Fasting Space

Do you ever compare yourself to others?
It sounds almost funny to ask, right? Human beings are social creatures. Comparison? So much of the time, it's just baked into the cake.
So let me ask it this way.
How does it work out for you?
When we're comparing ourselves to others, when you compare yourself to someone else's situation, does that tend to be a positive experience?
Or not? I'll tell you,
it can be a gamble, can't it? Sometimes it can be a gamble,
you say. Well, sometimes maybe I compare myself to someone and then I say, I'm doing okay.
Well, and I quote to show you about that.
Many times, though, don't we compare. We almost seek it out. We compare ourselves to people who we think are. We say, oh, this person is doing better. It creates this gap
where we can end up really bringing a lot of negative energy, discouragement, to our self.
I described it in a description, for our session today.
Can be a thief of joy. Half of our joy. Comparison.
we can take a, a comparison. And we can almost. We can turn it into, like, a number, you know, it's like, oh, this person is doing, like, 20% better than me.
Always a number that can make us feel bad about ourself anywhere that we're at in the world, especially now in this electronic, world that we're in where we have exposure to so many people, having so many different experiences can always find someone doing better, and people want to tell you because people want to be better.
And this is, social media culture, everybody putting
their best foot forward. But it might not even be a real foot. It might be an AI generated assisted foot forward. You know,
how many times in the past you might see a video, you say, well, at least you say, this is a real human being that I'm comparing myself to.
Now, you don't really know. And so think how much distress we can bring to ourselves by comparing ourselves to so many things, including things that aren't even real
crazy. So we want to protect our space. I say we want to be walking our path. We walk our path, not theirs.
Definitely enough to walk our path. Our path is unique.
Our path is the only one we can walk. And if we are trying to walk on that path as thoughtfully as possible, finding joy on the journey, minimizing struggle okay, a path towards struggle comparison is a huge,
thing that can pull us off of our path.
Tell us you know what? Your path isn't good enough. Look at this person.
They've got it. Figured it out.
As I was reading, some different things yesterday, planning for thinking about comparison as someone was saying,
we take someone's highlight reel and compare it to our behind the scenes footage,
Oh man, that really resonated with me.
So comparison can be a gamble. We say, let me show. Let's head back to our, reflection.
sitting by this water, looking at the reflection of the trees in the sky, in the water.
It is in a good space to reflect again. And comparison.
Two quotes that I want to share with you today.
Comparison more than reality makes people happy or wretched. That's
Thomas Fuller,
kind of bringing into that mindset. I was saying like, it's a gamble.
So maybe this comparison pay off. Sometimes I think more then more about that. But can it leave you wretched?
I know sometimes I have gotten into that space where it's like the times I feel worse. Maybe you say I was like, doing okay, like on a path here, things going okay, and then you encounter someone else who is just, like, crushing it, you know, it's. And then all of a sudden, I felt that
now I'm feeling bad about myself where I wasn't before.
Wretched. That's a that's a powerful word. Right?
How many times in our life do we experience that? Because we feel like we don't measure up. We're not good enough.
Comparison can blind us, actually to the reality. We're talking about how so many times in today's,
situation, we might be comparing ourselves to things that aren't even real.
Our path though, this is what we want to center on. This is something that is real and we can be having real progress. Actual, real progress. You know, health goal can be anywhere in life, right? Any sort of thing. We compare ourselves across every domain,
what kind of possessions we have, what our living situation is, or what our relationships are across every domain.
And I'll tell you, every domain of comparison is, something to think about. And it's all the same ultimately, because what we're trying to do in a health space or moving toward a health goal, maybe it's a weight loss goal, maybe it's some other type of health process. We're trying to get ourselves into the mindset where we can build for ourselves, create for ourselves the healthiest experience that we can.
And I do, love this idea. Building it, constructing it means a project, something we can work on,
build over time.
