Profit with Purpose by Anna Goldstein

Latest Episodes:

#145: Shana Yadid: Ways to Change Behavior with Dog Training Aug 15, 2019

Show notes

Shana Yadid is the Founder, CEO & Lead Trainer at Yadid'it! Dog Training. The most pivotal moment in Shana's life began shortly after her 21st birthday when she started reading Temple Grandin's "Animals in Translation, Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior." It was then that her understanding of her relationship with animals began to unfold.

One of the things that fascinates me about dog training is the use of practical psychology. So if you don't have a dog, this episode isn't just about dogs, it's about behavior training. In many ways, we can be very similar to dogs in the sense where we make associations — especially when a situation was painful and we can reassociate.

In this episode, we talk about neural associations, classical conditioning, redirecting attention and more.

So you grew up in New York? And you didn't have a dog growing up?

Shana grew up in New York. She didn't have her own dog, but she had everybody else's dog. There were over 700 apartments in the building she lived in.

You now have how many dogs?

She has six dogs. They are all rescues.

Did you know that you wanted to be a dog trainer because of your love of dogs?

She came to dog training in her early twenties after being a pet sitter. She read a book by Temple Grandin about using the mysteries of autism to translate animal behavior. Even though Shana isn't on the spectrum, it taught her a lot about how she thought and how she learned.

There is so much psychology in dog training.

Shana thinks of herself as a novice behavioral scientist. She doesn't have a degree in it but has read widely on the subject of both humans and dogs. She finds the brain fascinating.

I have a dog, and I love dogs. I have a 4lbs teacup Yorkie. Her name is Brook Lyn. Let's get into psychology. I find it fascinating how behavior can be facilitated. I know you also have experience with traumatized dogs. How can you tell that a dog has been traumatized?

It's not just about if a dog has suffered trauma or not. Some dogs just have anxious genetics. When you have a rescue dog that came from a shelter, certain assumptions can be made when you have no information, and you see certain behavior. If a dog runs across the room and hides under a table because you touched a broom that is likely to be a PTSD response. You shouldn't feel bad about touching the broom. We have to train the dog to reassociate the broom by changing their neural pathways and how they view the broom.

Neural Association. Can you explain what that is and how it works?

With a dog that is afraid of a broomstick, Shana would first lay the bro0m on the floor and take the dog over to it, as close as it will come without panic. Then she will get excited, tell them they did a "good job" and give them a treat. For Shana, when she sees all of the current legislation that is questioning women's bodily autonomy, that is a trigger for her. That puts her into a headspace, which makes it hard to remember she is worth anything. Then she puts on a song like Brave by Sarah Brellis or another motivational girl power song. She sings it to her inner child. That reawakens her spark. Although it might feel like she doesn't want to push forward, that's her brain taking all these traumas and telling her something which is not the truth. If she can figure out what the trigger is she can reassociate it. With the dog, she is trying to teach them that broomstick means treat rather than broomstick means beat.

You literally associate a new meaning with the trigger. From a coaching perspective, we go back to an event and identify the meanings which were created during that time. Then we create a new meaning which is essentially a new association.

Let's get into some practical dog stuff. Stating simply, how would you get a dog to sit?

You move your hand in a certain direction so that the dog ends up in the position you want. For a sit, she would bring her hand over the dog's head until their butt hit the ground. Sometimes you have to change certain things to set them up for their best success, so you can give them the reward. Once they have earned the reward they are much more likely to repeat the behavior. You start with food law. Then that turns into a hand signal which gets overlaid with a verbal command. That's how a dog learns verbal clues. Shana thinks that non-verbal commands are often more effective and more helpful. One of the first things she teaches is a focus command – Watch me - and requires eye contact.

How do you get a dog to stop barking at the door?

There are a few different ways. With terriers, they are often just alerting. Shana has taught one of her dogs 'thank you, that's enough'.

How did you train that?

They start barking. You acknowledge what it is they're barking at. Say they are barking at the window. You go over to the window and lookout. You're giving them the impression that you recognize what they are alerting you to. Then you give them a thank you and something else to do. Shana will give her dog a treat and then put him on the couch or take him with her to another room.

So classical conditioning.

Classical conditioning is the use of positive and negative reinforcement and positive and negative punishment. All 4 facets come into play when you are training a dog. In positive based training, you give them a treat whenever they get it right. Every other time they still get the treat and you rest after.

What do you mean by positive punishment?

Negative punishment is the removal of something such as a treat and positive punishment is giving something such as a leash correction. Positive reinforcement is you get the treat. Negative reinforcement is you get a correction. For Shana balanced training is about explaining to a dog why they are wrong with a verbal or physical cue. They try again and if they get it right they get a treat. It's clear balanced communication of both yes and no.

Do you think dogs can read energy?

Absolutely. Her dog Amber went with her to her level 1 Reiki attunement and now does reiki on people all the time. Shana catches her doing it and thinks it's adorably hilarious.

What's the best advice you've ever been given?

You don't have to be the richest, smartest or prettiest person in the room. But if you want to succeed in business the one thing you should always be is the most adaptable person in the room. That is the key to success.

Tell us how we can get in touch with you?

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shanayadid

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shananigan.yadid

Sustainable Dog Rescue: https://www.sustainablerescue.org/

Yadid't Dog Training: https://www.yadiditdog.training

#144: Ross Everett: Comedy + Personal Development: Stop Stopping the Unstoppable Aug 08, 2019

Show notes

Ross Everett is an award-winning actor, comedian, Internet personality, and writer. His YouTube videos have been viewed over 45 million times, landing him on the front page of HuffPost, Buzzfeed, and Reddit. His comedy has been featured on NBC, Hulu, Fox, and Sirius XM. He can be seen touring with his critically acclaimed comedy show Stop Stopping The Unstoppable a personal development seminar parody, where he plays a motivational speaker, Dale Thorhammer.

How did you get into comedy?

There wasn't a time when Ross wasn't into comedy. He loved things that made him laugh from a very young age. If people are funny, then everything else was forgivable.

Were your parents funny?

Not intentionally. Ross' Dad has good comedy thoughts but poor delivery. His mum is adorable in her own way. When she runs, she looks like a duck running away from a car. They aren't people who can engage a crowd in a comedic way.

Delivery is key.

Delivery is all of it. The most important thing in comedy is timing. But this can also apply to life. How are you delivering anything you want to be delivered? It is a real shame to say something that is meant to be heard in a way it can not be.

Personal development plus comedy. That's awesome.

Ross wants to create joy and help other people find their joy and go after it. A lot of comedians come from this negative place and then find this desire to make people laugh. A sense of humor is often a defense mechanism. Ross didn't want to be a comedian who was depressed. He loves personal development and wanted to find a way to combine the two. As a comedian, you get to deliver joy and happiness. As a kid, he wanted to be famous so that he could have friends all over the world. He admits that a lot of this comes from feeling uncool and unpopular at school. He wanted people to like him. Sometimes we become good at something because of a trauma or as a defense mechanism. We can heal the underlying wound and still maintain the benefits that that wound gave us.

