The Four Steps To Waking Up – How To Make Real Progress In Becoming More Conscious

What Is This Episode About…

In this episode, Chris explains the meaning of waking up. More than physically being awake, we need to be conscious of our abilities to achieve our dreams and ditch the negative bias we are trained to believe.

Chris breaks it down into four steps: unconscious unskillfulness, conscious unskillfulness, conscious skillfulness, unconscious skillfulness.  He teaches us how to break negative patterns and be aware that there is another way. Once we are conscious of the opportunity, we can track, find, and create the best versions of ourselves.

Chris teaches us how past experiences can manipulate our focus and impact our behavior. He shows us how to alter our feelings related to those experiences and gives us the chance to grow from then rather than getting stuck in a pattern. Listen for more on this episode of the Awakened Life Podcast.

Key Takeaways

• The meaning of waking up (2:43)
• Natures evolution impacting our way of thought  (4:07)
• Unconscious unskillfulness (6:57)
• Being conscious of your unskilfulness (8:59)
• Conscious skillfulness (11:03)
• The law of little things (11:30)
• Unconscious skillfulness (14:30)
• Creating new patterns in the future (17:14)

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When Was It Released…

This episode was released July 1, 2020

Episode Transcript…

The Transcript Is Auto Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors

Chris Yax  0:00  

What’s happening everybody, John and Chris here. Welcome to this episode of The Awakened Life podcast. We were so excited for this one.

Yeah, we are talking about a framework of how to wake up, there’s four steps. And so what does waking up even me waking up is to track

to find to create the best version of yourself the best version of your life.

And so everyone says they want it right. We all say I want growth, I want expansion. I want to become a better version myself. I want to be a more conscious person. But the reality is, we all have the self sabotaging behaviors where we say one thing, but we actually do the exact opposite of what we say. And this training is what we’re going to show how that happens and like how to navigate around it so that you don’t self sabotage the very dreams

John Yax  0:51  

that you say you want Chris gonna break down step by step where we get caught and how to overcome that. And so we gave this teaching to one of our private groups. It was via Facebook so you’re going to hear us say hashtag this and like that bear with us. It’s an awesome training Chris Brock the house. So let’s jump on over to it. Thanks so much, guys.

Welcome to The Awakened Life podcast where we’re going to give you the exact blueprint of how to live an awakened life, a life filled with purpose, passion, and power. We are the Yax brothers, John and Chris, and we’re here to share the truth that Yoga is so much more than stretching. It’s the oldest personal development system ever created.

The problem is that most modern day yoga focuses solely on getting better at poses, and promotes this idea that if you get good enough, one day your life will magically fall into place and your struggles with the world will end. Listen in each week as we reveal the truth about what yoga actually is and how it’s designed to bring the life of your dreams into reality.

If you’re ready to take immediate action to live an awakened life,join our private Facebook group Yax Yoga Lab and get two of our most popular yoga courses for free

Chris Yax  2:07  

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to this live training. Today we’re going to be talking about the four steps to waking up. And so, like I am awake Are you really? That’s the question. And so if you are live with me right now if you give me a like and a loved let me know that you’re here that you’re present watching, I appreciate that. So today, the four steps to waking up. I think it really starts with an understanding of like, what does it mean to wake up? Because obviously

we all wake up every day if we didn’t wake up, we’d be dead, right? And then this isn’t a conversation we’re talking about something else

