Conscious Living with Sam Spurlin

Sam Spurlin, Blogger and Author released his new e-book, Regaining Consciousness today. I got to meet Sam a few weeks ago when he interviewed me via Skype. It was my first video interview, and I must admit, I was a little nervous. Sam was really easy to talk with and it was fun to get to know him.

I thought it might help for you to get to know Sam a little better too. Check out our latest conversation…

Before you started living a conscious life, you weren’t aware of what you were missing. What was your wake up call? My wake up call was when I started making money from my blogging efforts. I realized that a life where I dictate how I spend my time and attention was actually possible. Once I realized that, I started looking around other areas of my life and assessing whether I was living according to my values, or if some other entity or entities were dictating the way I was living.

At the beginning of your journey, when you became more aware, did anything stand out to you immediately as a benefit of living a more conscious life? As I became more aware I began to realize that I didn’t need nearly the amount of money that I thought to survive. All of the various things that a lot of people spend money on weren’t important to me as I began to live more consciously. I don’t need home access to the internet. I don’t need cable TV (or a TV at all). I don’t need a nice car. I’m perfectly happy living in a 20×20 foot studio apartment, with a roommate. When your overhead is this low, it frees up a lot of your time and attention to focus on things that are much more important than making enough money to survive. If I had to work 80 hours a week to make enough money to meet my basic necessities, then there is no way I could live more consciously.

I think chapter 2 – Taking Control of Your Health could be it’s own book. It really is the most important thing we can do. What are the three changes you made to take control of your health? Are there more changes in terms of healthy living that you plan to make? When my hockey career ended I realized that I needed to make a conscious effort to improve my health. When I was playing hockey it was easy to stay in shape. The three biggest things I started doing were:

1. Finding something else I enjoyed doing (running).
2. Becoming more aware of what I put into my body and how it made me feel
3. Listening to my body in terms of aches, pains, and amount of rest I need

Moving forward, I’d like to continue adding distance to my running. I completed my first half marathon this year and am seriously considering a full marathon next year. I’d also like to focus more on my flexibility by getting involved with yoga.

It is so smart to get rid of the “vampires” in your life. Will you expand on what a vampire is? First of all, I can’t take credit for the terminology. I’m pretty sure I first heard about “vampires” from Chris Guillebeau. Basically, I think of a vampire as somebody who thrives on your failure or discomfort. A vampire feels better when you feel down. The sneaky thing about a vampire is that they masquerade as your friend. That’s what makes it so hard to identify and then do something about it.

Do you think you can help to change a vampire and make them a valuable part of your life? The optimist inside me wants to think that it’s possible to change a vampire into a valuable part of your life. If it takes more than a modicum of time and effort on your part though, I’m not convinced it’s worth the investment. At the very least, you could try sitting down and explaining to the vampire how you perceive their intentions and hopefully that will set them on a more wholesome path.

You had another e-book in progress that you decided not to produce. Why did you do that? Did anything translate from the last e-book to this e-book? I was writing an e-book about becoming more politically aware. I think it’s an important subject, but I was constantly struggling with the idea that since political apathy is so strong in this country, why would people read an e-book on the subject? The more I thought about it, the more depressed and stuck I became. Then, I began to realize that there was a larger issue at hand. Political apathy can be traced back to unconsciousness. A lot of people don’t care about politics because they are completely unconscious when it comes to their rights, responsibilities, and potential impact. I decided to refocus my efforts on this larger concept and that is where this current e-book came from.

The biggest thing that translated from my political awareness e-book is probably within the “Conscious Thinking” section. I first became aware of how unconsciously most people treat the way they think when I began interviewing people and doing research about political apathy. That section was almost completely written while I was still working on the political awareness e-book.

What is one thing you’ve learned that can really help people become more aware and to live a more conscious life? This is tough because there is so much that you can do to become a more conscious person. I think one of the biggest things is just sitting down and figuring out what your values are. For me, knowing my values is the bedrock upon which I make all my decisions. An unconscious person makes decisions that are influenced by external decision makers like the media, peer pressure, and advertising. Conscious living focuses on moving that decision from something external yourself to within your own being. Your values become what make those decisions.

If you have questions for Sam, please leave them in the comment section. Check out his new e-book, Regaining Consciousness for more on conscious living.

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