How did you get started? Comedy is not an easy path.

As a kid, Ross loved watching scrubs and Family Guy. He and his friends would reference those TV shows and make jokes that could've been in the TV shows. It was their joy. He started writing his own scripts and ideas for TV shows. In college, he began making things with a video camera. They started putting their videos on YouTube and gained a following. After graduation Ross worked at the Colbert Report as an intern. He got a joke on the show and it was a lightbulb moment to know that his joke was going out to the country.

Ross learned a lot from Colbert about how to approach comedy. He considers Colbert and Conan to be big inspirations to him. Colbert told him one of his humor philosophies. You never make the victim of a situation the punchline of a joke. People will laugh, but it will sound like they have blood in their mouths. He made a joke about Lindsey Lohan and felt bad about it because she's just a human being going through her own thing. He won't punch down on people.

There's a lot of risks that you take in comedy. Not only in content but in how it's received.

You can't control how something is received. Ross makes sure that he feels good about what he's putting out there. He has his own guidelines for his comedy.

What are they?

Never punch down.

The guidelines shifts as society shifts in the way it perceives people. Ross gives himself permission to elevate his standards with the times while forgiving himself for the stuff in the past before he knew better.

Tell us about your failures.

He took his show to Adelaide, Australia for the Fringe Festival. When he was flyering, he would pitch the show by saying, "Do you want to come see a feel-good comedy show?"

This woman walked by, heard him say this, and went to see the show. She sat in the front row. The show is a parody of a self-development seminar, and he plays a guru. It's a very interactive show with a lot of audience participation. There's a moment where he takes the audience through a funny guided mediation. He tells them to go back to their childhood when everything was okay and feel that now. He noticed that the woman had moved into the fetal position. He though great I can help her. He had a part of the show where he bought someone up on stage and made them dance. So he got her up and she meekly came on stage. He noticed this look of fear in her eyes.

She said, "Please don't make me do this."

He quickly reversed and put her back in her seat and told her to stay after the show because he wanted to make sure she was okay.

The show ends with people saying, "I love myself!" He noticed the woman was not feeling it. At the end of the show, she bolts out of the theatre. He runs after her. She shouts that "she's fine'." He can't get to her and thinks that his show just ruined someone's life. He feels he pushed on someone he shouldn't have pushed on. He goes back to the artist area, devastated. He thinks that he can't do this anymore and that the show is dangerous. He believed that a lot of people call themselves life coaches after reading a book or going to a seminar. If you unearth someone's deep traumatic stuff and can't bring them back up again, you've done damage. Ross's number 1 rule is don't do damage. Even though the show was about doing it in a silly way, he still did damage.

He checks his email, and there was an email from the crying woman apologizing for running out after the show. After crying in the bathroom for 15 minutes, she was fine. She thought the show was brilliant and thanked him for doing it. He met up with her to talk about what happened. She said she was in a down mood anyway and her childhood wasn't great. He asked her what he could say instead, and she said - 'go back to a time when everything was great.' Everybody has a time when everything was great. So he changed that part of the show. He made a new rule that if somebody is resisting him, instead of trying to get them out of their funk, he will play towards the people who are already loving it.

You do some coaching in the show.

There is some real personal development in the show. But the comedy comes first. He takes real personal development concepts and wraps them in idiocy and comedy. He wants to make it fun and palatable. But he realized that he has to be careful with his words. Although that failure was a nightmare, he learned from it, and it made the show better.

Do you go to self-development seminars?

All the time. He used to be resistant to personal development seminars. He would wonder what they were trying to sell him. He wouldn't trust them. That's why he wanted to create this show. Because he doesn't ask his audience to trust him, he asks them to play with him.

Comedy is funny because there is truth in it. Do you think people are more likely to go to a personal development seminar after seeing your show?

Ross hopes that his show arms them to go to a seminar and not have to take it too seriously. He wants people to be able to go to these seminars and have fun with them.

What's your favorite seminar?

Ross loved Tony Robbins, Date With Destiny. That was fun and impactful. Watching Tony Robbins do his stuff is amazing. He is a master and a showman.

I'm a huge Tony Robbins fan, but there's all this stuff in the media right now. I'm curious about your authentic take on him. Do you think he's the real deal?

Ross thinks Tony Robbins show's up as Tony Robbins when that is who he needs to be. And that he's human like the rest of us. Ross thinks Tony Robbins does good work and he provides a tremendous amount of value to people.

What's the best advice you've ever been given?

Never leave the site of a decision without taking massive action that forces you to commit.

How can we learn about you?

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therosseverett/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dalethorhammer/

Show: https://www.stopstoppingtheunstoppable.com/

#143: JV Bharathan: Undying Optimism: A Journey Out of Darkness Aug 01, 2019

Show notes

JV Bharathan reached darkness and found his way out again. He credits this to his autistic son and his undying optimism. JV is a coach, an author, and an entrepreneur. He wants people to find hope within their suffering. Hear him talk about his story, the power of helping others and what he has learned from his son.

I know that you had a moment in time where you had a couple of events all happening at once. What were those events?

JV grew up in India, moved to the US when he was 21 and found a good corporate job. Following the Indian tradition, JV's parent arranged for him to marry a woman from Sri Lanka when he was 25. He didn't like her but married her in order to please his Dad. The marriage didn't work out so they divorced. There was a custody battle over their son.

How old was your son when you divorced?

He was 4 or 5 years old and it was about 6 years after the marriage.

What happened with the custody battle?

JV felt like he was treated as a 2nd class citizen by the courts and police and automatically seen as guilty. It was a challenge to prove that he was a good dad. They now share custody of their son.

How did you get through it?

JV lost everything. He was homeless, jobless and bankrupt. He only had two things left. His son and his undying optimism.

Where were you living?

He sometimes stayed with friends and sometimes slept on the street. This period didn't last too long as he found his light pretty quickly.

What was it like sleeping on the street?

It was not easy but JV recognizes that went you go through situations like this, you become stronger. Now he can sleep anywhere.

JV found deep meaning through his son who has autism. He mostly communicates non-verbally. At 13 years old he can speak a few words but is unable to form sentences. JV realized that his life was bigger than him and that he needed to take care of his son. He needed to be a voice for his son. That is when everything changed for him.

You say everything changed, what do you mean?

He had been feeling like a victim and blaming his wife for his circumstances. But that didn't give him any power. He knew he had to take radical responsibility. So even if something is not your fault, you take responsibility for it. That gives you the power and allows you to take actions you didn't think were possible.

Were you reading a lot?

He was reading frequently and went on a journey to the Himalayas to stay with monks. They taught him that your life is not about you. It is all about the people in your life. Your family, friends and local community. That's when he started to take himself less seriously and focus on what others need.