Rome isn't built in a day. Great health is, is a lifetime sort of process. So we're walking on that path.
That path? We set it here. Imagine there's a path that is heading here across our beautiful, lake.
We're trying to get to that distant shore. That's our journey that we're heading toward.
If we want to stay on the path, it's going to be a good experience. We want to create a good experience for ourselves. The joy isn't in just getting to our campsite on the distant shore. The joy is the process of getting there. If we are experiencing joy.
This is why finding joy on the journey is so, important. The journey, people would say, is the destination. The journey to get to the place is the real experience,
the process of overcoming obstacles and moving through barriers, overcoming them. That's what builds deep satisfaction and deep understanding,
so that the process that we go through to get where we're going is what builds the foundation so that we can stay there.
So many times, you know, we've described,
a weight loss experience,
that people go through heavy experiences like this,
up and downs. Okay. That's a process. Think how much effort, you know, went into this part, and then think of the discouragement that happens. And then the effort and the things. And, you know, we want to pull ourselves back from an experience like that.
This is why I talk about finding peace and contentment and joy on a journey, because as we're moving through a space like this,
we want things to be sustainable and enjoyable
so that when we get where we're going, we feel comfortable when we get there. I've talked to people who have gone on extreme dietary processes, had actually huge amounts of success, but right at that point, people so burned out they're like, hey, I cannot maintain this.
This is not a place of contentment that is sustainable.
So this is why the mindset is the most important thing. And our dietary processes in our society were so dialed in. Okay, what are the calories? What are the practices? What are the things? That's why I'm presenting to you a fasting process,
which is a very powerful tool. One tool amongst our whole canvas, our whole palette of different, practices, the healthy food, the movement, all these sorts of things.
Fasting a very powerful to dial in on this. Why we would approach it in a most thoughtful and gentle way, so that you can doubt just the amount of it in, that helps you, to feel good and excited and encouraged.
Comparing ourselves to someone else
who is not doing that, you say, I see this influencer. I see that they're having this incredible experience. We don't know what their life is like. We don't know what their mental, emotional experience is. We don't know what their life is going to be like six months from now when it if it falls apart, you know.
So we've got our behind the scenes footage. We know our experience.
We don't know other people's experience. Check out this quote
a little bigger one.
This is getting into that spot. We say, well, comparison could make us feel better or wretched is a gamble. But then think about this one.
The thing about comparison is that there is never a win.
So is it. Is it really a gamble or is it a guaranteed loss?
There's never a win. According to Sonia. How often do we compare ourselves with someone less fortunate than us and then consider ourselves blessed? Okay, so that one, that one can hurt a little bit, right?
We think
you say, well, shouldn't we be able to feel good about ourselves and and isn't there a mindset where we say,
well, I'm doing better than this person and then we can feel good about ourselves?
That is not really ever. So we start to pull apart the emotions of it. Can you see that's not really a healthy or thoughtful perspective?
I know I do that, I definitely, do that.
But isn't that building up our ego? Isn't this telling us all how great we are at the expense of something else? If if our good feelings and good vibes are coming because we are thinking of ourselves as superior to other people, well, that's not a mindset. So like comparison can't really help us there actually.
Like, this is why we have to be in our path. We need to be finding joy and positivity from our path, not at the expense of someone else. So even this other side of it, where we might say comparison helps us win, but is it really?
And then more often, let's say we compare ourselves with someone that we perceive as being, having or doing more.
And this just leaves us coming up short. So I thought that the first quote kind of showing us like on is a kind of a gamble. And then the second one showing that even when when we gamble on comparison and it comes up good, it isn't even really taking us to a better space.
So this is the big message, focusing on our own path
and not on someone else's path. This is what is going to help us keep us in this reflection space where we're centered and grounded, and our path, the things that we can actually control. And then because then we know it's completely real,
then we are centered in a space, we know our destination, we can see where we're going,
and we can dial in.
