You Are Not Your Thoughts: A Quiet Conversation with Sonika Cottman

0:01 I have spent years in conversation with people who are successful by every measure and still quietly restless, not broken, not lost, just aware somewhere underneath the noise that there is a version of their life that feels more honest, more grounded, more genuinely theirs. This podcast exists for those people, for the ones who are done performing and ready to go deeper. My name is Dr. Doug. Welcome to Inspire Vision. I'm glad you were here. Samika, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Oh, I'm excited to have you here. It's always fascinating to me to hear the journeys of people and what brought them to the point that they're doing what they're doing now. And so for you, I'd love for you to share your journey. Who are you? Number one, let the audience know kind of your background. And then just very quickly, a little bit about your journey that brought you to this point. Then we'll talk about all the things you're doing. Okay, perfect.

1:09 Well, hello, everybody. I am Sonika Kottman. I have been working in the technology space for quite some time. I have 20 plus years in human resources. But recently, over the last three and a half years, I went through a shift. I call it an inner transformation shift. where my journey kind of started with, I had complete separation from my thoughts. So I came across a moment, I was listening to a book and literally within a few minutes, I was able to separate and I completely separated from the voice in my head and realized that I am not my thoughts. And that just kind of started the whole journey and really trying to understand who I am what I am and what does this mean and how will this impact my life? I knew in that moment it was going to. I just didn't know how and how much of an impact it was going to be.

2:03 But that's what led me here today, speaking to you. You know, it's so interesting. I think so often individuals will have that moment of realization, moment of something. For me, it was when my dad passed away. But it's fascinating to me that many people will take that realization and not do much of anything with it. And others will literally take that and make a huge difference, not only in their own lives, but then it becomes something that they want to be able to make a difference in other people's lives. And it sounds to me like that's exactly what happened for you.

2:45 Yes, absolutely. I could have gone two ways. I either could have just been completely ignorant or ignored what I had experienced and continued living my life as I was. However, what led me to that point was actually not being completely happy and fulfilled in my life. So I was constantly searching for fulfillment, looking for a sense that I'm okay, I don't need to be more, I don't need to accomplish more, everything's fine. And I could never kind of touch that space. For me, I was pretty much, I was done with, I call it suffering, but I was done with the misery that I had been living in the inner turmoil. So when that moment did happen in that separation, I felt complete peace and I wanted more of it. So I hear what you're saying. I think people have realizations, but that voice is so hypnotizing. It's so strong and it's so hard to let go of what you've known yourself to be for so long. that you just kind of fall back into those patterns. And I always say, you have to have suffered enough. You have to have been miserable long enough to say, I'm done, and I want to explore this. So that's kind of, I guess it happened to me at the right time.

4:06 It may have happened throughout my life in other periods, but I wasn't ready. But for some reason, this time I was ready. This time you were ready. And you know, What fascinates me, I've started this whole new project on what I call a 4D personal portrait. And one of the main reasons I'm doing that, and it sounds like this is exactly what you're talking about, is so many people all of a sudden find themselves, and it's not all of a sudden, like you say, it probably is ongoing, but the awareness isn't quite there enough that you're willing to admit it to yourself, that you're not really feeling it. comfortable, you're not feeling at peace, your profession, whatever you're doing, is not accomplishing what you hoped it would accomplish. And, you know, as I look at that, and I'm going to ask you this question, did you literally change professions and jobs, or did you just find that you put that as one element in your life, but you brought something else into your life to bring in that fulfillment?

5:12 Definitely the latter. I did not change anything really on the outside looking in. My life looks pretty much the same, but how I approach it, how I live, how I show up day to day, how I wake up, how I go to sleep, how I interact with my children, my former husband, my colleagues has completely changed. So I did feel though I needed to in the I don't know what the word is, opportunity. It never happened. So I just continued to do what I was doing, but I transformed in the process. So go ahead. Well, and I love that. I think that's important for the audience to hear because, you know, a lot of people, a lot of conversations I've had, you know, a lot of it goes to, well, you know, you just need to change professions or you need to get out of what you're doing. And it's always been my thought that, Maybe yes, maybe absolutely that's what you need to do.