I studied Buddhist psychology. There are two parts to the root of our suffering self-grasping and self-cherishing. Cherishing yourself as the most important person on earth is one of the roots of our sufferings. It sounds like you had that insight. When we ere suffering who are we thinking about? We are thinking about ourselves. That causes a lot of suffering. That shift to thinking about others is huge and with it brings happiness. So you went and hung out with the monks. What else did you learn?

They taught JV about money. Money is a form of energy. Many people tell themselves stories about money – I can't afford it, I don't deserve it. JV thinks this is silly. Money is just energy exchanged for services. If you focus on how much value you give to people, the money will come. Money is a tool and doesn't bring happiness.

So you went to the Himalayas and you meditated?

He meditated and did a lot of yoga. He lived a very simple humble life.

When you came back, how did you integrate?

He did a lot of coaching and leadership classes. He started to focus on other people starting with his son. He wanted to look beyond his sons 'problems' and look at how he could add value to his son's life. He started a non-profit for autistic children.

You created a non-profit. What else?

JV wrote a book despite not learning English until he was in college. When he was in his period of darkness he started writing as a way of venting his frustration. One day a friend of his accidentally found his journal and started reading it. He told JV that he should turn it into a book. Now he is writing a second one.

What is your book about?

Undying Optimism is about JV's journey into his darkness and how he got out of it. He wants his book to give people hope. We are all suffering in our own ways. He wants people who read his book to ask themselves questions about their own lives and find meaning in it. The book gives people hope in a world which doesn't always seem to have a lot of hope in it.

You do coaching?

JV does coaching for people going through transition and change. He went through a lot of transformation and change and wants to bring that experience to help other people.

Do you want to get married again?

It's hard to find the right partner especially when you're entrepreneurial. His son is a massive part of his life. He is open to the possibility of someone but isn't focused on it.

Do you still talk to your son's mom?

He used to call her his ex-wife and then realized he needed to give her respect. He now calls her his former wife. They don't talk a lot and when they do it is focused on their son. But he has forgiven her.

How did you arrive at forgiveness?

It was not easy to forgive her. She put him in jail. Forgiving is one of the most selfish things you can do. When you forgive you allow a space for new things in your life.

How long did it take you? Forgiveness is a process.

It took him 3 years.

I have a question for you about sadness. I've had my bouts of depression. The happier I've become, the more I focus on others, the more I serve the more sadness I see. But when I'm sad, I don't notice the sadness. I was curious about your viewpoint.

If you don't experience sadness you are not going to experience happiness. If you don't experience darkness you are not going to experience light. If you don't experience sunset you won't experience the sunrise. But when you realize you are sad, you need to see how you can shift that. Be with it. Ask yourself why you are sad. Try to change the situation if you can. Help someone else. Be grateful for the things in your life.

What is a question you can ask?

What can I do? Why am I suffering? What is causing me suffering today?

What is a question you ask yourself which keeps you focused?

What can I do today that's going to make someone else's life better?

What is next for you?

JV does have a plan but does not put timelines on things anymore. He likes to follow his intuition. He is writing his second book and has just joined a venture firm in Boston that will focus on organizations that want to solve humanitarian issues.

What's the best advice you've ever been given?

Be in the moment.

So you meditate?

Every day for at least 15 minutes. He does it as soon as he wakes up and has been doing that for the past 5 years. He finds meditation keeps him calm, makes him grounded and allows him to focus on the things he wants to focus on.

How do you feel that having a child with autism has shaped your view of the world?

His son is JV's biggest teacher. He has taught him patience, to focus on the process and empathy.

How can we get in touch with you?

Website: www.undyingoptimism.com

#141: David Wood: Take Charge of Your Life & Career: Play For Real. Jul 18, 2019

Show notes

David Wood is a personal and business coach. David left his cushy Park Avenue job 20 years ago to explore both the outer world and his own inner world.

At the individual level, he helps high performing entrepreneurs, executives, and leaders to Play for Real – in their own growth, in their relationships, and at work. By integrating three main principles of Real Truth, Real Daring, and Real Caring. At the corporate level, he helps companies to improve performance and retention. He has consulted Fortune 100 companies – such as Sony Music, Proctor & Gamble, and Exxon. He was recently voted into the Transformational Leadership Council, along with such thought leaders as Stephen M.R. Covey, Jack Canfield, John Gray, and Marianne Williamson.

In this interview we get real honest, in fact, David reveals something he has never shared on a podcast before — The real question is….what will "Play for Real" mean to you?

I've been coaching for over 10 years, and when I first started coaching your website came up a lot. You were owning the life coaching scene.

There was a point where David was the top 3 results on the search engine. He was fully committed to coaching. After becoming burnt out, David retired, but he is now back on the coaching scene with renewed passion.

You have figured out how to do something most people dream about, which is living an abundant life, making a huge contribution, and having a blast every step of the way. What is your secret to success?

David is very self-directed. He creates a vision he can be excited about, and then he uses hacks to create productive days so he can do what needs to be done to fulfill his vision. It can be hard to carry out consistent action in the face of no results. For people who can't do that, a simple hack is getting yourself a coach.

David considers himself a possibility generating machine. Other people assume that something can't be done. If David is told that something can't be done, he will go out there and do it.

What are some of those hacks? How do you get yourself in the right state if you aren't feeling it?

He has had a lot of depression and anxiety in his life, which can be several weeks of darkness but can also manifest as not wanting to send an email or do anything at all that day. But his job requires that he does stuff to bring in revenue. One hack is caffeine (although he restricts himself to one cup of coffee and one cup of tea a day). Once a week he takes adderall which enables him to get a solid 8 hours to work done. He likes to do morning pages which are supposed to be 3 pages of stream of consciousness writing and never read it. But David likes to use it to uncover the things he wants to do.

Some of those hacks are things that people often try to steer us away from, such as caffeine and other stimulants. Particularly in the self-development field. Thanks for sharing that.

David used to think that all medication was bad. It is worth being wary about medication as humans have a tenuous relationship with addiction. If you like coffee, you'll probably drink more of it and run into problems because you are abusing it. David went from thinking all medication was bad to taking antidepressants. The turning point came when he was talking to a colleague who took Welbutin and asked her why she took it since she was into personal growth. She told him that she likes herself better when she's on it. So he got off his high horse. He tries to be careful with how he takes medication by doing research and mixing things up to avoid tolerance.

Is that part of the caring element you were talking about?

David believes in 3 core pillars – Truth, Daring and Caring. He acknowledges that caring isn't the sexy part. David had a breakdown. He would be unable to sleep because adrenaline was shooting through his boy. A doctor friend told him to go on medication, but he refused because he wanted to heal it naturally. David had reached rock bottom and realized that there is a time and a place for daring, but if you don't acknowledge your limitations and nurture other areas, things will fall apart. He realised he needed to add the 3rd pillar of Caring.

