DANIEL SIH: [00:01] Hey there, Spacemakers. I'm Daniel Sih, here with my good friend and co-host, Matt Bain. Welcome to the fourth season of The Spacemakers, a podcast to help you live an intentional, meaningful life.

NARRATOR: This is The Spacemakers.

DANIEL SIH: This season, we go deeper, challenging our constant self-improvement culture and what it's doing to us.

DANIEL SIH: [00:30] It's a podcast designed to help you step off the busy treadmill, let go of the constant need for more and make space for a life that is truly enough. This episode is sponsored by The Spacemakers Dojo. If you're a busy professional who feels constantly behind, the Dojo is a place to slow down, think deeply and make space alongside others. For a limited time, new members can get 12 months for the price of six with the code PODCAST25. Find details at spacemakers.au/dojo.

NARRATOR: [00:57] The Spacemakers, with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain.

DANIEL SIH: Hi everyone, welcome back to The Spacemakers podcast. We're a podcast to help you make space for an intentional, meaningful life. My name's Daniel Sih and we are here exploring a big idea in season four of this podcast or a pod course as we call it, which is about Enough, all this self-help is killing me.

[01:23] We're talking about what it looks like to be enough, to have enough, to end your sense of striving for more, recognising that there's such a momentum and push for us to do more and be more to be enough in our society. And today we are exploring a big idea. We're going to be talking about attachments and the freedom of letting go.

[01:44] We're going to be exploring what it looks like to kind of chase something and need something and want something at a deep level to actually give ultimate meaning to something that actually hooks us in and makes us miserable, which kind of Buddhists call attachments or maybe Christians call idols. We're going to be talking about what it looks like to have self-awareness and how self-awareness can help us to kind of unhook from those things we chase unnecessarily.

[02:10] And we're going to get very practical and talk about some modern new ways or new or rediscovered ways in which you might slow down, relinquish control, remove attachments from your life and actually finally make space to have a life that's enough. It is a big topic. We're hoping we can do justice to it in the next 30 or 40 minutes. But before I dive in, let me introduce my co-host, the one and only Matt Bain, who I am very attached to.

MATT BAIN: Almost at the hip, almost at the hip.

DANIEL SIH: In hopefully a good way. Hey, welcome, Matt.

MATT BAIN: Thanks, Dan. Great to be here as always.

[02:44] And like you said, we don't want to add anything to people's busy lives, apart from listening and watching this podcast.

DANIEL SIH: Exactly. Yeah, religiously. Hey, this is a big idea, a big topic. Like we've spent a lot of time, well, thinking about the pod course as a whole, what it looks like to, you know, get out of that cycle of striving and needing more and wanting more and always adding more. But this one's a big topic in terms of attachments.

MATT BAIN: Yeah, I was thinking about it.

[03:09] And I wonder if it's almost like the meta topic, if you like, for the rest of the season. So to some degree, the stuff that we've already talked about, whether that's, you know, professional legacy or health and some of the things that we're hoping to cover soon, like money, all that can kind of be, I think, bracketed under this big topic of attachment. Because all those things people can get too attached to.

DANIEL SIH: Yeah.

[03:31] And it's almost like we can look at the external things, like the algorithms that cause us to want more or the consumptive messages or the workplace culture that always causes us to do more and need to do more and add more. But all of it kind of comes down to human nature. And what we're going to talk about the desire to want more at kind of a heart level.

[03:52] And how do you actually like things and pursue things and be passionate about things in life without actually getting into that negative cycle of attachment and striving. So it's an important topic.

MATT BAINL: It is. And just quickly, I think right from the first season of this podcast, which seems to be years and years and years ago now, I know we talked a lot about the importance of wanting to present everything and read everything and talk about everything through a lens of realism. So we didn't want it to be naive. We didn't want this to be idealistic. We didn't want to be like, I suppose, something that's sapped life from people.

[04:27] And I think when it comes to attachments, the way that we're going to talk about it is grounded in realism.

DANIEL SIH: Absolutely.

MATT BAIN: Yeah. So it should be, it may be difficult to swallow at times, but it should be life, ultimately life affirming and life giving.

DANIEL SIH: Hey, so to kick off this meaty topic, I want to start by reading a commencement speech or at least a part of it by David Foster Wallace, who gave this speech to Kenyon College in 2005. It's a super famous speech.

[04:52] It was controversial and interesting and made waves at the time and definitely worth reading. I remember working with a company called Aesop for many, many years. And they used to at least give this commencement speech to read to every single new grad who entered like Aesop.

MATT BAIN: Really?

DANIEL SIH: Yeah. Because they saw it as being so important to help change people's worldview and start thinking about how they shape their life. It's now called This is Water. And let me kick off the talk. So Wallace began his commencement speech with this.

[05:26] There are two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning boys, how's the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit. And then eventually one of them looks over to the other and goes, “What the hell is water?” Look, it's a good way to start a talk. And surprisingly, the talk doesn't go on to talk about culture.

[05:52] It actually goes on to talk about self awareness and the importance of self awareness for recognising the scripts that we have, the world views or the ways we see the world and the idea that many of us are caught in this kind of pattern of going on without recognising, you know, there's water in which we swim and we think in an act and see the world in particular ways. Yeah.

[06:18] So essentially, from my read of his speech, he starts off really with trying to convince us or at least kind of compel us to recognize that the goal of education, remembering it's a commencement speech, isn't knowledge, it's not even skills. In his words, it's the ability to pay attention. So to pay attention to what's going on right in front of me and what's going on inside of me. I really like that this idea that we need to have self awareness, we need to pay attention.

