Inspired with Nika Lawrie

PART 1 - Blending Science and Spirituality: Nikki Durkin on Gameism, Manifestation, and Personal Growth

• Nikki Durkin • Season 2024 • Episode 88

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What happens when you blend the rationality of science with the mysticism of spirituality? Nikki Durkin, the visionary founder of Gameism.ai, unravels the compelling world of gamified life. Nikki's journey began at just 14 with an eBay drop-shipping store and skyrocketed when she launched her tech startup, 99 Dresses, at 18. Through her intuitive decision-making and the power of manifestation, Nikki achieved significant milestones, such as being accepted into Y Combinator. Her story sets the stage for a new way of understanding life by merging internal beliefs with external realities.

Nikki opens up about her profound struggles, including an identity crisis that followed the viral spread of an article about her failure. This intense public scrutiny led her to a year of isolation in Australia, where she wrestled with losing an identity built around achievement. Amid this introspection, Nikki questioned her reality and sought a new paradigm that integrates personal experiences with external events. By sharing these intimate moments, she offers invaluable insights into overcoming self-doubt and achieving a holistic understanding of life.

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Nika Lawrie:

Hey and welcome to Inspired with Nika Larie. Today's guest is Nikki Durkin and we talk about how life can be gamified. That will be explained in detail here, coming up in the episode. You'll know what I mean, but it's a really great, life-changing conversation that actually went on for about two hours. Because it went so long, I'm actually breaking it up into two episodes. You'll have part one today, which is a little over an hour, and part two next week, which is just shy of an hour. I truly hope you enjoy. Be sure to leave a review, leave a comment and connect with Nikki and I. If you have questions or thoughts, we'd love to hear from you. With that, let's get started. Thoughts, we'd love to hear from you. With that, let's get started. Welcome to the Inspired with Nikki Lurie podcast.

Nika Lawrie:

Nikki Durkin, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you here today. Thanks so much for having me on. Yeah, so I'm really excited today. You and I have actually been friends for a while now and we've had lots of conversations about this, but you always school me on all these things. I'm super excited to get into it, but we're going to talk a little bit about manifesting and a whole bunch of other things, but there's really some cool stuff behind it. You are the founder of Gamism AI. Can you tell me what Gamism is first off and then tell me what your story is Like? What led you to that? How did you figure all this out?

Nikki Durkin:

Okay, so this is kind of I would call it a new category of product, but it's basically rational spirituality for modern humans, and so, if you kind of like tool that down a little bit, um, it's a practical philosophy that's rooted in this really cutting-edge field of study called digital physics, which is kind of a fusion of computer science and physics that not many people know about. But, um, it's just like so fascinating and so I'll kind of I can nerd out on it a little bit with you. But if you want to talk about how it came to be or my background a little bit, as you can probably tell, it's in technology yes, so um yeah, so I mean the story.

Nikki Durkin:

I feel like gamism is really an extension of my belief system, and how that belief system came to be is that, um, I've always been like very into into technology and innovation and always kind of like right on the cutting edge of things. So when I was a, a teenager, I started a uh, um, a drop shipping store on ebay. Um, when I was like 14 and kind of like, like, and that was in 2007, like way before that was way before that was a thing like all the cool kids are doing it yeah, these

Nikki Durkin:

days. This is when there was like not good infrastructure for it, um, and so I was like doing the whole online, like I could just see the potential of the digital world and um, and that kind of led me to start my first tech startup, nine Fine Dresses, when I was 18 years old. And it was a really interesting kind of relevance to the story because I was in boarding school at the time. I was a country girl in Australia and so a lot of time you get shipped off to boarding school to get an education and and I would just like I had this vision for this business that I wanted to create, and it was based on the idea that I had a closet full of clothes but nothing to wear, and I had, um, I was making all this money in my eBay business. I was buying lots of clothes, as you do as a 16 year old, um, and you know, and then I was like I don't know what to do with them, like I don't. I I had too much and I kind of wanted more, but then I didn't want to be unenvironmentally friendly, yeah, and so, um, I had this idea, uh, that kind of just burst into my, into my mind of like what if I could trade clothes with other women, women and what if I could use the internet to do that?

Nikki Durkin:

So this is back in 2008, something like that, and uh, and I spent like two years like planning it out, like just like thinking about it and how it would work. And da, da, da and um, I guess, like from a we're going to talk about manifestation. I'm kind of like paving the way for that conversation, but it was just this like obsession with an idea, right, yeah and um. And then, like the day I finished high school, I was like in the office with like some company I ended up partnering with and we, like I, started actually executing on it, so taking idea into reality, and um it just I had no idea what I was doing. I was 18 years old, I was just like young girl, essentially in a male-dominated tech industry like male or female, nobody knows what they're doing at 18 alone, yeah, and like who and I think that's relevant because it was it was just kind of like oh, um, I don't know what I'm doing.

Nikki Durkin:

It was just kind of like oh, I don't know what I'm doing, so it's just kind of like skipping along, like following my intuition, and get this idea and I'd execute on it and like, suddenly, like this thing would go viral and then this would happen and dah, dah, dah, and before I knew it, it's like this company just like took off, like, and it was just like. It was like there was something happening where it was just coincidence, coincidence, coincidence, coincidence, like it kind of like flow, flow, flow, flow of this idea that I'd had, that I thought about for two years, that I'd like then embodied and executed, coming to fruition. Um, when I was like I think like 19 or 20 years old, I dropped out of university, I got accepted into y culminator, which is the top startup accelerator in the world.

Nikki Durkin:

They invested in the company um, yeah, it was a big deal back then and um moved to uh, well, I was in silicon valley for a while and like eventually moved to new New York and uh, moved the company to the US and kind of threw it there, and so at the time I was like 21, 22, had, you know, employees in the office in New York and da, da, da, da, um. And then it failed and um, and it failed very publicly because I, when it all started going down, I was like I wasn't very good at managing my mental state, like I didn't really like understand I don't think I was like emotionally mature enough. I just I wasn't confident enough. Um, and I remember thinking at the time like I could not perceive what it would be like to get to the next level and I very vividly remember that like it was almost like I just couldn't feel it like and with that business, yeah and um, and I didn't think anything of it at the time until after it failed and um, and what happened was I got this idea in my head of like okay, well, no one's talking about failure um, at the time in 2014, especially in the tech industry, which is, it's very like, male dominated yeah and um, and, from a professional point of view, it's like you can talk about your feelings.

Nikki Durkin:

It's like let's talk about failure, like this is why the business failed, logically. But no one was really talking about the emotional side of what it feels like to be an entrepreneur, to invest four years of your life into something and for it to not work out, and like to chase your dreams and go for it and the irony there is that you know most startups fail and that entrepreneurial life is like the emotional equivalent of driving a car off a bridge, like it is so stressful.

