#20: How to ENGAGE with Life and SHIFT your Level of Consciousness

Welcome back to another episode. My name is Aaron Doughty and I run this podcast. I also have a YouTube channel. I also run that today we're going to be speaking about how to engage more in life, how to engage more with who you really are, how to move from the autopilot mind of being at the whims of society.

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I see some beliefs blowing around how we can move. I used to be a leaf in the wind. The wind would just take me wherever I was going. I really didn't have any of that attention. Therefore, it's also think of it like the metaphor, like a boat in the ocean. Imagine there's like a sail boat in the ocean.

There's no sail up and just the waves are just carrying it wherever the waves want to carry it. When instead, if we were to throw up that sail, all of a sudden, we'd start going in the direction that we want. Well, what does that sail? How do we set up that sail? What do we have to do in order to do that? How do we move from that of the, uh, the passenger seat into the driver's seat?

How do we do that safely? Like, we want to do that, but that sounds kind of dangerous. Were in the passenger seat. We want to move to the driver's seat. What do we do that, why we're driving? Do we stop the car?

Do we get out to the car? Do we walk around and then get in the driver's seat and then start going in the direction that we want? How do we really engage in life in the safest way possible? Is it dangerous to be, you know, taking an engaging with life. I mean, in this episode, that's exactly what we're going to learn. We're going to learn how we can move from the autopilot mind into engaging with life in a powerful way.

I know that was pretty dramatic in drove, but, uh, hopefully, hopefully it got you psyched up for today's episode because I'm ready. Ready to help you engage more with life and understand how to shift your level of consciousness. That you go from effect, effect, effect, stimulus response. This is happening, this is happening to. I'm at the cause, not the effect.

I am part of the happening in itself. This is something I've been working on lately. As you may have known or heard me talk about. I'm so currently creating something that's called the shift experience, the shift experience with Aaron Doughty and it's going to be both a live event which I traveled the world doing, Webinar webinars.

I traveled the world doing workshops on and it'll also be a course that shows step by step how to go through, have this shift in consciousness so that you also raise your vibrational set point because when you go through a shift, when you start to let go of a lot of this stuff that no longer serves, all the sudden you start to feel differently.

You're like, "Whoa, I feel way different than I did before." Because you start to realize that the way you felt before was just on autopilot and that you didn't have to think the same thoughts.

Therefore, you feel same emotions, therefore get inspired to take the same actions and then as you start changing these things that, because you're trying to become better has remember the ego, the thing I want to do and the thing I kind of want to bring into that of a, my teachings now is understanding the ego in a new way and knowing that a lot of people are trying to use the law of attraction in a way just from the ego, x perspectives of wanting more from an “egoic” point.

It's not a bad thing, but you have to be aware that you're doing it. Like, I can be aware that, hey, I want to grow a YouTube channel. Hey, I want to, uh, you know, maybe have a book one day and travel and do this and have this kind of lifestyle. But I'm aware that that's something that I have, that's a believer.

That's a desire that I have, but I'm not being swept away with it. And having that as something that like drives me, um, as if that's going to bring me happiness. It's like what we have to realize that we can also be happy right now in the present moment. I want to share with you some of the things that helped me along the process of moving from more of things that are happening to me too.

Then me moving into that driver's seat in a way, because most of our life, unless we become aware of it, unless we consciously decide that we're going to move from that of the driver of the passenger seat to the driver's seat, and I don't mean the ego by the way, we might be saying that. It's like, well it may. It may require a little bit of willpower, but it's not like the ego that has to run the show because a lot of times the ego wants what is comfortable.

The Ego wants familiarity because it wants to survive. The Ego's job is not the thrive. The Ego's job is just to survive. The autopilot mind is most likely the ego's safety mechanism to stay consistent in what is familiar and in order to move beyond that, what we have to do is not project ourselves. To the future is not to say, well, if I do this, this, this, maybe I'll accomplish this in the future.

It's more so about becoming present to the moment and saying yes to whatever we are experiencing. This is the shift of consciousness that I went through and for a long time I was. I had a story, like a narrative that was running my life. If I think too, one of the things that changed my life the most, and maybe you've heard me say it before and talk about it, but it was honestly, it's just making daily YouTube videos because at the time I was working at Nordstrom's.