[06:47] We need to be aware of the way we see the world and aware of the things that frame us. Is that how you read it?

MATT BAIN: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a warning for me, I suppose, to kind of, like you said, pay attention, be aware of the values, the desires, the assumptions that we can so easily take for granted. Yep, that's our water.

DANIEL SIH: [07:11] Yeah, I like it. And what's fascinating is that the end of this kind of commencement speech, he kind of moves into this very risque kind of area using terminology of religion, recognising that Wallace himself wasn't religious. But I really find this incredibly helpful. And this ending of his speech is also incredibly helpful when it comes to thinking about attachments and what it looks like to stop striving and I suppose be enough. So let me read this. It's a long passage, but it's worth reading.

MATT BAIN: It's worth it.

DANIEL SIH: “Okay, so here's something else that's weird but true. In the day to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism.

[07:48] There's no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships, the only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of God or spiritual type thing to worship, be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some enviable set of ethical principles is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

[08:15] If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you'll never have enough. You'll never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you'll die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, cliches, epigrams, parables, the skeleton of every great story.

[08:46] The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.” I really like that. “Worship power,” he says, “and you'll end up feeling weak and afraid and you will end up needing ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect being seen as smart, you'll end up feeling stupid, afraud, always on the verge of being found out.

[09:13] But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you gradually slip into day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that is what you are doing.”

[09:41] So, it's a good speech, it's confronting and it's a complex argument.

[09:45] But essentially what Wallace is saying from my read is that we have these default ways of seeing the world, default ways of swimming in water, and we end up being compelled to have attachments or kind of to giving meaning to things in our lives that actually define us, that kind of surround our self-identity and that give us ultimate meaning, but those things can eat us alive, as he says. And what my understanding of his speech is, is he was compelling people to actually pause and reflect and do so constantly and have self-awareness. And even if you see these things in yourself, of course, if I chase too much, I end up in debt, if I care too much about my body, then I end up kind of vain and self-conscious.

[10:33] We know these things because they're in parables and epitaphs and stories, but the complex bit is keeping it front and center and allowing it to change and shape us to essentially what we're going to talk about, which is to let go and to experience the freedom of letting go of those attachments. That's my read. What do you reckon?

MATT BAIN: Yeah, I just thought then in relationship counselling circles, I've come across this term, you've probably heard of it.

[11:02] It's like when it comes to investing in a relationship long-term, people tend to either slide or they decide. That's a term, slide or decide.

DANIEL SIH: And it rhymes, how good is that?

MATT BAIN: It does, yeah. It makes it incredibly catchier, right? Yeah, so if you slide into a relationship, it's almost unconsciously, over time, you just fall into it, right?

[11:21] Because it's comfortable, it's easy, it's a bit like this speech saying it's the equivalent of being unexamined and unintentional, as opposed to deciding consciously, intentionally, explicitly, unambiguously deciding that I'm going to commit to this particular relationship. I think that's not a bad parallel to what he's advocating in this speech. Every day, you wake up and you try to keep it front and center, that process of deciding what it is that you're going to value and what kind of water you're going to be swimming in, as opposed to just sliding into it, because that's what everyone else around you, your peer group is doing, for example.

DANIEL SIH: [11:57] Yeah, and I like what he says, it's this idea that once you slide in to a particular way of seeing the world, well, then you only see that thing and then you stop seeing all the other possibilities around you, even when like truth is kind of smashing you in front of the face. And he gives stories about that in the actual speech as well worth reading. But you simply close your eyes to the alternative possibilities about what the world is actually saying and about how you see the world.

[12:24] And so, again, I think that's why we don't want to slide in and we want to be able to examine and probably do so in community, which you and I talk about constantly. So let's talk about what attachments are. Let's talk about how we can see the kind of things that we get attached to. And maybe the big question is how do you get out of it, given that this is a topic about how do you have enough and how are you enough?

[12:53] So how can we actually get out of that circle of striving and stop chasing more and more and more and more, that insatiable hunger for more.

DANIEL SIH: [13:12] So tell us about this term attachments probably from Buddhist thought predominantly.

MATT BAIN: Yeah. Well, first of all, let me say what it's not because

DANIEL SIH: Because it's not the question I asked. Thanks.

MATT BAIN: Yeah! Like a good politician, I'll give you the answer that I want to give to the question that you can give me.

[13:30] But I'm just conscious of the fact that there are a lot of people now who are familiar with the idea of attachment theory, which is about the bond that forms between a baby or a child and their primary caregivers in the first couple of years of life. So this isn't it. So we aren't talking about that. We're not talking about attachment styles or theories. Like you said, we're kind of taking the term that's, I think, usually popularly associated with Buddhism, about attachment being sticky, ultimately unhelpful desires, if you like.

DANIEL SIH: [14:05] Yeah, desires that kind of lead you to chase something and want more.

MATT BAIN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

DANIEL SIH: The kind of the hunger that can do is.

MATT BAIN: The hunger, the hunger to either chase something or need something. I become completely dependent.

DANIEL SIH: And define yourself by.

MATT BAIN: And define it. Yeah. So it's like another term for that is fused. So to have your identity fused with this thing or completely hooked up with it to use a term that we've knocked around before. So cards on the table, I'm not a Buddhist. Right. So this is like my kind of non-Buddhist understanding of what they mean by attachment.

[14:33] But I don't want to get people, I suppose, I don't want people to be hung up on the idea of this being like a simply, exclusively or solely like a Buddhist idea.

DANIEL SIH: Well, I mean, I think it's a human idea.

MATT BAIN: It's a human idea.

