Takeaways from a ‘mind architect’

Heard of Peter Crone?

No?

I hadn’t either.

However, when I saw an episode of a podcast I enjoy (Rangan Chatterjee’s Feel Better. Live More.) with the title ‘How to create the life you were born to live‘ with Peter Crone, I was intrigued and figured it was worth a listen.

Peter styles himself as a ‘Mind Architect’, or as Dr. Chatterjee’s website puts it ‘Peter believes that resistance to the way life is, is not only futile, but it is the precursor to disease both psychologically and emotionally, which can then manifest physiologically.’

Full disclosure: I might not have listened to the Pod had I read the blurb first (I wasn’t sure if it would be for me)…BUT I found the episode riveting and full of insight. Worth a listen, especially if you’re feeling stuck in a negative thought spiral (or year, or decade, or…).

My three takeaways from the episode:

1. Slow down. Don’t always be rushing on to the next thing, thinking you’re not enough yet, and that life will start when you’re enough. Life is always changing and always in flux, there’s never going to be a perfect start. So just embrace what it is right now. As a corollary to this: just take the time to breathe. Do it now. Try to remember how good it feels to take a deep breath and do nothing else. Okay, now proceed.
2. Don’t judge. We have no right to judge other people. However they act, it’s a complicated function of genetics and environment (worth a listen for how this is explained in the podcast).
3. Honor the realities of others. If someone is feeling a certain way, they’re feeling a certain way. You may think that you wouldn’t feel that way in their situation, and you may think that you have a solution for how they feel. That’s irrelevant. They feel how they feel. Validate that.

A quote about everyone being both a masterpiece and a work in progress was also thrown out there. I tried to find the source, and it appears to be Sophia Bush via Twitter (!).

Finally, point #3, above, reminds me of this hilarious video, which pretty much sums up my relationship with my husband: It’s Not About The Nail.