I was working full time, 40 hours a week and I knew I wanted to be on YouTube and I only had maybe a thousand, a couple thousand subscribers on YouTube and it was by no means something. I felt like I could just leave my job and do that full time, but I had this story in my mind. I had this like fairytale, like, like I was like, okay, someone's going to come into my life and it's going to be a main public speaker.

They're going to see all this potential in me and what they're going to do is they're going to say, Aaron, US see a lot of potential in you. I'm going to put my money on you and I'm going to help you go full time with your passion and I'm going to give you a platform to share your message and all of this stuff and I'm going to say thank you so much.

I've always known that this is going to happen and then I would go and go about that and then I would become. For some reason I thought that it was like a mentor or something I was going to put me on. That was a story that I told myself and I was in this kind of the leaf in the wind type thing, waiting for it to happen. Making a video a week on YouTube, looking around like, why isn't things growing?

Well, I'm still waiting for that mentor. I still have this story in my mind that there's going to be some mentor that comes in that's going to be like, Hey Aaron, you've got potential here you go and then have the golden touch and all the sudden I'm this like very successful person. That was a story I told myself and that held me back for many years or probably be about a year of me making videos from really going all out.

There was just this epiphany I had. I was just like walking around my house. I was uh, I was in the, in the hallway upstairs at my dad's house. Believe it or not. I actually moved back into my diet at the time because I was like, I want to be full time on YouTube. And I had enough, you know, I was, I had an ex-girlfriend.

We were living together and then we broke up. She moved back to California and when she moved I was like, okay, so I'm going to move in with my dad so that I can start pursuing this full time thing because I don't want to have. I don't want to be selling shoes my whole life, you know, there's nothing wrong with that by the way.

I think sometimes I talk about that my podcasts or on social media and my old coworkers are like, what's wrong with being a shoe salesman or sales person?

My was talking bad about it by any means. It's just not something I was passionate about, you know? I just knew it wasn't what I was meant to be doing in life. Uh, but yeah, I was walking around my house and I just simply knew that this is not something I wanted. I knew that if I thought to myself, it was really a one question I asked myself. I asked myself this one question.

I said, what is the one thing that I could do every single day that would change my life the most in a year? That in a year I would look back on and be like, wow, that changed my life. And I just asked myself that question and that the answer that came up for me was to make a video a day. It was like, I don't know if there's a voice out of the clouds and just does like make a video a day or if there was some mentor that just popped in.

My mind is I hit Aaron, Tony Robbins, I hit errands, make a video a day. And I was like, Oh yeah, that was, that's great. That's what I should do. I was like, “Okay, make a video a day.” And I just had this feeling in the moment. I had that thought. I felt like this rush of energy through my body. It was like just a mild rush of energy.

It was like, okay, a video a day, I'm going to do that. From that point going on, I started to make a video a day no matter what. And there are times as working I'd get done at work because I live in Vegas and where, you know, things are open till late. Um, so barneys New York, which is like a high end retail store, I worked in women's shoes, I sold shoes that were like $800 to $1,200 for a pair of shoes.

And I worked there for years and I was there and I get it. I get done sometimes at midnight go home, like, oh, I got to film a video, got to edit the video, got to post the video and I get to bed at like three and I wake up at seven or eight the next day. And I did. That. Didn't happen all the time, but it did happen sometimes.

And just to show you the kind of mindset shift that I had because I would've never done that with the older mindset and be like, well, that seems hard. Why would I do that? There's still someone that's going to put me on one day. It was going to be this mentor is going to come along. It's going to be like, “Hey Aaron, you fricking awesome. Here you go. Here's your platform.

Here you go. You could go ahead and make all your money now and give you some.” I give you permission to do so. But what happened was, is more so than just me, I'm going from my passion. It was like I started to engage with life more. I started to experience it more. I became, I became just so in the moment because what happened was is the more I did it, the more I enjoyed it.

It was almost like the more I would get in front of the camera, the more I would enjoy being in front of the camera and the moral flow state would happen. That was the moment. That was something that really changed my life because then within four or five months I was able to get rid of that nine to five job. I was starting to figure out how to make money. By then things really started to grow. Within the first month I had one or two videos start to go viral and as those videos went viral brought in a lot of people.

I went from two or 3000 subscribers to like 40, 50,000 subscribers in a month or two. And I was like, Whoa, okay. And then I remember asking those couple other YouTube is. I reached out to us that had like a little bit more than me. They had like 60 or 80,000, so I was like, hey guys, when can I go full time?