or not talking at all. But the idea of waking up means that we have like, become asleep in relationship to what we believe like we can achieve in our lives. What we can do in our lives. And this is like the core of what Yoga is all about. So if you’re like, Wait a second, I’m in the x lab and like, why are they talking about four steps to waking up, because at the core of what Yoga is, it is to wake up to your truth to your potential to the reality that you are much more than you think you are. And this training is going to help outline exactly what that is. So this waking up is a metaphor, like we’re sleeping of like this dream of us of who we are and what our potential is. And it’s born from our history, from all the things we’ve experienced, that ends up being the caves that we lock ourselves in. We lock ourselves into it. And so I want to outline the process by which we we go about waking up. Now, before I get into it, and I talk about these four steps which are hidden behind here. What is important to understand is that what I’m going to talk about and where we’re going, is like nature’s design. It’s nature’s design, literally Born from evolution, we have, like, become who we are, because of survival, right? We have these brains that have evolved over millions of years to have one priority. number one priority is survival. Right? survival, survival, survival, meaning, it doesn’t care if you’re happy. Your brain doesn’t care if you’re at peace. It doesn’t care if you achieve your dreams in life, unless it has something to do with you surviving and then passing your genes on literally there’s four things that it cares about, and how it reacts. It’s like, I want to either fight or flee, right survival. I need to feed I want to eat or I want to procreate. And now those are the things like that’s the priority and that’s why so in order to achieve survival, we have hard wired in here hardwired in our In our like the software of our brains like the how it operates a negativity bias. What does that mean? It means that in our environment, our brains are programmed to focus on the negative, the things that could potentially cause us harm. So when you’re thinking, I mean, telling stories to yourself, what you end up telling stories about our worst case scenarios. And then we tell these stories over a long enough period of time stories based on experiences from the past. And when we get stuck in these negative feedback loops. This is what I mean by being asleep, or stuck in these negative feedback loops of thinking and experiencing life. And we think this is just how it is. This is just who we are, and it’s not. So the four step process to waking up is a way of saying I get that evolution. I appreciate you like prioritizing survival and allowing us to be here to even have this conversation. But I now get to choose how I want to see my work. How to operate. And this is what’s so cool about this you actually overlap is that we’re able to deliver like information in here that normally prior to this we were only being able to do inside of our teacher trainings, people pay thousands and thousands of dollars to be a part of it. So we’re soaked because we get to like this teachers at heart and we want to help people. So this what we’re doing

cool. So where do we start? We start with

unconscious on skillfulness. Now we borrow this framework from Mazda. Yeah, Matt, we borrowed this from psychiatrists or psychologists. I forget exactly what it is, but Maslin and we’ve changed the terminology. In fact, just today we were talking about we’re going to change it again. So where we start was his unconscious unskillful pneus this is where we changed it because it majo us in competence. And I’m like, that’s a little harsh, little stone a little too much shade on us. Back up Maslow You don’t know me, so unconscious unskillful pneus. And what this means is we are not aware that we are past And that we have a choice in what the what we’re doing and the decisions that we make. Meaning what if you’ve ever said, this is just who I am, you know, I’m for me, I’m just impatient. It’s just who I am. That is unconscious on skillfulness because that impatience rears its ugly head, in my relationships with my wife, with my kids, with my family at work at when I’m driving like it’s there. And if I feel like this is just who I am, right, that means I’m unconscious. And I’m unskillful because this pattern of being impatient is not helping me live a better life, right, it’s actually detracting and causing the suffering, right pain on some level tension between relationships, this low level of anxiety. So unconscious on skillfulness simply means we’re not aware that there’s even a possibility of changing in our lives, right? And the patterns that we have are unskillful. Why are they unskillful? Because they’re just being repeated from the past. All we’re doing is just repeating experiences in the past, and I’ll articulate this I’m going to talk abstractly for a bit and then I’ll tell the story about It to kind of encapsulate what I really mean by all this. Okay, so then we start doing practices like if you’re here, you’re interested in yoga, you’ve done yoga to some point, that is an awareness practice the way you really want to supercharge your process of waking up, start meditating. And by the way, we’re going to teach, like the truth about what movement really does are mass and meditation and how we manifest this beautiful life. This awakened life that we talked about in a five day immersion that we have coming up, it’s actually starts this coming Monday. So if you’re interested in that, I’ll let you know how to how to get it be a part of that. Okay, so we start an awareness practice, a movement, practice something that allows us to reflect so we get to see Oh, wait, there’s is that do I need to be that way is do I have to be impatient here? Is there another way I could be with my wife when I’m waiting for her to get ready so we can go to dinner. And this is when you elevate to being conscious of your unskillful nest Oh, and this is where it hurts

is where it hurts when you Become aware that you have another way that’s possible