DANIEL SIH: This is the point. Like, and actually, if you look at all world religions, they all have some type of word that covers this. You know, from a Christian tradition, we talk about idols and helpful idols. It's all the same type of idea, at least in the same ballpark. This is a very human idea. You don't have to be religious.

[15:00] You simply need to actually want to chase something enough and find you, find you chase something and then it becomes unhealthy. Right.

MATT BAIN: Well, I think even more importantly, even if you got again, like you've got no identified spirituality or religion, if you talk to anyone who's been around the block long enough, everyone who I've talked to can relate to this in their own life, not even like vicariously, but in their own life.

DANIEL SIH: And if you can't, you're a fish swimming around going, hey, what the hell is water?

MATT BAIN: [15:24] So, so, so our definition is like, so when we use this term, we're talking about it referring to clinging, grasping or holding on to it could be people slash relationships. It could be possessions. I need to have, I need to maintain this possession or I need to acquire this possession in my life in order to be happy. It could be experiences. Again, like we talked about, I have to tick off all the Greek islands or like the, you know, hundreds of Balinese and Indonesian islands. I have to see them before I die or else I’m never going to be happy.

DANIEL SIH: You’ve just come back from Bali, you’re rubbing that into my face, aren’t you.

MATT BAIN: Maybe, maybe, maybe not. I don't want to time stamp this.

[16:01] It could be ideas or ideals. So like if I don't have the perfect family, if I can, and I'm talking like two or three generations down, then my life has been wasted or I failed. Or it could even be aspects of our very identity. You know, so I think one we haven't mentioned yet is say health. So I need to be a healthy person. I need to regard myself as some kind of objectively healthy person or else again, I failed and my identity is not complete.

DANIEL SIH: And then you have the good old fashioned, you know, I have an attachment to alcohol. I have attachment to pokie machines.

[16:3] Like if you can be the good old fashioned, traditional cigarettes that like I need it.

MATT BAIN: Yes.

DANIEL SIH: There's not just a chemical, physical dependency, which is obviously a big part of it, but there's an emotional identity connection. It starts off feeling great and then eventually I need more and more of it and I feel less satisfied. Right. That's the same idea with any desire that we have and they can be with good things. Right.

MATT BAIN: Oh yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[16:58] And you know, the kind of classic bad things or less socially acceptable things like you just mentioned, you know, whether it's cigarettes, alcohol, that's like, that's kind of easy for people to identify. Like that water to some degree is pretty obvious. It's going to be like more of the good things, the admirable things, like the worthy aspirations that most of us have in life and strive for. And to be clear, we're not, we're not anti-desire. Like you and I certainly not wanting to advocate that.

[17:24] And there's nothing wrong with having like aspirations towards like most of these things, you know, and there's personally like, I'm okay with the idea of being able to experience and taste some of those things like say alcohol in the right dose. Right. So, so, so we're not talking about all desire bad. We're not like we're not, we're not down on relationships or material possessions or part of the creative order. It's not that.

DANIEL SIH: Yeah. Like Wallace says, it's not even about good or bad, right or wrong. It's not an issue of morality.

[17:53] It's an issue of perception. And seeing the world and living the life you need to live.

MATT BAIN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's whether it's, it's when that desire or that striving or that need to either acquire or maintain is completely again, it goes beyond something that you can kind of take or leave or something that you prefer or not prefer and it becomes something that you need.

[18:18] You fundamentally need to feel good about yourself and your life.

DANIEL SIH: And that leads to the lack of enoughness, right?

MATT BAIN: Yes.

DANIEL SIHL: And this is where we go back into this. I mean, it always leads to more, whether it be, I really value my career. I want to make an impact in the world. But now I find I'm checking emails constantly at night. I think and dream about my work. I'll neglect my family. I'll even neglect my health and I'll just continue going on and on and on.

[18:44] And just like any kind of addiction, it, it kind of draws you in. You become attached to it. The idea of losing your job or your identity that's related to your job terrifies you, but can be the same with like my children. It can be the same with my health. It can be the same with my football team. Like you can get attached to anything that you desire enough, right?

MATT BAINL: Yeah. Yeah yeah.

DANIEL SIH: And then hook your identity to. And that's, that's the tricky thing, right?

MATT BAIN: That's the tricky thing. It makes me.

MATT BAIN: Good things that become.

MATT BAIN: Yeah. Like great things.

DANIEL SIH: Ultimate things.

MATT BAIN: [19:13] Yes. I can still remember first year uni, we had this sociology lecturer who, and there's like, you know, this is hundreds of people in this room, first year like uni students. And it was great because this guy, he told us right from like the first class he was retiring at the end of this year, right? He'd been in the business for decades. So he had nothing to lose. So like the filters came off to some degree and he just gave us all these kind of ad hoc valuable life lessons. And one of them, and I'm talking, this is 1996. So it's going back a while.

[19:40] One of them was like, and I can't remember how it came up, but he looked at us and goes, look, if you or someone you love thinks that they've found the person, the one person in the world that they absolutely, positively cannot live without you or that person, you need to tell them, turn around, and run away as fast and as long as you possibly can. True. And I thought, man, like it just smacked everyone in the face. Cause you know, we're all young and romantic, idealist and blah, blah, blah.

[20:09] But that's like that, that just exemplifies exactly what you're talking about. If your identity becomes fused, I have to have this person in my life, you know, in order to be happy, to be fulfilled, blah, blah, blah. Ultimately, you can't control another person. It takes two people to maintain a relationship, which like leads to why this kind of attachment is, I suppose, risky and dangerous. And this goes back to the point that we made before about wanting to keep this grounded in realism. So again, this can be like a bit of a hard pill to swallow, but it's ultimately the best pill.