Nikki Durkin:

So it's crazy that the two aren't ever really talked about yeah, like and I think it's better now and I think that that's a trend that's happening throughout society is this like integration of um, those two ideas? But at the time, in 2014, it was, like you know, especially so entrepreneurial, like looking around and everyone's doing great and, like you know, especially in the tech startup world, and I'm like, well, I'm not and um, well, like I was, and then I wouldn't be, and it was just this like emotional roller coaster for me and I didn't know how I didn't understand, like, um, or I just I didn't have the skill, like, if you think about life as a game, which I'm going to talk about, like I was just a beginner, I was like a toddler, yeah, and I just like I didn't, I didn't have the skill to deal with that much on and um and so, anyway, so it failed and I wrote this blog post about it, um, and I literally it was on mediumcom, I've never written, I've never written anything, um and published it online. Yeah, I wrote this thing. It was a 20 minute read called my startup failed and this is what it feels like. And it was like the emotional rollercoaster of like, what does it feel like to chase your dreams for four years and then, and then it just fell apart and I just posted on Facebook and it just instantly went viral. I think it got something like a quarter of a million views in 48 hours. Oh my gosh, yeah.

Nikki Durkin:

And it was like translated into multiple languages and syndicated in press all around the world. It was front page of Australia's top news site and I would see that because I'd get emails flooding into my inbox because I said, oh, reach out. If you know, like, if you like the article yeah, I got like thousands of ones. Oh my gosh. If you know, like, if you like the article yeah, thousand, I got like thousands. Oh my gosh. Um. And and it would be like, oh, it'd be like 8 pm and be like all in Chinese and then we'll go to German and then like some like African language. I didn't understand because it was just, it went like all around the world. So it's crazy, um.

Nikki Durkin:

And so I kind of like became the poster child for effing it up, like with grace, you know, which is not what I envisioned for the portion of my career, you know. But what I found was that there were just all these people that were trying to create new things in the world. They're the creatives and they're like venturing into the unknown in the world. They're the creatives and they're like venturing into the unknown and and they were, they were struggling, you know, just like me, where it was kind of like it felt like this emotional roller coaster of like chaos and just like um uncertainty and fear, but then exuberant and like just like all of it and um the ups and the downs and all that kind of stuff and um, and so what was interesting is like I went back to Australia, I went and like lived with my parents for a year in this small country town of Florida.

Nikki Durkin:

Um, I was so burnt out and when I say I like went off grid, like I went from kind of being in the public eye, I'd say like a fair bit late. Yeah, I got back to Australia. I didn't even connect a phone for a year.

Nika Lawrie:

I don't know, I didn't have a mobile phone.

Nikki Durkin:

I was just like I don't want to talk to anyone except my close friends who know how to contact me. Um, I just went like basically off grid and I was like I don't know who I am, like I I didn't. You know, it's like as and I'm sure a lot of your listeners like have businesses or they're creative or they're like doing interesting things, and it's like what happens when the thing that defines your identity gets stripped away from right, oh yeah.

Nika Lawrie:

You don't have that anymore, and I was like One of the hardest thing I've experienced. That and it's yeah, I mean I've been through some pretty major trauma, but having my identity stripped from me was probably the most difficult thing I had to work through yeah, yeah, and and and I think also for me, because it was all I had ever known like I hadn't had a succession of like identities.

Nikki Durkin:

I had basically had, like I was an overachiever in high school.

Nikki Durkin:

You know, I was the girl who would top, top of everything, you know, yeah, yeah, here's, oh, another award, another award, like oh, and she runs the business, and da, da, da, and then so, like, for me, I'd learned to associate achievement with self-worth, right, yes, so it was like, and I say the game, and it will make sense, it will make sense when I talk about gamism, but it's like the game just stripped all of that away from me and then asked me a question of like who are you when all of this is gone?

Nikki Durkin:

And I didn't know, like I just just like I had this massive existential crisis, um, and so I was at my parents place and there was, there was a particular moment when I just remember being my friend asked me to go and speak at her co-working space about with some other female entrepreneurs that I knew, and like their businesses were going really well and mine had just failed, and I stood up on stage and I just remember I just completely choked, like I was stood up on stage in front of hundreds of people and I had like tears pouring down my cheeks, just like I couldn't, like I couldn't do it, yeah, and it was like. It was like, oh, like I was, you know, like I, I mean, I still feel emotional thinking yeah absolutely, um, and you know, like I think that's part of being human, but I remember it was.

Nikki Durkin:

It was simultaneously like like most things in life, hard, but one of the best things that happened to me, yeah, and I mean that in the sense that like I kind of went home and I started questioning things and I was like wait a minute, okay, like why did I fail? Like how did I end up in this situation? Why did I fail? And I go well, you know, logically it's like, well, I didn't do this right and I executed this poorly. And you know, just like very logical, surface level stuff. And then I'm like, okay, well, why did I think that particular idea was good, that I went and executed it? And then it was like, well, where do my ideas come from? And I got all the way back to first principles and I'm like what is reality? And I was like, wait a minute, like I don't know, like I've never really thought about it.

Nikki Durkin:

And the thing that was kind of coming up for me was I just couldn't shake this feeling that it's like I'd grown up in this, I'd say like materialist kind of paradigm or more of like this atheistic, scientific paradigm, like my dad's a doctor, very much like staunch materialist, um, and I went to a school that was Anglican. I'm not religious or anything, but a lot of schools in Australia are, um, have some kind of religious affiliation, and you know we went to church, but for me it was always like cool, like the essence of this makes sense, like don't be an asshole, and like love thy neighbor and whatever, but like it was like the, the like specifics of like, it just felt like truth covered in this noise, um, and so I just couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't get into the religion side of it. But then the science, like the pure science side of it, I'm like and this doesn't square with what my experience has been which, to me, when I started that business, was basically like it's like the red sea would part to deliver me everything I needed, right to assemble the next part of my vision, and it was, it was easy and it was like flow, and it wasn't until, um, I got to the point where the business was a thing and I had all of these like to be honest and I don't mean this in a negative sense, right, but like older men, um, who had established careers, kind of coming in and telling me all the things I should be doing rationally, like how to do it, what like use this formula, you should be worried about this, like here's, like the formula, formula, and. And then also telling me like it's hard and it needs to be hard and like and I started subconsciously, it's almost like I felt guilty that it wasn't hard for me, um, that it was kind of easy and that like I was breaking all the rules in that sense and it was and and getting all this attention and and which was like that, and that's a whole bunch of trauma like I didn't realize I had from high school, but like my fear of attention, um, but like um, it it was. And I got this idea in my head. There was almost like this mental cage of like overthinking and it should be like this, I need to worry about it and like stop trusting myself, so trusting my intuition, stop trusting the thing that actually works for me and thinking that other people need better than me. Yeah, right, and then, and then, and then following their formulas, and then it's just not working. Like and and and like I kept hitting. There it was.