You had all this success. Then you had these breakdowns. Would you agree that in many ways breakdowns can actually become the catalyst to success?

Recently, David heard someone say - "Your core wounds can become your greatest gifts." Many of the people in the coaching community have some kind of wound or past trauma they have had to overcome. If David hadn't had the breakdowns or experienced childhood trauma, he wouldn't be on this path. When he was 7 he watched his 5year old sister get killed in a traffic accident. He learnt how to shut down his emotions and not feel anything. This is when he started to be solution-focused. In his 20s he went to a psychiatrist who helped him to realize that he hadn't grieved. He has now spent the last 25 years reconnecting to his emotions and learning how to feel. He now gets to bring that to other people who are system and task-oriented but would like to have deeper connections with themselves, their partner, their kids, and all the other people in their life.

How do you understand yourself so you can find those gifts that allow you to get paid for who you are?

David used to teach people how to be a coach. Then people asked him how he was able to travel and coach all over the world. So he wrote the book Get Paid For Who You Are. Now he's interested in how do you love your life. He wants people to be able to be on their deathbeds and have no regrets. Part of how you do that is to have fulfilling and gratifying work.

How do you find your gifts?

There isn't a magic answer. When David started coaching, it happened organically, but then he stopped. Recently a friend suggested that he get back into it and he realized how much he loves it. Then within coaching, he has found the core themes which light him us - Truth, Daring, Caring and Connection. The short answer is to read the book The Passion Test and get yourself a coach.

I like how you say it takes time. Sometimes we don't respect the process.

You have to take action. Even if you don't know if it's the right action.

How do you view the coaching industry at this point in time?

David is fascinated by the state of corporate coaching today. The role of coaches is now accepted in the corporate world.

What are some of your favorite coaching questions?

What question would you most like to be asked right now?

What coaching would you give yourself on this?

You have an app right?

David has an app called Get Real.

I found this question on there. If you had to make one rule which everyone must follow, what would it be?

That you must speak the truth all the time with the exception that if you lie you must preface it by saying I'm going to lie to you right now.

So many people are lying to themselves as well as to others. It's so toxic because people are afraid to say the truth.

It takes a lot of guts to tell the truth. What if they don't like who I am because of something I said? What if I don't get a promotion because of saying that? It can be transformative to share your inner dialogue. It can take a lot of courage.

One of the greatest hacks you can play on yourself is to tell on yourself. Tell someone your inner thoughts and dialogue.

Do you have a question that you repeatedly ask your self?

What did you get done today? David finds it useful to acknowledge what he achieved in order to appreciate himself.

What is one thing you would love to do before you die?

David wants to play drums in a band for one public gig. He has done it as a guitarist and now wants to experience it as a drummer.

How can we get in touch with you?

David has a new podcast – http://playforreal.life/podcast/

David invites people to request a discovery session with him at http://playforreal.life/

Links

Get Paid For Who You Are by David Wood

https://www.amazon.com/Get-Paid-Who-You-Are-ebook/dp/B003WMA85A/

The Passion Test: The Effortless Path to Discovering Your Life Purpose by Janet Attwood and Chris Attwood

https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Test-Effortless-Discovering-Purpose/dp/0452289858/

Smart Marketer

https://smartmarketer.com/

Camp Maverick

https://gocampmaverick.com/

Yanik Silver

https://yaniksilver.com/

Steve Pavlina

https://www.stevepavlina.com/

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

https://www.amazon.com/Artists-Way-25th-Anniversary/dp/0143129252/

BetterUp

https://www.betterup.co/

Wildfit

https://www.mindvalley.com/wildfit/

#140: Anna Goldstein: 3 Steps to Move From Confusion to Clarity Jul 11, 2019

Show notes

I talk to a lot of people who want to find more clarity in their lives. And I want to talk about subtle ways that can have a profound impact on your life. This is a practice that you can continue to do because once you connect with clarity, it doesn't stop there. It's a practice that you want to continue to engage in.

Here are three steps.

Reduce stimulation. We are living in a world where technology is progressing so fast but there's not an increase in human happiness. I think we're more distracted today than ever. And distraction pulls us away from our happiness. Sensory overload is an abundance of stimuli that is intolerable and it causes confusion. Evidence is increasingly showing that overstimulation is a major factor leading to anxiety and depression. How do we overcome overstimulation and stay focused in a world that is moving so rapidly and so quickly? We have to stay conscious of the amount of time we're spending in front of screens. That means your phone, computer, television, ipad, etc. You want to reduce stimulation and you can do that through meditation; spending some time sitting down quieting your mind and paying attention to your breath. You can also reduce stimulation by going outside and connecting with nature, taking a walk, going to a yoga class. Because when there's so much noise happening it can be really hard to find clarity because you just were inundated with too much information and your brain is confused and overstimulated.
Pay attention to your energy. Once you've reduced the stimuli, it's much easier to start to pay attention to your energy. That means noticing when your energy go up and when does it go down. It's really important to listen to your energetic excitement -- there are things that you're naturally excited about. I get excited when I talk about human potential. I have a client that gets excited when she talks about politics. I don't get excited when I talk about politics. You energy is giving you feedback about what direction is naturally exciting to you. Start to pay attention. Maybe it's when you are talking about a certain subject matter. Write down what when you get excited, what are you doing? What are you talking about? What are you seeing?
Design your life around the things that light you up and let go of the three things that no longer serve you. Now that you have written down and you know what are the things that light you up and what makes your energy dip, you can use that as a guide for a total brain dump for clarity. Brain dump how you can integrate the things that light you up into your life. Can you take a class? Write an article on a subject matter that interests you? As you take action, you'll gain clarity because clarity comes from taking action.

#139: Anna Goldstein: How to Change Your Brain to Create Lasting Happiness Jul 04, 2019

Show notes

In 2005 the National Science Foundation published an article regarding research about human thoughts per day. The average person has about 12K to 60K thoughts per day of those thoughts. 80% are negative and 95% are exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before.

If you're finding yourself cycling around negative thoughts you are not alone. What we need to understand is that we have a "negativity bias."

What does that mean?

It means we pick up negative information faster than positive information. And the reason why is because we're wired for survival. We are not wired for happiness.

We've all had the experience of getting feedback and somebody tells us a bunch of positive information - things we're doing really well but then somebody gives us one piece of information that's slightly negative. And what do we seem to harp on? That one piece of information that's negative. And that's because we have a "negativity bias." We need to know that that's operating and it's operating to help us to protect us to look out for danger and to not believe those negative thoughts.

The way that you can start to change the pattern is by actively seeking the good. Dr. Rick Hansen is a neuroscientist and he talks about this concept of taking in the good and really absorbing it. You take in a positive experience for an extra 10, 15, 20 seconds. As you absorb these good moments what happens is they gradually weave good experiences into the fabric of the brain. Instead of good experiences being passing mental states, they become net lasting neural traits.