[20:37] Cause I think again, what we present is grounded in reality. This is how it is because this kind of attachment can futilely involve trying to make the uncontrollable controllable. So you're trying to take what is fundamentally uncontrollable and it's not within your control and you would try and to control it. And that particularly relates to people and relationships. Sometimes it'd be nice if other people were directly under our control.

DANIEL SIH: Oh, a lot of the time it’d be nice. I've been trying with you for years, Matt.

MATT BAIN: Yeah, that's true. I remember.

DANIEL SIH: [21:08] Do you really want to do this podcast?

MATT BAIN: Yeah, because what are your goals? Control more people.

DANIEL SIH: And start a cult from last episode.

MATT BAIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like that's one way that it's futile and unhealthy. You don't want to stake your sense of happiness and contentment on something that is not within your control. It tries to make again, in a futile manner, it tries to make the transient permanent. So stuff that will pass and change through time, you're trying to lock it in and pretty much preserve it in concrete.

[21:37] So things like ideal health, for example, things like competitive achievements, things like career success and even things like, and we can all relate to this, you know, you go through a particularly excellent part or stage of life and you think, man, I'd be happy if this could just last forever. But life doesn't last forever. This stage, it's transient.

DANIEL SIH: So you're clinging to the past. Or you’re clinging to a moment. And that becomes a defining part of who you are.

MATT BAIN: Yeah.

DANIEL SIH: Okay. That makes sense.

MATT BAIN: [22:05] And then another way where it's not helpful and kind of like completely anti-reality is when we futilely try, we get attached to the idea of taking something that we've termed earthly and making it transcendent. So this is when I say, I maybe I'm particularly attached to my political views or ideology. And I forget that that's like, that's like a social construct. It's actually not transcendent.

[22:29] It's still flawed, you know, it's still kind of earthly or going back to your point before I take my, my hedonistic pastime of choice, whether that's alcohol, nicotine, something else, gambling. And I think I'm going to make this transcendent. You know what I mean? I'm going to give this like next world value when it doesn't, it's still like a kind of material earthly pleasure. And finally, and like we talked about probably now almost ad nauseam, I take my finite capacity, which again, I'd say is earthly material, and I pretend that it's infinite.

[23:02] So I pretend that again, my limits don't really exist. And I can do it all, have it all, and I get attached and fused to that idea.

DANIEL SIH: And again, the problem with all this stuff isn't that it's kind of right or wrong, but it, it makes you miserable, right? Because if you cling to the past and say, you know, when I was 20, I was happy therefore I'm going to do the things that made me happy in my 20s, like life moves on, it doesn't work.

[23:25] If you try to control people who are, you know, by their very nature, uncontrollable, well, then you're going to be trying to live an illusion and that will make you miserable because you'll always be disappointed with people's responses and you'll always act in a way that actually probably causes them to spend less and less time with you and have less respect for who you are. Like it becomes a self-defeating thing.

[23:47] Whenever you cling to something, whenever you grab it, whenever you hold onto it, whenever you allow desire to actually define you and your actions, and whenever you define yourself by a person or by an action or an achievement, it just leads to misery.

MATT BAIN: Yeah, that's right. That's right. So maybe we don't, you know, like, again, don't use the language of right and wrong, but I do feel pretty comfortable with the idea of, you know, again saying this is realistic and this is not realistic. Yeah.

DANIEL SIH: Yeah. So look, I've written a bit on this in my book, Spacemaker, shameless plug, but I wrote a chapter on love.

[24:24] And so the book is really about technology, digital overuse and how the loves and longings of our heart are actually very much attached to technology. It's not just an algorithm issue. It's actually a heart issue. So I wrote a chapter on love and it was, you know, drawing on thinkers like Tim Keller and others who write about attachments. But let me just, it's a bit weird, but reading something from my own book. Now of course, not everyone.

MATT BAIN: It'd be weirder if you put on some other voice.

DANIEL SIH: That's right. See if I can put on the real or read in the name of the awesome voice.

 [24:57] Now of course, not everything we do or love is worship and I'm using worship as a synonymous to attachments in this sense. It is wholly possible to love someone or something deeply without worshiping them. We can value people and relish material objects. When it comes to worship, the key questions we need to ask ourselves is what or who is the functional master of my heart? In other words, what do I love so much that it defines me?

[25:25] What do I orientate my life around when no one is watching? What captivates my thinking day in and day out, shaping my everyday choices? Once you discover these things, you discover who or what you worship. I think those questions are incredibly helpful because, you know, it's it's trying to pick those seeds or those self delusions that have taken good things and made them ultimate things.

[25:50] Where we've gone to the point we've said, you know, what is the functional master of my heart? You know, again, let me read it out again, because I think there's a really helpful questions. What do I love so much that it defines me? What do I orientate my life around when no one is watching? What captivates my thinking day in and day out and shaping my everyday choices? I knew I added one more, actually, which is what am I terrified of losing? Are you terrified of losing your house? Are you terrified of losing your business? Are you terrified of losing your job? Kind of title? Are you terrified of losing your kids or your health?

[26:22] They're often pretty good indications that they're areas of your life which have ultimate meaning and where you may have some kind of hooks or fusion with your identity in a way that can lead to unhealthy attachments. And so that's a good place to start exploring.

MATT BAIN: Yeah. And just to be clear, I'm terrified of the prospect of like losing my kids. I like that terrifies me.