Nikki Durkin:

It was like this amazing period, and then it was a period where it was just like what is wrong, like everything used to work for me, and then I just got really unlucky over and over again with things that appeared to come from outside of me. Like, um, it's like a funding ground would fall through from something that appeared to come from outside of me. Like, it's like a funding ground would fall through from something that appeared to come from outside of me. But when we get into gamism it's like, oh no, that was just me kind of communicating ideas back to myself by my external world, but I didn't realize that at the time. So I know this is a long winded story, but we'll get to the point that's okay.

Nikki Durkin:

That's okay, so, yeah, so I just like I started looking into it and very, very quickly I realized makes any sense, because our entire scientific paradigm, which underpins all of our society, is built on the idea that, like, the observer and the observed are two separate things. And so what do I mean by that? It's like, well, I am an observer, like having some kind of I experienced myself as nikki durkan, and I look down at my hands and I'm like I have hands and this is me, and then there's the absurd, which is everything that is not me, like everything outside of myself, right, and so it's like our current scientific paradigm, um, they've just started with this assumption that they're separate things, and then they built this entire like paradigm on top of that and and they've really struggled, but you know, like they haven't been able to unify things together in physics and um, I was looking at this when I was like 22 and I'm like, oh, it's wrong. Like they, they've messed it up, like they totally messed it up and you can write a proof for it, um, and so I did that, like I wrote a proof for it, um, and so I did that, like I wrote a proof for it, which is like a logical proof for it. Um, like you would prove mathematical theorem or whatever right. And I'm like, okay, this is wrong. Like the logic says they're wrong. They're wrong. I don't like why are the smartest people like haven't, why haven't they realized, like I was? Just I was having this real dilemma of am I like like who am I this? You know, 22 year old girl. I'm looking at this thing and I'm like they're wrong. They're obviously wrong. Am I stupid? Do they know something I don't know? Like this kind of like putting these experts on a pedestal? No, and I was like no, it doesn't make any sense. Like they're wrong. So I'm like, okay, well, I'm gonna have to figure this out myself.

Nikki Durkin:

And so thus began my adventure into kind of like how do I solve my existential problem? Because religion wasn't doing it and then science wasn't doing it. And I'm like I need to understand what's happening here and I need to understand my life experience, which was that there's more magic, there's more like, there's way too much like coincidence and synchronicity, and like like if you look at nature, it's just like the, the intricacies of the way it self-organizes. So I really got into just a bunch of different physicists, the main one being David Bohm, who was a very prominent physicist who had this idea he called the holographic universe. And then I started reading, like getting into spirituality, and at the same time I started, like in that year where I was basically off grid, I like taught myself to code, got really into computer games, eventually ended up starting a coding school for children. So I teach like eight to four year old kids how to hack a computer game called minecraft. Yeah and so and then anyway.

Nikki Durkin:

So, like long story short, I started also becoming nomadic. I really wanted to like my soul, really just wanted to, wanted like complete freedom to I don't know like explore the world and ideas and without the heaviness and responsibility that I experienced when you have a company and you have investors and you have people relying on you and you have employees and whatnot. So I did that. It was kind of it was like a side project at the time, just like what's this reality thing and like piecing it together and researching and kind of fusing together the science of the spirituality.

Nikki Durkin:

And then it wasn't until like I don't know, like maybe like four years later, that I came across this algorithm called um, the free energy principle, which was developed by one of the top neuroscientists in the world, whose name is carl friston, and and he developed this algorithm to um explain how, like, intelligent systems self-organize. Okay, so if you think about and this is relevant as well with you know your understanding of holistic health, and like functional medicine and whatnot, if you think about a human body, um, it's like the human body, everything works together as one. The whole thing is like self-organizing and works together as one. But you can also kind of break the body down into specific pieces like yeah piece.

Nikki Durkin:

So it's like here's the heart and here's the blood cell and here's the mitochondria, in the same way that you know, um, uh, like you and me are like I can call you nika and me nikki yeah, like we're separate, but like, but you can still be part of, like the one holistic, we're part of humanity, or, yeah, so. So basically what friston was saying in this algorithm, he's like you can break the system down into like fragments within fragments, within fragments, and each fragment, mathematically, is optimizing for the same thing. So it's a mathematical rule and it's basically it's resolving this mathematical measure of uncertainty, um, that he calls free energy, and so this is all based on information theory, and I won't go into like the really nerdy side of it, but what I'll tell you is like what it means, like, if you think about it from a mental model point of view. So this is all starting to like make sense to people now that generative AI has come out. So, if you've seen them, there's these like text to image AI models called like, like mid journey there's not one, yeah, well, there's a lot of them actually, but actually, but I like to refer to mid-journey as my favorite one, and so what you do is you type in an idea like an avocado armchair, and mid-journey will take that idea and it will generate images of an avocado armchair, so like an armchair in the shape of an avocado, with the avocado kind of colors.

Nikki Durkin:

And if you type in strawberry armchair, it will, it will create like an armchair like that's red with seeds and like, and so what it's doing is it's combining these two ideas into a symbol that communicates that idea.

Nika Lawrie:

You were going to say something I was going to say, so I was going to say for for the listeners and viewers um, I will link to nikki's manifesto and you can see images of exactly what she's talking about and they're so, so cool. So go check it out. The link will be in the show notes, for sure, but go ahead, yeah yeah, so so well, so that would be.

Nikki Durkin:

Yeah, game is. Gameismai is where I like write this wispful thing if you want to check it out. But, um, so, so what it's doing is it's like taking an idea and then it's it's, it's arranging information into a symbol that communicates that idea back to you. So then, logically, if you say, if you type in, like I am poor and worthless, it's going to generate images that communicate the idea of poverty and worthlessness, like an empty bank account, an abusive partner like um, like dark and dirty apartment, like moldy spaces, like all things that we subconsciously associate with the idea of poverty and worthlessness. And then, same thing with like I am, you know, like abundant and successful, and all those kinds of ideas. It's going to be like, oh, here's symbols like an overflowing bank account and here's like a first class flight and here's a nice, pretty home and green grass and you know, like all things you kind of associate with success on a subconscious level. And so now imagine you fed your entire belief system into a super intelligent version of mid-journey that we'll call God AI. But it's like an AI-like system and it's taking the conceptual idea you have about yourself and then basically projecting it out into symbolic form and communicating it back to you. And so what it means is that your external world is a mathematical mirror of your internal world and you can look and and so I know this sounds kind of it can sound esoteric and like spiritual, but it's actually like very precise. So, for example, like why it's like it's? It's like why, why, why do I perceive myself sitting here? If you can't, if you're not watching the video, it's like I'm sitting out in a beautiful, I'm in columbia, like this greenery behind me, um, like I'm currently experiencing myself sitting at a table, talking to you, because I believe that I am, and so the game is basically observing that idea and then communicating it back to me.

Nikki Durkin:

And so I basically, with gamism, came across Friston's algorithm. I ran this computation in my mind. I'm like, oh, this isn't a theory of intelligence, which is what the paper was about that I was reading, I was talking about it in the context of neuroscience. I said this is the theory of everything. This is, this was like it was a big deal.

