Living Beyond Existence

The difference between merely existing and truly living lies in how we approach five core dimensions of life that are deeply interconnected and essential for wholeness.

• Oscar Wilde's quote "Most people exist, few truly live" challenges us to examine whether we're just checking boxes or fully engaged with life
• Living in a culture that celebrates hustle and busy-ness often leads us to believe surviving equals succeeding
• Success and productivity don't guarantee fulfillment – you can achieve much yet still feel empty inside
• Your inner anchor (spiritual health) provides grounding and clarity amid chaos
• Stillness and gratitude practices help strengthen your connection to what truly matters
• Your power source (physical health) includes quality sleep, movement, and nutrition that energizes
• Consistent habits matter more than perfection in maintaining physical wellness
• Your emotional climate follows you everywhere – it's about feeling deeply without being controlled by emotions
• Journaling thoughts and setting boundaries are simple ways to improve emotional health
• Your circle of mirrors (relationships) either reflect your truth or distort it
• Quality connections matter more than quantity – seek relationships where you can be authentic
• Your freedom metric (financial health) is about having control rather than just having wealth
• These five dimensions work as interconnected systems – when one thrives or suffers, all are affected
• Start by focusing on just one area that needs attention this week
• The quality of your life is shaped by the quality of your habits in these five areas

This is your one life – live like it matters, love like it's rare, and lead yourself with courage.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Most People Exist, Few Truly Live
• 4:35 Your Inner Anchor: Finding Spiritual Grounding
• 8:29 Your Power Source: Physical Wellness
• 12:42 Emotional Climate: Navigating Your Feelings
• 14:15 Circle of Mirrors: Meaningful Relationships
• 17:12 Freedom Metric: Healthy Financial Perspective
• 19:06 Integration and Taking First Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:25

Hey friend, I hope that you are doing well wherever this finds you. I want to start this episode with a quote that I heard many years ago that then stopped me in my tracks, but today is really a lot more applicable, I think, to the season that I'm in. And that's a quote by Oscar Wilde, and he said, most people exist, few truly live. Most people exist, few truly live. And I don't know about you, but that line really hits me. Hits me in my gut. It makes me pause. When I hear that quote, I ask myself, am I just checking off boxes? Or am I actually living? And even what does it mean to live? And the answer to that question is gonna be different for everybody. I realize that. But I want to pass that question on to you, honestly. No pressure. Just sit with it for a second. Which one are you? Are you the one who's existing? Or are you the one who's living? We live in a culture that celebrates the hustle, the busy, the performance, right? We're told to keep going, to keep striving, to keep doing.

unknown: 2:12

Right?

