Living is an experience that no amount of ancient knowledge has ever managed to explain... Religions have come one after another, trying to give meaning to life, and all of them have failed miserably to precisely explain what this whole living thing is about... There are scientists dedicated to biology, sociology, psychology, and even they fall far short of understanding the meaning of life... Esoteric sciences have been battling for centuries to uncover the whys, armed with knowledge that the general public doesn't have access to, and yet they remain bewildered in their quest for answers.

In short, there is absolutely nothing and no one who can, with full knowledge and understanding of cause and effect, explain this wonderful, frightening, and mysterious experience we call living... All we're left with are analogies, simple comparisons, and analytical steps that may at least help us live better!

Today, I bring you my favorite analogy, and I want you to consider the hypothesis that life is like a hot air balloon ride... one of those enormous and beautiful balloons with a passenger basket and all.

My name is Mário Portela... Welcome to my podcast! I've already set up the virtual table, so take a seat and let's have a chat!

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We are like a hot air balloon. Just us and our own flight! Can you imagine this analogy? Inside the basket of our life, we accumulate the ballast of the past, and if we keep going like this, we'll inevitably hit rock bottom and the flight will come to an end...

We are like a hot air balloon! Oh, come on... Picture yourself as a hot air balloon, with your basket filled with everything you've been accumulating throughout time, throughout your life experiences and interactions with other balloons around you. It won't be hard for you to realize that at this rate, your balloon will lose the strength to carry all the accumulated weight... all the memories, worries, moments... all the lessons!

If you do nothing, you'll soon find yourself crashing the basket onto the ground, scraping the bottom, and preventing yourself from flying. Agree?

The only immediate solution is to quickly look around and get rid of the excess weight. If you don't unload the accumulated "junk" promptly, you'll run out of options. It happens to everyone, no matter how dramatic the situation may be, and in reality, the solution is the same for each one of us. For each one of the balloons.

We cling to ideas, to a "self" that is no longer us. Things without any practical value insist on staying in our lives... the attachments are more than plenty and act as ballast in our flying balloon. Our mental life has accumulated stories, attachments, resentments, memories, recollections, beliefs, and other things with more or less justifiable reasons over the years.

We have to let go of the ballast... we have to fly... trust me... the journey is not over yet!

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Let go of attachments and blame

According to Buddhist philosophy, attachment is one of the roots of suffering, and I couldn't agree more. It's so easy for us to cling to people, things, and situations in a kind of chronic self-flagellation. Are you feeling attached to something? How strong is that attachment? Is it dragging you down?

Identify each of these attachments and take a moment... dedicate some time to them! Look at that attachment in the third person, don't feel it... just observe it for what it is, a mere attachment... break the unconscious illusion that you're incapable and realize that each attachment can be baggage that you need to let go of to continue your flight. Are you going to let that attachment prevent you from soaring? How much longer will you allow it?

If you allow it, you'll build something even heavier that takes up far too much space in your balloon's basket... you create feelings of guilt! Yes, guilt!

The feeling of guilt is an obsessive force... it's an agent that creates obsession and occupies you without taking you anywhere... like a rocking chair. The feeling of guilt is utterly useless. Think about it, what could you ever achieve or resolve with a feeling of guilt? It only holds you back and pulls you down. Imprisoned and burdened, the balloon cannot continue its journey with so much sorrow and self-inflicted mental harm. Do you understand the weight of those feelings of guilt?

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Abandon your pessimism and self-criticism!

The power of negative thinking and pessimism truly works wonders in creating a gloomy and tormenting existence for yourself. It's like being trapped in a dark cloud that engulfs every thought and action you take.

Thinking it's just a personality trait rather than a flaw is a clever way to absolve yourself from the pain you willingly inflict upon yourself. Pessimism is an incredibly dangerous path to follow, and if you realize that your thoughts shape your reality, you'll see how this destructive influence hinders your flight and sabotages your balloon. If you accept being a mere sparrow, how on earth can you ever dream of soaring with the eagles?

Oh, just a tiny leap from pessimism to destructive self-criticism, I must say! As if you didn't have enough criticism from others about who you are, as if external winds weren't already making your flight challenging... You just had to invite yourself to be your own executioner, didn't you?

Self-criticism is a burden you willingly choose to carry, and it weighs heavily upon you. We criticize ourselves for everything, seemingly with good intentions, but quickly cross the line of reason. Excessive criticism is a discouraging message, chronic criticism is a thinly veiled cruelty, and this self-criticism is a heavy burden that prevents your balloon from soaring! Why do you harm yourself like this?
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Let go of resentment and the resentful ones.

In the first episode, I promised you that I would embark on this podcast journey with a goal of love. Whether directly or indirectly, love is what should drive you. Most of the time, learning to live with love, understanding what love is, and how to deal with it is the solution.

To start steering yourself towards a flight in love, let's begin by adjusting how you deal with things and people who frustrate you.

Let's see things this way: resentment and anger harm the heart. Nowadays, more than any scientific study, it's widely proven that cardiovascular problems worsen significantly when we nourish feelings of anger, hatred, and resentment. And if this isn't enough to convince you, remember that energetically, we are what we think, and we only receive the energy that reflects the one we emit... pure logic. What you put into your world is what your world gives back to you... simple as that.

On our journey, we tend to try to keep up with those flashy and seemingly beautiful balloons... We are inherently social beings. We tend to form bonds with groups and try to avoid severing those bonds as if they were a reflection of ourselves. However, everything changes and evolves, and we need to move forward.

If you feel that there are insincere, envious, pessimistic, discouraging, humiliating, vampiric people around you... simply abandon them for good and allow yourself to be happy! Remember that what doesn't do you good... doesn't do you any good at all!

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Abandon the useless, filter what you accept.

How many times have you kept something just because maybe one day you might need it? How many times have you held onto completely useless and absurd objects, thinking that they will help you hold onto a memory? How many times have you clung to broken, damaged, or utterly useless things?

When you look at all these piled up, hoarded, amalgamated, crammed-together items (even if you have organized them in a sickeningly neat manner), what do you think your mind feels? There's a word for it in Portuguese that curiously has no translation in other languages: you feel "saudade," you become nostalgic... incomplete... downcast.

You have a basket full of things that only weigh you down, only hold you back, only keep you tethered to the past and prevent you from soaring. We are mirrors of the environment in which we allow ourselves to live. Is your room messy? Probably because your mind is in chaos. Have you accumulated useless things in your drawers? Probably because you accumulate memories instead of reaching new goals. Change that!

When someone comes to tell you the "latest news"... ask yourself if what you're about to hear is useful to you, if it's inspiring, if it's necessary... and if it's not... don't waste your precious flight time on the gossip of other balloons destined to fall. Filter what you hear, what you read, what you watch, and what you think.

I could tell you that being a hot air balloon is the perfect analogy because now you can try to pause for a moment and realize why your basket is filled with filth. I could even tell you that cleaning that basket is simple... but I can't... it's actually a laborious task that requires you to actually want to do something for yourself, and sometimes we might even need a guide, a professional...

But one thing I can assure you. Being aware of this is the first step, and you're more than capable of allowing yourself to fly a little freer, a little happier... with each passing day!

And for today, I'll let you rest your mind and challenge you to listen to this podcast again tomorrow... until you internalize it, until you make it your actionable goal!
If you've listened this far, surely it's because what I presented to you made sense, otherwise you would have fled like a scaredy-cat to the bottom of the plummeting hot air balloon basket. And for being here, my sincere and profound gratitude, sprinkled with a smile.