And then when we are having progress, when we are experiencing joy, peace and contentment, we can actually find
encouragement in those things, not be so distracted and pulled away by someone else's experience who has a completely different, reality than we are experiencing.
But.
I started thinking about comparisons. So yesterday afternoon, you know, I was reading through, this beautiful book for you, thinking fast and slow, trying to take every good I think I can squeeze out of it and bring it to you as psychological understanding about why do we make the decisions we do and think the things we think.
I went through a big chunk yesterday where it really went into a lot of financial stuff. Why do we make financial decisions that we do?
And especially it went into like some gambling sort of things, like
they study people who are making
bets and risk taking. I don't think all of that was really too applicable.
But there was one. There is one scenario that I just thought was interesting, a comment on talking about
two people at a casino, one person who is very wealthy, one person who is not a wealthy individual, is betting $5,000 a hand on a blackjack.
And for them, there's a $5,000 doesn't mean very much. This other person is not very wealthy and betting like $10 a hand.
But. But for the wealthy person is $5,000 is like ten bucks. It doesn't mean that much to them for someone, of more average means $10 is wasn't such a big deal for them. The experience that each of them have when they win and lose
is the same.
Someone is winning the blackjack hand. They win. 20 grand is not a big deal to a very wealthy person. Hard to understand. Okay, someone playing the $10 hand, they win 200 bucks, okay? They're each pretty happy, you know, with this outcome. So when you think about comparing between people, is this I thought that illustration just showed
because comparison is across every domain.
Think about one person's experience, about something that is causing joy. Someone in a totally different experience
can, even with a much more meager, experience, having the exact same cognitive experience. And so then we experience as someone is, you know, experiencing something and we say, oh, my life is nowhere near anything like that. Like, this is why we got to stay into our space, because we realize people having completely different, experiences and we can get pulled totally off base with this
is one comparison that we do want to make. And I'm going to get us to that space
in this section. They're talking to us about Jack and Jill. Okay. And Jack and Jill each have a wealth of $5 million. So can you imagine?
Okay.
And so just knowing that we can start, you know, thinking you're starting some comparison with yourself, like, presumably most people do not have a wealth of $5 million. And so, you know, I sit here and I think this like originally thinking these people must be happy
or we must be happy. We're already running the comparison thing. And then doesn't some process run in your mind, well, wouldn't I be happy?
Wouldn't I like to be both Jack and Jill in this scenario? They got 5 million bucks. I would be so happy.
Now listen to what he does now the story continues. But yesterday. All right,
Jack had $1 million and Jill had nine. Oh, ouch. So now you realize. And then the question, are they equally happy
today? They each have $5 million. Shouldn't they be equally happy? They're comparing to each other. They're just the same.
Okay, but Jack just made for a million bucks, and Jill was for a million bucks.
Obviously, like you can tell, Joe is miserable and Jack is elated.
So now we're seeing between people how complex it is, people's experience. Is it just, you know, with a simple illustration showing.
How it doesn't work to compare and, and in comparison, even when you can see exactly what the comparison is,
it's is like relative comparison that is controlling people's happiness. It's like the relative, experience people having in a blackjack hand. Someone was very wealthy betting 5000 and someone who is not betting ten. They can have the exact same experience.
But if you don't know
everything about these people, like we're just telling a story. We're making it up. So, like, you don't know people's situation. It frames the experience. This is what we're talking all these framing effects that we've been talking about in the rest of this book completely shapes the context, which shapes people's experience. And then happiness.
And a lot of times our lack of happiness. And so you say, I want to get out of that game, say, this is a game I don't want to play. I don't want to be sitting and taking my emotional space and putting it in a casino and gambling on it. Like, this is not, a thoughtful thing to do, but it's giving us an illustration
of what we do do when you're going in the casino of comparison.
We're just rolling the dice. And as we saw from the quote, it usually doesn't turn out too well.