[26:47] But I'd like to think, and it's easy to say from this side, that if that and hope, you know, go for a bit that ever happens, but if it did, I'd be able to keep going. So I wouldn't undo me completely if that makes sense.

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, because there's a sense of self that is beyond your children. That will actually then allow them to grow up and be adults and to leave and not have to phone them three times a day just to make sure they're OK. You know, like there's a difference.

MATT BAIN: That's right. That's right.

DANIEL SIH: [27:13] A healthy love that releases versus one that is attached. Yeah. And often that line is very fine and can actually move. But to ask yourself these types of questions can be super useful.

MATT BAIN: Yeah. And I don't mind if you include like you can include that one, that question for free in the five year.

DANIEL SIH: Awesome. Yeah. No, it was a crappy question. I'm just trying to add it so you feel good about it. You need to contribute something to the podcast.

MATT BAIN: [27:37] Well, I was going to say, I was going to say, you know, like one, one more revision. And if you're actually loving someone, I think the worst thing that you can do is worship them. But seriously, so it's not just like because if I if I worship someone else, it's very opposite of love because I'm putting pressure on them that they are not built to be able to carry. So it sounds like again, it sounds romantic. It sounds idealistic.

[27:58] It sounds really flattering, you know, but if you've ever been worshipped, I don't know if it's a good thing or not to say that I, you know, like maybe I speak of a personal experience.

DANIEL SIH: Matt, you have plenty of fans out there in the audience who actually worship you.

MATT BAIN: If you all worship, it does put way too much pressure on someone. If you worship your children again, they know that. Like to answer your question, I reckon often if you can't tell, if you can't answer that question accurately, ask the people in your life.

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, just ask people what is the functional master of your heart. You'd probably ask in a less weird way, but what does Matt give all of his attention and love to and you'll soon find out.

[28:34] So look, from quoting me to quoting you to quoting the Buddha, he says, “Attachment is the root of suffering.” It's a simple quote, but maybe it summarizes what we're trying to say. Attachment is the root of suffering. And there is another quote I'm going to read because we're going to have a minute of silence for you to reflect and think about what we've talked about. Now, I'm going to struggle to say the name of this person. I've read a number of his books.

[29:02] He's a Vietnamese monk and he's fantastic, but

MATT BAIN: Is he Vietnamese Buddhist monk?

DANIEL SIH: Ah, Zen master. So Thich Nhat Hanh is my best attempt. My apologies if there's a Vietnamese person who knows how bad my pronunciation is. But he says attachment to views, attachment to ideas, attachment to perceptions are the biggest obstacles to truth. So look have a moment of silence.

[29:27] We always like a time of silence to reflect on the space makers podcast because it's what you reflect on and then what you apply that counts. Yeah, are there possible? Is it possible that there are hidden attachments in your life? What are the things that you love the most? Are some of those loves and longings unhelpful, leading to a desire for more to be more to have to have more? And what might it look like to learn to let go and experience a bit more freedom in those spaces?

[29:59] Have some silence.

[30:28] So hopefully that time of silence was helpful. As you are maybe having a moment of silent solitude and reflection, our producer said it's ironic that we're having a whole episode on attachments while you are grasping your coffee like a deep vice.

MATT BAIN: [30:46] Look, to be fair, the water and I know this, so it's intentional. I've decided I haven't slide it, but my water is always caffeinated. The water that I swim in is always caffeinated. I'm happy with that.

DANIEL SIH: And hey, you know, everyone needs vices. So with that in mind, let's get practical because we did promise that we want to help people with this really, really practical, tangible ways that they can not only identify, you know, the things that they struggle with.

[31:11] I think if we're honest and we pause for long enough, we can identify areas where there's probably some attachments or at least the risk of desires becoming attachments. But what do you do about it? So look we've been going through a framework with this pod course, recognising that every podcast season we have has a series of episodes trying to get you somewhere and it's the AWARE framework. So it's an acrostic.

[31:35] A is for appreciation, which is about practicing thankfulness and gratitude and the importance of noticing what is good right now and therefore not needing more. W is watch for Kairos. We haven't talked about Kairos next. That's next episode. We're going to talk about the difference between chasing goals and actually living in serendipitous moments. It's going to be a really good episode. Acceptance is the A that's about embracing what is and stop needing to kind of change everything or control. The R is relinquish.

[32:07] I would say that this episode is predominantly about the R or letting go. Relinquish or letting go. It's about releasing control. It's about giving up attachments. It's about learning to give up your endless need to prove or improve and to essentially loosen your grip. And enoughness is the E, which is about downshifting, reducing your expectations for more. We can talk about that in the money episode. Yeah, yeah.

[32:35] Let's talk about relinquish and some practices about why it's helpful to let go to relinquish and how freedom comes from that. Now, of course, actually as a caveat, you know, this is now the area of religion. There are millions of books on meditation and mindfulness on prayer, on forgiveness, on confession, like depending on your tradition.

[32:55] It's not our role to teach you, you know, tens of thousands of years of religious practice, but we thought we would share a few kind of modern day or at least adapted practices that anyone can do, assuming that most people who listen don't have a religious background, which is the reality of our podcast. So let's talk about three ideas. And they're just ideas to relinquish control once you see an attachment in your life. Let's talk about three ideas to relinquish control once you see an attachment in your life.

MATT BAIN: [33:33] So the first one, the first one we've called serenity versus seasickness for reasons that will become apparent soon.

DANIEL SIH: So I'm still confused by that title, but that was yours, Matt. Now let's go with it.

MATT BAIN: I'll slow it down. I'll slow it down. Maybe we'll draw some pictures. We'll get you there.

DANIEL SIH: An acrostic would help.