Like as assets as asking them permission. I was like, what will it take me to go full time? What subscriber count? And I remember one guy, he's a friend of mine now. He's like, yeah, it doesn't, it's not a subscriber count. Just depends on a lot of different factors. The numbers really, you know, you could, you could do that 10,000 subs if you, if you have the right strategy. And was like, oh. Then it started to change my, my mindset, my belief about it.

And as I then started to see the opportunity, that's when I started to really double down on that and figuring out the business side of it. I was going to leave in the beginning of August, but I was like, no, I'll wait because I knew it was going to be busy. I waited until that day. That was like a celebration for me in that moment on.

I worked for myself, I'll never go work for anyone else again because of my mindset, you know, just because they don't have to, but also, it's my mindset. I could never work for someone else because of the way I think now and the person I became, you know, and this whole process as well.

When you start to engage with life, it's not about what you can achieve or what you can get or even it's about who you become because now I've become the kind of person that I look at different challenges in my life and I'm, I'm the kind of person now that I know I can figure it out because if I could figure it out to go full time on YouTube, if I could figure out how to get rid of a job I didn't like, if I could figure out how to transmute that pain of my past, of like the childhoods, like the kind of childhood that I had and I can go through all of that.

Then what else can I do? You see? It's almost like you can take all the pain from your past. You can take some of the challenges you're going through where maybe you've been at the effect before at the stimulus response. The main thing you have to do in order to experience this as you have to start, you have to stop intellectually in all of these stories and you have to start just simply being.

That's the shift because I was like, I kind of in a way imagine the best version of me, what I'd be doing. I was like, and I always thought I'd be making videos. I'd be traveling the world and speaking well, what is a platform for me to do that and to create it myself? Well, there's YouTube. No one has to me on YouTube.

You don't need an agent to put you on. You don't need a network marketing or whatever you call those. Some networks that's going to put you on you do it yourself, and that's the cool thing about YouTube as clothing about social media is that if you want to make it, you can. You just have to be putting in the work.

You have to be adding the value, you know, so I put my whole brand and everything that I'm about, around adding value to other people because I've been through pain. I've been through being the leaf in the wind. I've been that boat in the middle of the ocean that has no direction.

But what happened was as I started to develop an empowering vision and one thing you can do to start to engage in life is to have a vision. Have a vision for what you want to experience. Be aware if it's, whether it's just the ego. Why do you want your vision? Sometimes it could be just the ego that's like, oh, well, if I had a really nice car and I've had this and I had that, then I could feel happy, but experience the present moment right now, knowing you could enjoy the moment along the way.

You can join, you can enjoy the process and the more you enjoy the process, the more you find that you shift into the present moment and in the present moment is where everything happens. You know, I don't know whether it was like I started doing so many YouTube videos that I started to get into a flow state when I got in front of the camera or if it was more so just that's my purpose in life.

I just feel that naturally. I don't know whether it's the chicken or the aid that comes first, but whatever it is, simply decide that you are going to experience life and you're going to see the person that you become. That's what's most important is the person you become. It's the experience of it.

You know, a lot of times we have these labels. We have these stories that we tell ourselves. Like I had this story that there's some mentor guy who is going to come into my life or some mentor girl some coming to my life like, Hey, this is what you could be doing is how you can be successful.

And I'd be like, that gives so much is a story that held me back. What stories do you have in your mind? What stories of disempowerment do you have in your mind that caused you to be alive of the wind?

One of the main ones is what are your beliefs about life? Because if you believe that life is happening to you, then you'll remain in the victim mentality. And sometimes people hear me say that and it's like, oh, this guy talking about victim mentality. What has he been throw? He's probably had it a very entitled life.

I've been the victim before. I've been the victim. I've had an ex step mom that was abusive, both physically, mentally. She's a sociopath. She still is. I don't mean that in a mean way. I'm just calling it like it is. I mean, if you shouldn't to be diagnosed, that's what they would say. And she just, uh, I went through a period of my life where I had no power whatsoever. I experienced, at least that was my story that I told myself. And because of that I didn't, you know, I lived a certain way.

And then up until 15 years old and my dad divorced or all of and I have all this freedom again, but I still had patterns within me of the past being at the effects, meaning that they effect being at the effect because I didn't deal with it and experience those types of things. Here's the thing, when something happens, like my ex step mom, you notice to give it a little bit of a backstory just for a second as maybe you heard me talk about it before and the reason I bring up the past, sometimes you know, sometimes people will ask, they're like, "Well, why wouldn't I just let go of the past?"