SPEAKER_00: 2:12

We forget we're like human beings, not human doings. And somewhere along the way, we really start to believe that surviving equals succeeding. But the truth is that you can be a high-functioning individual. You can have a level of success and still feel hollow inside. You can be productive and still feel lost. You can look like you have it all together and still feel like something is missing. That's why today I want to have a real conversation, not just about self-care, but about what it actually means to live fully. Not someday in the future, not one day, but now. And to do that, I want to take you through five core dimensions of life. Not in the typical sort of wellness checklist, you know, that sort of thinking. But I want to sort of reframe them, if you will, because when these five areas are neglected, we drift. We make mistakes, we mess up, we break down. But when they're tended to, these core areas, when they're tended to, we we actually wake up. We come alive. So here's what we're gonna explore. We're gonna explore five key areas: your inner anchor, your power source, your emotional climate, your circle of mirrors, and your freedom metric. Let's break them down. Let's start with your inner anchor. This is what most people might call spiritual health. But let's take it deeper than that. I'm not here to tell you what to believe, whether you practice a religion or not. What I care about is this. What grounds you? What gives you clarity? What gives you meaning when everything else around you feels chaotic? What gives your life weight and centers you. The part of you that knows what matters most. Even when life gets loud and crazy and busy. If you're feeling untethered, directionless, numb, well, this is where you begin. One simple way I think that we can continue to cultivate our spirituality, our spiritual health, our inner anchor, is to just practice stillness. Being still. One of my favorite verses is be still and know that I am God. That's something that I think about often, and something that I'm learning to practice more and more. Even if it's just five minutes a day, ask yourself: are you living in alignment with your values or just talking about them? So in my times of being still, maybe being silent, times of meditation, I really employ gratitude. Gratitude can really help us. Not in this cheesy, toxic positivity way, but thinking of gratitude maybe as a muscle that trains your mind to look at what's real and good, even in the struggle, even in the grind, in the day-to-day. When your life is anchored in meaning, it stops being about motion and starts becoming more about momentum. So in your stillness, in the times when you can be still, like I said, even just five minutes a day, reflecting on the things that you're grateful for, the people, the blessings in your life, as you take inventory about that. That's where we can really start anchoring to a more divine purpose, a more divine connection. And again, what is an anchor? It's something that that holds you fast to maybe a truth, a higher power, uh to God, to his to his truths about you. And so in that you can be grateful and thankful. And in doing so, where you think of as an anchor, maybe just keeping you and holding you back, it's actually a protective function. But it also helps you to know when the time is right to move, and that's where momentum comes into play. Now, this is gonna lead into the next um area or dimension that we're talking about, and that is your power source. What is power source? What do I mean by that? Well, this is what I would refer to as your physical health. Now, I don't want to reduce what I'm about to talk to you about, just the typical gym culture or body goals. What I want to frame this is that we would talk about your energy source, your power source. Where do you derive that? So it's about stamina, it's about presence. If your body's breaking down, if you're chronically ill, it's really hard to show up for anything else in your life. Relationships, purpose, creativity, you name it. So I want to ask you, how are your energy levels, right? How is your fuel tank? Are you running on fumes? Or do you have enough reserve? And let me ask you, are you prioritizing all your pillars of physical health? Are you, for one, are you getting enough sleep? Is sleep a priority? I like to start with sleep because most people don't think about that, but that is a huge factor in your overall wellness and your physical health. Studies show, research shows that if we get at least eight hours of sleep a night, that that's optimal for health and wellness, seven to eight hours. I have been very diligent about that over the last couple of years and really guarding my sleep, probably getting a little annoying to my wife and kids, but it's something that's important to me. The other thing, another pillar of your physical health is what are you doing to move your body? All right, moving, movement. Not in a sense that when you think of working out as punishment, or oh, I gotta work out, or the dread of working out, but maybe reframing physical activity in terms of making it an exercise in gratitude. Being thankful that you can do these things, being thankful that you can can move. And I'm a big fan of combining resistance training, weight training, as well as cardiovascular aerobic training. I think both are very important. You get into the different camps and different things where even when you talk about things like this, it can be almost like talking about religion and politics. And the same adds to the next dimension or the next thing within physical health, and that is your nutrition, right? You want to eat food that gives you life, not just comfort, right? You want to drink more water than you think you need. Again, you don't need to be extreme with it, you just need to be consistent. So having a good, healthy balance of your macronutrients, your proteins, your carbs, your fats. But I'm really big on protein being a very, very important. So you want to have a high protein diet, whichever is your favorite diet. Again, diet, nutrition, lifestyle, a lot of debates on which diet is better, which nutritional plan is better for you. But you want to find something that aligns with your constitution, what really makes sense for your body. But again, protein is crucial. So I really push high protein in my practice and with my patients and friends. Again, you don't need to be extreme, you just need to be consistent. Okay. So looking at all those things, supplementation, proper supplementation, looking at things about how you navigate stress. Everyone has stress, everyone has stressors, things that cause stress, but how are we navigating