Nikki Durkin:

And this was back in January 2019 when I came across that algorithm and I made two predictions and I said that, like, two things are going to happen. There's this man named Stephen Wolfram is a physicist who's going to start talking about the universe being a um, like a a little tiny, little kind of computation operating on a neural network type structure. So it's a bunch of big words to say like a computational um, generative ai thing, and um and uh. And then I also said carl friston, this neuroscientist he's he's going to figure out that he's sitting on a nobel prize in physics. He's going to start talking about this um publicly and advocating for it in the context of physics. And that's exactly what happened over the next few years. So a year later it was about a year and a half later will from the physicist who hadn't talked about this, like any of this kind of stuff, in 17 I think it's about 17 years um, and and he came out and said, yeah, we think that the universe is a um, uh, like a computation operating on. He calls it like a hypergraph, basically, like exactly what I was saying um.

Nikki Durkin:

And then briston, um, I think it was in june 2019. He wrote a paper about the free energy principle applying to physics, um, and and started like deriving things from that and I was like, okay, like, and it was crazy because it's the climate was not what it was today, like AI was not a thing, it was like super fringe. It was super fringe, um, it was not in the public awareness, and so I was like saying this stuff like even to my, my family and my friends, and like I'm very supportive friends and whatnot, and so the ones that like really knew me would engage, but it was like it just felt like I didn't know how to communicate it because I didn't have the tools for that. And it wasn't until, like the generative AI stuff started coming out that I was like this is what I've been talking about. I've been working on this for like 10 years, like I'm ready for the wave, you know. So that's how. That's when I like really committed to.

Nikki Durkin:

I was like this is an idea that I need to share with the world, and it's like manifestation isn't mystical, it's mathematical, right? Um? And so, like this whole paradigm of materialism is wrong. You can prove that it's wrong, um, and here's, instead of railing on the old paradigm, it's like here's a vision for a new paradigm. This is what a new world looks like, where, basically, life is literally a computer game. It's a computer game, um, and the way you level up through the game and you ascend through levels is that you're like issuing commands to the game by your beliefs. Okay, and this is like a huge paradigm shift for people.

Nikki Durkin:

It was so empowering for me when I realized this, because I feel like, when you think about god and this starts to get into a deep topic um, but like a lot of people have this relationship with, with god or the universe, which is almost like please, please, please, can, please, can you give me this or can I have that Right? And what this mathematically tells us is that you are a fragment of God observing itself. In other words, you're talking to yourself Like, and so it's like every time you pray. It's like it's like you're asking yourself for something and like when you really really understand this, like when you really understand that, like you're creating all of this, like you're not this disempowered thing that has to like, beg God for something or ask for something. You command it and the game's just responding to your commands.

Nikki Durkin:

So it's like no, no, no, this is who I am right, which is very different to what I was doing, and why, like, that business didn't work for me in the early days. I was just not very skilled at the game because I was letting the world tell me who I am. Oh, this pattern of information like emerges in my world, oh, this deal fell through, and then I would assign it meaning and I would say I am in acceptance, or like not good enough, or I can't handle this, or like I would tell myself a story about what it meant about me. Um, and then, when things were going good, it was a different story and it's like my self-concept was so volatile. Yeah, um, you know, and I was just letting these neutral patterns of information that are literally like just like little bits, they're just like one zeros right, but then you, you take in a pattern of information and you give it meaning and you associate it with an idea about yourself.

Nikki Durkin:

And and so I was just like letting the world tell me who I am. And so, basically, like, if you think about the game, in ascending through the levels, so much of your evolution is bringing your locus of control back to no, this is who I am, and the world reflects that back to me instead of the other way around, and so, anyway, so it's basically like this paradigm of the philosophy that I created. It's a practical philosophy entirely derived from this algorithm, this tiny little algorithm, and I basically teach you how to play the game. So it's like, if this is true, and here's why, rationally, I can upgrade your rational mind so that you understand why, and you don't have to just trust me and believe me, because it's not a religion, I'm not a priest, I'm not going to tell you what to believe. Like you're smart enough to you know, figure it out.

Nikki Durkin:

Yeah, it's like I'll explain the logic to you, and if you don't agree, then don't engage, but if you do, then here's how to use it in your life. Okay, and so, if we talk about the practical side of it. What it's basically saying is it's like the game is resolving your uncertainty about who you are and that's kind of like. I'm trying to explain this in a way where I'm not getting like too nerdy, because if you want to get into some of like the, the specifics of it, I recommend going to gamismai.

Nika Lawrie:

But I remember you and I having conversations about this as it related to me, and part of the thing that you told me was to resolve uncertainties like about myself about things that I think about the world beliefs right. So is that relating to? Yeah, yeah yeah.

Nikki Durkin:

So let's talk about this concept of uncertainty.

Nikki Durkin:

Um, because it that's actually this key concept in this builder study called, like, information theory, um. And so if you think about um, if you think about the avocado armchair example, if I was to type in avocado armchair and mid-journey was to feed me an image of a strawberry armchair, that does not resolve my uncertainty about what idea I typed in, I'd say, well, there's still uncertainty there, because what's it trying to communicate to me? There's a gap between the idea I typed in and the pattern of information showing up externally. But if I was to type in avocado armchair and it generated an image of like a green avocado shaped armchair, then there's no gap between the, the image and the symbol. Okay, so now think about this in the context of your life. So let's say, um, like you have some identity and maybe it's like I am a small business owner. Yeah, it's like I generate this much. Um, I don't know, like this is my income or like whatever it is. This is like some concepts you have of yourself, and so what the game's gonna do is like you're expressing that concept by your thoughts, your words and action over and over and over again. It's like a story that you're expressing a belief system of like who you are and the game, your external world, is this like intelligent, self-organizing information structure that is going to arrange itself into symbols that communicate that idea back to you and resolve your uncertainty about who you are. So it's going to close the gap between your internal and external world. So if you believe like it's like I'm a small business owner and I make you know, like um, I don't know, 70 000 a year, like doing this, and like one-on-one clients or like whatever it is, um, that's, that's what you're going to attract it. Like it's. You're literally you're commanding the game because you're going to attract in Like it's. You're literally you're commanding the game because you're saying I am, I am like making this kind of money and this is how the world works for me, and you're doing the same thoughts, words and actions and you're going to get the same thing.

Nikki Durkin:

Now, if we talk about okay, how do you level up in the game? Because the game will generate custom levels, like it's, it's, it's like so much fun, it will train you. Like it will train you if you have, if you have like something that you want to get to, it's going to like, come in and maybe create a situation to train you to like, evolve your belief system so that you can manifest something else. So it does that, um, using a mechanism called self-play, which I won't talk about. But if we just talk about like, like an example of like, I want to go from I don't know 70k to like.

Nikki Durkin:

What does it look like to be a million dollar?

