You Are Not Meant To Be Like Everyone Else

We spot a rare red finch and use it as a mirror for the pressure to blend in, then follow that thread into why so many “normal” days quietly feel like suffering. We treat boredom as a serious emotional signal and land on a simple question that helps us reclaim choice without blowing up our lives. 
• noticing how often we live by other people’s priorities 
• separating the task from the story our mind adds to it 
• boredom as a message rather than a personality trait 
• how prestige and “important” jobs can still feel empty 
• the mental loop of bills, duty, and feeling trapped 
• why stepping out of line gets challenged 
• the Monopoly analogy for staying in a losing game 
• asking “What do I want?” to break the pattern

Transcript

Birds, Red Finches, And A Message

SPEAKER_00 0:12

We are on the line.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

It's a little overcast, but the birds are singing up a storm. We just saw a red finch.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Yeah, you don't often sing those.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

The Google says that they're from Africa.

SPEAKER_03 0:36

What?

SPEAKER_01 0:37

And I think the last time it was a couple of years ago, we saw one, and I think here they call them purple finches. But it was red. It was red like a cardinal red, but it had the black wings. Maybe it'll come back. And it's a perfect message for today. You know, we get all kinds of yellow finches. We even get some green ones. When they show up, they show up in packs of 30. And they're everywhere. And I they just go the rounds from all the lovely people who put a bird seed. Sometimes I think, Hillary, you feel like it's your responsibility to make sure all of nature is doing well.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Yeah, we're part of the year, yeah. Plus, I like seeing them, so yeah, that is the joy.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

So a red finch, different from all the others.

You Are Not Here To Blend In

SPEAKER_01 1:52

So today's message is you are not meant to be like everyone else.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Meant to be a red finch.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Put that into your mind for a minute. I'm not meant to be like everyone else.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

What does that mean to you?

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Um, well it makes me step back and think, you know, who am I? What what do I really like in life? What do I what do I do that I just go along with others? What do I do that's more for others than myself? And do I even know what I like?

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Now why would nature put you here to be somebody else?

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Well, it wouldn't but it's certainly I mean, if we think of all well, I I don't know all, but I'm gonna paint with a what is that? Paint with a wide paintbrush. If you think of any animal species, they're they're like one another, they learn from one another, they make sure they're doing what the others are doing. So maybe it's just a survival tactic. But as a human, maybe we're more than just that. Maybe we have the ability to break free from that.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

But even the mundane tasks, even the day-to-day things that gotta do tasks were never meant to lose your uniqueness.

The Mundane Becomes A Choice

SPEAKER_02 4:20

How can you be unique and then lundane?

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Well, first of all, I can watch people do whatever they do and not for a second know what's going on in their mind. There are those who will do the mundane in pain and agony. They will cut the grass and suffer the whole time. And there will be others who will cut the grass in joy the whole time, and then everything in between. But to have lost your sense of your uniqueness is to lose the opportunity to choose what you want to do, to choose how you're going to cut the grass, to choose whether or not you want grass, to choose where you want to live. The instant you take the most mundane, and you realize your mind turns it into the experience that it is, then you open the door to choose something different.

Boredom And The Lawyer Trap

SPEAKER_01 5:52

You can stay in the same thought patterns, and you can become bored. Boredom's a unique emotion. It's one of those emotions we don't talk about. Boredom doesn't often seem to be a problem. I mean, when I was when I was working hard as a lawyer, I used to dream of boredom. I used to yearn for boredom. Never felt like I was ever done, and there was always something to do. And I would like to find a moment where I could just sit and do nothing and get a little bored. And I think that's the insight there. I was working all the time. There was always something to do. And the truth was, I was bored. I was bored with what I was doing. It was mundane, it felt like suffering. And in my mind, I felt trapped. I felt like I had to.

SPEAKER_03 7:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

I felt like there wasn't any choice. And I would lock that into my mind and I would hold it there. And then put my head down and do the things I thought I had to do. And at the time I had been handed this delusion that, you know, lawyers are pretty important people. They're smart, they know a lot, they get opportunities to make lots of money, they get opportunities to be powerful. A great big, great big puddle of illusory ideas. If I am meant to find a job, then I better find a great one. If I'm meant to have a job and do a job every day of my life, then I better find one that's better than everybody else's. One that pays better, one that sounds better. But that's the one that everybody else tells me is better. Without even putting the slightest bit of effort into saying, well, what do I want?

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

I was never meant to be like everyone else. No one ever is. And we live in a world that fills us full of thoughts that actually leads us to suffering and boredom.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Ask yourself how much are you suffering in your day?