those things? How are you controlling the things that you can control? And that's that's an important factor as well, in terms of how that affects our cortisol levels, our stress hormones, and what that does physically to us. And we'll talk a little bit more uh in in the next dimension. Okay, we again we're talking about in from physical health now into emotional health, what we call the emotional climate or your emotional climate. Again, we want to build our bodies and our minds and our hearts to feel strong enough to live this life we're building. So, why does emotional health matter? Because your emotional health is your inner atmosphere that follows you everywhere, even when you're smiling on the outside. Emotional health isn't always about being happy. It's about being able to feel deeply without being taken out by your feelings. It's the ability to pause before reacting, to hold space for yourself, to know what you're feeling and why. You can start small on this side of things. I encourage you to consider maybe just journaling your thoughts, taking a few minutes a day to just write your thoughts out, to speak your truth without needing to fix it, right? To be able to maybe even set boundaries with people. Maybe you need to ask for help. Now, if you've been taught to hide your emotions or feel ashamed for being too much, I want you to hear this. Your feelings are data, not weakness. Emotional maturity is strength, period. This next dimension, we have what I call your circle of mirrors, your relationships. Because no matter how self-made or independent you are, you're really shaped by the people you keep close, your inner circle, if you will. The people around you are gonna either reflect your truth or they're gonna maybe even distort it. So take a second to check in. Who makes you feel more like yourself? Who supports your growth? And maybe who subtly asks you to shrink? Are you performing in your relationships or are you actually being seen? Relationships thrive on honesty and boundaries and shared values. It's not about how many people you have around you. It's about whether they're safe places for you, right? Safe places for your soul to land. Because at the end of the day, the deepest kind of success is connection. And this is an area that really a lot of us struggle in. Maybe we don't talk enough about. And again, we have all been through things in life, and we've all experienced things perhaps from our families of origin that we bring into our current relationships and our current families and our current interactions. And there's times in my own journey where I know that I have taken relationships for granted. I've taken people for granted. Sure, I've been hurt by people, but as I've been hurt, again, that old adage that says hurt people, hurt people. I mean, I've done my share of hurting. I've hurt people. And I think that that's something that that I've that I'm learning from, that I've learned from. By the same token, when I've begun to really value and cherish the people in my life, again, imperfect people. We're all imperfect, but cherish the relationship, cherish the the bonds that we have. Man, nothing on this life, in this life to me has been more fulfilling personally. Um I've learned in in marriage and family the ups and the downs that come with that. Um I've learned a great deal. And I think that relationships, people in our lives are probably some of our greatest teachers. And we have the greatest opportunities to learn and grow and expand with people who are also willing to grow and expand for themselves, but also with us. It's very important. Let's pivot now to what we call your freedom metric, okay? Your financial health. Let's be honest, money affects almost everything. Uh, even when we wish it didn't. When our finances are unstable, stress multiplies. But let's be clear, financial health doesn't necessarily mean being rich. It means having freedom. It means being in control, it means being able to make decisions that align with your values, not just your survival. So I've learned and learning, and I encourage you to create a system that works for you. Track what you spend. Yes, build your savings, pay off debt, invest in your future self. You don't need to be obsessed with money, is what I'm trying to say, though. You don't need to be obsessed with it. You just need to respect it enough to manage it well. Begin to cultivate maybe a healthier relationship with money. Because peace of mind is worth far more than status. Far more than what's sitting in your driveway. Far more than the square footage of your house. Money's a tool. It's okay to have money, it's okay to be blessed, it's okay to have things. Just make sure that those things don't have you. Here's the thing: these five areas aren't silos, they're systems. When one area of our lives suffers, the rest feel it. They're interconnected. We're interconnected beings. When one area of our life thrives, the others rise with it. You can't have emotional peace if your body's exhausted, and you can't feel spiritually anchored when your relationships are crumbling. It's all connected. It's all about wholeness, right? And wholeness isn't about being perfect in all five of these areas. It's about paying attention to what's out of alignment and doing something about it. I found this to be true in my personal life. That I might be doing well what I think in one area, but at the expense of something else. Again, it's about integration, it's about alignment, it's about realizing that all of these areas work together to help us live a blessed and productive and fruitful and meaningful life. So here's what I want you to do this week. Something simple. Just pick one area. One, not five, not ten goals, just one area that's calling for your attention. And I'm sure you know what that is. Something's been on your heart, or you're there's an area that's that you're maybe struggling in. You know what that is. One area. And it may be glaring, but there also could be just something that's just softly, like a soft voice just whispering to you about another area of your life. Start there. Be curious, be honest. And remember, you don't have to be perfect. It's not about perfection. You just have to be present. It's not about perfection, it's about progress. So let me leave you with this. The quality of your life is shaped by the quality of your habits. The quality of your life is shaped by the quality of your habits. Especially in these five areas that we just talked about. So live like it matters. Love like it's rare. And lead yourself with courage. This is your one life. You only get one shot at it. So make it count. Okay? Thanks for listening. Talk soon.