Here's how I practice this: When it's a moment that I see my son playing - I really take that moment in that moment of joy that I feel when I'm watching him play. If I'm driving in my car and listening to a song that I'm really enjoying -- I really take in that moment. Since the weather has been so nice when the sun is shining and I'm feeling the sun beating down on my face -- I love that really taking that in.

There's a saying in Tibet: If you take care of the minutes the years will take care of themselves.

#138: Alan Stein Jr.: Raise Your Game: High Performance Secrets from the Best of the Best Jun 27, 2019

Show notes

Alan Stein is a speaker and author, after spending over 15 years as a basketball coach. He has coached some of the top players and now brings what he learned from the world of sports to the world of business. The same skills and strategies that help basketball players be the top of their game can help top performers in the corporate world too. Alan believes in the power of doing sports throughout childhood and the traits and qualities they can instill in young people. He is also the author of Raise Your Game: High-Performance Secrets of the Best of the Best. In this episode Alan talks about finding your passion, letting go of what you can't control and the power of self-awareness.

You grew up playing sports competitively and reached a high level. And you coached for many years. Are you still coaching?

Alan doesn't coach anymore. Now he can be found on the sidelines watching his 3 children compete. Many of the traits that have helped him in his life have come from doing sports as a young person.

What are some of those traits that you learned from sports that have helped you in business and life?

Passion. Finding something you love and being able to spend time doing it is really important. That was the first lesson sport taught Alan. Learning to be coach-able. Having the discipline to go in and get reps done. All the little things that can add up and can have a profound impact on your performance. Being a good teammate. That when you sign up to a team sport you are a part of something much bigger than yourself.

You mention passion and when I've seen you speak, that passion really comes through. You seem to love teaching people and helping them be better.

Alan wants to be a servant leader who fills other people's buckets. Sport was always just his vehicle to do that. It wasn't just the sport that gave him so much enjoyment, it was the ability to be around other people and help to make them better with what they were trying to do.

I grew up playing tennis, which is a very individual sport. In your book, you talk a lot about teamwork and I realized that I've been on a very individual path with both participating in an individual sport and working for myself.

It has been Alan's experience that people, especially in sport, tend to gravitate to one or another. He tried to get his kids to experience both so they could see what they liked. Even if you are a solopreuneuer you still work with other people and teamwork traits are important. A family can also be a team. We ebb and flow from one to the other throughout our lives. Sometimes you're the player, sometimes the coach and sometimes you're on a team.

Part of being a good teammate is being a good leader.

There are traits that we all should be working on regardless of our specific scenario. The traits of being an effective leader and being an impactful teammate. They have such high utility and can be applied to any area of life, personal or professional. They are important skills and can be reinforced through sport. Alan encourages his children to play different sports so that they can work on those skills. They will learn things through a sport that they won't learn at school and that is hard to teach as a parent.

What about emotional intelligence?

That is another skillset which can and should be developed through sport. Emotional intelligence is about the ability to be aware of and manage your emotions and the emotions of others. Be able to read other people, know when and what to say and how to show somebody that you care about them. The best leaders and coaches all have very high emotional intelligence.

How do you think you can develop emotional intelligence?

It is a skillset and like any skillset, can be improved with purposeful practice and repetition. Repetitions is the oldest and most effective method of leaning in existence.

I think one of the biggest things that I learned through sports was losing and dealing with those emotions of loss. And getting back up, looking at what I did right or wrong and then going back out there.

Some of that is grit and resilience. But also have some self-compassion for yourself when you do lose, or make a mistake or don't perform well. Being able to forgive yourself so you can move on but also learning a lesson from it so that you become better moving forward. No matter what happens in life, it is important to find a way to take from it and use it to inch forward. Rather than it being something that makes you regress and move backward. We hold that power. We can't control what happens but we can control how we move forward. You choose that. If you want to be a high performer you will consistently choose something which serves you and helps you move forward. Alan recognizes that it isn't always easy to do, but that is what you have to do if you want to be the best you are capable of.

Managing the emotional part really makes the difference for someone who is going to be a high performer. If you let your emotions get the best of you, they will get the best of you.

If you're sitting in traffic, which nobody enjoys, what are your options? To let your blood pressure rise, get frustrated and honk your horn? Putting yourself in a negative mood just because there are more cars on the road doesn't help you move forward or serve you in any way. Why do we consistently make choices that don't serve us? You have a choice for how you respond to that. Maybe you make some phone calls or listen to a podcast.

This line really struck me from your book - 'Control the controllables.' You have a choice to be able to have control over the things you can control. You can't control the traffic but you can control the thought pathways that you choose to go down and how you choose to respond.

The number of things we have complete control over is actually pretty small. However, there is a significant power in the things we do have control over. These are primarily your effort and your attitude. These are incredibly influential and impactful. Many times it is not easy to make that choice. A lot of stuff happens in life which is challenging to deal with. But we always have that choice.

One quote that gives Alan comfort is - 'This too shall pass.' Our moods are important too. When we are in a bad mood we are going to react to things more than if we are in a good mood.

I was talking to a client who hadn't slept well because she was traveling. And I said to her 'be gentle with yourself.' I know that if you haven't slept the quality of your thoughts are going to be poor. Sometimes you have to ride that wave and be gentle with yourself until that negativity passes.

It takes high self-awareness to be able to recognize that. Many times people identify with their thoughts but really we are separate from our thoughts. We can often see in a friend when they are in a bad mood and give them space. It's harder to do that with ourselves.

You say something in your books something which I love - 'self-awareness is one of the highest predictors of performance and the least utilized criteria.' It is not being taught, it is something we have to seek out on our own, which is something high performers tend to do.

People who are not self-aware, don't know that they are not self-aware. Self-awareness can be looked at different levels. At a surface level, it's just about knowing who you are, what you stand for and what your goals are. It is also having the courage to look at the darker stuff -what are you scared of, what are your insecurities, what are the things that give you the most shame and guilt. This can be uncomfortable but is crucial to get the full overview of who you are as a human being.

It is important that the way you see yourself is in alignment with the way the rest of the world sees you. This is not about pandering to other people but that you see yourself accurately. An example would be if someone asked you if you were a good listener and you said yes but then they asked 5 friends and they all said no. That would be a lack of self-awareness.

The last level is being able to look at your emotions and understand why you're feeling that way. When you get frustrated in traffic because someone cut you off, there's a deeper reason as to why you're frustrated.

I love how you talk about the unseen hours. With social media, we see so much outward success but we don't see the unseen hours. What have you seen or observed or practiced yourself in the unseen hours?

