The Art Of Listening To This & Other Podcasts

Alright. Breathe in, and breathe out. And if you have a cup of tea, then, well, take a sip.

I would like to welcome you to Dmitri's Door, episode number one, attempt number 47 to record it. It is already teaching me a lot. That our society is built upon perfection. That it took me 47 attempts to even reach the idea that if I'm doing a podcast on freedom, that I should feel comfortable not to be perfect, that I should be comfortable to put myself out there, raw and unedited where I should let go of others' expectations of myself and my own expectations of me.

The point of this podcast is to explore the meaning of freedom and how to get there, but I'd like to do it in a slightly different way, and this episode is more about how I think we can do it together, because this podcast is not going to be about simply getting the best guests. Of course, that's important.

And it's not even gonna be about teaching you something, because there are many podcasts that do that already. Sometimes there might be some content within the podcast that will be very useful and sometimes practical. But that is not the point.

The point is that I want to explore life together with you through this podcast, through this method of having a dialogue together. Even though I cannot see you in front of me right now, I want to imagine, a situation as if you have walked through the door of my house, or in this particular case, through a door of a small red caravan in which I'm recording this, and in which I hope many future episodes will be recorded with our guests.

You sit down right in front of me, and when you listen to the podcast, you are co-creating it together with me. In order to help you do that, I'm asking you for a few simple things.

First, I'd like to ask you to dedicate uninterrupted time. If you're going to listen to an episode of Dmitri's Door, imagine you're really opening a door, going into this caravan, sitting down with me, closing the door, turning off your phone, and having a deep dialogue with me.

Two, I'd like you not to focus so much on what is being said, but to focus much more on the art of listening.

But when we say the art of listening, we often mean listening to other people. What I mean by the art of listening comes from the idea of dialogue, and there we talk about the art of listening to oneself, because as you are listening to a podcast, there are a lot of things happening within you.

It's new ideas, questions, and maybe even completely unrelated things that come into your consciousness and your awareness. Maybe it's something you forgot to do, or an old idea that you didn't do, or maybe it's something else entirely that is completely unrelated to the topic at hand, but it's somehow popping up into consciousness.

So what I would like you to do as you listen to any of my episodes, or I should say our episodes, is to focus on listening to yourself, and to help you do that, I think it would be worthwhile to take a notebook. And a pen or pencil, and write those thoughts, ideas, questions down, and to really explore what it is that is happening within you as you listen to this podcast.

Because my feeling is that a lot of the time we'll give away our own inner authority to others, well, because it's simply easier not to have your own ideas, not take your own responsibility for life.

To simply listen to someone who is in a position of power or is successful and to agree with them. To take what they said for granted, not to explore it and simply do what they say, but I feel that in some sense, that is irresponsible because you're not taking responsibility for yourself.

Instead, I think our lives will be so much better if we all take full responsibility or ability to respond for our lives ourselves. Thus, in this particular podcast, my intent is for you not to place authority in any of the speakers, including myself, and put full authority onto yourself. And by listening to yourself, writing down your thoughts and ideas, and comments, you will find that you will start generating new actions, new ideas, and new things you can do that might not be exactly related to what is being said.

It might be much more deeper rooted in your life than the content of the podcast itself, and this is why when we do Dmitri's Door, even though the episode itself might be rather fast paced or slow paced, or with a speaker or just me sharing my ideas, the main goal is not to treat that as simply content, but to treat it as.

Something that simply fires your neurons in new particular ways, which allows you to create your own inner content for yourself. And one of the ways to do that is to critically, consciously ask yourself to do that, to look for new ideas within you.

Only if I feel that every person who does this, consciously, is able to find something new within themselves that they created because the neurons were fired as a result of the podcast, would I treat it as success. But this is needs to be something new, not just an idea they took from the episode because somebody said something and just go: "Hey, that was great. I'm gonna use it in my life."

No, I'm looking for something that you create yourself, and hopefully you will share it with me. And finally, the last thing I'm gonna ask of you is to realize that this podcast is, at times, going to be slow. At times, it's going to be meditative. At times, there will be a pause, but always at the end, there will be a special section that I would ask us all to do. To give five minutes of time to meditate in silence after each podcast, and to really give your mind, your soul a space to channel new ideas and new thoughts as a result.

So at the end of each episode of Dmitri's Door, before you walk out, close the door and get on with your life, I'm gonna ask you to sit down together with me and meditate just for five minutes and see what comes up. This is not a podcast for you to learn from. This is a podcast for you to learn from yourself.

See you in the next episode overnight.