Never talk about it again. Wouldn't that be more powerful? Mean bringing it up? But the reason it happened, the reason I have to bring it up is because people need a reference experience and to know that I've experienced it and they kind of relate to it.

It's something I used to relate to other people so that people know because I could never talk about it again and probably would have less effect over me. But I've. I've used that as an empowering story and a metaphor because I have a platform to help other people go through the same thing because there's a lot of other people that were abused growing up or had an abusive parent or a went through bullying or whatever it is, and people can relate at some level.

That's why I bring it out. Let me just. First off, let me just clarify that, but just to give it a quick backstory except step mom was in my life from seven to 15 years old and in that period she, in a way, my dad was a fire. He still is. He's like firefighters. He's gone 24 hours a day, works on an off 24 hours shifts.

I and my brother, my brother's three years younger than me, we were always around her. She was very manipulative. She had something called or has something called borderline personality disorder where she just gets very, very angry. Um, and she, I think, went through a lot of pain when she was growing up. That's how she thinks that she has to treat other people.

But uh, what happened was me and my brother, a lot of times we're locked out of the house. We weren't allowed to eat very much in the morning. We were given a bowl of cereal, only one bowl. We were allowed. And then, uh, at the end of the day we're allowed to eat one TV. Dinner wasn't very much food. Me and my brother were very skinny, very malnourished, and we weren't allowed to watch TV.

We weren't allowed to have friends. If you wanted to watch TV, we'd have to break into the house when they would, when she would leave for work, we were locked out of the house. We had to do all these chores, raking. We had like half an acre of property. We're constantly doing stuff, digging trenches, doing just random stuff around the house or around the outside of the house. And then we would have to do all this stuff and we would then eventually try to break in the house. 

We go watch TV or we can try to eat some type of different types of food. You know, we'd always sneak because we weren't given, we weren't given that kind of. I'm kind of almost the bare necessities, right? We were totally, there's a certain way we had to think we had an earned going to school. If we got in trouble, would get taken away from us. We weren't allowed to like go to forensics debate tournaments or band camp, you know, that stuff would get taken away from us if we didn't admit to the line about something that we didn't lie about and she was just a very angry person.

Went through all of that. And then what eventually happened is I developed this pattern, this story about how the life works and how reality is and that I'm not worthy. I developed a self-image around it and here's the thing. Fifteen came around, my dad divorced or all the sudden my brother and I have a lot more freedom or allowed to watch TV. We're allowed to have friends, were allowed to eat food and like we're not reality more than one serving of food.

When I'm not just a TV dinner, we're allowed to like, you know, what we want. It was, it was such a feeling of expansion in that period because it wasn't like we were, were then like spoiled. We were just giving the bare necessities, you know, it's like all the sudden we were allowed to just do what every other kid was doing, you know, and um, we're allowed to have friends and stuff.

It was just, it was a big game changer. But even then there was still a pattern within me of being at the victim because then eventually I went to and I worked at Nordstrom's and women's shoes when I was going to college. And when I was working at Nordstrom's, I eventually got into a department where I had a manager and this manager had almost the same exact traits of my step mom.

It was like a pattern within me that attracted that kind of person in my life because I hadn't dealt with it yet. What happened was, is I was in my life like for years, no matter what, like people, everyone who tried to get her fired because literally she was so abusive mentally, she would say the main, like the main things, but she was protected by upper management so she wouldn't get fired.

Here's the crazy thing though, when I learned meditation was when I worked at Nordstrom's, I learned meditation, learn how to observe my thoughts are and how to observe my past and I started to heal my past. I started to let it be there within a week of doing this and I never learned meditation before that I fell a lot of resistance. Maybe know my story, the whole ADHD thing, but what I did is I let that go. 

When I let that go, within a week she got fired. It was almost like as I allowed the past to be there, as I reframe past experience and I realized I was no longer the victim, I could observe my thoughts, observe my beliefs. Within a week she got fired. It was incredible. What does that mean? That it's like me that did it. I don't know. All I'm knowing that is it in my own life.

The moment I started to feel it embodied the emotion of what happened to me of the past and I started to integrate it. It was the moment that then it dropped the vibrational resonance of those things in my life. I even then after that one, the next step, mom, one of the first girlfriends I had kind of resembled my step mom. She had like, she was a very controlling type person.