SPEAKER_01 9:10

Ask yourself if you found yourself bored with your life. Are you simply focused on the tasks? Does your day get filled with tasks that somebody else said are important and that you've accepted are important? And that you've accepted must be done.

How The World Trains Conformity

SPEAKER_01 9:59

And when it's not people that we love who are trying to guide us and care for us, it's a world as a whole that's doing everything it can to make you like everyone else. Now it's really easy to take this idea and suffer it.

SPEAKER_03 10:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Turn it into something. It's really easy to take this idea and say, poor me, I live a dreary life. I live a life that's not filled with excitement. It's really easy to tell ourselves, well, there's nothing I can do about it. But the emotion of boredom is a really interesting one. I'm spending time thinking about it because you know I'm I'm fascinated by emotions.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

Sorry, I'm I'm thinking about boredom and I'm thinking, what does somebody do when they're bored? Like, how do you know you're bored? Because in my mind, I think of a bored person and they're just sort of staring off into space. Like, you know. I think of that moment of boredom as pretty tiny because your mind is gonna think, well, maybe I'll read or watch TV, or are you bored when you're watching TV? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Like of all the things you could do, would you choose to spend your life watching TV?

SPEAKER_00 11:44

No.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Of all the things you could do, would you choose to be sitting doom scrolling on your phone?

SPEAKER_00 11:53

No.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Of all the things that you could choose, would you choose to sit and stare in space?

SPEAKER_03 12:03

No.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

And to me, that's evidence that we've been programmed, that we're supposed to be like everyone else. We're supposed to fit into a specific lifestyle, and that the best you can do within that lifestyle is yearn for more stuff and more money. And for somebody to tell you, oh, I know the secret to life, or I know what you're supposed to do with your life, it's pretty easy to just reject them and say, What do you how do you know? What do you know? And I would never claim to know what you are meant to do with your life. I have a hard time figuring it out for myself. But boredom is an emotion, and emotions are messages.

Emotions As Messages To Act On

SPEAKER_01 13:02

They're not meant to be hung on to, they're meant to be acted upon. And that's a mistake because we claim the emotion. We say, I am angry, I am afraid, I am sad. We claim it and we hold on to it when really we're meant to say, Oh, there is boredom. And boredom has brought me a message. And the message boredom brings is I am meant for more than this.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

And I think, you know, I think that we can get caught in a loop of I'm meant for more than this, and then think, well, I've got this and bills to pay, and this to do, and family to keep, and then it loops in on itself, and then it just becomes like a spiral downwards into I can't do anything about my situation because you have never been thought to think about it differently.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

You have been trained into that mental loop. And boredom is the emotion that's trying to shake you out of that. And the question then becomes when I look in the mirror, do I think I am meant to be like everyone else? I mean, this opens up a whole can of worms, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Yeah, like who are you to be like special?

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Ah, there's another one of those beautiful thoughts that hammer you back down into your boredom. A thought you've been trained in you that's really just kept you in line. Because stepping out of line, doing something different, for the most part is poo-pooed. For the most part, is challenged. And when somebody says, you know, who the heck do you think you are? Right? Your answer should simply be me. I think I'm me. And I'm allowed to act on my curiosities, and I'm allowed to act on my creativity, and I am meant for more than this. I was never meant to be like everyone else. And every thought that comes to you in response to that that drives you back into that tedium that you call your life, was trained into you. Because people who don't act like everybody else are feared.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Are they feared because they push buttons within us that we're scared to do what they're doing?

SPEAKER_01 16:33

So Because most of us are bored, and the message of boredom is I am meant for more than this. And since I can't find my way out of it, how dare you find your way out of it?

SPEAKER_02 16:50

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

I was not born to get a job to make somebody else rich. There's no way in the world that I was born for that. That doesn't mean don't have a job. It means there's more. It doesn't mean quit your job or give up on your family or walk away from your life. No, it just means there's more. And it's worth thinking about. Everything flows from the mind. And when the mind is trapped in these loops, and every time we try to break out of these loops, others are right there to snap us back into them. We can just start with the way we do things. Because you might wake up and say, you know what? I like having a lawn. And if you do, that's wonderful. Which means cutting the grass shouldn't be suffering.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

Yeah. It's how you enjoy what you want.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

But I think that if there's suffering there, the suffering is the result of boredom. So boredom is an emotion we don't talk about enough.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Yeah, really.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Boredom is an emotion we don't look at enough.

Monopoly And Quitting The Wrong Game

SPEAKER_01 18:43

We talked the other day about Monopoly. It's a fun game, and I want to I want to finish with that idea. If you're playing Monopoly, right, you've got five or six, maybe ten people around the table, right? And you've decided to play Monopoly. And when you sit down, you already have a pretty eye, pretty good idea who's gonna win. But you also have a real desire to be the winner.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Yeah. How do we know who's gonna win? Sorry, that's derailing you.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

We size each other up really well. The point I'm trying to make is that there are some people who are naturally sort of good at the game, a little bit cutthroat. And there are those that are naturally bad at the game because they don't think about all the steps of the game and where it's going to lead them. And some people feel completely trapped by their roll of the dice. And some people feel really lucky, and their roll of the dice seems to work out. But the point I'm trying to make is here we are playing the game, right? And the game goes on, and in the first couple of rounds that the board, you got a good idea who's in the best position and who isn't. You've got a pretty good idea which way it's gonna go. And yet you sit there and you keep rolling the dice. Now, the person that owns Boardwalk and Park Place, they want you to keep rolling the dice. When you say I'm bored, I'm gonna lose, I want to move on to something else, they say, no, no, no, no, we're playing a game here. Come on, we've got to play this game. Because they know they're winning. They're like, Yeah, I'm gonna beat everybody. And after, you know, half an hour, somebody's finally out. They just they couldn't have rolled doubles if their life depended on them. And and and they they find themselves now on Park Place with rents that they don't have, and they hand over all their property and they quit the game, just so happy to finally be out of the game. Just joyous of, oh my god, I'm glad that's over. I'm gonna go do something I really want to do. And still there's one who owns Boardwalk and Park Place who says, no, come on, stay, stay. And it's inevitable how this game is going to turn out, but it's also inevitable that it's gonna take hours. And there's one or two people who've got some, you know, they've got the green properties, right? They've got some good strategic properties on each side. The board, you know, maybe they got all four railroads and they can hang in there. And if they get a couple of people landing on their property and get some money, they can put some hotels and they can start charging big rents. And if they can get like a little strip, you know, they can now negotiate with somebody to get a strip of properties so that when you go down that side of the board, you're stuck. You got to pay them rent. There's no way you're getting around it, and everybody's gonna eventually pay some rent, and they can hang in there, and then it's going to be hours and hours before there's now only three people around the board. And two of them know that their chances of survival are pretty low, and one of them just wants to keep on playing. Come on, let's play. And the other two are saying, Come on, it's dinner time. Let's just eat dinner. Time for bed, let's just go to bed. No, we have to finish this. When you're winning the game, you want to keep playing. When you're losing the game, you get bored really fast. And the thing of it is, there are hundreds of games to play. You don't have to play that one. I and you were not meant to be like everyone else. We're meant to be who we are.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

And it doesn't matter who wins. What matters is can you play without being bored?

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Because when that boredom hits, it's meant to tell you. I am meant for more than this. And so when you find yourself doom scrolling and you're not even satisfied with the videos you're getting, or you find yourself playing video games and it doesn't really thrill with you. When you find yourself sitting on a dock drinking beer, and you're not really happy, that's boredom trying to send you a message. I was meant for more than this, I was not meant to be like everyone else. And I think that's why we see as a phenomenon in our world, rich people doing bad things. Because even if you're really, really rich, and I know that sounds nice, but even if you're really, really rich, you can be bored. So billionaires who've got all this money and no interest in their business anymore want to uh build a spaceship and fly to space because they're bored and they don't know what else to do. And they figure they got all this money. So they're gonna do something nobody else can do. And even still, they're gonna wake up the day afterwards and wonder what's next. I was meant for more than this. I think it's a good thing to think about for a while.

The Question That Breaks The Loop

SPEAKER_01 25:58

And of course, that's gonna lead you to that great question. What do I want? The question we don't ask ourselves enough. The question that leads us towards what will alleviate the boredom. So let that be your earworm today. I was not meant to be like everyone else. I was meant for more than this. What do I want? I was not meant to be like everyone else. I was meant for more than this. What do I want? And if you happen to be someone who says, I love everything about my life, God bless you. I'm sending you my love and appreciation. And maybe you could tell people how you got there, how you identified what you want, how you overcame the boredom. And if you're not there, I'll spend some time on what do I want? What do I really want? What do I want for me? What do I want for the world?

SPEAKER_02 27:23

What are the circumstances I want to create? So there you go.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

That's enough.

SPEAKER_00 27:38

Off to the gym.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Yep, on to the gym.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Yeah, I like that. I think the monopoly analogy is great. Okay. We will see you later.