Alex Olshonsky

Create a life too fulfilling to numb •
Exec coach + somatic guide •
Men’s work + retreats: •
Writing:

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

I wrote what's essentially becoming my core thesis. We're all subject to addiction, today more than ever. Follow it down, and it's not just substances and screens, but thinking patterns themselves.

This is what contemplative traditions have been pointing to for millennia: you can set down compulsive thinking and discover what’s been living you all along.

This one's about how to actually do that, and what it feels like to live less in your head, and more intuitively.

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

Jed McKenna, Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

The smartphone era will look, in retrospect, like the smoking era

The intelligence era will look like, who fucking knows, but for all its advances in medicine, it will cost us as embodied beings

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

@vacayajo Haven't read the book, but my overall sentiments of her are aligned with that read

And, haha! Thank you so much. Means a lot to hear <3

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

This isn't everyone's medicine, but for those it is, it tends to be the work of a lifetime:

Learn to disappoint anyone – hell, disappoint everyone – but don't ever disappoint yourself.

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

First heard this in a dharma talk from Hareesh Wallis, on pure motive in tantrik practice

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

Instead of: there's something wrong with me as I am, and I hope my spiritual practice will fix it

It helps to hold this conviction in your heart, however fleeting:

There is something right with me as I am, and I hope this practice will reveal it

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

Most cravings are misdirected prayers

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

Much of the software running our minds is built to problem-solve. When it doesn't get updated toward a sense of safety, it keeps scanning for threats, resulting in ambient catastrophic thinking.

This can be the major stuff: I didn't get promoted, thus I'll forever be a worthless failure. Or more moderate: she left me on read, thus I'm clearly too much. But where it's most sneaky is in the little, mundane stuff. You're on a Zoom, your colleague's expression changes, looking distracted or even slightly annoyed, and because you're the one talking, you conclude you must've said the wrong thing – oh shit, what did I do, here I go yet again – and all of this is happening while you're still speaking. This kind of minor psychic rupture happens all the time, and it compounds, deepening the division within the self.

Regardless of whether it's major or minor, the practice starts with just noticing how often thinking goes catastrophic, or, in parts language, how often a protector gets activated.

As presence deepens, you might be shocked, as I was, by just how often the mind’s chatter is pure catastrophe. But that noticing is essential; you can't stop a pattern you don't know exists.

From there, first celebrate the catch, as a quick inward yes right when you notice is what trains the reward system to look for the next one. Relax the body and brain. Then see if you can view the arising negative thoughts as energy that needs to clear from the system. You could say it's prior psychological conditioning, karma burning off, or just old code still running, but whatever you call it, it has momentum, and it's surfacing now to be released.

Meeting the thoughts with compassion, instead of another round of self-attack, is what makes them a non-problem. And it's what finally gives the system the safety it never had, so the scanning can stop and the charge starts to drain out. I've found it helps tremendously to bring loving attention to all this, never force.

Seeing the arising of negative thoughts as a natural process of intelligence, part of the healing and coherent order of things, helps you get out of the way and let it move, creating more unity in the self.

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

My son is two today, and when I look at him, I see a poem the earth wrote to keep me alive

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

@dkazand @jonnym1ller Next time join us pls

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

Rare break from dad life to get in the water with my guy @jonnym1ller

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

@aubpascual Green lights, ah, that's McConaughey's term, right

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

If you want to increase your surface area for magic, start keeping a synchronicity journal. It can be a simple note on your phone where you track the date and the uncanny moments that feel beyond coincidence, when it feels like the universe is winking at you.

Jung, who coined the term, believed synchronicities occur when the membrane between your inner world (the unconscious) and the outer world becomes porous, and what comes through feels like a secret message meant only for you, hence the wink.

He also believed they occur around crucial life moments, when the unconscious is welling up, giving you a sign that you are on the right path. Yet most people miss them. Mostly because they were never taught what to notice, or how.

And the more you do notice, the more the membrane thins out, until it feels like you’re in on the game of life, which was, for Jung, the path of individuation, of becoming more whole.

So the journal basically primes your system to notice more of these magical moments. And the noticing is how you find yourself inside a living, intelligent, untamed universe, flirting back with you.

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

@usernom99 I like that, high-fives

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

@Normandescedant Nice

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

These workshops have been a blast. Running it back this Friday - join us to discover that you can move, act, speak, and relate without thinking about it

https://t.co/S1dyjX69MN

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

Overthinking is always pointing at a deeper unmet need – the topic, as urgent as it feels, is just the form the need assumes when it can’t be felt.

Underneath, you're trying to get something, avoid something, prove yourself right, reduce uncertainty, or, most typically, manipulate a feeling.

All of it is an earnest, yet futile attempt to negotiate with reality.

Whenever you catch yourself in the act, pause to feel, relax the energy behind the deeper wanting, maybe even remind yourself the answer won't come from spiraling, and the thinking tends to settle on its own.

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

Overthinking is always pointing at a deeper unmet need – the topic, as urgent as it feels, is just the form the need assumes when it can’t be felt.

Underneath, you're trying to get something, avoid something, prove yourself right, reduce uncertainty, or, most typically, manipulate a feeling.

All of it is an earnest, yet futile attempt to negotiate with reality.

Whenever you catch yourself in the act, pause to feel, relax the energy behind the deeper wanting, maybe even remind yourself the answer won't come from spiraling, and the thinking tends to settle on its own.

[Alex Olshonsky @oloal]

@schlaf @CryptoMindcare Leggo