Always trying to control what I did. I was always like the loud one. I was always too loud. I always had to be a certain way, you know, I'm always, always kind of like, I've always been kind of like somebody that, you know, I like attention. I like that this is kind of like being a, being a fire sign. I don't know what it is, but that's just how I am. But I had an ex-girlfriend, my first ex-girlfriend after that, one of my first girlfriends after, uh, the whole step-mom thing and 15 years old.

Maybe your parents divorced and you think it's your fault. Maybe something happens and somebody it's very embarrassing type situation in a moment that happened. Normally what happens is we resist the moment we exist, the experience in, in the resistance of that experience.

We caused a pattern within us that then attracts to us similar experiences that happen over and over again. It's about being aware of all of this. Being aware of all of this pain, of whatever the experience of it is, an experience it and once you experience it, you complete it. It's like it comes full circle.

I've experienced and I let it be okay that I experienced that negativity, that I experienced the control of my step mom, of even that manager that I had. I let it all be there and in the letting of it be there and the experience and really absorbing it and allowing it to be there.

It then transforms. If you want to shift from being a boat in the middle of the ocean with no sail, put up your sail and allow yourself to feel whatever emotions come up and in that feeling of it, you'd didn't let go. It's almost like think of it like sand bags that are inside of the boat that are holding the boat from moving anywhere and as you let go of it, as you pick up those sandbags and let go of the past, you allow them to be there and you just let go of it having power over you.

Then you start to let it go and then the boat can more easily move in the direction that you want. You're letting go of all of these ties that are holding you back, all of these things, but let it be okay that they're there. We sometimes we judge ourselves and we think that we're supposed to be more spiritual.

We're supposed to be better than this, but the truth is we are perfect the way that we are. Let it be okay that you experienced it and you actually experienced it more so than just an intellectual idea because I could have said that I was abused growing up on my step bomb, but that is a story you could say.

Well, no, it's true. You had an abusive ex step mom. She was mentally and physically abusive, but here's the thing, that's a story that I tag onto the situation. What actually happened, what actually happened is, yes, she may have hit me and my brother that may have happened, but the abuse is part of a story and this space, they aren't harsh to some people, but it really helps us to start to see things more as the story, what happened in the story that we tell ourselves about what happened because saying that we experienced some type of a s ice breakers.

I experienced social trauma when I went in front of the class and I didn't know how to give a presentation. I forgot my lines and it was silence, and then that was like a. people were laughing. That social trauma. No, that's not social trauma. All it was I went in front of a group of people.

It was a meaningless situation. Everything in our life does not have meaning unless we give it meaning. My ex that mom could have hit me. It could have happened, but the meaning I gave that was, oh, she's abusing me. That's the experience. That's what I, that's what I may have felt in the moment.

That's maybe even what I experienced, but most of what we experienced is a label. It's not actually what we experienced is the interpretation about what we experienced and is the label of us our past and our parents divorced and all of this stuff happened and it was it my fault.

That's all inexperienced, so the key is knowing that we can allow it to be there in by allowing it to be there. We then transform the past and when we transform the past, we transformed much of the beliefs we have about life because then I realized that I don't have to believe life is hard. I don't have to believe that things are happening to me.

I don't have to believe I'm a leaf in the wind and say what I can do is realize that the true power is not the eagle controlling everything. The true power is in choosing to experience the moment right now. Say Yes to the present moment. If negative emotion comes up, say yes to it. If positive emotion comes up and say yes to it, if negative comes up, say yes to it, say yes to whatever comes up because you can start to observe the mind.

You can start to observe all of this. The more you observe all of this is, the more you take your power back. The truth is you and you alone can start to embody the present moment more and more.

You can start to say yes to the present moment and the more you say yes is the more you start to realize that you can choose what you want in your life, what you have to first off, take responsibility for what's happened in well.

Responsibility means the ability to respond, the ability to respond in the ability to experience, experience your past. Go into a meditation and experience what it was like and let it be there. You may find emotions come up. You may find it's painful, but allow it to be there because then as you allow it to be there and you experience it, you relive it.

You will then be letting go of what doesn't serve and you will then be transferred to transforming your life. You will move from a leaf in the wind to be an on your purpose. You will move from the boat just drifting in different directions, then going and you put it up the sail and you go in and powerful way.