6:12 But on the other hand, maybe what you need to do is do exactly what you're sharing with us, is find a different way to bring everything into balance and find a way to really become self-aware and start to fulfill that area in your life. And then the other becomes not your main life now, but it's a means to an end. To allow you to live the life that you want to live. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people naturally is, oh, I need to change my job. For me, I need to walk out of my marriage. I need to do all these big life changes. But unless you do any type of shifting internally... the same patterns are going to show up no matter where you end up, no matter where you live, what you do. And that was kind of, you have to become aware to see those patterns, but it becomes kind of a vicious cycle. It's like the loop, you get caught in it. And yes, of course you can change jobs, of course. And that might be the absolute decision that you need to make. But until you've done any inner work and internally transcended a lot of what you believe yourself to be, you're still going to encounter the same patterns and they'll just manifest in different ways in your reality.

7:31 Well, and I think you've hit the good point is this work on yourself is so essential because all of the decisions we make, and I know that you talk about this a bit, I think all the decisions that we make in our lives are so affected by that subconscious element in our life. And we don't even realize it. It has to do with our perception and We're experiencing life the way that we've been told by our subconscious to experience our life. And the only way that's ever going to change, we can blame everybody. We can blame our spouse. We can blame everybody else around. But until we are willing to make the change, nothing changes.

8:14 Yep, absolutely. The subconscious is very powerful. And by the time you're around the age of 35, 90% of your subconscious is running your day-to-day and you're on autopilot. So if people listening, if you just start paying attention to how you wake up, how you get out of bed, how you walk to the restroom, what's the first thing you do, then you'll start seeing that it's literally the same routine day by day. You can just put the days on top of each other and they'll be pretty repetitive. It's because we're just running on autopilot. So it takes... something to shake us up. And my biggest message is that why wait till you hit rock bottom? Why wait till you have significant loss? Why not pause and realize, okay, what I'm doing is not working. I need to try something different. I'm not happy. I've got the career. I got this. I've got the job. However, I'm still not fulfilled.

9:15 Why am I still feeling like I'm missing something? Well, you made a statement and I'm really curious about that. I've never heard that particular thing that by the age 35, that the subconscious is literally pretty much running our lives. Is there a study that you got that from? Yes. So the initial book that led me on this path was all centered around neuroscience and biology and quantum physics. Dr. Joe Dispenza, he actually speaks and talks about our brainwaves and how, and he's a doctor himself. He's studied the brain extensively for many, many years. And he has studies that have shown, and it's not just his work. You can look at it. There's a lot of other scientists that have done the work. But our brainwaves, when we're born for the first, probably since birth till about six, seven years old, our brainwaves are very slow. So we're just, think of us as computers and anything that we are told to do, told to believe, it's just automatically downloaded.

10:19 because our analytical mind has not developed yet. So everything, how we raise our children, it's downloaded and that's who they think they are. That's how they show up throughout their life. Well, as they get older, their analytical mind does end up developing and then they start questioning things. But if they do not change how they view life and how they go about their day, all of that neuroplasticity gets hardwired. So you start, your routines become very, very familiar. And to break them takes a huge act of, I call it, supernatural genius. You have to become aware, realize, oh my gosh, I am doing this. I need to stop. And you have to be very diligent about it. It can't just be a one-time thing. You have to do it time and time again. So as you get older, by the time you're the age of 35, your subconscious mind is running 90% of your day of that time.

11:11 And that analytical mind is up against that 5%. So you've got this programming that you were essentially born with. You were not even born with, but you had been downloaded into your brain. And as you get older, you've just been kind of following blindly these belief systems, not really questioning them, kind of living life. You know, a lot of us end up like our parents or we have habits like our parents once did. That's how it's all connected. And then unless you become aware of it and go, I don't want to live this way. I don't want to believe that. That essentially just becomes the norm. That's why it's so hard to change for people. Like after the age 35, they get so set in their ways. I'm sure you've heard that expression before. People just have a really hard time letting go of what they've believed for so long because the unknown is so scary. Well, who am I if I don't believe that anymore? I've believed that my entire life. So I have to look at life differently. Everything shifts. But you have to have a desire to want to shift. This has to have been painful enough for you want to live life a different way. So that's why the suffering and the challenges we go through, they all serve such a beautiful purpose.