MATT BAIN: So so one common form of unhealthy attachment that we've talked about at length is becoming fixated. Now I take note of that word, so it's not just preferring, but it's becoming fixated on something, on changing something that is fundamentally beyond our control.

[34:02] So I tie my wellbeing, my sense of wellbeing on whether this whether I can change this thing when in reality, like we said before, this thing is not within my realm of control to change. So this is this is different from simply wishing that something was different, again, having a preference for it and is distinct from realising that I've got some influence over whether it changes. This is saying, (a) this thing must change.

[34:29] And this thing and thinking futilely that it is within my power to change it. When reality says, sorry, mate, it's not. So examples, this could be a loved one's behaviour. So I can influence a loved one. I can't control. I don't have that that degree of like, you know, autonomy over a loved one. So that's a classic example. Another one is like a lifelong medical condition. So I think I've talked about it on here before, probably somewhere. I've got a stent. I had a stent put in to my heart like three or four years ago.

 [34:58] And I remember after the procedure coming back around and talking to the surgeon and they said, “OK, you know, you're going to be on statins now.” And I like naively, I was like OK, cool. How long will I be on this medication for? And he said, “Look, probably like the rest of your natural life. That's going to be it now.” And so that took a little while for me to kind of adjust to like this idea and kind of make peace with it now. I'm someone who's got a heart condition and I'm going to be on this medication. It's not it's not an option really. It's a necessity for the remainder of my life, you know, that's something that I can't change.

 [35:27] So getting fixated, my wellbeing becoming fixated on that changing would be an unhealthy attachment. You know what I mean?

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, that makes sense.

MATT BAIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or like lastly, it could be and not that you or I could possibly relate to this. But the the public's the public's lukewarm reception to, you know, the great work of art, maybe a podcast that you poured your blood, sweat and tears into and your mum said that was great. That was fantastic. But everyone else is like, just another podcast.

DANIEL SIH: Mum does like my podcast.

MATT BAIN: [35:55] You know, so. So this made us think of like the famous serenity prayer that people will be familiar with. It's really big and recovery circles, particularly AA and the serenity prayer goes as most people be well aware. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference. Now, we don't think that you necessarily need to believe in God or a higher power.

[36:22] You don't have to like to be able to see the sense like the wisdom in this. Because again, that to me is just steeped. It's grounded in realism in terms of like how the world is. There are stuff that I can influence. There is stuff that I have the power to change. Yeah, but I need to be really, I need to be wise and discerning to recognise the difference between those two categories. Absolutely critical, you know, but not accepting, not accepting the stuff that I can't change, not being able to make peace with it.

[36:54] It comes with a bunch of perils of its own. Some of it, some of them we've already mentioned. And this was like best recently summarised to me by this awesome quote from some poetry from Leonard Cohen, the great.

DANIEL SIH: You've been wanting to get Leonard Cohen in for ages.

MATT BAIN: Yes, he put it beautifully. And the thing about Cohen is that he was obviously, well, not obviously, but he was an ordained Zen monk. So he was very, very familiar with Buddhism.

[37:21] He did his time in the monastery and he was also very familiar with both, you know, Judaism, being a Jew and Christianity. So he wrote one of his poems. This came, I think it was either penned during his time in the monastery or after he got out. So this is like just like a snippet, but he said, “if you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day. If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day.” Beautiful.

[37:43] So just identifying there that the stuff like the ocean, so vast, so powerful, so beyond you, you can't tame it, you can't control it. You haven't got responsibility for it. Maybe you can influence it, but even that's a long shot. So you need to be able to almost like identify and roll with the stuff in your life that you fundamentally can't change. Because if you don't, if you try to again strive, push it back, control it, you will be absolutely seasick.

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, that makes sense. That's why you've called it serenity versus seasickness.

MATT BAIN: So I told you, I told you that we get there, mate.

DANIEL SIH: [38:13] I know you connected. It was a long bow, but you did it. But essentially what you're saying is this is for those attachments where people are trying to fight against reality. Whether they're trying to control people or situations or circumstances in life, whether they be regrets or whether they be desires in the future. But they're trying to control things that are actually beyond their control. Where if they ask the question, God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

[38:43] Well, they probably need to accept and relinquish control of those things. Courage to change the things I can. Sometimes when we're chasing things and putting our identity and our belief in things that we can't control, we don't take ownership and responsibility for what we can. The small acts of responsibility that can actually improve the situation.

MATT BAIN: Yeah, that's right.

DANIEL SIH: And obviously the wisdom to know the difference.

MATT BAIN: Yes. Yeah.

DANIEL SIH: So we've done practice one. Let's talk about practice two and three. We'll be fairly brief here.

[39:15] But we're calling the second practice abstaining from your loves. Now, again, it's abstaining, not giving up. We're not saying that things that you love and care about are wrong. But there can be a point where we over identify with those things and therefore it's helpful to abstain or fast to withdraw yourself from those things for a time in order to gain some independence from them. So look, fasting is one way of abstaining when we don't eat food. Food is a good thing.

[39:43] Food is fantastic. It's beautiful. It gives life. But we can get greedy. We can become obsessed about food. It can be unhelpful for ourselves and for the world around us. So one of the practices of fasting, at least in kind of traditional religious circles is to give up food for a time, not to reject the value of food, but to appreciate it more and to separate your body and your soul so that you can actually realise you are not dependent on food and the way you think you are.

MATT BAIN: [40:11] That's right. So yeah, reduce the chance of getting attached to it in unhealthy.

