring award-winning original shows, live classes, community learning, guided meditations, and more, with the leading wisdom teachers of our time. Use promo code podcast to get your first month free. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com. Sounds true. Waking up the world.