12:20 And they kind of lead you up to like the precipice of life where you're like, okay, I'm diving into the unknown. I'm done with this. Well, and as you talk about Dr. Gerald, his main focus is meditation, but He works with a couple of really prestigious universities in Southern California. And, you know, listening to that story, how originally he comes out with these ideas and they're all going in. And all of a sudden they've changed their whole idea about it. And now they're so well behind it. And, you know, for me, that was a major, major change for me when I went to one of his workshops down in Cartagena for a week. And that's what brought me out to Thailand.

13:07 I won't get into the story, but the reality is that's what got me out to Thailand. And obviously I went to that because I was sensing something wasn't quite what I wanted out of life. And, you know, so I was feeling that discomfort. And anyway, so that was an interesting story. But, you know, I think the point for people that, is so difficult is to be able to sit back and really stay at peace just long enough to do that introspective work and start to become aware that, number one, their life is their responsibility. They can't blame anybody else. Now, do things happen that are beyond our control? Absolutely. And I would never not say that.

14:00 But the way that we respond is totally up to us. And so how do you help people? And I would assume the people you work with or the conversations and so forth, they've kind of come to that point or you wouldn't be having those conversations. But what about the people that haven't quite reached that yet? Do they have to wait for that dramatic moment in their life in order to start to become curious enough to become aware of, you know what? Maybe what I'm experiencing, I'm creating. Maybe the truth that I believe is truth isn't. Maybe it's only my perception. I wrote a whole article on that on Substack the other day about how truth is only our perception of truth.

14:54 Yeah. It's... If I'm going to say something real quick, there could be another person in this conversation and they could say something. You interpret it one way. I look at it completely different. Well, who's right? And we're both right. Everybody's right because everybody sees life based on their set of conditioning, their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions. And there is no right or wrong at the end of the day. Everything is as is. So that's where the flexibility and the moldability comes in, where you can actually shift and choose to see things differently. So helping others, it really, at the end of the day, all of this is centered around awareness. And I know that's a very common word we use. And we talk about self-awareness. But what is awareness? Awareness is truly paying attention to what is happening inside of you. All of our attention, everybody. majority of the people on this planet is in our external environment.

15:55 No one pays attention to what is happening inside here and inside here. What am I saying to myself? What's the voice in my head say? And how am I feeling? What emotions am I experiencing? So usually the first thing that I try when people come to me and they're talking about whatever it is that comes up, I try to get them to separate themselves from the story, from whatever it is that they're telling themselves about the event. The event is very simple. If you look at life at the most fundamental way, you have a human being who spoke three sentences, period, the end. But we add a narrative to what that person meant, what their intention was, how they came across, what their tone was, and how it hit us. Well, it hit us based on our internal garbage that we store inside of us and we don't even realize it. So the first thing is just becoming aware of what is the story that I'm telling myself?

16:56 What is my mind saying? And how am I feeling? And I love for people to journal, especially when they're really in the middle of it. But it gets hard. If you haven't practiced this enough, last thing you want to do is practice awareness when you're upset. Because you're already upset, which means you've completely believed the story that the mind is saying. You're in it. You've become it. So there's no separation from it. It's really hard to get through to someone in that state. But I always encourage people, practice when you have wonderful days. Start paying attention. It's like a brand new muscle. If you've never ran a day in your life and you're trying to run a 5K, you can't just get up and start running. It doesn't work. You'll run out of gas. You'll have to walk. It's baby steps. But if you practice enough when things are going well, you're building that muscle. So when challenge does come and right away, you hear the story, you actually hear it. You're not in the story. So if somebody says something that upsets you, that right away, you're like, how dare she say that? Or he say that?

17:59 How dare this happen? I can't believe it. And if you can just stop and go, whoa, that's the voice. I don't have to listen to it. Okay, pause. But that's that muscle. That's that level of awareness. And it's all within us. It's our natural state, but it's so covered up with the noise and the junk and what we just All the pollution inside of us. I always tell people, clean your energy. That is your responsibility. No one else can do it for you. And that is all you can really do. You can't fix what's out here, but you can fix what's in here. And once you fix what's in here, out here will reorganize itself to look differently, to feel differently. But we try to fix everything around us to feel okay inside. And we don't.