It's saying, what is the thing that the house always wins in gambling, right. So you, you to go into the comparison casino like the house is going to win most of the time.
Not a good gamble
is traditional theories
about what makes people more or less happy.
Say Jack and Jill have the same wealth.
People would say they should be equally happy. But you don't need a degree in psychology to know that today, Jack is elated and Jill is despondent.
Indeed, we know that Jack would be a great deal happier than Jill, even if he only had $2
today. Well, she had five, okay, because they're experiencing loss.
One person is experiencing gain. They're experiencing
happiness. One person is experiencing loss
and happiness. The Jack and Jill experience is determined by the recent change in their
finances relative to different states of wealth that define their reference points, that this was very interesting. People develop reference points across every domain of our life, like what our experience is compared to someone else.
The reference is ubiquitous across all of our sensations and perceptions. The same sound will be experienced is very loud or very quiet, depending on whether it was preceded by a whisper or a roar
to predict the subjective experience of loudness. It's not, and not often enough to know it's absolute energy. You need to know the reference sound.
Similarly, you need to know about the background before you can predict whether a gray patch on a page will appear as dark or light,
and you need to know the reference before you can
predict the utility of someone's finances.
So this is starting to bring into a concept that I think is the comparison that we should only be making, which is our experience today compared to our experience yesterday, our experience now compared to our past. Because we are walking a path, we are trying to head forward through a space and get to a destination that is important to us.
We aren't trying to walk someone else's path. We do not have their context or a reference which we can't see.
We can only see our situation and path. And if this is how the comparison starts pulling off course, like I put in the description of parasite of our progress that is pulling us in a direction that we don't really want to be going.
We stay on our path. We know our references.
Then we can say, am I'm moving forward on my path. Am I working through the struggles and challenges that I am experiencing in a healthy and positive way? Am I learning and growing and developing and dealing with these unique things? Doesn't matter what anybody else is doing in making that comparison to someone else can only take us in a different direction.
That's the comparison that we need to make and harder to do because we're looking outside. We're always looking to something else and so many things vying for our attention. As soon as we get it right, then we start comparing.
That's why I encourage everybody take the time for that inward reflection. Start the journal, dive into the journal, open up some open meditation space and time.
Bring that reflection inward. Start comparing self to self.
Do some reflection in that space you like. How? How are you doing with that?
Is how fasting. We were saying the other day get us into that
space of openness.
Open space in our life feeds through across many different domains. We create open physical space in a body. That's the weight loss space. We talked about using that to let go of the basically the weight that isn't serving us,
eating into the emotional space. We talked yesterday about forgiveness, about letting go of the emotional baggage from trauma and darkness.
It has come to us.
Finding lightness through that process.
That's the comparison we can make with ourselves today. Am I am I emotionally lighter today than yesterday because I forgave okay, in credibly powerful space?
Am I physically lighter today? Because I opened up a fasting space, I gave my body the opportunity to open up this space and it used that energy.
Okay. And we're moving forward in a progress in a space six super contained.
Emotionally is not dependent on someone else's experience. It's not living up to anyone else's expectations
other than our own. That's how we start living in alignment with our path and not someone else's.
Yeah, so maybe a practice for today for going forward just to recognize, okay, comparison is natural. It's hardwired into the system. We're going to do it like it's going to happen. But building our process of awareness, this is what I would say to start to be more aware of it and to realize so many times we do it, it's just it's subconscious.
It's that that fast thinking system, like we've been saying, these comparisons are just brought up to us by the associated machinery, just happens.
Bringing the awareness would be to start to realize where is comparison having an impact on my life? Where is this influencing my thinking?
Siphoning off the energy that I'm trying to put into my path is diverting it into these processes of other people that I don't know or understand, or couldn't possibly realize the context of their life and experience.
Okay,
as we're building our awareness of the places where comparison is operating in our life, we can work overtime to turn those pathways down. Like, it'd be very hard for us to ever, you know, not compare ourselves for anything. But as we build awareness, we turn down the dials on those pathways, channel all that energy into our path.