Most of what we do is in the unseen hours. When you're working on your self-awareness, that's unseen hours. When an athlete is in a gym practicing a move over and over again, that's unseen hours. The relationship you have with your significant other is heavily predicated on the inside work you do to be the best version of yourself during the unseen hours. Most hours are unseen but they are the ones that dictate how well we do when we are seen.

Sometimes we try to cut corners as we live in a fast-paced world and want everything now. I think it's actually slowing us down in terms of our performance.

Mastery takes time and it takes a lot of reps. Social media can be great but it encourages us to play the comparison game. We have plenty of opportunities in the unseen hours to get better at anything we put our mind to. We have to be willing to put in the work. If you can find alignment between what you love and what you're good at then it doesn't always seem like work.

If you don't have that passion it can be really difficult to put in the work. You are likely to just quit.

Absolutely. That is why you have to find that alignment. Find what you love, find what you're good at and then find the place where those two things overlap.

I'm curious about your journey. You were in youth sports and coaching for 20 years but you recently made a pivot.

Alan's passion in the youth sports arena was starting to wane so he decided to make a change. In teaching and coaching, you have to be all in. He decided to make a pivot into the corporate space as a speaker and author. He now has a passion back for what he is doing. The things that you love and what you're good at will change over time.

Some people might be feeling like they need a change but don't know what the new thing is. What was your process for going through that? Was it an 'a ha' moment or were there lots of little moments which added up to the new direction?

For Alan, it was both. A few years ago he was in Germany speaking at a basketball conference and he realized that it wasn't exciting him as much as it should. Then a friend asked him to give a keynote at a corporate retreat after somebody had dropped out at the last minute. He was asked to give a speech on leadership and when he stepped offstage he felt alive and invigorated. He knew it was what he wanted to start pursuing. If you don't know what you want to do, it is worth considering what you would do if you could take a month off from work. What would you do with your time? Whatever it is you would be doing is probably close to what you should be doing.

So I'm curious about the difference between the talk in Germany and the talk at the corporate retreat. Was it the audience? Was it the content?

It was both. He realized that a good portion of his time in the basketball space was filled with 15-18-year-old teenage boys. They are very narrow in what they like to talk about. It's mostly basketball and girls. In the corporate space, Andy is around peers who are teaching him as much as he is teaching them. This has invigorated him. The content that people want from him has also changed. As a coach, people wanted to know how to run faster and jump higher, but Andy has always been interested in leadership, teamwork and building a winning culture.

So, how do you jump higher?

One. Strengthen the major muscles in your body. It's not just the legs that are needed for jumping. You need core strength and even the upper body is involved by providing momentum. If you can produce more force against the ground, it will propel you higher.

Two. Practice jumping. Practice the skill. And practice it in the way you want to use it

What is the best advice you've ever been given?

Find what you love. Find what you're good at and find where those two things intersect.

From a coaching standpoint: Every coach should look in the mirror every morning and say 'it's not about me, it's about them'.

Tell us how we can get in touch with you

https://raiseyourgamebook.com/

https://alansteinjr.com/

#137: Christine Egan: Redefining Healthy: In the Least Expected and Most Delightful Ways Jun 20, 2019

Show notes

Christine Egan is a health and wellness expert. Catherine Egan is a breast cancer survivor. Despite her background in health and wellness, breast cancer woke her up to figuring out what being healthy actually means for her. Now she brings this idea to other women. In this episode, she talks about when working in the marketing division at McDonald's was her dream job, how cancer changed her mindset and running a marathon a year after her cancer diagnosis.

Do you feel like you're a resilient person?

Christine has never really thought of herself that way. She wants to be thought of as someone who beats to her own drum. She wants her actions are aligned to who she is.

Does that come naturally to you, or do you have to work at it?

She works at it. 2 of her 3 children were born at home. Learning how to have a baby at home rather than in a hospital set her on a different path. She learned everything she could so that she could make an informed decision. When she had her first child she decided she wanted a home birth with a midwife. She started exploring what it meant to have a home birth and what she was and wasn't willing to do.

Were you into health back then?

She used to work for the McDonald's corporation in their marketing division. She loved that job and at the time it wasn't out of alignment with who she was. It was a dream job and she loved it. She did it for 5 years. Then there came a point in her life where she needed a change. She moved from the Midwest back to Long Island and that was when she started to move into the health and wellness space. She became a licensed massage therapist, a certified homebirth instructor and a certified health coach. She now has over 25 years of being in the health and wellness field.

Did you eat McDonald's when you worked there?

Of course, she did. Part of her job was to go through the drive-through and rate the quality of the service and the food. She wasn't a big fast food eater but it wasn't a disconnect for her.

How do you see it now, as a health professional?

It makes her sad now, knowing how inexpensive that food can be. For some people, that's the only food they can afford and it is so easily available. It takes more of an effort to eat a healthy meal when fast food is so easily accessible. For her and her kids, it is just not part of her lives. It makes her sad to think of people drinking soda on a daily basis or having fast food as a regular part of their diet.

What does your personal diet look like now?

As a family, they eat mostly plants and fruits and use meat as a condiment. They don't eat meat as a meal or as a major part of their meal. If they do eat meat she knows what farm it comes from. They don't eat anything from a box.

I'm so blown away by this information I'm learning about you about McDonald's. And how big of a contrast it is. I think we can all have those experiences where early on we are doing something and then we completely outgrow it.

She did what she was supposed to be doing. She graduated and got a great job that took her to New York and then the Midwest and she was happy doing it. Until she wasn't. This gave her an opportunity to change the direction she was in.

Was there a specific point that was a turning point for you?

No. It was just that opportunities allowed her to leave the midwest and move to Long Island and things came out of that. But there wasn't a lightbulb moment for her.

How old were you when you got breast cancer?

How long were you on health journey prior to that?

15-18 years.

And what was that moment like, when you found out you had cancer?

She had a private health coaching business at that point, helping women in her community get healthier for themselves so they could get healthier for their families. She had information about cancer with her in case the women she was working with needed it, but she didn't ever expect to be the one who needed it. He dog Zoe was what alerted her to the lump in her breast. She was lying down and her dog clawed at her breast. Alarms went off in her head that said pay attention to what she is doing. She found a lump. She didn't immediately think it was cancer. She got a mammogram and it was clear. She had pushed to get both a mammogram and a sonogram. The sonogram showed the lump and it became clear she had cancer. She interviewed 9 surgeons to decide which she wanted to go with. She decided to go with surgery to take the lump out.

What changed?

Stress levels. When she was undergoing treatment it she needed to rest to let her body do what it needed to do to get well. This meant saying yes to the things that were really important and no to the things that weren't. It became really clear to her what was important. Spending time with her family was the most important thing. Which meant watching movies together or making meals together. And not rushing out to karate lessons or dance lessons. Being together as a family, resting and doing simple things together became the priority.

Do you feel you made any decisions about how you would live differently?

She doesn't stress as much about her kids. Homeschooling her 3 kids was stressful. Were they doing the right thing? Were their kids socializing enough? Christine realized that there comes a moment where you just have to accept the decision that you made and be okay with what happens. And if things change you will figure out what should be done differently. She had this attitude to cancer too.

So you ran a half marathon after 33 radiation treatments. And a full marathon to celebrate your remission. Incredible.

She ran half marathons prior to being diagnosed and kept running during treatment after reading about the importance of exercise during treatment. She wasn't trying to break PR's but if she felt good enough, she went for a run.

She had a sign in her house that said: "What would you do if you could not fail?" Her answer to that was always run a marathon. After going through cancer treatment she decided to do a marathon and one year after she was diagnosed she ran the Disney Marathon.

Do you see certain patterns in mental and emotional strength to get through difficult times?

Cancer showed her the urgency to do the things you want to do and stop putting them off. Because there is never going to be a perfect time.

It's easy to put things off. It's easy to get caught up in life without pausing to say 'What is it that I want' and giving ourselves permission to do what we want right now.

That was the wakeup call of cancer for Christine. She now teaches workshops with people who have finished cancer treatments and she tells them that they can recreate a life for themselves and how do they want that to look. For many people that is so scary. It's really hard for women to figure out what will bring them joy. Some women will figure out what will make them happy do it for a few weeks and then stop. They will come up with reasons and excuses – my family needed me, I needed to put in more time at work. The whole idea of figuring out the things that bring you joy is that you do those first so that you are a better wife, mother, friend or worker. Those things have to be done first so that you can then do those other things. Sometimes people don't see the benefits right away and think it's not working. But it's like a bank account. We have to give it time to build up and then you get the benefits. When you stop doing those things, you can get a little bit crabbier, you are short with your kids or husband. You start feeling the differences when you let those things go.

I see that with my meditation and yoga practice. I'm much more patient as a mother and a wife. I'm more tuned into my work. People will start doing something that brings them joy, they start to feel good and then they stop. And we need to understand that it's a cumulative effect

It starts with baby steps. What bite-sized pieces are you willing to do today. When she works with women she gets them to come up with a buffet line of things they know they want to do in the day that makes them feel healthy. If these are the things that make you healthy, what are you willing to do - to do those things? It's a buffet line because you can pull different things on different days.

My spiritual practice doesn't look the same every day. Sometimes I need different things. Today I did an at home yoga practice, I don't always do that.

What made you sign up for this extraordinary event the Everest 29029?

It's a crazy event that Jesse Itzler puts on where he rents out Stratton Mountain in Vermont. You climb Stratton Mountain 17 times to equal the height of Everest, but you only have 36 hours to do it. She wasn't expecting it to be as difficult or the terrain so steep. It was gruelingly steep. It was snowing and raining. She was shin deep in mud. She had trained hard with her husband and was using the event to It was a way of celebrating her 50th Birthday and bring cancer free for 8 years.

What was the inner game like for you?

They had trained for it and had a gameplan for how the event would go. They knew how long they had for each ascent and still be able to sleep. The event started at 6 am. Once they had done the 3rd summit and came back down, Christine broke down and cried. She had expected to feel tired by the 10th summit and not the 3rd. She had to make a decision about what it was going to take to get up the mountain. She decided she was going to stop at every aid station and talk to the volunteers. She was going to tell everyone it was her 50th birthday. She was going to make it fun. She decided that for the really steep section she was going to put her headphones in and listen to podcasts. They hiked for 19 hours straight. They wanted 10 summits by midnight and they reached 9 which felt close enough to their goal. In the end, they managed 11 summits which are the height of Kilimanjaro.

What is the lesson that you learned?

That it's not all or nothing. Even though she hadn't reached her goal she still achieved. It was something really cool thing that she wanted to do. She now intends to do the event again.

Did you feel high afterward?

She was happy with what she did. She hiked for 18 hours straight and was really proud of that.

Why redefining healthy? Where did that come from?

Redefining healthy was all about helping women post-cancer. She is teaching people how to tap into what is it that makes you feel healthy. Christine was able to feel healthy even though she had cancer. She needed to redefine what healthy meant.

Do you feel like that's your purpose?

She feels like working with women post-cancer is an important part of her life's mission.

Do you find that people can go on the way or the other? That after cancer they can either be more confined or more willing?

People run the gamut. She doesn't take it personally and just shares her knowledge and research. Some women are ready to do the hard work and some aren't and that's okay.

What's an action step or piece of advice you might have for how to take charge of your health?

Drink more water. It's as simple as that. And eat more fruits and vegetables and less processed foods. There's no one specific diet that helps cancer. We don't need to complicate it. We just need to eat more fruit and veg. Do more of the things which light you up and less of the things that don't.

The stories we tell ourselves are important and we can choose what those stories are. Christine experienced this with both cancer and Everest 29019. She could have told herself negative stories about what was happening, but she chose not to.

Were you always like that or did cancer change your attitude?

It was cancer. Or more specifically it was the blood clot after she survived cancer which she thought was going to kill her.

What's the best advice you've ever been given?

Do your best and forget the rest

Tell us how we can get in touch with you

Her Website: www.redefining-healthy.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christine.walshegan

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christine.egan/

Links

The Healthy Girl's Guide to Breast Cancer by Christine Egan

https://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Girls-Guide-Breast-Cancer/dp/1452574596/

Living with the Monks: What Turning Off My Phone Taught Me about Happiness, Gratitude, and Focus by Jesse Itzler

https://www.amazon.com/Living-Monks-Turning-Happiness-Gratitude/dp/1478993421/

Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet by Jesse Itzler

https://www.amazon.com/Living-Seal-Training-Toughest-Planet/dp/1455534684/

Everest 29029

https://29029everesting.com

#136: Elicia Miller: Core Emotional Healing: Getting to the Root Cause of Your Symptoms Jun 13, 2019

Show notes

Elicia created the Core Emotional Healing® process as the culmination of 10 years of intensive training, personal healing, and empathic intuitive gifts. Based on her personal and professional experience, she developed a guided step-by-step process to address the emotional root cause of symptoms and suffering. Elicia provides insightful, direct, compassionate guidance to inspire and support others to be responsible for how they feel, ask for what they want, and to set healthy boundaries. She helps others feel safe and supported so they are empowered to freely express their true selves. She is the author of the ebook Detox 101 and coauthor of the books, One Crazy Broccoli and What's Left to Eat. Her new book, Your Symptoms Are A Gift, to be released in 2019, is an inspirational guide to help readers realize the emotional connection to their symptoms. The book details the Core Emotional Healing® process to help anyone heal from physical, emotional, and relationship challenges. Along with her husband, Psychologist Doug Miller, PhD, Elicia offers Core Emotional Experiential Therapy Private Healing Immersion for individuals and couples in Costa Rica.

Tell us about the work that you do and how you started on that journey.

Elicia grew up with a rageaholic father who controlled all of the emotions in the household. Elicia knew what was happening was wrong but when she would try to stand up to him, she would be shamed by her mother for doing so. Elicia coped by numbing herself through drinking, drugs, and sex. She had a lifetime of repression and shaming of her emotions.

When she was 38 she had been healing herself for 8 years using every healing modality she could find. She realized that the pain she had been feeling was connected to her childhood. She knew she needed to take care of her emotional needs from the past and the present. And then everything went away. Her addictions, eating disorders and relationship patterns. She found a deeper connection to herself to take care of herself on an emotional level.

There were several years where you were struggling with addiction. It sounds like there was a point where you shifted from drugs and drinking to detoxing and spirituality. When did that shift happen?

Elicia left an abusive marriage after 3 months when she was 30. That was when she decided to stop living an unconscious life. She asked herself - 'what made her choose him?' An experiential therapy course helped wake her up. She realized she could take care of herself and make decisions for herself. She didn't need somebody else to do that. She started taking lots of courses and connected with helping people in that way. She left her corporate sales job and became a journaling coordinator. She started creating after telling herself she wasn't creative all her life. She started to feel real happiness. From this deeper connection within herself, she stopped partying and going out. It didn't stay that way though, things came up which threw her back into her old coping ways.

You mentioned that you had all these symptoms in your life but were then able to get to the root cause. How do people access the root cause in their lives?

It's not just healing and going back and feeling these repressed emotions. It also working from your experience. What did you believe about yourself? What did you do to protect these wounds and feel love? We live from this false sense of self that formed from the core wounds. Addressing the core wounds can help shift everything but we need to be aware of what we really need and what we do to get our needs met. But some of the ways we get these needs met are preventing us from living life fully.

Let's use the example of your story. You had a dominant, controlling father and knew this from a young age. Often we can see that somebody mistreated us but what is the actual wound?

There are many wounds. We struggle with the emotional disconnection from our vulnerable self. We don't process our feelings and take care of them. The disconnect is what causes the problem. We have to reconnect to the vulnerable part of ourselves. Elicia calls this our wounded inner child.

If somebody is listening to this and wondering about their wounded child is, what's a question they could start with?

The wounded inner child is a part of ourselves that we all carry. It is the wounds we are trying to compensate for. It is the part of ourselves that doesn't feel good enough or needs to be right or always feels sad. It gets triggered. Or wants to find a way to feel better instead of feeling what it is feeling. The wounded inner child is the part of you that needs you to go into these feelings and take care of them. It is underneath all of the adaptations we form to cope with the world. Things like people pleasing or perfectionism.

Is there a specific question that can help access the hurt or the wound?

Triggers can be a way into the wounded inner child. How do I feel? When did I first feel that way? A trigger is when you feel disproportionately angry or sad or you withdraw from what just happened. Ask yourself - 'When did I feel that way as a child?'

What's your relationship with your dad like now?

Elicia has managed to heal her relationship with her father. It took until she was 38 and she had to stop talking to him completely. After her father divorced her mother he went to therapy and did a lot of healing himself. He has become a more loving and supportive person. Elicia has also worked out what she needs and where she can get it from, so she is no longer looking to her father to give her that.

Can you tell me a bit more about experiential therapy?

Experiential therapy is more of an active process than talk therapy. It uses other people to act out roles and situations. Someone might act as a parent and this helps draw the true feelings out of you. It can help bypass our defenses. Elicia and her husband developed a process called Core Emotional Experiential Therapy which uses over 100 objects to work someone through this process. They use the objects to lay out relationships which can bypass defenses and bring out the subconscious.

Sometimes we can get caught up on this never-ending 'fix-it' mentality. Do you think this could be another part of the wounded child?

There are a few things that could be going on. Never feeling good enough comes from toxic shame and can drive people to continuously want to improve themselves. Reading self-help books can be a way of bypassing what is really needed which is emotional healing. Books can support the process, but focusing on them can be about bypassing the emotions.

There are a lot of layers to this.

The process is about reconnecting to your emotions and wounds, and then learning how to take care of yourself. Then when you do that you can handle more things. Then more things come up but you know how to work with them on an ongoing basis.

What does it really mean to be self-aware?

You are the observer of yourself. You notice when you are in a pattern. You notice when you don't feel good. You notice that something keeps happening. To be self-aware is to continue to seek help when you are in some kind of pattern or are triggered by something. The more we heal our emotional wounds the more we integrate our true self. From that place, we are really able to be our true selves.

It's funny how we think we can know ourselves. We think 'I am not a creative person' and then realize that we are that way. It's a huge shift in identity.

Elicia used to say that she wasn't a writer. This comes from wounding. Now she writes all the time. But as a child what she had to say was dismissed, especially by her mother. Her true and authentic voice got blocked. And the protection of that was to say - 'I'm not a good writer.' Once she healed herself she was able to write and connect to her creative authentic voice.

What's the best advice you've ever been given?

Just keep writing.

Do you feel that because you have done so much work, the depth of beauty, joy, and peace has expanded?

Absolutely. When she had really connected and healed with her inner child, Elicia started singing and making up songs. That is a part of her natural expression which came out as a joyful playfulness.

Tell me how we can get in touch with you.

https://eliciamiller.com/

Links

Alice Miller

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Miller_(psychologist)

Healing The Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families by Charles L. Whitfield M.D.

https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Child-Within-Discovery-Dysfunctional/dp/0932194400/

The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You by Karla McLaren

https://www.amazon.com/Language-Emotions-What-Feelings-Trying/dp/1591797691/

#135: Anna Goldstein: An Important Part of Growth: How to Develop Your Wings May 30, 2019

Show notes

There is a story about a little boy who was playing outdoors and he found a caterpillar. Then he saw the caterpillar climb up the tree and act strangely and his mother explained that the butterfly was forming a cocoon.

The little boy watched it every day waiting for the butterfly to emerge. And one day it happened a small hole appeared in the cocoon and the Butterfly started to struggle to come out.

At first, the boy was really excited but then he became concerned because the butterfly was struggling so hard to get out and it looked like he couldn't break free. It looked desperate. So the boy was concerned and he wanted to help. So he ran to get scissors and he snipped the cocoon to make the hole bigger and the Butterfly quickly emerged.

But when the butterfly came out the boy was surprised the body was small and the wings were shriveled. And he continued to watch the butterfly expecting that at any moment the wings would dry out enlarge and expand to support the swollen body.

But that didn't happen.

The butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It was never able to fly.

And the boy tried to figure out what had gone wrong.

He went to a local college to see a scientist and he learned that the butterfly was supposed to struggle. In fact, the butterfly struggled to push its way through the tiny opening of the cocoon pushes the fluid out of its body and into its wings without the struggle. The butterfly would never ever fly.

So as you go through life keep in mind that struggling is an important part of any growth because it allows you to develop your wings.

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