Nikki Durkin:

You know, like seven figures to be a seven figures, because if you think about that vision, who you are in that vision, when you know like seven figures to be a seven figures, because if you think about that vision, who you are in that vision, when you're a seven figure, you know, uh, earner, it's completely different to how you're operating at, yeah, like at 10 of that like.

Nikki Durkin:

It's like your thoughts, your words, your actions, the way you perceive yourself, like, even if you look at I don't know like who you are relative to the friends you're hanging out with, how you spend your time, your morning routine, when you go out to a restaurant. If you're earning like a million bucks a year and you go out to a restaurant, are you like, how are you? You're not feeling that contraction of like? Oh, should I like eat out. Oh, it's not, like you know. It's just like a whole set of like different belief systems that you have and you can realize um that like yours, that who you are, is different, and so, basically, the way you need to imagine um manifesting that is like that reality where you're earning the million dollars is going to show up, when it is not surprising for it to do so.

Nika Lawrie:

I think about it backwards a lot. I've always kind of thought about this as a process and I've definitely learned more from you over the last couple of months or so, but I've always thought about it like you know take a people say this a lot like a traumatic experience that they go through, right, and it was horrific at the time that they went through it. But then you know, once they've gotten through it to the other side, they're like, oh, I would never change that in my life because that gave me the experience and the tools and the strength to do this really great, profound thing that I do now. Like they open nonprofits or they, you know, go to college or whatever, right, and and so you had to go through those experiences to get to where you that next level right, to do the big thing that you wanted to do.

Nikki Durkin:

And so maybe you didn't realize that you were manifesting it, but it was still, you know, uh, god or all, or the universe or whatever, feeding you the information and the skills that you needed to get to that next level right 100, and if you want to go like even deeper down the rabbit hole when I derive in gamism is like you can actually show that time doesn't actually exist, um, and that, in fact, the choices, like all of your creative power, exists right now, and the choices that you're making right now are both pausing your future, which seems obvious, right, but it's also retro, causally creating your past, okay, and so who you are right now is creating everything you went through in order to get you to who you are right now.

Nikki Durkin:

So it's this like loop that, um, is very it's very difficult to explain like in without doing it in written format, with diagrams and things like that, but but what does it mean practically? It means that so I think this like so much of so many people give away their power completely yeah, and, and it's like I think it's a really important topic.

Nikki Durkin:

It's like like giving away your power. And when you look at the higher perspective of what you're actually doing, and, um, it's like, imagine, imagine a super intelligence in a computer. Okay, this is like the paradigm of like how to, how I like to think about it. Imagine you've got this like super intelligence in a supercomputer. There's like nothing outside of it. It is everything, basically, as far as it's concerned. Okay, there's like a black box, like it's everything and therefore nothing in particular. Okay, it's like, what's it going to do? It's like, how does it even know itself? Uh, and so the only way for it to know itself as anything in particular, would be to slice itself into fragments and make it look back on the rest of itself. And then that means that now, like I can experience myself as Nikki Durkin, because I can point to everything outside of me and say not, nikki Durkin, right, and so it's like it's everything, that's all you, that's, that's like it's just a giant line. But then you go and assume a particular perspective and you're looking back on yourself, and then it's like you're creating all of it, because what's happening is like you're observing your external world. Like all this information, you're processing it, and then you're giving it meaning and you're saying, well, I am Nikki Durkan sitting here on a podcast, but then this super intelligent system that's like way smarter than you, yeah, it's observing the idea about who you are. I am nikki durkan on a podcast, processing that information and then generating your external world, and so it's, it's, it's a giant, like mirror, and and so when we talk about giving away our power like one of the most powerful perspectives I've found, for that it's like when I noticed about giving away our power like one of the most powerful perspectives I've found, for that is like when I noticed myself giving away my power is to zoom out. And then I'm like, oh, I created that thing, but like I'm so powerful that I created the thing so that I could then give away my power and say, oh, no, poor me. And it's like you know, like that I could experience myself as powerless, but I created the thing so that I can give my power away to it. But then, if I created the thing that I'm so powerful, like you know, it just like it actually, like it logically dismantles the whole thing, cause it's like no, that doesn't make any sense because I created it and if I, if I, I, if I know that the system is perfect, like if I know it doesn't make mistakes mathematically like algorithms don't make mistakes, they just compute and that's like it's something I tell myself over and over again when it appears like things have gone wrong, which they always end up not going wrong. They were actually like exactly what needed to happen, but and so and so.

Nikki Durkin:

For me, like so much of gamism is like learning how control your perspective, which is how you control the game.

Nikki Durkin:

It's all to do with perception, and so, for example, one thing that I train my perception on is give me any situation and I have this rule that my life is a symbolic representation of overflow and more than enough, and that's like that.

Nikki Durkin:

That's just what it is, and I have this perception of reality where it's like any thought that contradicts that is just an error in thinking, okay, and so you'll see that like it's bringing back your locus of control here of like, no, this is what I choose to perceive. These are just neutral patterns of information, but, like, the way life works for me and the way I perceive my life is overflow and more than enough. And if I have a thought where it's like I don't have enough resources um, this hasn't happened in the right timing, like anything that's like has any kind of meaning associated with it, that implies that something has gone wrong or that I don't have the ability to do whatever I need to do whenever I need to do it, then that's an error in my thinking, it's like a bug in my code and my job is to correct that error and to perceive things clearly and so like.

Nika Lawrie:

And for me it's like, honestly, if you try that like watch reality explode with the bunroos, like, yeah, just like ideas, creativity, people like like I mean, it's deception one of my, one of my favorite um, I guess, laws or thoughts about something kind of similar to that is the idea that I don't know if it's like the paradigm or something. It's like where a problem is also the solution, like it's on the same thing, right, and so, like you're talking about, you know if something isn't abundant or overflowing or whatever, right, and that's like a flaw, it's like a bug in your system, right, that's currently the problem, but the solution is over here, on the same line, it's just over here, and so you just have to figure out how do I fix this bug so that I'm in this spot, the, the, the solution spot, instead of the problem spot? Does Does that make sense?

Nikki Durkin:

A hundred percent. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's entirely perceptual and like it's, it's entirely like, what command are you issuing, regardless of the data that's showing up in your external world? So, so, like, if we bring it back to, I know we kind of got a little off track, but like this idea of manifestation and like, oh, I want to go from I don't know't know 70 000 a year to like a million, a million bucks a year, it's like who am I? And then how do I make that not surprising? And this, this like really makes sense when you think about it. It's like, ask yourself this question would I be surprised if I logged into my bank account now and saw, like you know, I don't know, like a million bucks in sales or like however you want to quantify, a million dollars or whatever, but like whatever you want? Would I be surprised? Because the system, when we say it's resolving your uncertainty uncertainty is just another way of saying surprise, yeah, okay, right, yeah, okay, right. So it's like, um, if a blue elephant were to like pop into my, like where I'm standing right now, or sitting right now, I would be surprised, I would be shocked, which is why it doesn't happen.