18:41 work from the inside out. We work on kind of the opposite way. So that's always the first step is just becoming aware, start practicing, is that what is the voice in your head saying and how are you feeling in this moment? And then the other part of it is staying in the present moment. Go ahead. Yeah. But you know, it's fascinating to me that I think the word that comes to my mind consistently is curiosity. Why? One of my younger brothers, I drive crazy. We get into conversations, and I'm always, why this? Why that? And it's interesting if people, and you have hit on such an important point. Previously, I interviewed someone, and they made a fascinating point that so often we say, I am. I am angry. I'm upset, whatever. or you upset me or this situation upset me, but we never stop to think and to get curious to say, what is the feeling that I'm experiencing? And rather than I am, it's like, you know what? Why is this experience of anger?

19:57 Why is this emotion of anger coming up? Why is this emotion coming up? And as you say, once you start changing your thought process there, and become curious, become more aware of what's going on and starting to ask those questions. Why am I reacting so angrily about this? It's fascinating how all of a sudden we start delving into the very thing you're talking about and get the reasons why. Yes. And I think another, I love, I love asking this question to people is explain the feeling. What is that feeling? We give it a name, give it a color. What does it feel like? Do you feel it in your chest?

20:39 Do you feel it in your stomach? Do you feel it in your shoulders? And where is it? And then I ask, when is the last time you felt that? And I try to get them to, because it's not a brand new feeling. It feels brand new every time you feel it because you automatically project blame on whatever's happening around you. And that's the cause of it. But if you start noticing patterns, That was one of my biggest, my first meditations I did of Dr. Joe. I had this beautiful epiphany is that this feeling I would get at work. It was anger. It was frustration. It was very dull, very dark. I had been feeling that since I was a little girl, since I had trauma growing up. I grew up in a household, a lot of volatility and abuse, but I had felt that before multiple times. And when I could pinpoint that I was still feeling that same feeling Since I was five years old, that was a game changer. Now I can step back and go, whoa, look at it differently. Okay, I can't blame work anymore because I've been feeling this my entire life. I can't blame this person. Okay, so what is this feeling? How can I get rid of it or how can I make it weaker so it doesn't take over me?

21:52 Well, the other thing that comes to my mind, and this is something that may be a little bit controversial for some of the people that I talk to, is this road to personal transformation, so often we become so focused on that, and I have the saying that I've mentioned a number of times, and it's something that I can't even remember where I heard this quote, but that which we resist persists. And in some instances, our focus on transformation becomes resistance, and all of a sudden, We never experience what we're trying to experience because we keep focusing so hard on that and resisting everything that's going on that we don't make the change. So how do you help people to get rid of that overthinking, that over direction, and really start to find a sense of stillness, a sense of peace long enough to be able to look at that and start to think the way that you were just sharing, where you look at that and go, wow, this is something that I've been experiencing. This emotion is something I've experienced since childhood. Right.

23:13 Well, meditation is extremely helpful. However, the biggest thing I tell people is what the, I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought. The biggest thing I tell people is you experienced this before, in order for you to see that, stop trying. We are all seekers. We're all seeking transformation. We're all seeking spirituality. We're all seeking this experience of where you're going to have this big separation. And it's really not a huge experience. It's literally this element of letting go. And this is what I continually tell people is stop trying. Just stop. Stop trying to figure it out. Stop And that's where the overthinking comes in because we feel like we're missing something. We feel like we have to try to get somewhere. And the realization that you are already there, you are already complete, you are already whole, and you've always been that. It's just been covered up.

24:10 And that is a radical shift for people because people feel that they have to do to get somewhere. They have to continue doing. But there's an element of just being, of just letting go. And that's part of the slowing down, Doug. People, we do not slow down long enough to hear our thoughts. We don't slow down long enough to hear that voice. But for someone to be able to recognize all the patterns that have happened in my life, oh, I've experienced this before. When I had that realization, I didn't have anything going on in my mind. I was completely empty. I was letting go. And that's when that realization came. We constantly have this inner guidance that's there, the epiphanies, it's always telling us, but we have to be still enough to hear it. So this transformation, this inner shift does not happen from trying, from doing, from more, from becoming.

