#12 - Fill the Void - Say No to Escapism | Strategy Series III
In the third episode of this Strategy Series, Andrew and Sammy talk about the importance of real connections and how High Noon is about more than just recovering from addiction.
Discussion points include the power of connections both good and bad and how to tell the difference, the ways different people make connections, and how to connect to yourself, others and God.
Episode Transcript:
Andrew Love: Welcome back to Love, Life and Legacy, a podcast, probably the best podcast on Earth. If you are looking to build sexual integrity, that means get rid of any negative habits likeporn, build healthy habits. And today is very perfect if you are looking to squeeze out any room possible for porn to exist in your life because we're going to talk about building connection. Building connection with ourselves, with others, with God and with our own vision. And these are extremely important because when your life is vibrant and filled with vitality, you do not want to settle for false alternatives. There's no room, there's no way when you're surrounded by a ton of people who are loving you and cheering you on. Why would you ever let somebody hang out with you who's spitting you and degrading you. That's exactly what porn is. It's such a fake, ridiculous version of connection and love. So, we want to teach you all that we can in today's brief episode about how to seek connection, where to go, what to do. Please enjoy. Welcome back, everybody. We are going to re-record this intro because Sammy forgot to press record. Don't, don't judge. My name is Andrew Love and I'm here with Sammy Uyama and I'm gonna say his name for efficiency's sake because we already did all that, Sammy.
Sammy Uyama: So yeah, what just happened is we probably recorded about 10 minutes of an entire episode and I realized that I didn't actually hit record the entire time.
Andrew Love: But we're gonna come at this fresh. We're going to be fresh, right Sammy? We're not gonna even regurgitate a single answer. That we're going to come at you fresh, because today's a big one...
Sammy Uyama: And you wouldn't be able to tell.
Andrew Love: We would, we would. So today we wanted to talk about connection, because it's such a paramount, like it's the antithesis of addiction. So there's an old saying that the addiction is born in secrecy while you're alone and it dies in community. It dies, the need for an addiction dies the moment we become connected. And we want to get into the whys and the whats of that type of line of thinking.
Sammy Uyama: Right. Because what connection provides, it's the, really, the answer, the solution to the underlying thing that's driving all these negative behaviors, any kind of addiction, compulsion, any kind of escapism, escapism behavior, all of these things are actually just symptoms of something deeper underneath. And what that deeper underneath thing is, it's a, there's an infinite range of what that can be, typically has to do with some kind of emotional wound, some hole that you're subconsciously, subconsciously looking to fill. And that's what all of these different behaviors do is that they are a substitute that temporarily fills that void in that hole. And that's what connection, it provides the solve and the solution for it is actually fills what's empty there. And unconsciously, subconsciously, that is what everyone is looking for in their lives is connection to something, connection to someone being a part of something. And knowing that they're, they're fully seen, and all pretense is stripped away, and they're fully embraced and accepted. And that they're actually enough.
Andrew Love: Yeah, yeah. And that sounds, you know, a lot of that. I mean, it's all true. But the way that it's expressed, I would like to just really strip it down to its bare essentials and just explain that, you know, deep down all we want is for somebody to embrace us and just say you're good enough, we love you, no matter what you are, no matter what you've done, we love you. That's, that's what we want. It's a deep, fundamental human need. And it comes from the fact that that's what we're born, we're meant to be born from the love of God. But this, this, this, you know, experience that we have on earth is often we're starved of that love, because we don't often get it from people, we often don't get it from ourselves. We don't get it from God. We don't know where to look. And so we kind of, we look around for value in people liking our posts in this modern era, you know, from validation, looking cool, trying to get money so that people respect us, all this stuff. And it gives us these little, little senses that we feel good for a little bit. It's like these little spikes of a good feeling. But then it goes away because it's not the actual thing that we're looking for. We're looking for the connection that, that we think these things will bring us. And so we wanted to talk about what, what does it mean to get real connection? And first of all the quality of connections, and we wanted to talk about the quality of connection. So why don't you get into this?