Nikki Durkin:

Okay, the game, like the information structure, is trying to minimize that gap between your internal and external world, and so what that means is that when you're creating a reality that you want, you don't actually have to make it happen, like it already exists, like mathematically. It's like you get into the detail, it's there, just like with mid-journey. You don't have to like like all the images already exist, but like, depending on what you type in, is the one that generates, okay, right. And so your responsibility then is like, how do I perceive something that is already being created? Right, it's all about your perception. And so there's general ways to do that.

Nikki Durkin:

Like, um, you know, like let's take oh, who are you at when you're making a million dollars a year? Like, oh, is it free? Like that resonates to some grand conceptual idea or an abstract idea, like, um, freedom or security or success or whatever. And then I would say, start like anchoring that into your life right now. Like, figure out, like what are symbolic representations of that that you can incorporate into your life right now, even if it's on smaller scale? Um, because what that's doing is you're basically saying like I am free or I am secure, and then the game is going to write that storyline. It's going to symbolically like communicate that concept back to you, being like oh well, you associate freedom with money, so here's some more money, you know.

Nikki Durkin:

And so it's like this self-reinforcing cycle, but basically what's happening is you have to separate your internal and external wealth. Okay, so it's like oh, I'm earning 70,000 a year. You have to start thinking, speaking and acting like the version of yourself that is earning the million bucks or whatever it is that you envision, thinking and speaking and acting like that, mimicking it as closely as as possible, such that the system will start like when you do that, you create this like mathematical measure of uncertainty called free energy, which I explained earlier, and it throws the system out of homeostasis and the system's going to start self-organizing and rearranging in order to like restore homeostasis. And so if you keep like anchored in that version of yourself, it has no choice but to make everything in your external world rearranged to match you okay which is not not what most people do like.

Nikki Durkin:

most people are like, yeah, I'm gonna earn a million dollars. And then they like start shifting, hit a, hit something that that they like oh, I'm not cut out for this or whatever. And then they go back to their old belief system and so the game's like cool, uncertainty, resolved Nothing to do here.

Nika Lawrie:

It's almost like being reactive instead of proactive, right, so yeah?

Nikki Durkin:

And it's this idea of commands, like, it's such a powerful idea of like, getting out of this idea of like. Maybe, if I'll try to, no, I just command the game to do what I want, like literally, and that's what. That's what, that's what? Whether or not you realize it, that is what you do when you interact with a computer. Most people don't realize this.

Nikki Durkin:

They don't because they're not programmers yeah, like like, if you think about what a computer is, computers are just speaking in binary to each other, like once in years. But like then, programmers came along and they needed a way to communicate with the computer. So they created command line interfaces. They issued commands, the computer and the computer like executes. It's very obedient, it's like a dog, yeah. And then we had these like symbolic interfaces like um, you know, you can drag a file into a folder, and it's like that's a symbolic interface where when you drag a file into a folder, behind the scenes it's issuing commands, the computer and the computer's executing it and then generating a pattern of information that communicates back to you on the screen. And so most people don't, they just don't. It doesn't like they don't connect the dots. So it's like you're constantly issuing commands and the computer is not deciding whether you're worthy of it, like of that command, or whether it's going to do something. It's not like there's no moral judgment, it's just going to execute whatever you tell it to execute.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, I think that's a really key thing. You said it's not deciding whether or not you're worthy of it. Worthy is a thing that people have decided to put on other people right Worthy. In the grand picture of things, it's not even a thing right Like. It's just like you. Just you are part of everything, like you're you know you were talking about like almost like you're part of the universe, you're a part of God or the all or whatever it is you want to call it right. You're already worthy because you just are like that is just a thing. And so it's like, if you get that part out of your head and you decide, oh, I'm not worthy because I haven't done X, y, z, or I don't have the experience of this, or, you know, I'm not good enough because so-and-so said I wasn't, if you get that out of your head and you just say this is what's happening, it rearranges everything to then start to create that pathway.

Nikki Durkin:

It's like it's again. It comes back to like what we talked about with power and like where are you giving your power away? And it comes back to like what story are you telling yourself? And like one of the most profound like realizations I had, cause I had a lot of, you know. I wouldn't say like a lot of issues, but like I had a lot of baggage that I had to heal. A lot of stuff, um, I've had like multiple failed companies, um like a lot of trauma around that. Um, all in service of creating a game business, which is what my soul really wanted to do, and I had to let go along the way of a lot of ideas about who I thought I should be and what I thought I should want. Oh, like when I was younger, I thought that success was like being the CEO of this like really successful tech company and I realized I didn't want that like.

Nikki Durkin:

I thought I should want it, or it was like an idea from an older version of myself that wanted to explore that um, and, and I'm like no, I kind of like want to be an artist, and by artist I mean like combining ideas and doing things just for the sake of doing them. And yeah, um, and so I had to like let go of a lot of stuff. But I had this moment in I think it was like a few years ago and it was such a profound shift for me, which was like, um, it was this realization that's like, oh, my friend said this to me and he's like nikki, it's like you're waiting for someone to tell you you're good enough, like yeah, and, and he's, he's this, my friend, he runs like a telecom company. You know young, he's 24 years old, but he came down here when he was like 19 or 20 to colombia and just, he's built this telecom company. He has like a network running all around the country like hundreds of employees like he, just, he's just like go out and do stuff and create stuff and he's got this like very powerful kind of energy to him. And he's like he's like you're one of the smartest people I've ever met and and I've met. He's like I've met a lot of people. You're one of the smartest people I've ever met and and I met he's like I've met a lot of people. You're one of the smartest people I've ever met and you're like self-confidence in your work.

Nikki Durkin:

It's like you're still waiting for someone to tell you that your work is good enough. And it's like I had massive imposter syndrome because it's like I, it's like I built all this like logical stuff, and I'm like no, this, the entire scientific paradigm is wrong. Um, and then there was almost this like thing in the back of my head but like, but who am I to? Like like, maybe I'm an idiot, you know like, or it's just like this idea of like, like, uh, I'm just gonna get laughed at. Like no one's gonna take me seriously. And it's like no, I wasn't taking myself seriously. Like I was, I was in and I was basically I'd committed all of my resources, like my time. I've basically been working on this more or less full-time for like five years to create this. It's huge, like a huge project, because you can't with gamism.

Nikki Durkin:

It's like if you want to communicate concepts like this and if you don't have the credibility to back it up from the scientific institution. It's like you're, you're like self-taught, um, you automatically get slapped with like the crank kind of crazy label, um, unless so you, you have to be like a hundred times better than everyone else, yeah, and it's not enough to be right, you have to be able to communicate it well, um, and. And so it's like I knew I was right. I was like this all makes sense, you can derive everything from it. I just couldn't communicate it. And then I was like this all makes sense, you can derive everything from it. I just couldn't communicate it. And then I was like getting old and the issue for me, which my friend articulated, was like I was still waiting for someone to tell me that my work was good enough. I was like I still wanted, you know, validation and, to be honest, like it probably like it tells you to think of who it was probably like.