We're working, you know, getting 1% better every day, you know, a little step forward. Have you seen those graphs? I should find one 1% better every day.
You don't just get 360% better because it compounds. And so over the course of a year, say 1% better every day. It just blows out in this logarithmic scale.
So little things like this, let's divert the energy of comparison just to myself today to myself last week.
And then we will see that's bring us,
bringing us forward. Definitely better without the joy being siphoned off by, by anybody else.
Keep us focused and grounded. This is what I want a fasting practice to me, as a grounding practice. It's stripping out every unnecessary thing completely. Opening up space, leaning into the body helps us to realize body is very strong. Body has huge resources, and we train ourselves to tap into it and use it helps us build trust and confidence in the body.
That is a real, tangible process that looks like taking steps down a path every day. It's not any kind of magic, you know, cure all. And and didn't call it easy fasting. I call it simple because it is very direct. There's not much to it. You know, you can outline the whole thing in only a few sentences.
You are going to be eating breakfast and now you're not. And you're going to practice staying hydrated and remaining content in that space only to the extent that it works. You know, I can flow that out in one phrase. It's a very, very simple. But then to do it, you say, then you could add a second sentence. And if you need more power in order to lose weight, you can increase the intensity by eliminating the next meal and practicing opening up that space.
So in a few phrases, we can describe the arc of what fasting is. But then we can talk for hours, day after day about the implications of it, because it's a very profound and deep space in the body is getting to the core of this metabolism.
We talked about breaking a practice like that up into tiny steps. If you struggle to do it, one person doesn't struggle because and we don't know their reference, okay.
And someone else struggles greatly says this is the most difficult thing that I did,
but they still overcame it. And so within that whole spectrum of human experience, this is why we all are on our own path. We can't compare ourselves to the other people who are trying to walk. This path is a very personal experience to go through our relationship with food and and what that is doing for us both physically and emotionally,
like at the core of our emotional experience.
So I'm especially interested in a someone who says, I start a thing like that. It's not difficult at all to me, and they accomplish everything you ever want. Well, bless that person. You don't really need very much help, you know. So we want to focus on this end of the spectrum, especially people who are really saying, I, I could use a hand.
I want to give you a hand to do that, because I've worked with people who found it completely impossible to do, let's say. But then we move toward it
when we compare ourselves in that sort of space, you say, oh, I'm really struggling. How come this person doesn't struggle? Okay, then it is like, it's not going to help anything.
That's the thief of joy. That's the parasite on the progress.
Comparing ourselves to our self yesterday, realizing, hey, I'm actually moving forward. This is the path of how we move forward. You can be making real, meaningful progress, but if you're looking for someone else's path, you won't even be able to see it.
Getting the comparison out
help us are really focusing on what is actually happening here in my life right now that I am experiencing, and I can control and I can shape and push forward. That progress might be small at the start, and that's okay. But when we eliminate these distractions, all our energy is not going into any kind of comparison except for ourselves.
Then we can start to see it. That's like dialing into focus.
And this process.
That's that 1% better. Every day you start to get in a path like that where you can see, okay, I am gaining experience, I am gaining skill, I am practicing this commitment. I'm committed to myself, my body, my path. Here are the things I can do. We've got a small checklist of things that we can do
moving our bodies in healthy ways, eating the healthiest food and keeping the toxic things out.
Opening up a fasting space to the extent that it is bringing joy and openness and health to my body. Practicing all of the supportive mental health practices that are helping me to do that. The journal, the meditation, the walks, the connection with nature and community and friends and family, all these sort of things getting good sleep,
all these beautiful things that support total health and flourishing.
These are the things to dial in on. I mean, how many things did I just rattle off? Like 12 different things and plenty of things to focus there on our own path without, someone else, getting in the way of it.