Sammy Uyama: Yes. Because that makes all the difference. And I'd say any connection is better than no connection. But there's also a spectrum, there's a scale of, you know, good quality versus low quality. And low quality connection is that very surface level. If you just say hi to someone, you just talk about, you know, whatever is they're talking about this is, you know, when you start talking about the weather, that's an indicator of the quality of connection, they're having this, with this person. And I would say the biggest driving force of low quality connection is anything that causes us to put on some kind of pretense. Or we're actually dealing with experiencing and thinking about in our lives, we cover that up with something else and project what we want others to, how we want others to perceive us or how we think that we, they want what we what they're expecting or wanting? And it's nothing to do with, you know, who am I genuinely as a human being. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.
Andrew Love: I mean, so yeah, it's like bandwidth, right? When you're connected to the best Internet, possibly you can stream movies in a million K, you can, you know, do anything you want. A bunch of devices. That's why people are excited about 5G, some people are terrified. But you know, for the sake of connection, 5G, everybody's really excited about it because of the possibilities of you can connect more devices and they're all faster and that's the same with when you're connected to the, the real quality of God's love through another person, through circumstance. It gives you more ideas, it gives you more power. It gives you more sense of being invincible, because you're connected to eternity. It gives you like a sense of limitlessness I guess, and when you get a little, little bits of it, you kind of feel a little bit but it's not not enough to really get you through even a day. But when you connect it to the source, man alive! You have, you have a lot of power in that.
Sammy Uyama: Yes, that's what high quality connection can provide. It's, yeah, it's really the, how a lot of... so me, what I'm referencing when I talk about this is, and is this book called Real Love, which I just recommend for anybody interested. This is a fantastic book by Greg Bear. And I think it's something that should, you know, more people should read. And so the quality, the idea of quality connection is when the you stop pretending and you open up to someone and you start telling the truth about yourself. And what is it that you're really faced with, you're dealing with, you're worried about, you're afraid of whatever it is, and you just have experience where like this is, you know, this is the truth about myself. And when you do that, you, and then another person can see you and then they can accept what they shared with you. And that process is the experience of real unconditional profound love and that is, I would consider, the highest quality of connection you can have with another person, is that there is nothing, there's nothing needed. Oh, just let me finish, there's nothing needed of you from them; is that they they're the, the definition of an expression of their love for you; is that they just care for your happiness and they just want you to be happy and it's as simple as that. So there's no, there's no such thing as disappointment or being let down or upset or angered on their on their behalf because as you are, it, they just want your happiness. And so telling you, telling the truth is something that they, they're grateful for and then they appreciate and that is such an amazing experience.
Andrew Love: You're, you're that... you did a great job, Sammy. You, you're... just great. Good job. So I'm practicing real love, yeah. The next I wanted to mention, you know, because we're talking about connecting to people, but there's a few levels of connection that are really important in order to sustain, you know. Because, okay, a lot of times we'll think that High Noon is an organization that fights pornography or wants to stop people from watching pornography. And that's not the case. We want to help people become so fulfilled that porn becomes irrelevant. We're just not afraid to talk about porn as being a huge, you know, vat of escapism for most people. And so, we want to help people understand the need to connect to themselves, to God, to other people, and even to connect to a vision for themselves and I want to I want it to get I want to unpack each one of those. So we talked about connection to other people and receiving real love from other people unconditional love from Other people, but it's really, really, really important to also connect to the love that is flowing through them from the source from God. And there's a bunch of different ways that you can do that. You know, a lot of people pray, some people actually need to go out into nature. Some people need to serve other people in order to feel God. Some people need to do more traditional religious things, whatever the tradition is of your faith, there's so many different ways to connect to the divine but it's it's important because I'm, I personally meditate a lot every day, at least once, ideally three times a day. And that is great to do many things, to get rid of anxiety, to connect to my vision, you know, this kind of stuff that I'm about to talk about, and it's all great. But I realized I also really need to set aside a lot of time to pray. To really just have a conversation with the Creator, and that develops a very specific type of connection. When you, you know, a lot of people just pray when their plane's about to crash or when they want to win the lottery and it's very self serving, but to connect to God means to have a conversation and to, to really feel like an answer somehow to your questions and, and to offer up information and just like you would with a real person, this is actually it takes a lot of effort and an ongoing effort because sometimes people feel very connected to God and sometimes there's an absence. But that connection is vital and it takes an investment, a daily investment, you know. So there's, there's that element to like connecting to people and feeling God's love through them is absolutely essential for, for humans in general. But to also go straight to the source and to develop your own genuine connection, unique connection to God.