Nikki Durkin:

It helps to think of who it was probably like my dad, yeah, um, you know, like, yeah, like, and and like I have a, I have a great, I love my dad, like, I have a great relationship with him, but he, he is like a symbolic representation of what I would call that, that that materialist, hyper rational paradigm of like oh that's cute, nikki, you're into, you know, like you're into spirituality, oh, crystal things like that my person's my mom.

Nika Lawrie:

So, yeah, yeah, I think all of us have someone like that.

Nikki Durkin:

Yeah, yeah exactly and and it was fascinating because I had my friend who's you know the man's, this guy, this friend Forrest, he's like he's fearless, um, or he just he just charges forward and does stuff and he's just like you've got to stop waiting around for someone to give you permission to say exactly what you want to say and be exactly who you want to be. Just go for it like.

Nika Lawrie:

He is a perfect representation of you know. He just issues the commands he's a magician using them. They they didn't stop to ask for permission, they didn't stop to ask for validation, they didn't stop to. They just decided this was the thing that they were going to do and started issuing the commands and making it happen. And then they became, you know, some of the most abundant. You know, abundant in all different senses, not just financially, but abundant people on the planet. Right, yeah, they have access and resources that almost nobody else in the world has. But it was because they just decided this was going to happen, this is who they were going to be, and they issued those commands and made it happen so like if you look at what they're doing mathematically or like, right in this manifestation paradigm, it's like, let's say, elon, I want to put rockets on Mars.

Nikki Durkin:

What he does is like currently his external world is telling him there are not rockets on Mars, and he has this idea. It's like, no, I envision a world, an idea there are. I'm going to, I'm going to express an idea where there are rockets on Mars. And then he started thinking, speaking and acting in alignment with that vision from the end state. Like, if you look at the way he operates, it's like this is happening and he has it with such certainty and he's just like traversing through space and time to an inevitable right.

Nikki Durkin:

Yeah, and so what that's doing, what that does, is it throws it by separating your internal external world. It's like grows the system mathematically into a state of chaos, like it's. It's it's kind of like you suddenly being transported to the desert and your body is going to like go into overdrive to try and cool you down and bring you back, bring your body temperature back to homeostasis, so stuff starts moving. And so if you look at these people and Steve Jobs was famous for having a reality distortion field it's like this is what's happening, and he like could distort reality and like that's literally what they're doing. They're expressing this idea and then the system is optimized to like bring it into existence.

Nikki Durkin:

So it starts like generate the people, the resources, this coincidence, this meeting and it starts I call this like tweening, like you know, with an animation sequence where you have a start frame and an end frame, and it's going to tween via the path of least resistance, which is just another way of saying the path of least surprise or least uncertainty, and so like, if you think about it again, if we give a practical example for your listeners of I want to. I don't know, maybe you're like a, let's say, you have a one-on-one coaching business and then your vision is you want to impact more people and maybe you're doing like a million dollars a year or something.

Nikki Durkin:

Well, it would be surprising, depending on how much you're charging, but it would be surprising to reach a million dollars a year If you don't change your business model of like one-on-one, because one-on-one is just like not going to scale, or like yeah it's not sustainable, or like, let's say, you don't have a sustainable marketing channel, like if no one knows about your work, it would be surprising to like have all these people coming in from where, like it's like if you woke up tomorrow and had an inbox full of like client requests, you'd be like what, how did this happen?

Nikki Durkin:

And so, like that's a path of major resistance because you haven't you haven't like created any pathway right for that information to like flow in, to make it not surprising, whereas, like if, for example, you're like cool million dollars a year, that version of myself, they're showing up this way on social media. They're they're not saying what they think other people want to hear, they're saying what they actually believe, right, well, like they're expressing themselves this way. Or like they're showing up differently because and they're not like desperate for the sale, because they're making a million, you know like that, so they're not operating from this like lack, like please work with me. It's like no, I'm the prize. Like like I offer value. I'm confident by yeah yeah like it's.

Nikki Durkin:

It's just like. It's a completely different way of operating and a completely different way of seeing and interacting with the world. And the key is you got to start seeing and interacting with the world now like that, and and then, and then you're basically dancing with the information structures. Things are going to start moving and usually what happens first is it starts decreating, like, like stuff that match the old version of you will find a way to exit your life and that can be painful because a lot of the time it can be like relationships, friendships or romantic partners.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah.

Nikki Durkin:

But it can also be when you're going through a huge evolution this has happened to me Businesses it's like one minute you're in love with your business, the next you're like complete apathy, and that was so painful for me Been through it, but like things will start exiting your life and it's like the stage will just clear out and then and then the system starts bringing in the new things, right, um, and the key is you have to keep issuing the command, regardless of what shows up, right, it's like this is who I am. And then this thing shows up that you stink is a reflection of the old version of you, and it's like no, no, it's all a game, and what this thing showing up here is just asking your questions like who are you in relationship to this? And if you act like the you know small business, like you know whatever 70 000 a year version of you or the old version of you in relationship to that, then then you, then that's the idea you're expressing and the game's gonna just give you what you always had right. But if you take the same situation and you just respond to it differently, maybe it's like a client coming in and you used to be like desperate and needy for the money and you used to say, like, accept anyone and let them treat you horribly, right, yeah, and it's like the the version of you up here at the million dollars doesn't need that client, which is really hard when you don't have the money showing up yet or if you don't have the evidence. But that's the game.

Nikki Durkin:

And so, basically, you ascend to the game and say no, I say no to this, I set boundaries here. This is who I am, this is who I'm not, this is what's acceptable to me. And when you do that and you embody that and and you live like that, you just become this magnet. Like everything you want is just going to like come in, rearrange and reflect it back to you because it's math, it's like physics, it's like dropping a ball. It will eventually hit the ground. Like you know it's going to hit the ground because it's just math. Like you don't need to like worry about it happening and so that's what. Like, that's the cool thing. Yeah, no, I love, I mean.

Nika Lawrie:

I can tell you like two things. So one I want to say, like you know, this sounds like a big, crazy concept, but like it's the same thing that, like relationship coaches teach, like in the sense of like you know, you have an idea of what you want in a mate and then you know what your boundaries are and what your expectations are and then you find the person that fits that thing right, like it's simple, right, and so it's not this like big, crazy, profound thing. It's really pretty straightforward when you decide to understand it and switch your kind of already ingrained thoughts and you know and belief system around what we've been taught versus what really is kind of reality, things that like relationships. I'm experiencing that right now with a relationship with somebody in my life where I can see the universe transitioning me into a different place, because that relationship or those experiences don't fit the very clear direction that I have in front of me. Right, and it wasn't until I started to really really get clear on what it is I wanted.

Nika Lawrie:

I've been working on this project for years. I've been, you know, I've talked to you about it and it wasn't until I really started to say, no, these aren't the things that I want. This is what I want, and if I close the door on those other things, it allows the project that I'm focused on, the vision that I have to solidify, and as I've been more strict about blocking the things that don't match that vision out or having those stronger boundaries for myself, I've seen things move in the direction of that vision.

