What is a Good Life? #54
Exploring Our Conditioning with Gab Ciminelli
On the 54th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I am delighted to introduce our guest, Gab Ciminelli. Gab is the Founder of the Silent Leadership Institute in Japan, author of Nothing Changes the World: Excerpts and Insights on the Art of Nothing, and speaker on The Art of Nothing.
In this illuminating discussion, we explore our capacity not to learn from our mistakes and how we get swept away by our conditioning - be it our upbringing, education, culture, etc.
We share our experiences of re-sensitising ourselves to the human beings we naturally are, through silence, space, reflection, and nature, and the experiences of suffering that prompted a departure from the status quo.
We delve into navigating our wider sense of disconnection and separation, transcending our ideas of identity and our fixation on measurement and labels, to an awareness of what is, and how we could step into the unknown.
This whole conversation with Gab is a breath of fresh air. His open-heartedness and willingness to explore embody much of what he is pointing towards in this conversation. If you are in need of looking at your life and world with a fresh set of eyes, this conversation will give you multiple pointers as to how you can start.
The weekly clip from the podcast (5 mins), my weekly reflection (4 mins), the full podcast (65 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
Like a fish, unaware of the existence of water, the majority of us spend most of our lives deeply unaware of our conditioning, and other alternatives that are possible. There is something extraordinarily powerful regarding the mind’s ability to create constructs that we believe to be absolutes or the only way to do things.
What makes this more interesting to me is that I don’t know many cultures or groups where the majority of people seem either truly content with their own lives or the direction their society is going in. Yet the constructs we have created around how to live a life are still vehemently followed and replicated as we are too fearful to engage with the unknown, to look for or contemplate other ways, and then to make a change. Better the devil you know, it seems.
The more I talk to people about the question of “what is a good life?” (almost 200 people now), it is becoming clearer to me that unless our lives bear some markings of our individual fingerprints, we are going to pay the price in terms of how we feel in our lives. Whatever expression you are comfortable using, be it soul, true self, your essence, authenticity, or whatever it may be, if our life paths are almost indistinguishable from each other’s, something in us is going to suffer.
Several recent guests have pointed to the importance of engaging with the unknown, the unfolding of life, moments where we suspend labels or what we know to get another perspective on the same problem which, until now, we have attempted to fix with the same thinking and values that created the problems in the first place, whether individually or collectively.
In our present-day conditioning, the delusion or overinflation of our rationality and logic make us believe we have far more answers than we think. Our hubris is restricting us to remain in the narrow lanes of knowledge we already have, even if it is not where we want to be, for the sake of not rocking our boats or deviating from our present sense of who we are, once again, whether individually or collectively.
Unfortunately, it leaves little space in our lives to wrestle, play, and inquire with the bigger questions in life—of who we are, what we need, what we can contribute to one another, and what is meaningful to us. These questions and investigations are rarely very linear or neat. They do not cooperate with our other models of prediction and measurement; they take us into terrain where time and measurement are not necessarily part of the language.
While a specific amount of calories burned and consumed may be reliable for predicting weight loss, for exploring more of our soul, psyche, spirit, unconscious, etc., a specific amount of hours meditating, sitting in nature, therapy, silence, creating, etc., doesn’t have a standard output.
While the maps, if we have them at all, to handle our own personal exploration are at best fuzzy pointers. Even then, the changes in us that occur may not align with what our present culture values or prioritises and may put us up against the edge of its conditioning. The priority we give to money is obvious, but what about aliveness, connection, community, love, spontaneity, engagement, or a life with meaning? Do we really value such things or do we pay them lip service?
For me, it is clear that where our present conditioning is at—and it need not be considered to have been constructed by some malevolent intention—is not going to take us to where we need to go on multiple frontiers. While the process of letting go of present perspectives when/if there isn’t an immediate replacement is not something we find comfortable, perhaps right now, taking a pause, sitting in silence and waiting for what needs to emerge, to emerge, is the best answer we have, whether individually or collectively.
If you’d like to work with me individually as your coach, to awaken your own self-inquiry, message me here to a arrange a free 30-minute 1-on-1 consultation
3. Full Episode - Exploring Our Conditioning with Gab Ciminelli - What is a Good Life? #54
Click here for Apple and Google
4. This week’s Questions
Is there anything you have long professed to believe but have often suspected not to be true?
Have you ever let go of what was a fundamental belief of yours? What occurred for that to happen?
About Me
I am a Coach based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I left behind a 15-year career in Capital Markets after I became extremely curious around answering some of the bigger questions in life. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed around 200 people, to provide people with the space to reflect on their own lives and to create content that would spark people’s own inquiry into this question. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience, beyond the facades we typically project.
If you would like to work with me, or you simply want to get in touch, here’s my email and LinkedIn.
Powerful, wonderful an inspirational ☆☆☆☆☆ Five starts for the good vibrations and thoughts you gave to me and through me to others 💜