Sammy Uyama: Yeah, I think that especially, especially I think prayer is so valuable. And it, it can, it says if anything connects us to, it's a reminder of the vastness of the world and that we're a piece of that. It's so easy to get caught up in our own universe. And every mishap that happens to us is, you know, it's a travesty in, on the world scale. But actually, we're just one part that's connected to everybody else and connected to, ultimately to God. And prayer is a really simple and short way to be able to tap into that. And to, and to just remember all the, if I need to remember what to be grateful for, and remember, the, all the other people in the world and what they're likely going through and all the different things that many people are experiencing.
Andrew Love: Yeah, absolutely. And so yeah, we get locked into our own perspective on, on all things. And definitely when you start to leave your own limited viewpoint, your own limited thinking and feeling, and you start to connect to what God might be feeling, somebody who feels responsible for the entire planet, then it gives you a very different viewpoint, perspective and understanding of any given situation. So it's a vital connection and it gets you outside of the trappings of your own thinking, too. So you can see yourself from, from outside of yourself more objectively, when, when you connect with God, there's, there's endless, you know, upside. There's no downside other than time, but it's time well-invested. And it's just something that, there's no substitute for, meditation is not a substitute for prayer. They're both different skill sets. I highly recommend, but for the sake of connection I just really wanted to mention Yes, it's very important to connect to other people in a very deep way. It's also extremely important that you develop your own connection, unique connection with, with God and find your own languaging and communication with, with the divine. And that will lead to the next thing which is connection to self. Did you want to talk about that? How to connect to yourself semi?
Sammy Uyama: That sounds like an esoteric concept that is your specialty.
Andrew Love: No, just spending time with yourself is actually super important. It's like, I've heard of endless, you know, amazing people that I really respect. You know, in the business world, but also you know, people like Nikola Tesla, just people, revaluing the sitting by yourself time, thinking your own thought,s being totally unplugged from anything else and just listening, just, you know. The other day I was just sitting out in nature, just listening to nature. And it was so beautiful. I heard this, you know, this, this cacophony of, there's cicadas and all sorts of, you know, animals all over the place. And I was not aware that there's so much noise, but even just sitting and listening and appreciating the fact that there's so many noises all around you close and far. But just taking the time to just be by yourself and have, and think thoughts and have feelings and process stuff instead of feeling the need to be either doing something, or watching something consuming something. It's, it's a, it's a huge addiction.
Sammy Uyama: Always stimulated.
Andrew Love: Yeah, hyper stimulated. Always distracted. But you never get time to just be by yourself and just to relax and that's actually not a waste of time. It's actually a highly important productive use of time is to connect with your own thinking, your thoughts, your own feelings, where you at at processing stuff. Why was I so angry the other day? Why was I so sad? Why was I so happy? Learning about yourself? I recommend even dating yourself. One of the best times of my life I just decided to start going to comedy shows by myself, going to movies by myself and there's a fear to take yourself home after I did, but I just cuddled; it was amicable. I, it's, I think a lot of people just fear judgment from other people or they don't want to enter a room by themselves and look nerdy. But actually, if you develop this great confidence, where, you know, Stephen Covey talks about the need to go through the three stages of total dependence, then total independence and then interdependence. And so this real genuine independence. I think a lot of people, they lose touch of if they ever spent a lot of, people don't even spend time at all with themselves. They don't go on dates with themselves and just sit and think and be by themselves. It's important and, and, you know, healthy amount of doses. I don't mean you know, become a recluse, not, don't become a Howard Hughes or something like that. But just to spend some time with yourself intentional time with yourself. And then the last thing we wanted to bring up was to spend time with your sense of purpose or sense of vision. Did you want to get into that, Sammy? Do you have anything to say about that?