25:02 You have to let go of all of that. It's such a paradox because we're born and raised in a world where we have to do, where we're not there yet. You get this, you have to go to the next. You're always climbing. But this is a sense of like literally going the other direction. People have a hard time with that because they feel that, well, if I let go, then I'm going to completely dissolve. There's not going to be anything of me left. I want to stand out. I want to be more. But it's the complete opposite. So it's this element of like stopping and letting go. Just stop trying. And that's, yeah, that's one of my biggest messages. And people have a hard time with that for sure. Well, and you talk about be still. And, you know, I come from a theological background. And the comment that I think about is be still and know that I am God. And, you know, here's a statement out of the New Testament. And I think, you know what, if we were to listen to that and apply it to ourselves, be still and know that I have that divinity within me And just as you talked about, if we come to realize that we've been told who we are, but the reality is that has totally patterned over who we genuinely are. And when we can come to that realization of understanding that we're good, basically, that we have that

26:35 divinity within us, if we would just allow ourselves to get rid of all of that junk, that has been told to us all of our lives. Yes. And I love that you brought up the verse, be still and know that I am God. If you look at the words, and I am not a religious individual, but just throughout this journey, I've read a lot and I've delved into those practices. They all say the same thing. You have the Tao, you have the Bhagavad Gita, which is the Hindu scriptures. you've got the Bible, you have Buddhism, and they all use different terminology, but they're all pointing to the same, it's not even a thing, the same no thing, the same space, the same, they all point you in words and they all point you in something deeper that's within all of us. They all knew it.

27:30 They were all connected. And these words have been around for thousands of years, but we've been so hypnotized, unfortunately. I say unfortunately, but I feel like this awareness. I feel like there's more people talking about this. So this shift is happening. And if it wasn't for the misery, the shift wouldn't be happening. So I do appreciate, and I am grateful for that. But I just, I feel like we've taken those words and just kind of twisted them to make sense for us. And I get that, but we try to understand it from the mind perspective. We try to understand it from a separate, more egoic versus more of not the mind, more of a feeling, more of an inner realization, that recognition. And I say that because that's exactly what I felt when I had that separation from my mind. It completely blew my mind understanding that this is not who I am. It's almost like you're, I explain it, think of it like a noise machine. You've got the AC running on nonstop in the background. And then all of a sudden it stops.

28:36 And you didn't even realize it was running this whole time. All of a sudden, it's just quiet. It was like that. It was stepping out of this noise machine that I've been living in. And that's what the same noise machine is, what's trying to understand the Bible, rewrite it, speak about it. They talk about it in churches, but they don't understand the pure essence of what it is and what we all are and how connected we all are. We're all connected, whether we like it or not. It doesn't matter your age, race, whatever, but we are, we're all connected. Well, you know, as you bring that up, it's interesting. Being here in Thailand, I've really studied a lot of Buddhism also, as well as Hinduism, but mainly Buddhism. And one of the things that was just so confusing for me was when he talks about the self and that the self doesn't exist. And I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute. No, I exist. I don't. And then I read an article, and they hit it right on the head, that he's not talking about the fact that we don't exist. He's talking about the self, the person that we think we are doesn't exist. And when we can eliminate that, when we can eliminate the ego, when we can eliminate all of that and return back to who we are, that for his focus, the suffering... becomes minimal in our lives. And I think that that's, you know, when we talk about awareness and it is tough. There's

30:10 so much influence that goes on now, whether it's religious, whether it's societal, whether it's political, whatever it happens to be, there's so much focus on the fact that we are not necessarily that innate goodness And for people to learn to be able to just quietly return back to who they are, I think it's so important. I love the picture that you have on your wall. And for the audience that's listening to this rather than watching it on YouTube or wherever, there's this beautiful picture of a bench sitting out in the morning sun and a singular tree right next to it. And, you know, What that brings to my mind, I do a lot of walking meditation.