Finding a path,
of peace and contentment. This is a big thing. This is where I want fasting to go. I think the average person in our society see fasting. Oh, that's something very intense. Something to struggle through. Something I wouldn't want to experience. Then as you go through it, you pass through it.
You realize, oh, this is part of a broader experience of finding contentment in life
contentment. Something
and it doesn't. Everybody want that. And culture. What I describe as consumption culture, the try to sell contentment to us.
That you have to buy contentment. My perspective is contentment exists inside, and we have to create the environment for ourselves in which we can experience it. You don't have to buy it.
The process of buying, trying to buy contentment,
generally unsatisfying most of the time is like, okay, you buy something, you get a temporary feeling from it.
So I now I feel satisfied. I have this thing. How long does that last?
That cycle? I'm trying to buy contentment
is is really driven by a comparison. You think about what a commercial is. Basically, you think what an advertisement is, is trying to create and show a gap between what you have now and what you could have.
And if you bought this thing or experience, wouldn't you be then content. And that is what gets us on a cycle where we're chasing contentment, always by comparing ourselves to some other state where we have more.
And to me, fasting is like the antidote, the, the the template that shows the other way. Actually, by opening up space, we can find contentment already exists inside of us.
We can be content with nothing. This is what breaks the consumption cycle across, you know, every domain, where we need to consume, help bring things into balance. It's like the counterbalance
don't have to compare to other people to find,
something better.
Better exist right here. What we have is enough. There's a world that is not present, you know, in our popular, societal vocabulary.
Very much,
enough
fasting start to show us, like we can have enough, at least in a space. Like with nothing. We think about framing effects, advertisements, all these things showing us you don't have enough. You need to purchase. You need to consume. Now we are playing that comparison. See, comparison is so powerful. This is what so much advertising trying to do is to play off that.
They know people will compare like, oh, look at all the happy people on the TV
and look at the people in the ad. They are so happy. I want we want that happiness trying to sell it to us.
Like when when we have dialed up our awareness.
Then we can start to see like, oh, am I not satisfied? Am I not content? Do I not have enough already? Do we start to build that mindset, try to insulate ourselves from that effect? Realize that's our default position is going to be just comparison. But then we try to say, no, actually I'm good.
Actually I'm good.
got a couple questions about comparison to reflect on.
If you're able to open up some space today. So I want to reflect
and comparison. So just think. Think of someone in your life that you compare yourself to.
Can you think of someone? Maybe it's someone you don't know. Is someone you you follow on some social media. Maybe it's someone in your life. This is someone I'm comparing myself to and reflect on that.
Why is that?
It's coming to me now as I'm talking about it, okay? It's it's okay to admire experiences that people are happy having. And maybe you can turn this into something like to to see someone else's experience.
And say, I like how this person is doing this thing. I like how someone is doing that.
This I'm thinking live with you is not, you know, part of my thinking yesterday saying, oh, we should never compare ourselves to someone.
Isn't there a space where
where
to value someone's experience and to be inspired by someone can be positive. And to the extent that that you can see someone's experience,
not as a comparison in the sense of judging ourselves. I think this this perhaps is where
comparison really goes awry. Is is is like envy
when we are
jealous of someone's experience and we judge ourselves for not feeling good enough.
If there's a positive experience for comparison,
maybe that's not even comparison.
Maybe that's just looking to others for inspiration without comparing their experience to ours. Maybe that's the distinction as I'm trying to think through it.
Very good. Look to someone else for experience. Inspiration to see. Oh, here is someone who has walked a path that I am trying to walk.
Of course, any time we don't have to reinvent the wheel and say, hey, here is someone who's walking on a path.
Good to have inspiration. I would say that from people. Inspiration without comparison. To realize
this person who is having this experience that I am looking to for inspiration, living a different life and is is actually on a different path with a different experience.
Can't take inspiration and turn it into anything that is judgment
that would be trying to put ourselves on someone else's path. Instead of walking our own.