Cut your losses

The above is a guided meditation on how to get instant perspective on what really matters. This is the second of two posts born out of a conversation I had on the Money, Meet Meaning podcast:The following audio is me reading today’s essay (my son Huck gives us a cameo at the end):There’s a man named James Howells who, in 2013, mistakenly disposed of a laptop hard drive containing the private key for 8,000 Bitcoin in the Docksway landfill in Newport, Wales. He’s spent the subsequent thirteen years of his life devoted to getting into the landfill to get it back. The Newport City Council has repeatedly refused permission to excavate the landfill, citing environmental concerns including dangerous gases, methane, asbestos, and toxic leachate. Howells assembled a team of specialists, secured funding from a hedge fund, proposed using AI, drones, and robotic dogs to find the drive; and sued the city council. All so that he can have a chance at getting it back. The chances of actually finding it, and that it’s in-tact enough to retrieve the information he needs, are over 3,000 times less likely than winning the UK National Lottery jackpot.Although this is an extreme example, we do things like this all the time. I once spent over 40 hours trying (unsuccessfully) to get reimbursed by my health insurance company for a $2500 charge. It was a non-trivial amount of money, but I still questioned my own motivations and the underlying beliefs that might be driving these (often fruitless) efforts.When I felt into it, there was some flavor of “I can’t let them take advantage of me” happening. There was also the belief that I was somehow responsible for advocating on behalf of all the people out there who are being taken advantage of by our broken healthcare system to benefit the wealthy. As I talked about in my last post, I’ve been caught in believing that my well-being is highly correlated with the amount of money that I have. And beneath all of that, there’s the fundamental feeling of mistrust of the world at large, that I’m not safe in this life and I have to take it upon myself to cling to stuff to stay protected. This is what’s known as unwise view. The first factor of the eightfold path is Wise View. It means seeing things clearly as they actually are, rather than through the distorting lens of our wishes, fears, habits, and conditioning. Having wise view means that we understand that all things are impermanent, that suffering is caused by clinging to things that are impermanent; and besides, there’s no solid self there that can be protected by all that clinging in the first place. If you don’t have wise view, all of your subsequent pursuits are not rooted in this wisdom, and so you end up doing a bunch of stuff that’s not in line with your best interests.After having these insights into my own unwise view, I decided to do something that felt risky. I decided not to spend any more time on the phone with my health insurance company. I was not meant to spend my life that way. Call me what you will, but I choose to believe that if I spend less time focused on protecting my assets and more time trusting that the universe has my back, my life will be better for it. I’d probably lose money, maybe a lot of it, and yes, the big corporations would “win.” But I was already losing. It’s time to cut our losses. There are things we’re all doing that we know are making us miserable, and are not serving our highest purpose. We’re staying in a fight, a habit, a relationship, a mindset, or an activity not because it serves us but because we’ve already invested in it. What if we lean into trust, take a leap of faith, and intentionally change some of our fear-based habits? Stop digging through that pile of garbage to find your Bitcoin and start living, now.The practical invitation is to slow down or pause in any given moment, and to check: how do you feel right now? Is what you’re doing something you actually, really, want to be doing? Don’t force yourself to stop, keep doing it, just a little bit slower, and notice how it feels to be doing it. Maybe invite some ease into your body as you go. Include more of what’s happening in your sensory experience, and also in your emotional world. Let it all be here, just as you might do in a formal meditation session. Immediately, you’ll get some perspective on the endeavor, and you’ll suddenly have a choice. Ultimately, there are actually no sunk costs. There is instant insight that happens right then and there, especially in situations where we feel emotionally invested. Immediately, we pivot from sinking our energy into the things that don’t serve our highest purpose, and land squarely on our path.James Howells claims that he feels alive and engaged in his quest, and maybe he does. Nothing says alive quite like spending thirteen years elbow-deep in a landfill.Your support is a huge help! To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Online Mini-RetreatWho say that the only people who get to wake up are the ones who have the resources to be on retreat all the time? This mini, at-home retreat is meant to upend this way of thinking, and expose how your life is exactly what you need to awaken.April 19th, 11am-3pm through IMS Online. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caralai.substack.com/subscribe