31:01 And as I walk around, there's rice fields and so forth. And then there are just individual trees alone within that rice field. And I think to myself, how often do we not recognize that quietness and peace and solitude is so important? And that's what the tree reminds me of, is that sense of solitude. And as you talk about people just sitting back for a minute and then maybe starting to write or whatever that is, when they can get to the point of feeling that sense of solitude, not aloneness, not being alone, but solitude, that all of a sudden things come to mind that they would never have experienced otherwise. Yeah, absolutely.

31:49 Absolutely. Thank you, by the way. I love that you see that. This picture, it means a lot. Part of my journey has also been in solitude and the sense of just really no longer functioning how I used to, no longer surrounding myself with these activities and the things I used to do and really completely transitioning over to a new way of being. It fed me in a different way. It fed me from the inside out. And through it, the outpour that came out was just natural giving. And, you know, you talked about the self earlier, about not understanding what in Buddhism when he said, you know, there is no self. It's the identity. It's the identification, right?

32:36 We talked about that. It's a bundle of thoughts that you believe who you are. But people have a really hard time going, well, if I let that go, how do you operate? And I just want to share that. oh my gosh, you operate so much more. It's just, it's richer. And you no longer see people the way you used to see them. No matter how they speak to you, there's compassion. There's this natural outflow of love. Even someone who is not the kindest, but you see what they're conditioning, what they're completely hypnotized by, and they just haven't reached that point. And the fact that you have, you can actually have this beautiful compassion for others and not judge and not look at them as separate entities because you've reached the point within yourself, understanding that the self does not exist, that there is no self. It's only oneness. And there's separation. Yes, we're on this planet for whatever reason, having this human experience, but we're not human.

33:36 We're beings. We're human beings. We're spiritual in nature. We're formless. Science has studied this from a subatomic level. We are 99.99% empty space, just completely empty space. We're not solid objects. So yes, we may look solid, but I just share that because as we do the inner work and we understand who we truly are, we connect with that self or no self, I should say, you start connecting with others and you start seeing everybody around you completely differently. And that's where harmony comes in. There's no judgment. There's no more, I'm right, you're wrong. There's no more, we still have opinions. Of course you have, you like things, you don't like things. That all exists, but it doesn't take you over anymore. There's no more need to prove a point. And I just, I really feel that if people did the inner work, we could slowly completely shift this, our planet and kind of the trajectory it's on right now.

34:37 And I know there's a lot going on in the world, but the change does not happen from the outside. It happens internally. And it only takes one person to change and that person is you. So if you can just do the work, imagine the impact you're going to have, not on just your own life, but everybody around you. Well, and you made a statement that just really hit me hard. You know, I have a story to tell about my son. When he was young in Boy Scouts, he came home from me and he was in the leadership among the young boys. And he came home really from a weekend and really sad and upset. And it's like, all right, what's going on here? And he had done something, and who knows what it was. But his leader, his adult leader, had come down so hard on him and really ripped into him. And at least from my son's perception, that's what he was experiencing. And I sat down with him, and I said, look, And I know this man. And I said, here's the situation. You have to realize that what he did, what he said, the way he reacted has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with him and what he's experiencing in his life.

36:00 And what's interesting is they have become friends over the years and they're still friends over the years. And I think about relationships and how often we hear someone say something and we take it so personally and it may be the first step to developing an elimination of that relationship. And if we could change our mindset to realize that, you know what, when they said that and you made the comment, do we love enough to realize that, hey, this is something that they're experiencing. This has nothing to do with me necessarily. Maybe it does, and maybe I need to change how I trigger someone. But at the same time, this has everything to do with who they are, what they're experiencing, their perception. And in my mind, when you can reach that point of understanding and truly love the person for who they are and what they are experiencing, it changes relationships.

37:05 Yes. Oh, it's so beautiful. I love that so much. Thank you for sharing. We make everything personal. When you haven't gone beyond the sense of self and the identities, everything that we believe to be us, everything's personal because we're separate. We're separate from one another. I'm me, you're you, you're there, I'm here. There's this separation. So If you really take a step back and you look at who and what we truly are, if you've really connected with it, reality is neutral. Anything and everything that happens is always neutral. We give it the meaning. We can show up in any which way. There's infinite ways, infinite realities. There's infinite potentials, possibilities, and you can look at it. Here's the situation. You can stand around any corner here, around this circle, around this one situation, and you can look at it from any perspective. And that's what's so beautiful about it is that we all pick our perspective and we make it personal.