when you become aware that you see you now see that how your being isn’t skillful. And why does it hurt? Because, you know, there’s another way you have this awareness practice, you’ve you’re self reflective enough so that you’re like, man, there’s like that I don’t have to be that way. There’s a potential of me being another way. In fact, or maybe it’s not, I don’t have to be that way. But I don’t enjoy being this way. I don’t enjoy being impatient. Literally the level of anxiety that I’ve lived most of my life and just like impatiently waiting for the people to show up and to be a part of what I’m doing and to get there on time. It’s like it is more suffering that I’ve incurred in anything else in my life just in patients. And this is now I’m aware of it. Now, what happens after this? What happens? Right? Well, what happens here is most people be like, Oh my god, I wish I was unaware. You can’t regress. You can’t go back. To being unconscious, once your eyes have opened, you can never close them again. And what this level says is there is another way. But right now I don’t have the capacity to embody in the moment and actually act on that other way. And this is what the catch. So how do you get from here to here we have to have some type of awareness, practice yoga, meditation, sometimes just just being in nature. For me, most of the stuff that I do is awareness packs like martial arts was an awareness, practice. Surfing is an awareness practice where you’re immersed in the moment and you get to be self reflective, right? So we do practices here that allow us to see what we couldn’t see before, and you cannot and ignorance isn’t bliss By the way, bliss is bliss. Ignorance is ignorance. Ignorance is causing suffering, suffering, bliss causes bliss, like so that’s a lie, don’t believe that myth. So but then we have conscious skillfulness And this is like, Oh, I now see a pattern that is causing me. anger, anxiety, anger, regret something that like is a negative aspect that I don’t want to experience. And now I start practicing. The other way of being. And this is what’s really important here. It’s the law of little things. I wish in my heart that at once I saw the pattern, and I was like, oh man, I’m super impatient. I should probably work on being less patient. Poof, magically, I am bestowed patience. And I walk around with effortless ease. And I have infinite patience for my brother, who’s a Libra, who is slower than anyone I’ve ever met in my life. No, that doesn’t happen. What happens now as you see this, you now are given the opportunity to have conscious skillfulness This is the reality. So let’s go back to how the brain works. When you focus on something long enough, this is how we acquire skill, we have to focus consciously on it and we focus consciously on and we focus consciously on it, we focus consciously on it to a degree that it becomes embedded in our subconscious. Because the brain is all about efficiency. It doesn’t need to have all of this information, top of mind because it then can’t process information in an effective way. So what happens is when you focus on something long enough and you acquire a skill, whether that skill is skillful or not, it then gets embedded in your subconscious as a program. And this is why we’re walking around sleepwalking is that we’re just have all of these subconscious programs embedded from evolution survival, embedded from our life experiences, like for me, it was one of the biggest programs I had was I didn’t I felt like the in the puzzle piece that is me. I was missing the piece. That was lovable because my dad left when I was like two years old. And I took responsibility for that I took the blame for that, which made me hate him for years. That was a subconscious pattern that I played out over and over and over again. And for most of my life, I was just thinking, this is just who I am. I’m just an angry kid at my dad, my dad is an asshole, right? And that’s just who I am. And then I started yoga,

right, I actually started martial arts. And it was just this pressure valve release where I could just

punch something, right? Got all the aggression that I had in my life out. And then I started practicing yoga. And I was like, Oh, I’m now aware that this is killing me literally, like on a physical level. I’m not happy. I’m not I’m, I’m in pain. It’s killing me. And then I started being able to practice when you see it. Now, what happens is, this goes back to the programming thing. You now in your brain, you’re saying, hey, brain, this is significant to me. Please focus in my environment, on the things that will help me gain more patience and what your brain says is good. I’ll do that. What I’m going to focus Your attention to are all the moments where you have the opportunity to be patient, meaning all of the things that trigger you to be impatient. This is how it works. This is the unfortunate truth is when you get to this awareness that there’s an unskilful Miss, what you then programmed in the brain is I now need to be more focused on those areas so that I can like build the muscle, I can take the action to become more skillful. And this is the years years years long process for me in the forgiving of my dad, I would go back to like a man, I hate him and then I’d be like, no, forgive them. And then I was like, Oh, I need to I need a tactic. I need to talk to him. I need to understand them. So I understand them. And I would understand why he did what he did when he was younger, and why he made the choices to leave and leave his six kids and I understood them and then I was like, Okay, now I’m going to practice forgiveness again. And I’ll practice forgiveness again. And when you do that enough, this is my point, the law of little things. When you practice when you flex the muscle for me a forgiveness when I flex the muscle of patients over and over and over again, where you end up is to be unconsciously skillful, meaning you then wire into your subconscious. And this is what we’re going to change. It should be unconscious that should really be subconscious because that’s what’s actually operating. You wire into your subconscious a skillful way of being. What does that mean? Now when I think of my dad, what comes up is, I love him. Not I hate him. I’ve literally over the years taken this me waking up to the truth of who I am waking up to this potential of how I want to relate to him. It went from I hate him to now when I think of him, I love him. I love and I say it wholeheartedly, right, because I’ve gone through this process of just taking and it’s way deeper. Like for this training, I just want to keep it like 30,000 foot level, because the way in which you go about practicing is very specific to the situation that you’re dealing with period. But the practice is the practice meaning we have to flex the muscle enough here to get to this programming of the mind to then have an appropriate skillful heart opening, mind clearing, like not being stuck in the past response. And that’s the way you wake up you go from just being aware, like or being totally unaware, this is where most people are just walking around sleepwalking. This is just who I am. I’m an angry person. Okay, let me know how that works for you. Then you have an awareness practice. Maybe you have a conversation with someone and caught like conversing, communicating as an awareness practice. If you’re listening, and all of a sudden you’re like, Oh, wait, there’s a different way of being,