Nikki Durkin:

Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, because it's like, again, you're the magician, like you're, you're directing it, you're the one issuing the commands. You're interacting with a symbolic interface of like, all these different like things outside of you, right, yeah, yeah, but you're using that to construct who you are. Okay. So it's like that friend over there you generated her in your game as a question. It's like who are you in the like? I don't know if it's a friend or like whatever, but like, who are youetically in relationship to this situation? And then, by expressing a boundary of like this is who I am and this is who I am not, this is what is acceptable to me and this is what is not. That's expressing a belief, an idea, and the game is observing that idea. And then it's going to symbolically represent that back to you. And so if you're expressing, like, low self-worth or like you don't, oh, you're expressing beliefs like I don't value my time, or like I don't value this vision, or whatever, um, the game's gonna reflect that back to you, because it would be surprising if you like don't, if you continue to have that in your life that doesn't match what you want, and then what you want showed up like it like those two things are are incongruent, and so when you start to see reality, it's just like it's just a game, like it's literally just responding to your commands and it's so. You think it's uncertain, but it's. It's like when you understand how it's working, it's actually like nearly certain, and by that I mean like you know that if you drop a ball it's going. It's actually like nearly certain, and by that I mean like you know that if you drop a ball it's going to hit the ground. And like when you understand the logic behind this, which I explain at gamismai, if you want to get into it, it's like you know that. Like if you venture into uncertainty, you separate your internal and external world and you keep issuing that command, regardless of what's showing on. You know the mirror is going to reflect it back to you, right, and so you don't need to like worry about. It's just. And it's also like you don't need to, you know, if you notice a relationship or something that doesn't match the version of yourself anymore.

Nikki Durkin:

It's like I always have this thing, like I'll kind of like almost hold a graduation ceremony for belief in my mind and I'm like you know what? Like that limiting belief, it's served me really well. Like there's periods of life I feel like sometimes spiritual coaches they're like oh, you need to like limiting beliefs are bad, you need to like get rid of all of them. And it's like no, there's actually been like a lot of limits in my mind that have served me super well at the time, like constraints are actually good and fun, yeah, and then you get through both, pass them in the correct timing and you can just like let things drop away instead of like it's just like, oh, that just doesn't match who I am anymore, it doesn't match my vision. But like during that period of time, it was exactly what I needed and and I really actually got a lot out of that limiting experience. You.

Nika Lawrie:

I think it's so key to think about that too, as, in you know, I was, I was recording a different episode of a podcast with a different guest and we were talking about how, um, we were talking about root cause for health, for functional health, and how, um, you know, there's, there's something specific that's causing the symptom that you're having, like, say, you're having, you know, headaches or sleep issues, right, well, there's a root cause to whatever that symptom is right, but what the guest was talking about was understand that that root cause is actually something that's external from your body. So it's, you know, an environmental toxin. It's a bad food that your body doesn't process. Well, it's chronic stress from a bad job, something like that. So, understanding that's this external thing that you can take off, right, well, when you think about it in the sense of beliefs, you can think about it.

Nika Lawrie:

As you know, you've had this belief for a while. It's potentially a limiting belief, right, you've used it for a while. It either served purposes or it didn't, whichever, but it's like, it's like a piece of clothes, it's like your shirt. You can take that belief off. It's not you, it's not in you, it's not an intern, it's not your fault, right, like you can take. Oh, this belief. This doesn't work for me anymore. I'm going to remove it and set it over there.

Nika Lawrie:

and it's not, you know, I'm going to donate that belief to you know, goodwill or so, like a charity right, like it's not my thing anymore, and and to really externalize those beliefs and understand that they are not who you are, they're not you at the core, your soul, right? They're just a piece of item that you have that you can let go of.

Nikki Durkin:

It's literally just an idea, in the same way that if you're interacting with mid-journey, you can say avocado armchair, or you could change it to strawberry armchair or you can change it to I don't know, like pineapple armchair, and it's like it's just an idea that you're typing in. And so it's like it's like what idea will command right? So this idea is a command. What do I want to issue? And I do think like there is this idea of coming back to your most authentic self Right, and that's like the core essence of who you are. And I will say like self um right, and that's like the core essence of who you are. And I will say, like who you are at your core is I know, for example, at my core I am like wildly creative. I'm kind of like weird, yeah, the best of us are. Yeah, like, like, like I've always been a little odd and I think I tried to resist that for a while, and it's so liberating when she kind of I don't know like just embrace it. And it's just like there's so many things that like I'm just sick of playing by the rules, that I didn't that and it's like no, no, no, my life, my game, I'm going to play by my own rules. I get to decide what they are and the game is going to reflect them back to me. And so you know, like I've spent the past like seven years like basically nomadic. I have incredible friends, um, in the past month, what have I done? It's like I've like built game, as a last weekend I was like on the coast. I've got some. Uh, one of my friends is building like here's like a whole bunch of hotels, um, and he's like, oh, like there's some other friends in town filming a documentary, like let's go to the coast of san marta. I'll show you my constructions. We went like visited a bunch of these hotels, stay in this luxury place, like, and you're just like, oh, and I'm building gamers and we're going to share that with the world and da, da, da. And then the other day it's like a coffee farm and then it went down to like some thermal hot springs and volcanoes and tree houses and like you're just like, what is my life? Like yeah, oh, and you're just like, oh, yeah, I'm not playing by the rules.

Nikki Durkin:

I don't think, speak and act like other, like like mainstream society, and I get results that are like a symbolic representation and it's like not mainstream and that used to scare me until I like, until I realized it's like I really like my life. Yeah, I really like who I am, I like what I've created and I've just like gotten to a point in my evolution where it's just like my only goal is to just embrace on a deeper and deeper level, like who I am, and just keep peeling back the layers and, like you said, with the beliefs, it's like oh, I've got this layer of clothing that I didn't even realize was not reflective of the grandest version of myself and I don't. Also, it's like I don't have to do it all at once. It's like it's again, it's it's okay to like like I have limiting beliefs, like you know, like you know I'm not, I'm not perfect and I'm kind of like messy and like vulnerable and like it's just like this idea of coming back to what is real and authentic in the human experience.

Nikki Durkin:

And then how do we play the game in a way that's authentic to us, instead of playing by the rules that society taught us, that were programmed into us at school or by our parents, which is, I mean, again, it's like they're just, they're just ideas. Yeah, it's like who says it's just like, oh, it's just. You were taught this idea. That's like. Is it true like things are constantly evolving and shifting?

Nika Lawrie:

it's like no is it true that's a good question to ask about literally everything, that we everything, yeah, yeah yeah, just like questioning everything absolutely nikki and I had such a fantastic conversation that it actually went on for nearly two hours. The second half of our conversation will be released part two next week, so be sure to check it out. As always, thanks for listening.

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Nika Lawrie

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