38:03 We make it about us not realizing that if we just took one step this way, we're going to see it completely different. We're going to feel different. And that deeper realization, it does not come from the other person. It doesn't come from other people. It comes from within. So I love what you just said because the personal piece is the ego. It's separation. It's you've offended me. You've said something that's hit something here. And when there is no ego, there's nothing here to hit. You're still here. I'm still talking to you. But if you say something right now that's unkind, it's going to really pass through me. It might not feel good, but I'll be aware of that. I'll recognize it, but I'm not going to turn around and make it about me that Doug said something to me and now I'm upset at Doug. There's that separation again.

38:51 So that personalization really comes from our ego and there's nothing wrong with that. Our ego's here for a reason. We experience the world. We're experiencing really each other. If you think about it, we're all manifested in these different bodies and different life forms. There's animals, there's plant life, all sorts of beautiful things on this planet. But at the end of the day, if you can just connect with that and understand really what and who you truly are, there's no more someone here. There's no more self to hit. There's no more self to get offended. There's no more self to abuse. People can say and do whatever. It doesn't mean you become a doormat and you take. what? No, absolutely not. You take action and you take right action.

39:33 But that right action comes from a place of clarity and peace, not resentment, not resistance. There's a level of acceptance, a level of surrender that happens. And then you know what to do and where you need to go. But there's no more of this inner turmoil that towards the other person or towards a specific situation that all dissolves. Can you imagine a conversation and what that would change? What we're experiencing right now, if, you know, in the U S and everywhere else in the world, if I were, if I were, if you and I were in a conversation or whatever, and I were to say, you know what, there's this emotion that's coming up in me that makes me so angry. And And it has nothing to do with you. I recognize that there's something within me that's getting me so angry and I don't really understand why.

40:26 I probably need to figure it out. And you turn around and say, wow, I totally get you, you mean, because here I was ready to bite into you. But here's this emotion that I'm feeling too. Can you imagine a conversation like that of transparency to the point of what that would do with relationships? Half of this stuff wouldn't be happening right now. That's happening in the world, for sure, for sure. But what's so beautiful about what you just said, if we can understand, if everybody can just understand what you just said, and we can start teaching our young, our children that way. And this is something that I've been already instilling in both of my children as they're in their teenage years experiencing life. But the conversations we have now are so vastly different than I would have four years ago. It would have been completely different. There's no more victimhood. There's no more, it's such a different way to look at it.

41:25 And now they're, when they come and talk to me before they even share what's happened, They're already coming with a level of awareness all. On their own. And I think what you're saying is possible. It's doable. I know it is. I can feel it because I'm doing it literally in my house. And I am not special. There's nothing special about me that other human beings don't have. I've just made a choice. But that choice came from that moment of awareness. So if people can choose to start communicating and living this way, And then they start kind of spreading that, whether you have children or not, or other people's kids, but this younger generation that's coming up that's going to be our future, how beautiful. Maybe we can change the trajectory of what's happening right now in the world, right? I know, I think it would be amazing if people did communicate that way.

42:17 Oh, Linda. So, you know, what comes to my mind, and as we're getting near the close, what really impresses me is that You really haven't changed your life from the perspective of you still have the same job, you're living in whatever location you've chosen to live in, and yet you have allowed yourself to make those subtle changes in your inner self to the point that you're experiencing life in an entirely different way that you used to experience this without changing a lot of what you're doing. Isn't it?

42:59 Our lives. How? Our lives are the perfect treating ground. And start where you are now today. Every challenge you have, every discomfort you're going through, everything that you have believed to not be the way you want it to be, that's your spiritual practice. Make that your practice. Meaning, accept it, surrender to it, that this is what is, and move from there. We resist so much. And resistance, I mean, just complaining about the weather. That's a form of resistance. All of that. It is constant. We're never accepting of what is, and we're never here, or either mentally completely projecting something into the future, or we're living in the past. And the way I was able to completely live differently, but not really change it, and I really haven't. I'm I'm in the same house. I have my kids.