Sammy Uyama: Yeah, well, just and I think this is a fantastic opportunity, if anything, when people are at home and not don't have to necessarily be so busy. And you can put down the other stimulations and take time to think about your life and where you want it to go and what it and get deeply connected with what you want for your, your, for yourself. And all the different areas of your life, there's, there's many facets, right? There's for our health where we want for, you know, our skills and what we learn and intellectually stimulating yourself or relationships or love life.I if you're a parent, your relationship, your children, your career and all these together and how do they tie together? And where do you want these things to lead you in the future? And create a vision for yourself that's inspiring and get just really moved and touched by that?
Andrew Love: Absolutely, yeah. And so our mind our mind typically gravitates towards romanticizing, or kind of making a negative movie out of our past. And it brings up these emotions every time you have, you remember something bad that happened to you, you get those same emotions. You know, it's like it's this addiction to the past. And so you can actually if you spend enough time really investing in a vision for your future, you start to gain whatever emotional connection you choose. So you're like, I want to be, you know, totally muscular, totally, I don't know, I just, I want, I want to be the type of person that's loving and serving. And people are just so attracted to me because they like being around me, because I'm always giving them you know, this great feeling about, I connect them to God. Whatever it is, the more you invest in really seeing yourself as that person and feeling yourself as that person, the more than just becomes real, it becomes like those emotions become real and you just as real as it were actually happening. And then it just actually starts to happen because you're so used to those emotions. So being connected to the person that you choose to be, it starts in your mind and then it goes into your heart and then it just becomes like who you are. So it's really important to sit down formulate that vision and curate a life based off of who you choose to be, right? So being connected, and that's only possible, honestly if you're connected to God connected to yourself connected to other people and that's, that's it's just an expansion of those realms and the future.
Sammy Uyama: So I guess something specifically useful in this area is like my wife and I, we reached recently to this online course called Life Book, and it's basically exactly this, you create a vision for your, what you want and for different categories of your life, it's 12 that they put together. And so you go week by week through different ones and you create an inspiring and a moving picture of what is your ideal that you want for this area. And it's, it's really move... it's inspiring to go back to that. And you know, whenever I'm like, I'm in a slump or just down to myself for whatever reason, to go back to that and reconnect with what I want for my life. And you know what, my wife now, we want for our family and our family, the future together. And it's a really great exercise and a great tool to have on hand. It's like, it's written out in physical form. It's on paper to be able to hold it and to go through. It helps a lot.
Andrew Love: Absolutely. Yeah. And you start to feel like, you know, you, you, you have some semblance of control over your life, rather than just waking up and doing whatever the day makes you do. You get to choose who you are every day. So these are just some pointers. Again, we're keeping these,, these episodes relatively short, just because we want you to practically apply them. So today's all about connection, and learning to take time to connect with God. Take time to connect with yourself. Take time to really be open and be your true self in front of other people, and also to formulate a vision for yourself. And we've seen that, you know, I've heard from every expert I agree with, you cannot merely prove...
Sammy Uyama: ... the experts that you agree with not, not necessarily all experts?
Andrew Love: All the other experts that say porn is a fantastic idea - I simply just don't follow their advice. But the ones that seem morally, you know, I don't know, awake, alive. They all, you know, will say that part of addiction, a massive part of addiction, is being clear on the person that you want to be after you stop being addicted because it's, that's a huge part of your identity. So you have to reformulate who you want to be. So having a vision is just essential for recreating yourself. If you want to, you know, have a life that you're really happy about, proud of, where you have no shadows. So please take this into account in your day and try to make time for connecting every day, and you will find that the grip that porn has on you lessens every time that you establish deeper and deeper connections with, with these areas that we mentioned. And soon enough, porn will stop knocking on your door because it'll just realize that you're too strong. You're too connected. You're too powerful.
Sammy Uyama: Alright, so thank you very much for tuning in. As always, hope this is helpful. And we've got one episode left in the strategy series. So join us next time, that'll be about how to create quality relationships. So the people concept of an accountability partner - what is that? How relevant and the relevancy of that right now in today's world. And so stay tuned, subscribe and we'll see you next time.
Andrew Love: See yah.
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