DANIEL SIH: It's about reducing the unhelpful attachments. And that actually allows you to enjoy food and appreciate it more. Even outside of the science of why fasting is good for you. But it's the same idea, right? So abstaining, but you can do it for anything. OK, you can abstain from social media, which is very common. It's a pretty common way of kind of separating yourself from that unhelpful attachment to social media.

[40:36] You can you can abstain from overwork, from email. And what are some other examples you can think of?

MATT BAIN: Well, I've heard people talk about coffee, but that's ridiculous.

DANIEL SIH: Anyway, we get the point, right? I wrote a book about technology and about our loves and longings. So Spacemaker, there's a there's a chapter around Sabbath keeping.

[41:00] I called it the weekly day of rest and how actually fasting from work or abstaining from work is probably a more accurate term. Abstaining from work for a day a week and not just like not being at work, but actually building a practice around what does it look like to disconnect from work to rest your mind, to invest in relationships, to orientate a day around the principles of rest and reflection. How can that actually allow you to then achieve more and enjoy work more without becoming obsessed by it?

[41:30] If you're interested, I actually have a free course about how to plan a digital Sabbath that's at spacemakers.au/rest or obviously pick up the book. But look, it's really about saying I'm going to abstain from a particular behavior that kind of hooks me in and I'm going to abstain for a period of time in order that it does not own me anymore. And therefore you become enough. It becomes enough and you start to enjoy it again. Yeah.

[42:04] Any practical tips on that?

MATT BAIN: Oh, yeah. The only one would be like super fast, like. Don't be that person that picks something that's actually like really easy for them and has no chance of hooking them in the first place. Like, you know what I mean? Just for the sake of feeling virtuous. Yeah, that's all. Yeah, so.

DANIEL SIH: So you should actually do coffee.

MATT BAIN: Yeah, maybe.

DANIEL SIH: All right. So look the second one is to abstain from things you love. And that's a clear one.

[42:28] I suppose you're just taking oxygen away from those attachments and then allowing you to feel your emotions, to experience how hard or easy it is and to separate your self identity from the thing you love.

MATT BAIN: We're probably not talking about people and relationships there so much.

DANIEL SIH: Well, I think so, actually. It could be. I mean, if you have unhelpful friendships and you think, well, actually, this is a bit toxic potentially, I mean, or it could be actually. I'm worshiping the person I'm kind of partnered with.

[42:56] We actually need to go and hang out with friends sometimes and not spend every night with each other. Like, I don't know. I think there's value in in having some independence or interdependence, if that makes sense.

MATT BAIN: Yeah, that's true.

DANIEL SIH: Without rejecting the relationship or whatever. You just don't have to do it constantly.

MATT BAIN: Yeah, I’m thinking about it, that's a great line to use if you were trying to put a bit of distance, you know, between you and someone else. Look, I need to have some space because I'm at risk of worshiping you here.

DANIEL SIH: That's right. It's probably better than saying, hey, you're an attachment. I need to detach my desires. All right.

[43:29] So look, activity number three or practice number three is letting go through embodiment. And look, I've got to say, this is probably the one I like the most, but we all have our jam. I think embodiment by that, we mean through a physical act and by actually speaking out something. I think it's actually really powerful to say something and to use your body and your kind of posture in a way that actually releases control and lets go of the things you love.

[43:54] You know, I think about the analogy of if you want to hold sand, if you hold it tight, you lose the sand from your hand. Whereas, you know, if you open your hands up, then you can hold sand. I think I can't say his name again. The Vietnamese monk, Thitch. I can't say his name without checking my notes. But he talks about the idea of a butterfly in your hands. And, you know, you don't want to close the butterfly. You want to hold it open. OK, so I think it's something about our hands being open, which is very important. For me, because I'm quite a tactile person, I have a particular practice.

[44:27] You probably won't want to copy this, but I've mentioned it before. But I have a cold shower of six days a week, except for my Sabbath. I have a cold shower six days a week for two minutes. I'm in Hobart, Tasmania. It is cold a lot of the year. And it doesn't matter how long I've done this for. It's still a hard habit. Like every single time I have to turn my shower from hot to cold, I'm like, this is gonna suck. But I have a timer. I slowly turn it down and then I go full cold for two minutes.

[44:56] And I'm literally trying to grab, you know, trying to get my breath and not squeal. After about 30 seconds, I put my head under the shower. I open up my hands and I say a little prayer that my friend taught me, which is I surrender my breath to God of the universe. And that is actually an act of me surrendering control. And then I'll say whatever's in my heart, you know, I surrender my worries about today's podcast episode, I surrender.

[45:23] My anger around how my child spoke to me, you know, I surrender my desire for more money this week, you know, like I just, I just go through the motions and whatever happens in my heart, whatever I pick up in my head, I kind of surrender it because I'm in the shower it’s very physical. I really like it. I find that a really helpful practice. It helps me desire less. It helps me want less and it helps me be less anxious because the things I want have less hold on me. And I think that's the power of the freedom of letting go.

[45:55] Now, you don't have to have a cold shower, obviously. A very kind of conscious and common practice is to start with a fist and then deliberately open your hands. You know, there's something about opening them up to the, you know, I don't know, universe to God, to just to surrender, which is really useful.

[46:14] And then to literally say something like I surrender, I give up or I let go of these detachment attachments, you know, like, and then speaking stuff out, it can be really helpful. Yeah.

MATT BAIN: Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Like it's really there. There is something that seems to take it up a notch. Turns the dial in terms of intensity and reality and ownership if you actually verbalize the thing, even if it's just yourself and no one else is around, as opposed to just think the thing.

DANIEL SIH: Yeah.