43:55 I'm divorced. I've got my job. But everything, how I show up has changed because I literally got my energy back. I stopped living in the future. I stopped living in, okay, with my kids, it was all transactional. All right, did you brush your teeth? Did you do your homework? Pack your lunch? What are we doing? Okay, we got to get ready. Always in a rush, always busy. So becoming aware of that and then stopping, slowing down, less talking. more being around them, allowing them to just be who they are and no judgment, just creating space for it. That's just one element. My children, same thing at work. If I'm speaking to somebody in a meeting and we're typically on Zoom, be there fully, no distractions. Don't start a mental story about what the other person is saying.

44:42 Be present, be with them, focus all your energy there. And when you're done with that call, then you move on to the next thing. brushing my teeth in the morning. Brushing my teeth was such a beautiful practice. And then people find it, they're like, really? Because when I used to brush my teeth before, Doug, I was never there. I was never brushing my teeth. I was going through my emails. I was going through my coffee I was about to make, what I needed to do next. I was never present. And then the past, anytime I would get upset, here comes years and years and years of baggage I had carried and just like completely projected onto everybody else. So Living in this moment. And the more you do it, you'll realize there aren't really any problems.

45:26 I am okay right now here. But a lot of the problems we create, a lot of the fear we have, a lot of the anxiety, it's all self-made. It's all projected in the mind. And that's where it is. That's where we create it. And that's where we experience it. So understanding that how you actually experience reality is through your mind anyways. So why not clean this up? and experience it in a completely different way. So I didn't really need to retreat. I actually never even been to a spiritual retreat, believe it or not. I've always wanted to go to Joe's and Eckhart Tolle is another one of my authors that I absolutely love. I went to one of his talks, just one, but I wanted to always go to a retreat and I never did. I just never had the opportunities being a single mom, whatever the case might be, but how beautiful. I didn't have to change anything. I literally took everything that I was resisting in my life and used it as a spiritual practice.

46:19 And I just let go, let go, let go. And next thing you know, I am loving my life. I'm grateful for it. There's no more resentment. I see things so differently. And I look back and I go, wow, I can't believe that I used to even complain about this. This is a gift. So I know this sounds really cliche and changing. Don't even pay attention to any of the outcome of it. Just pay attention to where are you now? Are you listening? Are you here? Are you paying attention? Where's your mind? Where's your energy? So the more you call your energy back, you are just, you're already fulfilled. So when you move from a place of completeness, a place of wholeness, what else is there? Anything else you get is a bonus, but you've already arrived. You're already here. So this, it's such a, I hope that makes sense to the way I'm saying it, but.

47:07 It does. It does. And thank you. And so how do people find you? How do, you know, if someone wants to, reach out to you? How do they do that? They can go on my website. It's eyesclosed.love. And they can also email me directly, which is my first name, sonica at eyesclosed.love. But my website, I'm building it slowly. I've got a lot of information on there. I'm actually putting together a few programs, curriculum, so people can start diving into some of the practices, whether you're having challenges with money. It could be your job. It could be your children, whatever the case might be. I'm going to have different tailored, all the same essentially, but a little bit of customization to what people are going through so they can start downloading some information there. And then also I just came out with my book that just got published and it shares a lot of the practice and a lot about my journey and how I was able to shift and change everything. So please go on my website, eyesclosed.love.

48:09 I'm also on Instagram. I'm on LinkedIn under Sonika Kotmil. A lot of social media as well, they can find me. But I hope some of this resonated with whoever's listening. I hope if you've been in a dark tunnel, there is hope, there's light. It's actually you are the light and it's all around you. You just have to look in that direction. And the name of your book? The name of the book is Formless, Who You Truly Are Beyond the Mind. Okay, love it. Soneka, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation and I really appreciate it. So I hope you've enjoyed this. I hope there's been something that's been said today that is going to trigger a response for you to be able to start looking inside and realizing that, you know what, I can change something that I'm not happy with what I'm experiencing. So anyway, thanks for joining us. Join us again soon. This is Dr.

49:10 Doug saying namaste. Namaste. Every conversation on this podcast eventually comes back to that same question, not how do I get more, but is this actually who I am? If something you heard today moved you just a little closer to an honest answer, that is enough. I'm Dr. Doug. This is Inspire Vision. Until next time.