Being a Yes to What Is

All right, and welcome back on today's episode, I want to start with a very brief story about Prince, the musician and musical artist and singer that in 2007 played the super bowl halftime show, which you may know is a pretty big deal, and in a pretty big show.

And so back in 2007, which was the first time it ever had ever rained during a Super Bowl, Prince had been rehearsing, and, you know, he was known as being a very methodical performer. Right? He really went for it. He went for the best. And they had been rehearsing for days, preparing in the outdoor arena with their guitars and the visuals and the sound.

And that morning, it starts to pour rain. And it's pouring rain. So his producer calls Prince. A little concerned, right? Kind of stressed out. As the producer of the show, it's a big deal when it rains. Not all performers are down, that there's a little bit of danger with electricity, etcetera, and the general just unpleasantness of it. But so his producer calls him and, you know, is kind of braced for, oh, my God, how's this guy gonna respond?

And he says to him, you know, I want you to know it's raining. Prince just says, yes, it's raining. And the producer kind of gets curious, and he's like, well, are you okay with that? And Prince responded to him rather famously. Can you make it rain harder? And what I love about that story is what it exemplifies.

What I mean by that is Prince was a yes to what was happening. He even kind of went beyond yes and stretched into and bring on more of it. You know, like, if this is going to happen, bring on more rain. Let's celebrate that in the show. You know, Purple Rain is one of his big songs, so, hey, hell, why not? But what this really means is one of the big capacities we can develop and really work towards in life is being a yes to what is now.

This is a bit of a subtle thing because it doesn't mean you have to love everything that's happening to you. Doesn't mean you have to be grateful for accidents or horrible things or down days. What it really means is, well, you have to come to terms with the fact that whatever you feel about it, it's happening. It Is it's already here. Wishing it to be different isn't going to change anything.

Resisting it isn't going to change anything. And I think this is such an important lesson, particularly for us men as so much of our lives can easily become moving through life resisting what is. I wish it was different. And that actually creates more stress and tension and often makes things as they are even worse than they actually would be otherwise.

But being a yes to or just accepting, not resisting what is coming to terms to it actually relating to what is, whether it's a situation in our work life, status of a relationship or the reality of us getting older is such a transformative way of being because then your energy gets freed up to actually deal with reality.

Now this is one that translates directly to emotions as well. Something I've talked a lot about on this show before, right. The same paradigm of the more we resist something, the harder we make it in some ways or the more energy it takes to kind of keep it at bay. Totally applies to emotions. And I do some pretty deep work with guys around this in my coaching programs and the shadow programs I lead and in my own life.

And the thing about emotions are, right, like I've talked about, they're energy that wants to move through our body. And when we resist them, we are resisting that natural process. And by resisting them, we actually often make the discomfort of them persist even longer than they would otherwise. The alternative, when we accept them, when we turn towards them, when we don't resist them, when we come into complete contact.

Again, this kind of theme of we actually come into relationship with what is not with our fantasy or what we want or what we wish. But when we actually come to be with an emotion, it may be incredibly uncomfortable, it may be devastating. The type of grief we can touch, the type of anger we can have, the disgust we can have or shame we can have. This is could be really hard stuff to feel, there's no doubt about that.

But by not resisting those emotions and actually being present with them, they almost inevitably start to move again. There's some movement of that energy through our system. Doesn't mean they go away, doesn't mean they're not pleasant. But there starts to be movement which frees us up a little bit and often actually creates more space in our body. We can breathe deeper, our body can revert to a little bit more of a parasympathetic state.

It's not holding so much anymore. And that just comes from being with what is being a yes to what actually is, you know, I have a personal example of this from about two years ago. My family had been going through something pretty hard and we wanted to do a little ritual to kind of bring it to a close. And so we drove up to a forest, had my dog, my wife, and at that time, my one and a half year old daughter.

And we found a beautiful hike kind of in the mountains of Santa Barbara. It was a misty morning. It's pretty magical. And we're walking out on this hike and it's early in the morning on a weekend and nobody's there. And I'm thinking, awesome, this is exactly what I want. We can get to this waterfall we're headed to, we can do our little ritual. It's going to be peaceful and it's going to be amazing. Now what happens when we get there?

About a minute later, another group comes up with their own dogs. And my dog, Black Lab, is obsessed with fetching. Obsessed. So she actually doesn't do well on hikes because once we get somewhere, she gets it in her head we have to play fetch. And she gets very whiny and barky if she doesn't get to play it. So suddenly this idyllic moment I had for this ritual is totally burst. This other group comes in, suddenly I don't feel like we have privacy.

Their dog is a little dog and it's just, yeah, yapping like crazy, kind of running after our dog. Our dog is whining, trying to grab sticks, trying to get me to play with it. And then my daughter wants to chase the dog and then she falls, she starts crying, and inevitably the energy just starts, keeps amping up. And then I'm yelling at my dog, trying to get her to not play fetch, trying to get my daughter to move over, trying to create a safe space for us. And I'm getting pretty worked up.

It's not the idyllic mooring I had for this ritual. Something tripped in me though, when I realized, oh my God, I am actually yelling at my dog in anger because it wants to play fetch with me. Wants to play fetch. She just wanted to play fetch. And I kind of caught myself of, wow, she's going to do that no matter what. Like this, this moment we're in is not going to change.

It's not going to change by me being grumpy, by me yelling at the dog, by me trying to change it. And it was first through my dog that I had this shift of, well, I can keep trying to complain and yell at my dog and change it, or I could just start Loving the fuck out of her and appreciating her for how much she wants to play and how much energy she has. And so I made a choice. And instead of yelling at her and trying to change her, you know, my voice changed to kind of the more sing songy, playful child talk that my dog loves.

And I started telling her, oh, you're such a good girl and you just want to play so much. Oh, we can't play right now, but we'll play soon. She didn't magically stop barking or anything, but I felt a lot better just laughing out loud at my wife, at the craziness of the situation we had gotten in of like, oh, my God, our kids crying, dog's whining, we don't have the privacy. And I became a yes to it. I just said yes to all this chaos. I was like, you know what? How fucking lucky am I to be here in this moment, which despite things, I'm here with a beautiful family in a beautiful place, and whatever we do is going to be enough.

And we then proceeded and were able to kind of complete our ritual, and I felt good about it. And that moment has really stood out to me as one of my kind of yes, can you make it rain harder? Of there's no point in me bitching or moaning or wishing it would be different. And to some extent, like, let's go all in. It's going to rain, make it rain harder. Let's make the show even crazier, wilder. In that capacity to not resist, to turn towards, to be a yes in the moment, I think it's one of the most challenging skills to cultivate for us, and it's one of the most rewarding that I've had to really come to terms with in all kinds of ways in my life.

Even beyond that story of, you know, oftentimes there's things I wish would be different in my life. Sometimes part of becoming mature is, well, and if it never changed, could I be a yes to the life I have? And the more I do that, the more gratitude I feel, the more appreciation I feel, and the more enjoyable my life is. Moment to moment, when I resist, what is, whether it's emotions or a situation or something I avoid, it just plain sucks.

And I'm a guy that has resisted and avoided a lot of stuff in my life. I'm a veteran at doing this, and I'm here to tell you firsthand, it just doesn't work so well being a yes. The can you make it rain harder? Attitude of appreciating what is is a game changer for any situation in any relationship. So next time you're in a storm and things aren't going your way, take a moment and pause.

You can keep resisting. You can wish it's different, or you can say, can you make it rain harder? And become a yes to it. Until next time. If you're interested in working with me around dating relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to Evolutionary men. Apply.