right. That’s why therapy is so powerful. They’re just like bodying this different way of being giving you these different insights about your history and different ways of looking at it. Then you practice that way of being over and over and over again, until it becomes a pattern that is healthy in your life. But here’s the deal. Here’s the last thing I’ll leave you with. This may be a pro It now, but is it appropriate in five years in one year and 10 years, these patterns may not be relevant to you, even if they’re healthy now something they shift in your life where it’s unhealthy later, right? Most of us have these patterns. Like for me, it was the self defense mechanism when I was younger, to have to take on the responsibility of my father because it gave me some semblance of control, even though it was hurting me. And that was skillful at that time when I was three years old, and I couldn’t make sense of what was happening was my dad leaving my Mom, where’s my dad? Why aren’t they together anymore? Right at the time, me like holding the mantle of like, it’s my fault. However crazy it sounds was a response that I needed to get me through that time period of my life. Fast forward to my early teens, and all of a sudden this thing is killing me. And so the point is, to practice to have an awareness practice gives us insights into how we’re being so that we can start dismantling them and rewiring better responses to life. And this is a continual process. It’s a continual process, because this is super important. And this is happening in all areas of our life every day all day long. And what’s so important about this is then it reframes all of the things that are happening that you perceive as negative, it reframes them so that you can have enough space to see like, is it negative? Or is there a shift that needs to happen in the way I’m seeing this, to then achieve this next level of awakening, right of waking up to this next level of growth and expansion in your life, to act literally, to increase your capacity to handle more and live the life that you actually want to live? Because otherwise, what we’re doing is we’re just repeating our former selves. That’s all we’re doing. We’re just literally repeating ourselves over and over and over again, wondering why life is so hard when it’s been so hard forever. And we’re just repeating ourselves over and over and over again. If you want to do deep dive deeper into this type of information. We have a free five day immersion coming up, right? It starts this coming Monday, on June 15, at 12 o’clock, if you haven’t registered, we’re having everyone register so that if you miss a live session, you can get the email. And that’ll have the link to the replay where we’re going to be holding all the replays. So if you’re interested in attending the immersion again, it’s all free. There’s no charge for it. Just comment down below hashtag immersion, and we’ll send you over the link and that link. If you have someone you’re like, Man, this is good stuff. They need to see it you can share that link with anybody. We’re like this is wide open, it’s free. So we just want to get as many people in there to help as many people as possible. So anyway, I hope this is helpful. If it was helpful, give me a like give me a love or if you wouldn’t mind giving a hashtag value. The reason we asked you to do that so much is that not only does it give us a sense of if like what we’re giving is what you’re looking for, but it also allows us to reach more people because when you start commenting and liking and loving all of a sudden the algorithm In Facebook’s like, hey, there’s something important going on, hey, we want you want to go check out what’s going on over there. And so it really helps just increase our impact, which we really appreciate. So anyway, that’s all we got for step two waking up. Here it is, and man is the process that will change your life forever. So thanks so much for watching. I’ll see you in the immersion. Thanks so much.

John Yax  20:19  

Thanks so much for listening to the Awakened Life podcast. Do you want to connect with us and a community of like minded Yogi’s who are on a mission to live in Awakened Life? Then join us in our private Facebook group yaks yoga lab now just head over to Facebook and type in yaks yoga lab. When you join you’ll get access to two free yoga courses are stability series and flow series, which will help you take the first step on your path toward an awakened life. Go join yaks yoga lab now.