MATT BAIN: You know, so yeah.

DANIEL SIH: [46:47] And so it's just say I choose to release is kind of an act of will to say, I recognise that I'm overly associated with this and there's anxiety or fear or want associated with this. So it's to kind of actively choose to let that go. I like it as a daily practice or a weekly practice at the very least because like David Wallace says in his talk, this is not something that happens once. We know the stories and the parables and the cliches.

[47:16] It's about keeping it front and center in your mind. So the daily practice of letting go or relinquishing control is super, super helpful. And I think it's a humble posture of acknowledging that actually we're likely to grab onto things.

MATT BAIN: Exactly.

DANIEL SIH: All the time. And just like forgiveness, it's not a one and done deal. You practice it. You practice it. You practice it. And then you realise, oh, I don't need that. I like it. I care about it. I'm pushing and working towards it. But I'm OK without it.

[47:46] Essentially, I'm enough. Yeah, it's because what this kind of whole podcast season is about.

MATT BAIN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Just saying it out loud. Like you said, it's an acknowledgement and it's some kind of admission. And that's good for the humility.

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, absolutely.

[47:59] So look, if people need more detail about these practices, they are everything we talk about in this podcast, including the AWARE framework and details about like each each activity is found in our kind of podcast season handout. Go to spacemakers.au/S4 for for season four.

MATT BAIN: So hopefully at least one of those three practices, if not all will land with people. So just to give like a really quick recap and again, we’d strongly encourage you to pick one of these up and run with it because it's it's easy to have ideas. It's easy to have opinions. It's easy to like to give intellectual ascent to the stuff that we've talked about, but none of that will actually replace some action.

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, in fact nothing works unless you do it, like you have to do something with stuff, right.

MATT BAIN: [48:44] Yeah, yeah, you've got to do some of this stuff. So so we've got the three. We've got the serenity versus seasickness. So again, I do that emotional check in at the end of every day, trying to work out and be honest with yourself about how much control we have over that and then saying the prayer at the end. We've got abstaining from your love. So practicing some abstentation around. I think that's a word for it.

DANIEL SIH: That's a good word. I like it, even if it’s not true.

MATT BAIN: Yeah, yeah. It sounds convincing.

DANIEL SIH: Sounds good.

MATT BAIN: Yeah. So again, looking at something that it doesn't have to be hooking you right now.

[49:10] It just has to be presenting a risk of hooking you in the future. Right.

DANIEL SIH: Well even if you abstain and it's easy, well, then it's probably not an attachment, but if it's hard. If you think about it lots. And if it's incredibly painful to give up that thing.

MATT BAIN: Yeah, it's a good sign.

DANIEL SIH: You’ve found something.

MATT BAIN: Yeah, you found something. And then lastly, like letting go through embodiment. So that whether that's using your hands, going from the fist, the open hand, whether that's like kneeling or even if it's just articulating. So again, like verbalising the thing as well.

[49:38] Just do something with your body to give a bit more kind of power and conviction to the attachments that you think you may be at risk of having.

DANIEL SIH: And it's all it's all about the freedom of letting go, which is what we're talking.

MATT BAIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

DANIEL SIH: Actively choosing to let go of those things.

MATT BAIN: Yes. And to make it more realistic again, like always, we’d encourage people to incorporate some action triggers.

[50:00] So determine when you are going to do any of these practices day to day, so pick a time, pick a realistic time, maybe like again, attach that to something that you're already planning on doing and doing like having a shower and then work out how you're going to do it as well. So be really specific in your planning, because again, if you've got the time and the place and the how, you are so much more likely to actually follow through with it.

DANIEL SIH: Yeah. And I'd probably finish by saying start small. These are hard things, right? So if you've never done this before, if this is a new practice, start small. You know, just open your hands and say one small thing. And then do it the next day.

[50:36] Or say the Serenity Prayer.

MATT BAIN: That's a great idea.

DANIEL SIH: Consider maybe journaling a few a few lines on a piece of paper. Do you know what I mean? Like don't don't fast for like 10 days. You know, if it's food, like maybe go for a morning without food, you know, or go for a morning without social media, go for a walk without your tech. Just start small, but but don't do nothing.

MATT BAIN: Yeah, don't don't fast for 10 days whilst having continuous like two minute cold showers where you're face down at the bottom of the basin.

[51:04] Trying to do this Serenity Prayer

DANIEL SIH: While you're reading David Foster Wallace's book

MATT BAIN: And journaling at the same time with a waterproof pen. Yeah, maybe don't start there. Just in case that was a risk for you. Maybe don't start there. We can’t all be Dan. We can’t all be Dan.

DANIEL SIH: On that very serious note. Hopefully this has been useful. It's a big topic. Next week. We continue this podcast on enough. All this self help is killing me.

[51:29] And we're going to talk about legacy,

MATT BAIN: Legacy.

DANIEL SIH: The importance of leaving a legacy. But how legacy has a dark side and how sometimes needing to make a dent in the universe can actually make you miserable.

MATT BAIN: Yeah, love it because this is I reckon this is a sacred cow for a lot of people.

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, yeah, I love it. So until next time, don't be attached too much to our podcast and make space.

MATT BAIN: Thanks. See ya.

NARRATOR: The Spacemakers with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain.

DANIEL SIH: This episode is sponsored by the Spacemakers Dojo.

[52:01] If you're a busy professional who feels constantly behind, the Dojo is a place to slow down, think deeply and make space alongside others. For a limited time, new members can get 12 months for the price of six with the code PODCAST25. Find details at spacemakers.au/dojo.

NARRATOR: The Spacemakers with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain.